medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (27. October) is the feast day of:
1) Evaristus, pope (d. ca. 109). E. appears in the early succession lists of the bishops of Rome as the fourth bishop (after Linus, Anacletus [actually, Anencletus], and Clement I, the latter two of whom are sometimes presented in reverse order). The so-called Liberian Catalogue gives his name as Aristus. A. will have become bishop in about the year 100. Nothing certain is known about him. The _Liber pontificalis_ provides various details, all suspect. Later tradition, maintained in the RM until its revision of 2001 (when E. was moved to today from 26. October) considered him a martyr under Hadrian.
Expandable views of a late fifteenth-century (after 1482) manuscript illumination of E. in a Roman Breviary of French origin are here (Clermont-Ferrand, Bibliothèque municipale, ms. 69, fol. 590r):
http://tinyurl.com/634mrf
2) Thraseas (d. later 2d cent.). We know about T., a bishop of Eumenia in Phrygia, chiefly from Polycrates of Ephesus as quoted by Eusebius (_Historia ecclesiastica_, 5. 24) and by St. Jerome (_De viris illustribus_, 45). According to Polycrates, who is listing prominent Quartodecimans, T. of Eumenia was a bishop and martyr who reposed at Smyrna. He is generally assumed to be the martyr T. mentioned by the anti-Montanist writer Apollonius in another passage quoted by Eusebius (_Hist. eccl., 5. 18). In the Syriac Martyrology and in the (pseudo-)Hieronymian Matryrology T. is recorded under today along with Polycarp, Gaius, and eight others. Ado, followed by Usuard, entered T. under 5. October. That is also where he was in the RM until its revision of 2001.
3) Namatius of Clermont (d. 462?). According to St. Gregory of Tours (_Historia Francorum_, 2. 16-17), N. succeeded St. Rusticus of Clermont as bishop of that city and over a period of twelve years built an intramural cathedral in which he deposited relics of Sts. Vitalis and Agricola that he had received from Bologna. Gregory (loc. cit.) also tells us that N. was married at the time of his election as bishop, that his wife constructed an extramural basilica dedicated to St. Stephen, and that N. was buried in that church. Invocations of N. as a saint begin to be recorded from about the year 950.
4) Gaudiosus, bp. of Abitina, venerated at Naples (d. 5th cent. ?). The sepulchral inscription (_CIL_ X. 1538) in the Neapolitan catacombs that bear his name informs us that Septimus Caelius Gaudiosus was a bishop of Abitina in Africa (A. Proconsularis, probably) who died in exile at the age of seventy. Not securely dated, this less well known saint of the Regno was laid to rest in an arcosolium close to the first resting place of the Neapolitan bishop St. Nostrianus (d. 454). The usual conjecture (at least as old as Peter the Subdeacon in the tenth century) is that G., like the better attested St. Quodvultdeus of Carthage, was an exile from Arian persecution in Vandal Africa.
G. has long been one of Naples' major saints. At some point between 767 and 780, bishop Stephen II of Naples erected on the site of the former monastery of St. Agnellus (also held to have been an African exile) at the city's acropolis (now Caponapoli) a men's monastery dedicated to G.; this is the complex in which the same bishop erected the women's monastery to which he translated the presumed remains of St. Fortunata venerated at Patria. G.'s monastery, which lay just within the city walls, helped to preserve his cult during the years that followed, when extremely unsettled conditions led to the cessation of liturgies at the of course extramural catacombs.
Possibly also under Stephen II, and certainly by 1132, G.'s remains (along with those of Agnellus) were translated to the aforesaid monastery; in 1799 they were removed to the cathedral, where they remain today. G. was included along with various sainted bishops of Naples in the litany of the Neapolitan _Ordo ad unguendum infirmum_ attested from the tenth and eleventh centuries.
The ninth-century Marble Calendar of Naples gives 27. October as the date of G.'s laying to rest. In editing the early RM, Cardinal Baronio used 27. October for the feast of St. Gaudiosus of Salerno (now usually held to be a doublet of our G.) and set G.'s feast day as 28. October. In the latest revision (2001) of the RM, G. of Salerno has disappeared and G. of Abitina has been restored to today.
After centuries of neglect, Naples' Catacombe di San Gaudioso began to be visited occasionally in the sixteenth century. In the seventeenth century they were re-opened for cult purposes and in places remodeled. A few views:
http://tinyurl.com/ypv763
http://tinyurl.com/2hn6qv
http://tinyurl.com/y2m43x
G.'s arcosolium:
http://tinyurl.com/26sphr
5) Bartholomew of Breganze (Bl.; d. 1270). After study at Padua B. (also B. of Vicenza) entered the Order for Friars Preacher at what is said to have been a very young age. He preached in Emilia and in Lombardy. Gregory IX brought him Rome, where he became Master of the Sacred Palace. In 1253 Innocent IV made B. bishop of Limassol. Two years later Alexander IV translated him to Vicenza. When Vicenza's lord, Ezzelino da Romano, drove him out, B. was instead made papal legate to England. On his return voyage he was received by St. Louis IX, who gave him a thorn from the Crown of Thorns. In 1260 or 1261 B., now restored to the see of Vicenza, erected in that city its chiesa di Santa Corona.
B. was a prolific writer of sermons and of works of mystical spirituality. He is buried in Santa Corona. His cult was confirmed in 1793. An Italian-language account of Vicenza's chiesa di Sacra Corona is here:
http://tinyurl.com/648erz
A larger version of the exterior view shown on that page:
http://www.bed-breakfast-italy.com/photos/santa-corona.jpg
An even larger view:
http://www.vicenza.hu/gallery/36.jpg
Main portal:
http://tinyurl.com/6e5vps
Interior:
http://tinyurl.com/5rkd2a
Best,
John Dillon
(Gaudiosus of Abitina lightly revised from last year's post)
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