medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (29. March 2008) is the feast day of:
1) Eustasius of Naples (d. 3d cent.). According to the late eighth- or early ninth-century first portion of the __Chronicon episcoporum sanctae Neapolitanae ecclesiae_, today's less well known saint of the Regno (also Eustathius, Eustachius) was Naples' seventh bishop. His elogium, which has suffered textual damage, focuses on his cult. Referring to the devotion of the populace, it informs us that E. had been translated from his original place of burial to the main altar of a church of the BVM. In the twelfth century that church's successor was in the city's Portanova district and in 1616 relics identified as E.'s by the inscription on their container were discovered there. Three years later E.'s cult, previously restricted to this church, was extended to the entire diocese. Possibly it was then that E.'s relics were moved to the cathedral, where they were accorded a solemn recognition in 1884.
E.'s feast day in Naples is 10. May, the date of his commemoration in that city's early ninth-century Marble Calendar. Slightly later in the same century, St. Ado of Vienne entered into his martyrology under this date a different Eustasius (he of Luxeuil). Usuard followed suit in the first version of _his_ Martyrology but in the second moved that E. to his _dies natalis_ on 2. April. Through 1956, though, the RM followed Ado and the earlier Usuard in commemorating E. of Luxeuil today. In its revision of 2001 he was replaced under this date by E. of Naples.
2) Mark of Arethusa (d. 364). M. was made bishop of Arethusa (today's ar-Rastan in Syria's governorate of Homs) by Constantine the Great, His propensity to side with quasi-Arians at various councils caused Baronio, suspecting his orthodoxy, to exclude him from his editions of MR (a decision later altered thanks to the Bollandists' promotion of him as a martyr). St. Gregory of Nazianzus (_Or._ 4. 88-91), drawing on a fourth-century Passio (BHG 2248), relates his heroism in the face of anti-Christian violence at Arethusa stirred up by the emperor Julian in 361. The aged M., who had torn down a pagan temple and who had been effective in making Christian converts, left the city briefly (out of prudence, not fear, says Gregory) but returned when things got ugly. He was seized, publicly humiliated, and tortured extensively. M.'s steadfastness then and later shamed the magistrates, who allowed him to survive.
M.'s early Passio was edited by François Halkin in his "La Passion de S. Marc d'Aréthuse, BHG 2248", _Analecta Bollandiana_ 103 (1985), nos. 3-4, pp. 217-29.
An English-language translation of Gregory's oration is here (the squeamish might wish to skip paragraph 87; the latter, by the way, underlies the account of the companions of yesterday's Cyril of Heliopolis at Theodoret, _Historia ecclesiastica_ 3. 3):
http://tinyurl.com/2e8j9b
An English-language version of Sozomen's account of M.'s suffering at _Historia ecclesiastica_ 5. 10 is here:
http://tinyurl.com/cybdy8
Arethusa / ar-Rastan is in the valley of the Orontes / al-´Asi. Here's a view of the latter to the east of the city, giving one some idea of the terrain:
http://www.dainst.org/medien/de/orontes_abb01-g.jpg
3) Guillaume Tempier (d. 1197). The canon regular G. was abbot of Saint-Hilaire at Poitiers before becoming that city's bishop in 1184. His resolute defense of the temporals of his diocese caused him to suffer severe harrassment (described in a document of 1185 as persecution); in 1191, when he compelled homage from a lord who owed it to him, he was described as G. "the strong". His cult seems to have been more or less immediate.
In 1175, when he was still abbot, G. laid the first stone of the then new church of the abbey of Sainte-Croix at today's Angles-sur-l'Anglin (Vienne). The abbey is gone but part of the church remains. Herewith some views:
http://www.chambre-hote.eu/image3.jpg
http://www.angles-gite.com/vue-sainte-croix.php
http://www.angles-gite.com/vue-abbaye-photo.php
An illustrated, French-language page on the abbey and its church is here:
http://www.angles-gite.com/abbaye/architecture-abbaye.php
4) Berthold of Mount Carmel (d. earlier 13th cent.). The second prior general of the Carmelites on Mount Carmel, B. is said to have come from Lombardy. The sketch of Carmelite history known as the _Letter of Cyril_ (first attested after 1378) makes him the first prior general. Fifteenth-century Carmelites viewed him as the fourth prior general. In recent centuries he was identified with the Calabrian priest and monk said by the late twelfth-century traveler Johannes Phocas to have established in ca. 1177 a small monastic community in the ruins of an older monastery on the mountain. B. began to receive an official cultus in the later sixteenth century. No longer celebrated liturgically, he is commemorated on this day in the RM and (presumably) in the Carmelite Martyrology.
5) Ludolf of Ratzeburg (d. 1250). L. was a Premonstratensian who in 1236 became bishop of Ratzeburg (today the county town of Kreis Herzogtum Lauenburg in southeastern Schleswig-Holstein). His opposition to claims on diocesan property by the duke of Lauenburg proved inconvenient for the duke, who had L. imprisoned for a lengthy period, and probably lethal for L., who is said to have been mistreated and who died at Wismar shortly after his release. The Premonstratensian abbey of St. Johann at Hamborn (today's Duisburg-Hamborn in Nordrhein-Westfalen) is said to have a relic of him (did this stay in the abbey church between the abbey's dissolution in 1806 and its reoccupation by the Premonstratensians in 1959/60?).
Herewith an illustrated, German-language page on the ex-cathedral of Ratzeburg (the Ratzeburger Dom, completed 1220; chapter house and cloister added in the later thirteenth century):
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratzeburger_Dom
Other views:
http://www.ratzeburgerdom.de/
http://www.boldts.net/album/D-ch-Ratzeburg.shtml
http://tinyurl.com/2fv488
http://www.ipn.uni-kiel.de/aktuell/ipnblatt/ip404/ip404b13.gif
The abbey church at Hamborn was rebuilt in the seventeenth century. The adjoining cloister of 1170 survives in part today:
http://tinyurl.com/25akn8
http://tinyurl.com/yw4czy
Best,
John Dillon
(Eustasius of Naples, Mark of Arethusa, and Ludolf of Ratzeburg lightly revised from last year's post)
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