medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (30. July) is the feast day of:
1) Abdon and Sennen (also Abdus, Sennes, other spellings; d. 249 or 250, supposedly). A. and S. are martyrs of Rome named in the _Depositio martyrum_ of the Chronographer of 354. Reliable details about their lives and martyrdom are lacking. They were buried in the cemetery of Pontianus on the Via Portuensis and were commemorated in a basilica there that the author of _Notitia ecclesiarum urbis Romae_ thought of as large. Linked by legend to the very prominent martyrs Sixtus (pope St. Sixtus II) and Lawrence, they have been fixtures in the Roman sanctoral calendar since late antiquity.
According to their legendary Passio (BHL 6 through 7b), A. and S. were Persian citizens of Christian faith brought to Rome as captives by the emperor Decius, exposed ineffectively to wild beasts in an amphitheater, and finally decapitated by gladiators. A late sixth- or seventh-century fresco in the cemetery of Pontianus shows A. and S. in Phrygian caps while Christ awards them a martyr's diadem. Some versions of the legend make them princes and give them a trial in which they appear manacled but in sumptuous clothing.
The last we hear of the basilica of A. and S. is a notice in the _Liber Pontificalis_ stating that Nicholas I (858-67) restored it as well as that of yesterday's St. Felix (also on the Via Portuensis). A church dedicated to them near the Colosseum (thus adjacent to their presumed place of martyrdom) was ruinous in the later sixteenth century and demolished not long after. In the pontificate of Gregory IV (827-844) relics thought to be theirs were deposited were deposited in the ninth-century crypt of what is now Rome's San Marco Evangelista in Campidoglio. In 1474 these were placed under that church's main altar and in 1948 they were returned to the crypt. Here, from Marjorie Greene's medrelart site, is a view of an inscription there that notes these translations:
http://medrelart.shutterfly.com/1809
A. and S. now repose under in this altar:
http://tinyurl.com/ms243q
A view through the glass of the Chi Rho to bone fragments believed to be of these saints:
http://tinyurl.com/kk5xcs
Places outside of Rome -- e.g. Florence and Soissons -- have also long claimed to possess relics of A. and S. Parma's cathedral uses for its main altar a late twelfth- or thirteenth-century sarcophagus showing ten apostles and, in place of the other two, the Passion of A. and S., whose relics -- along with those of others -- this piece is said to contain (the decollation of A. and S. at lower right):
http://www.cattedrale.parma.it/img/crono-catt/A5-pag267.jpg
An Italian-language account, with two expandable detail views (neither, alas, of A. and S.), is here (hold your mouse over no. 2):
http://tinyurl.com/qvsr7
The cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta at Chioggia has an early fourteenth-century leg reliquary of A. (shown in the center here):
http://tinyurl.com/66oyj2
But the best known extra-Roman locale for the remains of A. and S. is at the former Benedictine abbey of Sainte-Marie at Arles-sur-Tech (Pyrénées-Orientales) in Roussillon. Here they are said to repose in a late antique sarcophagus referred to locally as the Sainte Tombe:
http://jeantosti.com/villages/arlestombe.jpg
Water collecting annually in the Sainte Tombe was long considered to be a miraculous distillation from the saints and was used for cures. Placed above the sarcophagus now is this funerary plaque of one Guillaume Gaucelme (1204), who is said to have been cured of a facial cancer by the application of cloths soaked in this liquid:
http://www.cathares.org/P08-09'-11a-arles-sur-tech.jpg
A scientific explanation of the phenomenon is here (briefly: the cover is permeable):
http://tinyurl.com/m6twq2
While we're here, it's worth having a look at the abbey's late thirteenth-century cloister:
http://jeantosti.com/villages/arles.jpg
http://www.cathares.org/P08-09'-16a-arles-sur-tech.jpg
http://www.cathares.org/P08-09'-15a-arles-sur-tech.jpg
and at this cross over the entrance to the church, now a _paroissiale_:
http://jeantosti.com/villages/arlestympan.jpg
A. and S. as depicted by Jaume Huguet on an altarpiece from 1459-1460 with scenes from their Passio, in the iglesia de Santa Maria de Tarrasa at Tarrasa (in Spanish, Terrassa) in Cataluña:
http://tinyurl.com/647dm6
Some illustrated pages on the partly late antique, mostly twelfth-century church housing that altarpiece:
http://tinyurl.com/mx3kgo
http://tinyurl.com/ncw7te
http://tinyurl.com/ntby5g
Single views:
http://tinyurl.com/mujejd
http://tinyurl.com/mx6ejo
http://www.flickr.com/photos/erjavi/3666029674/sizes/l/
http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/20336538.jpg
2) Julitta of Caesarea (d. ca. 304). We know about J. from a sermon of St. Basil the Great (no. 334), presumably delivered in the 370s when B. was bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia. According to this account, J. had successfully defended herself in a property suit brought against her by her husband when she declared that, inasmuch she was unwilling to offer sacrifice to the state divinities, she should not benefit from the decision of a state court. This occurred during the Great Persecution and J. was promptly condemned. J. was sentenced to execution by fire and died of what appears to have been asphyxiation from the smoke before her body (which was retrieved whole) could be seriously burned. Her tomb became the focus of a local cult. According to Basil, whereas the neighboring waters were brackish and salty, a spring of healing fresh water emanated from from J.'s burial place.
3) Peter Chrysologus (d. betw. 449 and 458). P. is best known for his numerous surviving sermons, which together with traditions recorded in the ninth century by Agnellus of Ravenna are our principal sources for his life. He seems to have been born at Imola. By 429 P. was bishop of Ravenna. His reputation as a theologian was such that his advice was sought by, among others, Theodoret of Cyrus and the anti-Nestorian Eutyches of Constantinople, soon to be condemned as a heretic. P.'s by-name ("golden-speaking") appears to have been bestowed upon him only centuries after his death.
P.'s cult was probably limited at first to the archdiocese of Ravenna. He appears in the thirteenth-century Lateran Missal under 3. December, the date of his feast until 1729, when he was proclaimed a Doctor of the Church with his feast re-assigned to 4. December, thanks to Francis Xavier's being also celebrated on the 3d). It was moved to today in the revision of the Roman Calendar promulgated in 1969.
4) Godeleva (d. ca. 1070). According to her Vita by Drogo of St.-Winoc (two versions: BHL 3591t and 3592), G. (in Flemish, Godelieve; in French, Godelein) was a young woman from the territory of Boulogne who married a Flemish noble whose seat was at Snipgate near today's Gistel/Ghistelles (West-Vlaanderen). The latter's mother treated her badly and he abandoned her, never having consummated the marriage. When the bishop of Tournai was attempting to resolve matters the husband had G. strangled with a noose of some sort. Possibly because G. was then under the protection of the church, she was considered a martyr. She received an Elevatio in the church at Gistel in 1084. By the beginning of the twelfth century there was in the vicinity a small convent dedicated to G.; she was later said to have been its founding abbess (this community relocated to Bruges in the sixteenth century; the present abbey at Ghistelles is a late nineteenth-century re-occupation).
G. in a fifteenth-century miniature from Bruges:
http://www.figy.be/legenden/Fotos/Gistel_Godelieve.jpg
Here's a slightly expandable view of the late fifteenth-century St. Godelieve Polyptych at the Metropolitan Museum in New York:
http://tinyurl.com/6qx93e
A better view of the central panels:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/7711591@N04/524646049/
Clicking on the panels here brings up expanded detail views:
http://tinyurl.com/56qd26
Another set of detail views begins here:
http://tinyurl.com/5frzg9
Best,
John Dillon
(last year's post revised)
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