medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (24. September) is the feast day of:
1) Anatolius of Milan (d. late 2d cent. ?). A. (also Anatelon; in Italian, Anatolio, Anatalone) is the traditional first bishop of Milan. According to Paul the Deacon, writing in the _Gesta episcoporum Mettensium_, he was sent by St. Peter to evangelize the city. In the eleventh century, after the legend of the Milanese church's apostolic foundation by St. Barnabas had arisen, A. was said to have been B.'s disciple, to have been the protobishop not only of Milan but also of Brescia, and to have been laid to rest (place unspecified) on this day. The anniversary of his laying to rest was celebrated in Milan's church of San Babila. In 1269 a Milanese liturgical calendar, _Beroldus novus_, added that A. had been buried in Brescia's chiesa di San Floriano. In 1472 that church was the scene of an Inventio of A.'s putative remains; these were then translated to Brescia's cathedral, where they are said to remain today.
2) Terence of Pesaro (d. 247 or 251, supposedly). T. is the patron saint of today's Pesaro (PU) in the northern Marche. His cult is attested in the dedication of Pesaro's (should you not know, the name is a proparoxytone) originally thirteenth-century cathedral, where in 1447 his putative relics were placed under the main altar, and in that of a now vanished monastery near today's Bellaguardia di Fossombrone (PU) first recorded in the subscriptions to the tithe records of the diocese of Urbino for the year 1299.
T. may be the bishop portrayed in a sixth- or seventh-century fresco discovered in 1752 in the crypt of Pesaro's extraurban abbey church of San Decenzio. In the fifteenth century he appears on the seal of one of Pesaro's bishops as a young man not dressed in clerical garb. This accords with the saint's construction in his very late, legendary Passio (BHL 8007; thought to be based on a vernacular original) preserved in his Office published in 1592 and making him a young layman and thaumaturge of Pannonian origin who is arrested in Aquileia as a Christian but miraculously is able to escape his prison, who then goes to Rome, and who on the way from Rome to Pesaro is slain by brigands on this day in 247 [sic] in the papacy of St. Cornelius and in the reign of the emperor Decius (which if true would instead make the year 251). Post-mortem miracles confirm his sanctity. Thus far the Passio. T. is considered a martyr.
Pesaro's cattedrale di San Terenzio had late antique predecessors on the same site. Rebuilt in the later nineteenth and very early twentieth centuries, it retains a seemingly thirteenth-century portal and facade:
http://www.italyheaven.co.uk/lemarche/images/pesaro2.jpg
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dave_italy/2562011260/
http://tinyurl.com/4krzs8
Parts of two late antique mosaic floors, the latter reworked in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, have been discovered in this church. Herewith an Italian-language account:
http://www.comune.pesaro.pu.it/index.php?id=484
An English-language account (with detail views accessible via hot links):
http://www.mosaiciduomopesaro.it/mosaici_eng.htm
More views (use menu at right):
http://tinyurl.com/4n5cuv
Two more views:
http://www.mosaiciduomopesaro.it/index.htm
T. has yet to grace the pages of the RM. Herewith some views of his effigy reliquary leaving the cathedral for a procession on his Big Day and then being returned:
http://tinyurl.com/4u3k97
http://tinyurl.com/4rd8f6
http://tinyurl.com/3wlq3k
http://tinyurl.com/3fopy5
3) Andochius, Thyrsis, and Felix (d. ca. 272, supposedly). A. (in French, Andoche), T., and F. are martyrs of Saulieu near Autun recorded in a legendary Passio thought to be of the fifth century (BHL 424-426; no witness earlier than the ninth century) and in later manuscripts of the (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology. The Passio makes them martyrs under Aurelian. They are entered in the ninth-century martyrologies of Florus, Ado, and Usuard.
An illustrated, French-language page on the earlier twelfth-century basilique Saint-Andoche at Saulieu (Côte-d'Or) in Bourgogne:
http://saulieu.chez-alice.fr/saint_andoche..htm
A companion page on the capitals:
http://saulieu.chez-alice.fr/les_chapitaux.htm
A much more extensive illustrated, French-language page on this church:
http://tinyurl.com/44loum
The Paradoxplace page on this church:
http://tinyurl.com/4p9t5y
The romanes.com page on this church:
http://www.romanes.com/Saulieu/
The Structurae images page for this church:
http://tinyurl.com/44mmxl
Six pages of black-and-white images of its decor begin here:
http://tinyurl.com/4g9kqu
4) Virgil of Salzburg (d. 784). The Irishman Virgil (whose name in Irish will have been Fearghal _vel sim._) had been in Francia for two years at the court of Pepin the Short before P.'s brother in law Odilo, duke of Bavaria invited him to succeed a recently deceased incumbent as abbot-bishop at Salzburg. The learned V. served at first as abbot only while a fellow Irishman exercised episcopal functions. But in 749, it is now thought, V. was consecrated bishop and served until his death on 27. November 784. He is remembered for St. Boniface's attacks upon him for treating as valid a baptism in which the formula had been badly garbled and for some doctrine which Boniface seems to have interpreted as involving a belief in a separate antipodean world. V. also founded several monasteries in Bavarian territory including the newly conquered Carinthia, in which latter he also directed missionary work. He was canonized in 1233.
V.'s feast on this day (in the Austrian diocese of Gurk - Klagenfurt he is celebrated on his _dies natalis_) commemorates his translation of the remains of St. Rupert (27. March in the General Roman Calendar) for the consecration of Salzburg's new cathedral dedicated to him and to St. Peter, the dedicatee of the monastery from which Salzburg's bishops had previously operated.
A thirteenth-century subterranean chapel in Vienna once had an altar in it dedicated to V. and for that reason is known as the Virgilkapelle. Two views:
http://leo.skyar.com/stationen/images/atw05.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/2v4zv8
In the pair of bishops shown here from ca. 1520 originally in the Rupertikirche at Stainach-Niederhofen (Steiermark) but now in the diocesan museum of the Diocese of Graz-Seckau the figure on the right is recognizable from his salt bucket as St. Rupert. The general assumption is that the figure on the right is V.:
http://www.niederhofen.at/seiten/erforschen_detail23.html
5) Gerard of Csanád (d. 1046). The Venetian G. (in Hungarian, Gellért) was abbot of the monastery of St. George in Venice before becoming tutor to St. Emeric/Imre, son of king St. Stephen/István of Hungary. As bishop of Csanád he played some role in the Christianization of the kingdom. During the troubled reign in Hungary of his unbeloved fellow Venetian Peter Orseolo G. was killed at Pest by pagan adherents of a native claimant to the throne. Christians treated him as a martyr for his faith rather than as a victim of nationality-based hatred. G. was canonized along with Stephen/István and Emeric/Imre in 1083. He is one of Hungary's patron saints.
The hill (Gellért-hegy; Gellért Hill) in Budapest at which G. is said to have been killed after having crossed the Danube:
http://tinyurl.com/4qvcxw
Two illuminations in the fourteenth-century Hungarian Angevin Legendary showing scenes from G.'s _gesta_ in Hungary as well as his murder and his laying to rest:
http://tinyurl.com/3uuyer
http://tinyurl.com/4nuh5q
In the fifteenth century G.'s relics were transported to Venice, where they remained in Murano's twelfth-century Chiesa di Santa Maria e San Donato until they were returned to Hungary in 2002. A few views of that church and of its belltower:
http://www.panoramio.com/photo/2617682
http://tinyurl.com/34xh6x
http://tinyurl.com/3dvpj3
http://tinyurl.com/bu8v8
http://tinyurl.com/2jpzxu
Best,
John Dillon
(Virgil of Salzburg and Gerard of Csanád lightly revised from last year's post)
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