medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture

Today (21. May) is the feast day of:

1)  Restituta of Corsica (d. 217/18, supposedly).  A saint of this name has been venerated at Calenzana (also Calinzana; situated in Haute-Corse) and elsewhere on Corsica since at least the fifteenth century and seemingly a lot earlier than that, as excavations beneath the altar in her chapel at Calenzana in 1951 revealed a late antique or early medieval martyrium with a fresco depicting the martyrdom of a female saint.  Also discovered there was an ancient sarcophagus containing twelve human femurs, two of which were determined medically to have belonged to a woman.

These remains coincide remarkably with a Passio (BHL 6466e; preserved in the main portion of Vaticanus latinus 6933, dated to the twelfth century) wherein R. and five male colleagues fled from persecution in north Africa to Calvi in northern Corsica and were executed in the following year by a newly arrived prefect during the reign of the emperor Macrinus.  According to this text, R. was martyred on 21. May at Calvi itself and three of her companions, Paragorius, Parthaeus, and Parthenopaeus, were martyred in Ulmia, the adjacent medieval parish that included Calenzana.  (P., P., and P., saints of 7. September, seem also to have been venerated at La Marana in northern Corsica and were certainly so honored at Noli (SV) in Liguria, where their poorly documented cult is reported to have employed a now lost antiphon saying that they had been martyred on Corsica.)

The sarcophagus at Calenzana
http://tinyurl.com/737pu
is seemingly without any ancient inscription.  When it was placed in the space under the altar at Calenzana is not known.  The chapel itself is a sixteenth-century structure replacing what is said to have been an eleventh- or early twelfth-century one located in what had been an ancient Roman cemetery.  A reasonable guess would be that documentation (the Passio) for a saint called Restituta venerated at this site was created in connection with the new church, but whether the number of companions was arrived at to fit already existing relics or whether the number and sex of the relics was made to conform with the Passio is not known and perhaps not knowable.  Certainly the Passio itself is systematizing: in addition to its inclusion of saints venerated elsewhere there is also the matter of R.'s _dies natalis_, which conveniently falls just one day before that of the much better known and earlier documented Julia of Corsica.

This English-language page, whose text reflects more recent accounts of R. at variance with her medieval Passio, offers a view of the relics as displayed in a chest at the chapel at Calenzana; also shown is what is said to be a thirteenth-century fresco (location not specified) of R. and her companions with the citadel of Calvi:
http://www.calinzana.corsica-isula.com/st%20restitude.htm

R.'s name in French is variously given as Restitude (the local form), Restitute, or Ristituta, the latter being also the customary form in Corsican.  In 1984 the Congregation for Divine Worship declared her the heavenly patron of Calenzana and of all the surrounding region (the Balagne).  For those wishing to try their hand at a probably unfamiliar Romance tongue, a brief and very readable account of R. in Corsican will be found here (scroll down to "21.V."):
http://www.adecec.net/adecec-net/SANTI/MAGHJU.htm


2)  Martyrs of Alexandria killed under Constantius (d. 357 and perh. 358).  Secundus was a priest of Barca in Cyrenaica assassinated during Lent 357 on the orders of the Arian bishop of Ptolemais, also named Secundus.  The others in this group are unnamed martyrs of both sexes who after Easter in either 357 or 358 fled Arian persecution in Alexandria only to be set upon, beaten, and killed by soldiers lead by the local _dux_, a Manichean.  Our sole source for these martyrs is St. Athanasius of Alexandria.  None of these saints is known to have enjoyed a late antique or medieval cult.  Bl. Cesare Baronio entered them in the RM.


3)  Ezzo, Matilda, and Richeza (Bl.; d. 1034, 1024, 1063).  E. (also Erenfrid, his birth name) was the count palatine of Lotharingia under Otto III and Henry II.  He was married to M., a daughter of Otto II.  Richeza, who became queen of Poland, was their eldest daughter.  In April 1024 E. and M. jointly founded the abbey of Sts. Nicholas and Medard at Brauweiler in today's Pulheim (Rhein-Erft-Kreis), near Köln.  R. later richly endowed the abbey and funded construction of its second church, begun in 1048.  M. died in November 1024 and was laid to rest in a tomb at the abbey.  A few years later, the pious E. became a monk of the same house.  He and M. shared the same tomb, where a miracles were said to occur and where a cult developed.  Though the latter appears never to have been confirmed papally, all three are routinely listed among Germany's saints and blesseds.

An illlustrated, German-language account of Brauweiler's former abbey church of St. Nicholas is here:
http://tinyurl.com/qag62s
And an illustrated, German-language page on the abbey is here:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abtei_Brauweiler
A brief, German-language timeline of the abbey with views and plans:
http://www.abtei-brauweiler.de/html/abtei-brauweiler.html
Single views of its church (the third one, begun in 1136):
http://www.dieter-e-neuhaus.de/images/abtei.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/qe7tue
http://tinyurl.com/2m4hto
http://tinyurl.com/2snzah
Inside is this late twelfth-century wooden statue of St. Nicholas of Myra:
http://tinyurl.com/367yhx
While over the west portal of the atrium is this monumental wooden St. Nick (1491), 2.26 metres high and said to be carved from the trunk of a single tree:
http://tinyurl.com/32fczg
A view of chapter room:
http://www.gerahmtekunst.de/images/laufer-kreuz.jpg


4)  Godric of Finchale (d. 1170).  The son of an unmoneyed Anglo-Saxon farming couple at Walpole in Norfolk, G. became an itinerant pedlar and subsequently captain and part owner of a merchant vessel.  He combined his mercantile travels with pilgrimages in Britain and abroad, undertaken to atone for previous sins.  Around 1110, when he may have been already close to forty years old, he settled down as a hermit near Whitby but within a few years moved on to Durham.  From there he soon moved down the Wear to Finchale, where he established a hermitage on land given him by the bishop of Durham, Ranulf Flambard.

G. lived very ascetically at Finchale (where Durham later had a priory), accepting the discipline of the monks of Durham and becoming the sort of famous holy man of whom royals take notice.  He was also musical.  The earliest words and melodies that we have of songs in Middle English are down to G.  He lived to a ripe old age.  G. has a very colorful Vita (BHL 3596, etc.; several versions) by the monk Reginald of Durham.  Two other contemporaries also wrote Vitae of him (BHL 3602, 3603).  Though G. has never been papally canonized, his cult continues at Durham and Finchale and among Cistercians, who have "adopted" him. One of Durham's Roman Catholic churches is dedicated to G.

An English Heritage page on Finchale Priory is here:
http://tinyurl.com/2jwwmn
An aerial view:
http://tinyurl.com/3chgrn
Two entire pages of views:
http://tinyurl.com/37rghs
http://www.pbase.com/scirburn/finchale_abbey
A series of expandable views from British Heritage begins here:
http://tinyurl.com/38vt7k
One further view:
http://tinyurl.com/qmbwch


5)  Hemming (Bl.; d. 1366).  H. was a Swede from a knightly family who in all likelihood received his early education at the cathedral school in Uppsala.  He studied theology at Paris under the direction of the future Clement VI.  By 1329 he was a cathedral canon at Turku (Swedish: Åbo), the chief town of Sweden's Finnish colony, whose bishop Bengt came from the same part of Sweden that he did.  In 1338 H. was elected to succeed Bengt; his consecration, thought to have taken place in Stockholm, occurred in the following year.  He established a residence outside of Turku, appointed the first dean of the cathedral, strengthened his diocese's ability to support itself through taxation, donated his library to the cathedral, and negotiated with the crown a statement limiting royal patronage rights in the Finnish church.

H. became a friend and confidant of St. Bridget of Sweden, who employed him as an emissary to his old Paris master, Clement VI.  The association with Bridget -- and perhaps a brief period of imprisonment late in life when he had a falling out with king Magnus II -- facilitated his posthumous reputation for sanctity.  In the fifteenth century H. enjoyed a popular cult at his tomb in Turku's cathedral; his miracles were recorded in a canonization campaign that led to his beatification in 1497.

This illustrated, English-language page on H. includes views of H. and St. Bridget of Sweden as portrayed on an altar frontal of ca. 1500 at Urdiala and the wooden shrine in Turku cathedral generally believed to be the one into which his relics were translated in 1514:
http://tinyurl.com/3kg5dv
Two medievally pertinent, English-language pages from the website of Turku cathedral are here:
http://tinyurl.com/q65t5h
http://tinyurl.com/oe8nzy

Best,
John Dillon
(last year's post lightly revised)

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