medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (10. January) is the feast day of:
1) Miltiades, pope (d. 314). Thanks to the policy of the emperor Maxentius (who well before the Edict of Milan returned confiscated properties to the church), M. (also Melchiades) was the first bishop of Rome to operate in conditions of freedom after the Diocletianic persecution. Commissioned by the emperor Constantine to investigate a challenge from within the church to the fitness for office of the bishop of Carthage, M. called a synod that sided with the incumbent and that excommunicated the bishop's chief rival, Donatus. Later Donatists said very unkind things about M. He was buried in the cemetery of Callistus on the Appian Way and was succeeded by pope St. Sylvester I. San Silvestro in Capite is said to hold his relics. But not all of them. One of the bone fragments here is said to be his:
http://tinyurl.com/yl4s2s
http://tinyurl.com/yg22he
A fourteenth-century depiction of M. (at left) and Sylvester in Paris, BnF, ms. Français 241, fol. 58r (Jacobus de Voragine, _Legenda aurea_ [traduction de Jean de Vignay]):
http://tinyurl.com/ymr8yp
2) Gregory of Nyssa (d. 395). G. was a younger brother of St. Basil of Caesarea, by whom he was educated. He married and became a rhetor. When he was his early thirties he was ordained priest. In 371 he became bishop of Nyssa (one of Caesarea's suffragan dioceses). What became of his wife is unknown. G., who wrote extensively on Trinitarian theology and who participated in the Council of Constantinople (381), is the most philosophically oriented of the Cappadocian Fathers.
Here's a view of what is said to be G.'s jawbone, preserved at the Visoki Decani Monastery at Metohija in, depending on one's view of recent events, the Republic of Kosovo or Serbia's province of Kosovo and Metohija:
http://www.orthodoxphotos.com/Holy_Relics/Various/6.shtml
G. in the eleventh-century mosaics of St. Sophia in Kiev:
http://www.pravoslavieto.com/life/01/01.10_sv_G_Niski.jpg
G. in the twelfth-century mosaics of the Cappella Palatina at Palermo:
http://cache.eb.com/eb/image?id=45898&rendTypeId=4
G. (at right) in the early fourteenth-century frescoes of the King's Church, Studenica Monastery, near Kraljevo in Serbia:
http://tinyurl.com/y75pth
3) Agatho, pope (d. 681). A Greek-Latin bilingual from Sicily, A. is chiefly remembered for his efforts leading to the Sixth Ecumenical Council's anathematization of monotheletism, a posthumously obtained victory that greatly reinforced the prestige of the bishop of Rome (expressed, for example, in the Council's formula that Peter had spoken through Agatho). A.'s papacy also saw the final submission of the previously autocephalous church of Ravenna to the see of Rome and the first known papal resolution of a dispute between English bishops (saints Theodore of Canterbury and Wilfred of York).
A. (with triple tiara!), at right in this composite of two frescoes, in a fifteenth-century portrait in the vaulting just before the entrance to the chapter room of the St. Benedict Monastery at Subiaco:
http://www.romeartlover.it/Subiaco7.jpg
4) Benincasa (Bl.; d. 1194). This less well known holy person of the Regno was the eighth abbot of the monastery of the Most Holy Trinity at today's Cava de' Tirreni (SA) in southern Campania, where he succeeded Bl. Marinus on 30. January 1171. According to John of Capua in 1295, B. was _pius, prudens, et pastor opimus_ ("pious, prudent, and a most worthy shepherd"). B. enjoyed excellent relations with king William II, who entrusted to the Cavensians the royal monastery he established at Monreale in the early 1170s, who granted the abbey the legal status of a tenant in chief in its secular holdings, and who resolved in the abbey's favor a dispute with the bishop of Salerno over control of the port of Vietri, where the abbey kept a ship used in commercial ventures that in B.'s time extended to ports in the kingdom of Jerusalem.
B.'s cult was immediate. It was confirmed papally at the level of Beatus in 1928 in a job lot with seven other abbots from Simeon to Leo II.
In the later tradition of Monreale, William's choice of the Cavensians to staff that abbey was an act of gratitude for the spiritual care he received from B. in 1172 at Salerno that led to his physical recovery from a painful medical condition then afflicting him. Herewith some views of Monreale's cloister and adjacent monastic buildings, starting with a view taken from the cathedral of Santa Maria la Nuova:
http://www.panoramio.com/photo/5088475
http://www.motortravel.it/fotogallery/sicilia/monreale01.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/8oatct
http://www.pbase.com/ssschwarz/image/51383440
http://tinyurl.com/7vg5ky
http://tinyurl.com/8kuzme
http://tinyurl.com/9uqnbd
http://www.flickr.com/photos/atlantide/2455970297/sizes/o/
http://tinyurl.com/9ys9mb
http://flickr.com/photos/boschianpest/2507693711/sizes/l/
And a view back across the cloister to the cathedral:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/atlantide/2455954771/sizes/o/
5) William of Bourges (d. 1209 or 1210). W. (also W. of Corbeil, W. of Donj[e]on), a descendant of the counts of Nevers and the patron saint of the French nation at the University of Paris, was a monk at Grandmont before entering the Cistercian order at Pontigny. He rose to become abbot at his order's houses at Fontainejean (Loiret) and Chaalis (Oise). In late 1199 he was chosen, reportedly by lot, from among three Cistercian abbots to succeed to the recently vacant archiepiscopal see of Bourges. He made his formal entry and was consecrated in the following January. W. was an active supporter of policies espoused by the Reform papacy. His predecessor had provided funds for the rebuilding of Bourges' cathedral and in W.'s time the crypt was completed and work on the choir had begun.
In what is usually said to have been 1209 W. became fatally ill from a condition either brought on or exacerbated by an open-air, midwinter service he had conducted in the new cathedral's unfinished choir on the Vigil of the Epiphany. His death is said to have followed swiftly on this day and to have prevented him from participating in the Albigensian Crusade, which began in 1209. (In his "'Fabrica, opus' and the Dating of Mediaeval Monuments", _Gesta_ 15 [1976], 27-30, at p. 29, Robert Branner cited a charter executed by W. early in _1210_.). Miracles followed as did also a very prompt canonization (1217, by Honorius III). W. has several Vitae and Miracula based upon his canonization hearing (BHL 8900-8905).
Here's W. in a later fifteenth-century window (ca. 1465-1470) in the cathedral of Rouen:
http://www.patrimoinedefrance.org/ico100.jpg
And here he is in a late fifteenth-century manuscript illumination in an Hours for the Use of Rome (Angers, Bibliothèque municipale, ms. 134):
http://tinyurl.com/7qzr5t
Some views of Bourges' cathedral of Saint-Etienne:
http://tinyurl.com/8pdj4b
http://tinyurl.com/77xjon
http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/cas/fnart/arch/bourges.html
Best,
John Dillon
(Miltiades, Gregory of Nyssa, and Agatho lightly revised from last year's post)
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