medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture

Today (18. October) is the feast day of:

1)  Luke, evangelist (d. late 1st or earlier 2d cent.).  The author of Luke-Acts needs no introduction to the learned of this list.  He is generally identified with the physician L. who is St. Paul's companion at Colossians 4:14.  Late antique and medieval traditions place his apostolate in Alexandria in Egypt (the most frequently named venue), Byzantium, Thrace, Macedonia, Dalmatia, Italy, and Gaul.  St. Jerome (_De viris illustribus_, 7) knew L.'s age at the time of his death (84) but not where he died.  Others assert that he was martyred at Elaea in the Peloponnese by being crucified on an olive tree.  According to the Coptic Orthodox Church, L. was martyred at Rome by decapitation.  Jerome (loc. cit.) reports that L.'s relics were translated in 357 by Constantius II to Constantinople, where they were deposited in the Church of the Apostles.  Sts. Gaudentius of Brescia and Paulinus of Nola obtained relics of L. that they placed in churches of their foundation.

Since a reported Inventio of 1177 it has been believed at Padua that a now headless skeleton kept in its Basilica di Santa Giustina is that of L.  In 1998 a skull in Prague said to have been brought there as L.'s in the fourteenth century by the emperor Charles IV was taken to Padua and was found to be a "highly specific" fit with the uppermost vertebra of the skeleton, whose coffin had been opened to permit testing of various sorts.  Analysis of mitochondrial DNA from two of the teeth led to a pronouncement that the owner was three times more likely to have been a native of Syria than one of Greece.  Osteological examination of the skeleton showed to be of a man who had been aged somewhere between 70 and 85 when he died.  Carbon dating of the skeleton placed the man's death at some time between the years 130 and 400.  Carbon dating of bones of snakes endemic to western Europe found in the coffin placed the latter in the West in the fifth century.  

Two views of the lead coffin at Padua containing the skeleton believed to be L.'s:
http://www.30giorni.it/foto/1078747115226.jpg
http://www.30giorni.it/foto/1078747296789.jpg
A view of two teeth from the skull from Prague:
http://www.pnas.org/content/98/23/13460/F2.large.jpg 

From at least the eighth century onward L. was believed to have been a painter.   Herewith a page of expandable views of paintings by Rogier van der Weyden (ca. 1400-1464) of L. painting an image of the BVM:
http://tinyurl.com/6czabs
And here are two views of one of the many late medieval images of the BVM and Christ Child piously thought to have been painted by L. (this one is in the Santuario di San Luca at Bologna):
http://tinyurl.com/3j325x
http://tinyurl.com/5ufx5u
Another, called the Madonna constantinopolitana (in local tradition it was brought to Padova from Constantinople) and damaged by fire before the sixteenth century, is displayed behind a protective cover in the Cappella di San Luca in Padua's Basilica di Santa Giustina, where it is mounted above and behind the tomb of the skeleton believed to be that of L.:
http://www.glaubenswege.ch/Evangelist_Lukas.html
A view of it without the cover:
http://www.abbaziasantagiustina.org/images/icona.jpg
A recent reconstruction of the original:
http://www.iconografi.it/images/costantinopolitana_ric.JPG 


2)  Asclepiades of Antioch (d. 218).  According to St. Jerome's _Chronicon_ A. was the ninth bishop of Antioch on the Orontes, having succeeded Serapion in 211 or 212.  He entered the historical martyrologies with Ado, who had read a reference to him in Rufinus' Latin translation of Eusebius' _Historia Ecclesiastica but who, having confused this A, with his homonym the companion of St. Pionius, made him a martyr under Decius. 


3)  Proculus, Eutyches, and Acutius (d. 305, supposedly).  Today's less well known saints of the Regno, said to have been a deacon and two laymen of ancient Puteoli, today's Pozzuoli (NA) in Campania, are among the canonical companions in martyrdom of St. Januarius venerated at Naples.  In the developed Januarian story all the martyrs are caught up in the Great Persecution and are sentenced to exposure to wild beasts in the amphitheatre of Pozzuoli.  This sentence is however not carried out and they are instead decapitated at the Forum Vulcani, at or near the Solfatara in the Phlegraean Fields.  In a synopsis relayed by Bede (followed by Ado and by Usuard) as well as in a more detailed translation account (BHL 4116), people of Puteoli bring their remains (much later, evidently) to the town's basilica of St. Stephen.  Their feast day commemorates this translation.

Later translation accounts (BHL 4137, 4133) have Naples' eighth-century bishop Stephen II translating the remains of Eutyches and Acutius to that city and the Lombards making off with those of Proculus and taking them to Benevento.  A supposedly ninth-century translation account has the relics of all three removed to Reichenau.  In the later eighteenth century, when these accounts had come to light and relics said to be theirs were found at Reichenau, Pozzuoli received half of the remains of each saint that were then at Naples (including those of P., who had somehow managed to find his way here from Benevento) and the other half were reinterred under the main altar of Naples' cathedral (where in a few years they were joined by the putative relics of Naples' St. Agrippinus).  An inspection of the Campanian relics in 1964 resulted in a declaration that these were lacking the bones belonging to the set at Reichenau.

Quite inadequate reproductions of the splendidly colorful depictions of P., E., and A. in the catacombs of San Gennaro at Naples are at the foot of this page:
http://www.sansossio.it/
Excellent ones will be found in Umberto M. Fasola, _Le catacombe di S.
Gennaro a Capodimonte_ (Roma: Editalia, 1975).               

Here's a view of the Flavian Amphitheatre at Pozzuoli:
http://tinyurl.com/ymzdaw
Other views:
http://140.164.3.3/CampiFlegrei/pozzuoli/anfiteatro.html
More views (all expandable), and some of the Solfatara as well, are here:
http://www.geocities.com/kpkilburn/pozzuolicumasolfatara.htm

In the sixth century inhabited Puteoli/Pozzuoli had shrunk to its fortified acropolis, today's Rione Terra.  The town's paleochristian cathedral of St. Stephen was abandoned and an ancient temple (today's so-called Tempio di Augusto) became the new cathedral, dedicated to P.  This remained free-standing until 1643, when it was incorporated into the then newly built cattedrale di San Procolo.  This late fifteenth-century drawing by the architect Giuliano da Sangallo is said to be the only view we have of it prior to that incorporation:
http://tinyurl.com/2krn63
In 1963 the cathedral suffered a disastrous fire and in the following year remains of the ancient temple and medieval cathedral were revealed when the fabric surrounding them was removed:
http://www.costruzioni.net/articoli/pozzuoli/9.jpg
http://www.costruzioni.net/articoli/pozzuoli/8.jpg
http://140.164.3.3/CampiFlegrei/pozzuoli/pozzuoli4/tempiort.gif
http://tinyurl.com/2jbbzk
In this aerial view they're just a little above center:
http://www.costruzioni.net/articoli/pozzuoli/6.jpg


4) Amabilis of Riom (d. later 5th cent.).  According to St. Gregory of Tours' _De gloria confessorum_, A. (in French, Aimable, Amable) was a priest of outstanding virtues at today's Riom (Puy-de-Dôme) in Auvergne, said to have had power over snakes.  Relics believed to be his were brought from Clermont to Riom probably in the eleventh century (a community of canons regular served his church there from 1077 to 1548).  Herewith some views of Riom's mostly twelfth- and thirteenth-century basilique Saint-Amable (the facade is of the eighteenth century; the belltower and the transepts were rebuilt in 1855):
http://www.pbase.com/philippe_henry/image/53516725
http://tinyurl.com/6esr73
http://tinyurl.com/5cdsrx 

Best,
John Dillon
(Proculus, Eutyches, and Acutius lightly revised from last year's post)

**********************************************************************
To join the list, send the message: join medieval-religion YOUR NAME
to: [log in to unmask]
To send a message to the list, address it to:
[log in to unmask]
To leave the list, send the message: leave medieval-religion
to: [log in to unmask]
In order to report problems or to contact the list's owners, write to:
[log in to unmask]
For further information, visit our web site:
http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/medieval-religion.html