medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (11. February) is the feast day of:
1) Soteris (d. ca. 304?). We know about S. (whose name in some texts is spelled medievally as Sotheris) chiefly from writings of St. Ambrose of Milan (_De virginibus_ 3. 7; _Exhortatio virginis_, 12). According to A., she was a relative of his from some previous generation (but at a time when the family was already of consular rank) martyred during a persecution which he does not identify. Versions B and C of the sixth- or seventh-century Passio of St. Pancras of Rome (BHL 6240, etc.) say that S. was martyred at the same time as was P. and that their deaths occurred in the persecution of Diocletian and Maximian. Ambrose says that S., who had consecrated herself to Christ, was physically very beautiful, that after refusing to sacrifice to the Roman gods she was tortured, that her suffering included severe facial disfigurement, and that she ultimately perished by the sword.
A funerary inscription from the city of Rome in the year 401 (_CIL_ VI, 9811) shows both that S. was then celebrated liturgically there and that today was then considered her _dies natalis_. This is also one of the dates given for her in the (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology. Later martyrologies, including the RM until its revision of 2001, entered her under 10. February. S. was buried in a cemetery on the Via Appia that later was named for her. Pope Stephen II (752-57) restored a martyrial church that had been erected over her grave. S.'s remains along with those of many other saints were brought into the city by pope Sergius II (844-47) and deposited in the newly rebuilt San Martino ai Monti. In that church's now seventeenth-century crypt their relics are kept in a small chamber underneath the main altar. Here's a view:
http://tinyurl.com/3dgk2l
While we're here, a discussion of San Martino ai Monti (still in some respects a ninth-century church):
http://tinyurl.com/3877c6
and some views:
http://tinyurl.com/33mmk5
http://tinyurl.com/39ebas
http://www.giovannirinaldi.it/page/rome/sanmartinoaimonti/
2) Castrensis (d. 5th cent., supposedly). Venerated in Campania as an early martyr-bishop, this less well known saint of the Regno is recorded for today in the (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology, in the early eighth-century Calendar of St. Willibrord, and in the ninth-century Marble Calendar of Naples. He is especially associated with the following places in today's province of Caserta: Castel Volturno (whose ninth-century bishop Radipert is recorded as having been buried at an altar containing C.'s remains), Capua, and Sessa Aurunca. C. became the leading figure in the thirteenth(?)-century _Vita sancti Castrensis_ (BHL 1644-1645), which brings together twelve saints from southern Italy and makes them all Africans who in the fifth century escaped Vandal persecution, made their way in an unseaworthy vessel to Campania, and died there in various places.
A twelfth-century mosaic illustrating two of C.'s miracles is part of the decor of Sicily's Monreale cathedral (nave, west wall):
http://tinyurl.com/djppyy
Since at least the late sixteenth century the cathedral has laid claim to C.'s (putative) relics. Alleged to have been brought there in 1182 and to have been placed in the new cathedral's then sole altar, these were translated in 1596 to its present Cappella di San Castrense. A Benedictine convent dedicated to C. was founded at Monreale in 1499; its church, expanded in the eighteenth century and still retaining the original dedication, now serves a local parish. C. (n Italian, Castrense or Castrese) is the principal patron of the archdiocese of Monreale as well as the patron saint of Monreale (PA) and, in Campania, of Castel Volturno (CE), Marano di Napoli (NA), and Sessa Aurunca (CE).
C.'s image in the much degraded frescoes of the Grotta dei Santi at Calvi Risorta (CE) may be made out here (left-hand column, second view; labelled as Fig. 10):
http://www.cattedrale-calvirisorta.com/imgrottasanti.htm
C. has given his name both to one of Campania's many locally developed varieties of apricot, the San Castrese, and to a Sicilian pastry, the _biscotto castrense_, supposedly first made by the sisters at his convent at Monreale.
3) Secundinus, venerated at Troia (d. 7th cent.?). One of the companions of St. Castrensis (see 2, above) in the systematizing and largely untrustworthy thirteenth(?)-century _Vita sancti Castrensis_ (BHL 1644-1645) is this less well known saint of the Regno, said to have become bishop of Aecae in Apulia and to have died there. Since the eleventh century a bishop of this name has had an important cult at today's Troia (FG), founded in 1018 or 1019 by the East Roman katepan Basil Boioannes near the ruins of decayed Aecae as a fortress defending the Capitanata against military attack by the area's former master, the Lombard principality of Benevento.
According both to the _Historia inventionis corporis sancti Secundini_ (BHL 7554-7555) and to S.'s so-called Vita by the later eleventh-century Cassinese hagiographer Guaifer (BHL 7556; an expansion of the Inventio), while Troia was being built a sarcophagus bearing the name of _sanctus et venerabilis Secundinus episcopus_ and noting his day of death was discovered at Aecae's church of St. Mark by builders looking for ancient spolia. Within was a marble urn containing the remains of the aforementioned saintly person. These were wrapped in a clean shroud and brought into the new city. Placed temporarily in the church of the Holy Cross they were, after a miracle that overcame episcopal reluctance, brought into Troia's cathedral (this will have been in or after 1031, when Troia was raised to diocesan status as Aecae's successor).
S.'s sarcophagus survives; it's now in the Museo Civico di Troia. Said on stylistic grounds to be of the seventh century (but its inscription has also been dated to the fifth or sixth century), it is shown here:
http://xoomer.virgilio.it/guidoiam/arte/guidoiam/Images/sarcofago.jpg
Where it spent the Middle Ages after the removal of S.'s relics to the new town is unknown. At some point prior to 1968 it was discovered serving as the basin for a fountain behind Troia's monastery of the Combonian Missionaries. The inscription is said to be as described in the eleventh-century accounts, except that it lacks the word _episcopus_. But as it is also reported to say that S. restored (_renovavit_) the churches of the saints, the inference that S. had been a bishop seems justified.
One of Troia's patron saints, S. is the flanking figure on the right on the lintel of the main (north) portal of its twelfth- and early thirteenth-century cathedral. The penultimate image on this page gives a very clear view of his part of the relief:
http://tinyurl.com/3xwaak
One or more episcopal saints of this name has/have been venerated since the early Middle Ages in parts of Campania and southern Lazio. He/they is/are sometimes identified with S. of Troia, e.g. at Bellona (CE) in Campania, whose patron saint is now today's S.
4) Gregory II, pope (d. 731). According to the _Liber Pontificalis_, G. vigorously opposed the iconoclastic policies of the emperor Leo III. For a very different take on Leo, and thus on the accuracy of the LP in this regard, see:
http://www.roman-emperors.org/leoiii.htm
Though in 730 Leo certainly issued an iconoclastic decree, G.'s differences with him may have had more to do with the fiscal health of the states of the church. On another front, it was G. who in 718 authorized St. Boniface's renewed missionary activity in Germany and who in 722 consecrated him bishop.
Portraits of G. and of Leo will be found here:
http://tinyurl.com/2erqap
Note that that is a "saints of the day" page for _13._ February. Prior to its revision of 2001, that is where the RM had G.
5) Paschal I, pope (d. 824). P. was a native of Rome. His election in 817 had not been cleared in advance with Louis the Pious. Although an exchange of correspondence resulted in Louis' recognizing the autonomy of the church of Rome in choosing its bishop, relations between P. and the western imperial house are often said to have been strained. But the assassination, shortly before P.'s own death, of two prominent papal officials who favored western imperial authority in Rome may have colored such estimates of his papacy as a whole. The eastern emperor at this point was the iconoclast Leo V, whose ecclesiastical policies P. did his best to counter.
P.'s seal on a lead bulla:
http://www.24hourmuseum.org.uk/nwh_gfx_en/ART24948.html
Not to miss the censer cover discussed and illustrated (several views) further down in this piece.
P.'s enameled reliquary cross (upper part only) in the Musei Vaticani:
http://www.italicon.it/museo/I226-008.jpg
P. is best known for the churches he rebuilt and had decorated: Santa Prassede, Santa Cecilia in Trastevere, and Santa Maria in Domnica. Very brief, illustrated, Italian-language accounts of the first two of these are here:
http://www.rositour.it/RomaLazio/RMMosaici/RMMosaici.htm
An English-language page on Santa Prassede:
http://tinyurl.com/ys627s
A page of views of Santa Prassede:
http://tinyurl.com/25bkbn
Marjorie Greene's views, in Medrelart, of Santa Prassede:
http://medrelart.shutterfly.com/462
A page of eight expandable views of mosaics from Santa Prassede:
http://www.classicalmosaics.com/photo_album.htm
P.'s portrait (detail of the apse mosaic):
http://tinyurl.com/3exrs3
An English-language page on Santa Cecilia in Trastevere:
http://tinyurl.com/22fpws
The first view on this page of Arnolfo di Cambio's ciborium/tabernacle (1293) in this church allows a look at the much earlier apse mosaic behind it:
http://www.wga.hu/frames-e.html?/html/a/arnolfo/3/index.html
Details from Pietro Cavallini's Last Judgment (ca. 1293) in the same church:
http://tinyurl.com/2cs4rv
An English-language page on Santa Maria in Domnica:
http://romanchurches.wikia.com/wiki/Santa_Maria_in_Domnica
Apse mosaic with kneeling P.:
http://www2.siba.fi/~kkoskim/rooma/kuvat/355_021c.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/2y43jb
http://tinyurl.com/28cx5d
Best,
John Dillon
(last year's post lightly revised)
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