medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (14. October) is the feast day of:
1) Callistus I, pope (d. 222). C. (also Calixtus) was elected bishop of Rome in 217, succeeding pope St. Zephyrinus. Our chief sources for him are the tendentious _Philosophoumena_ or _Refutatio omnium haeresium_ of an Hippolytus who tends be called H. of Rome and the not altogether reliable _Liber pontificalis_. According to Hippolytus, C. had been born into servile status and had twice been punished for crimes. In the second instance he had been sentenced to the mines in Sardinia and probably at that time ceased to be the property of his former master, a Christian of the imperial household. Some nine or ten years after C.'s release from the mines Zephyrinus put him in charge of the Christian cemetery that still bears C.'s name. In his brief pontificate C. condemned Sabellius for heresy. Though he died under Alexander Severus, who did not persecute, by the earlier fourth century C. had come to be considered a martyr.
The _Depositio martyrum_ of the Chronographer of 354 gives today as that of C.'s laying to rest at a milestone that accords with the location of the cemetery of Calepodius (which is where both the _Liber pontificalis_ and C.'s legendary Passio [BHL 1523; oldest witness is of the ninth century] say that he was buried). Remains believed to be those of C. are said to have been translated by pope St. Julius I (337-52; some prefer Gregory III [731-41]) to Rome's church of Santa Maria in Trastevere, where Gregory IV (827-44) later translated them to the apse. Here's a view of the portion of that church's late thirteenth-century apse mosaic (ca. 1290; attributed to Pietro Cavallini) that includes a representation of C. (third from left):
http://www.flickr.com/photos/athomeinrome/857538928/sizes/o/
Spurious letters of C. are included in the collection known as the False Decretals. One of these decrees fasting in each of four seasons. Here's a fourteenth-century illumination of C. promulgating this decree (Paris, BnF, ms. Français 185 [Vies des saints], fol. 201r):
http://saints.bestlatin.net/images/gallery/calixtus_bnfms.jpg
2) Lupulus of Capua (?). This less well known saint of the Regno was prominently represented among the local saints of the now lost apse mosaics of the late fifth-/early sixth-century church of St. Priscus at today's San Prisco (CE), an extramural survivor of (Old) Capua, where he was also figured in the cupola mosaics together with St. Rufus of Capua. He appears in mangled entries for today and for tomorrow in the (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology. That early eighth-century inheritor of late antique Campanian festal practices, the Calendar of St. Willibrord from Epternach, records him for tomorrow (15. October) along with other Campanian saints. Under the name form Libulus he is listed for tomorrow by Rabanus Maurus and by Notker. Later medieval calendars of the diocese of Capua also have L.'s feast on 15. October.
Notices from the eleventh and twelfth centuries of a church dedicated to L. at Grottola in Campania and of a town called Sanctus Lupulus in northern Puglia testify to the dissemination of his cult.
Herewith some views of a structure with which L. presumably will have been familiar, the amphitheatre of Roman-period Capua, now the Anfiteatro Campano at Santa Maria Capua Vetere (CE):
http://tinyurl.com/2j4q4q
http://tinyurl.com/4fr6xh
http://tinyurl.com/3lvthw
http://tinyurl.com/42tetn
http://tinyurl.com/yn7nhp
Some views of a structure in the same town erected for worship services by a religion with which early Christianity had to contend, the mithraeum of Santa Maria Capua Vetere:
http://tinyurl.com/2qc68r
http://www.mithra.it/mitrei/capua.htm
http://tinyurl.com/2dw7tu
3) Gaudentius of Rimini (?). G. (in Italian, Gaudenzo or Gaudenzio) is a legendary early bishop of Rimini and that city's patron saint. His Vitae are both very late (no witnesses earlier than the sixteenth century) and somewhat contradictory. They agree that G. was originally from Ephesus, that after voyaging to Rome he was sent by a pope to Rimini, that he there he preached, operated miracles, and made many converts, that he died on 14. October, and that he was buried in an extramural church dedicated to him. One Vita (BHL 3276) makes him a martyr under Diocletian; this accords, more or less, with G.'s mentions in Vitae of St. Mercurialis of Forlì and of St. Marinus of San Marino. The other Vita (BHL 3275) places his activity in third quarter of the fourth century, has him convert Arians to the Catholic faith, and has him martyred in ca. 360 by imperial officials.
Here's G. as depicted on a grosso from Rimini of the communal period (1265-1385):
http://tinyurl.com/3ce7fs
4) Fortunatus of Todi (d. perh. mid-6th cent.). We know about F. solely from some incidents recounted by pope St. Gregory the Great in his _Dialogi_ (1. 10). A potent exorcist and thaumaturge and a defender of the church, he was in his old age bishop of Todi during some part of Justinian's war of reconquest of Italy from the Goths. G. is Todi's patron saint. Herewith some views of Todi's Tempio di San Fortunato (begun in 1292):
http://tinyurl.com/64glh6
http://www.casaleulivi.com/files/images/Todi-panoramica.jpg
http://www.todi.net/fortunato.htm
http://www.moveaboutitaly.com/umbria/todi_san_Fortunato_it.html
http://tinyurl.com/kl6uj
Interior:
http://tinyurl.com/onxkt
http://www.thais.it/architettura/Gotica/HR/345.htm
http://www.thais.it/architettura/Gotica/HR/346.htm
Details (architectural and pictorial):
http://www.abiyoyo.com/italia/umbria/Todi2/Todi.htm
5) Angadrisma (d. ca. 695). We know about A. (also Angadresima; in French, Angadrême) chiefly from Aigradus' Vita of St. Ansbertus of Rouen (BHL 520) written ca. 700. This tells us that she was of the high nobility of Merovingian Francia, that her family originated in the territory of Thérouanne, that a cousin was St. Lambert of Fontenelle, and that though she wished to remain virginal she was betrothed by her father to the young Ansbert (who of course had not yet entered religion). A. prayed that her beauty be turned to ugliness through what the text calls leprosy. Her prayer was granted and her visage became ulcerated. Doctors were called in but the more they worked on her the more deformed her face appeared. Finally the marriage was called off by mutual consent of the two families.
A. then betook herself to St. Audoenus (Ouen) of Rouen and with his blessing became a nun, whereupon her physical beauty was restored to her. She entered the monastery of Oröer near Beauvais, where in time she became abbess and where she died, aged more than eighty years. Her cult is thought to have been more or less immediate. Oroër was destroyed by Normans in 851 but A.'s cult continued and her putative remains were preserved at Beauvais (they are now in the cathedral). She has a Vita of her own (BHL 453), whose only witness is of the eleventh century.
In 1321 A.'s veneration at Beauvais was renewed by its then bishop, the Norman noble Jean de Marigny (d. 1350; younger brother of Enguerrand de Marigny, chamberlain to Philip the Fair), who fixed the day of her feast in his diocese as 14. October. In 1472 her shrine was displayed on the ramparts during Beauvais' successful resistance to the siege placed on it by Charles the Bold. In the following year Louis XI decreed that A. be honored in an annual procession in gratitude for her aid in saving the city. The number of late fifteenth- and sixteenth-century statues of A. surviving in Beauvais testify in part to her civic popularity at this time.
Remains of A.'s monastery are said to exist underneath the sixteenth-century église St.-Martin at Oroër (Oise), shown here:
http://tinyurl.com/2g8dse
A.'s chapel in Beauvais' cathédrale Saint-Pierre is graced by the late sixteenth-century statue of her seen here in increasingly closer views:
Distance view (lighted figure to the right of the choir, facing viewer):
http://tinyurl.com/39hemg:
Closer view, showing A. to the left of her chapel:
http://tinyurl.com/2mdl5z
Much closer view, showing A.'s face darkened to represent her "leprosy":
http://tinyurl.com/2ph3hh
Another statue of A. (late fifteenth- or sixteenth-century) in the cathedral of Beauvais:
http://tinyurl.com/3a3xp8
http://tinyurl.com/32j7qo
http://tinyurl.com/2pglgy
A couple of illustrated sites/pages on Beauvais' cathedral:
http://www.cathedrale-beauvais.fr/index.htm
http://www.romanes.com/Beauvais/
Best,
John Dillon
(Lupulus of Capua and Angadrisma lightly revised from last year's posts)
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