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MEDIEVAL-RELIGION  July 2009

MEDIEVAL-RELIGION July 2009

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Subject:

saints of the day 15. July

From:

John Dillon <[log in to unmask]>

Reply-To:

medieval-religion - Scholarly discussions of medieval religious culture <[log in to unmask]>

Date:

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 12:31:54 -0500

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medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture

Today (15. July) is the feast day of:

1)  Felix of Tibiuca (vel sim.; d. 303, supposedly).  This is the commemoration, now of F. alone, that prior to the RM's revision of 2001 was that of Felix, an African bishop (medievally: a bishop); Adauctus and Januarius, presbyters; and Fortunatus and Septimius, lectors.   These less well known putative saints of the Regno, not to be confused with the Roman Felix and Adauctus of 30. August (though of course that Felix, thanks to a translation in 1673, is now also a saint of the Regno), are the principal patrons of Venosa (PZ) in Basilicata and are co-patrons of the diocese of Melfi - Rapolla - Venosa.  Venosa's medieval cathedral, pulled down in 1470, was dedicated to F. 

F. and companions are the subjects of a set of legendary Passiones (BHL 2893s-2895d) that make F. a bishop of the African town of T(h)ibiuca (variously spelled, incl. Tubzac and Tubzoc) who at the outset there of the Great Persecution refused to surrender his church's Christian books and who was sent on to Carthage.  There, in the earliest accounts, the fifty-six-year-old bishop was tried, convicted and, on 15. July (in some texts, thanks to a confusion already alluded to, on 30. August), duly executed.  By the ninth century, when F. appears in the martyrologies of Ado (under 30. August) and of Usuard (under 24. October), he had acquired companions and all are said to have been tortured in Africa and in Sicily before they are put to death.  Later Passiones have all put to death in southern Italy, either at Nola (where they also had a cult) or at Venosa (in whose Passiones the companions are named Januarius, Fortunatianus, and Septiminus).


2)  Jacob of Nisibis (d. 337/38?).  J. was bishop of Nisibis in upper Mesopotamia, today's Nusaybin in Turkey's Mardin province.  Much of what is said about him in late antique sources reposes on traditions that are either dubious or false.  But it is clear that he spoke on the anti-Arian side at the Council of Nicaea in 325 and that St. Ephraem (Ephrem) the Syrian, most of whose life was spent in Nisibis, both had known J. and regarded him as his spiritual father.  J. was initially buried in Nisibis, where the principal church came to be named for him.  Though there are differing accounts of their later vicissitudes, the fate of his remains after the Roman cession of Nisibis to Persia in 363 and the subsequent departure of that town's Christian community to Edessa and other places is uncertain.

Some views of Nisibis'/Nusaybin's largely eighth-century church of St. Jacob (Mor Yacqub):
http://tinyurl.com/2oz3u5
http://tinyurl.com/34qq3k
The crypt of the baptistery built in 359 by bishop Vologeses contains what was once J.'s tomb:
http://tinyurl.com/2o9xxf   


3)  Plechelm (d. 8th cent.).  We know almost nothing about the historical P., who is said to have been a missionary and monastic founder in the Low Countries.  He has a very unreliable late tenth- or eleventh-century Vita (BHL 6867) that probably was written at the abbey of St. Peter at Odilienberg near Roermond. This makes him an Irishman and a companion of saints Wiro and Otger, whose own Vitae (Wiro's, at least, is considerably earlier) are cut from the same legendary cloth.

P. appears in a tenth-century calendar from Utrecht and is commemorated in the twelfth-century church dedicated to him at Oldenzaal (Ov), where he is said to have founded a church dedicated to St. Sylvester and where an earlier church had also been dedicated to him in 954.  Various views of this structure (now the St. Plechelmusbasiliek) will be found at the Archimon page on it:
http://tinyurl.com/2go592
Other views:
http://tinyurl.com/3dugn5
http://tinyurl.com/29ym8g
http://tinyurl.com/2qqn67
http://tinyurl.com/mayh9e
http://tinyurl.com/2mk3gr

Dating from 1244, the seal shown at the right in this view bears the oldest known effigy of P.:
http://tinyurl.com/58f985
For 15 euros one may purchase from the St. Plechelmusbasiliek a CD of a performance of his medieval Office:
http://tinyurl.com/2zpkur
For more on P.'s cult, see the essays in Guus Goorhuis and Jan Oude Nijhuis, eds., _Plechelmus: zijn kerk, liturgie en kapittel te Oldenzaal_ (Zutphen: Walburg Pr., 2005; 254pp.).


4)  Gumbert of Ansbach (d. after 786).  G. is a poorly attested bishop of Würzburg who according to a charter of Bl. Charlemagne from 786 as copied ca. 1600 had founded on his own property a monastery dedicated to the BVM at what is now the Middle Franconian city of Ansbach.  In a later but undated charter of Charlemagne's the monastery is already called _monasterium sancti Gumberti episcopi_.  G. has a very brief, legendary Vita (BHL 3691; probably no later than the earlier twelfth century) that makes him a noble and a disciple of St. Burkard of Würzburg (that city's first bishop).  He remained the local saint of the monastery through its conversion to a canonry in the eleventh century to its final suppression in 1563.

The monastery's church survives as Ansbach's originally eleventh- to sixteenth-century St.-Gumbertus-Kirche (Lutheran).  Some exterior views showing medieval portions (most of the church was rebuilt in the eighteenth century):
http://tinyurl.com/mert2b
http://tinyurl.com/lcthwq
The eleventh-century crypt:
http://tinyurl.com/l66pfx  
also here (lower left):
http://surfan.de/rundgang/_bilder/gumbertus.jpg


5)  Athanasius of Naples (d. 872).  This less well known saint of the Regno became bishop of the Parthenopean city in 849, succeeding at the age of nineteen his mentor St. John IV 'lo Scriba' (22. June).  As bishop, he is Athanasius I.  A. was a son of duke Sergius I of Naples (r. 840-65) and thus by birth as well as by office a member of Naples' ruling elite.  He became a _familiaris_ of both Lothar I and Louis II and was a leading figure in the synod of Rome that deposed archbishop John VII of Ravenna in 861.  At Naples he established a ransom service for Christians captured by Muslims, founded a hospice for pilgrims, and instituted a body of canons devoted to sacred music. 

A. seems to have gotten along well with his father and with his older brother, duke Gregory III (r. 865-70).  But he differed with the latter's son, duke Sergius II (who comes off very badly in our sources), on important matters of policy and resisted what are said to have been his nephew's attempts to interfere in ecclesiastical appointments and to confiscate church funds.  To remove this obstacle, the new duke imprisoned A. on the the island at Naples where the Castel dell'Ovo now stands and whence, in the same year, he was rescued at the behest of Louis II by a naval force under the command of the prefect of relatively autonomous Amalfi.  A. was taken to papal territory, where two years later he died in exile at Veroli in today's Lazio.  A.'s remains were brought to Montecassino and in 877, with Sergius still in power, they were translated to Naples where A. was soon venerated as a saint.

A. has an interesting hagiographic dossier including a late ninth-century Vita maior (BHL 735) that presents a vivid picture of early medieval Naples.  This has been re-edited fairly recently, with good discussions of the dossier as a whole, by Antonio Vuolo as _Vita et translatio s. Athanasii neapolitani episcopi (BHL 735 e 737) sec. XI_ (Roma: Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo, 2001). 

Most of the present facade of Naples' cathedral was executed in the nineteenth century.  But the central portal through its peak and the lateral portals through the arches over their lunettes are early fifteenth-century work that survived the earthquake of 1456.  The standing figure in lunette of the left portal, attributed to Antonio Baboccio of Piperno, represents A.  In the absence of a really clear image, these will have to do (the second view is expandable):
http://tinyurl.com/kvngtz
http://tinyurl.com/2ma4so


6)  David of Munktorp (d. ca. 1082).  D. (also D. of Sweden and D. of Västerås) is the saint of today's Munktorp in Västmanlands Län, whose Benedictine monastery venerated him as its founder.  According to his very brief Vita (BHL 2113), whose credibility, one would think (but see Peter Doyle's revised July volume of _Butler's Lives of the Saints_, p. 120), is severely impeached by its dependence on the legend of St. Sigfrid of Sweden (15. February), D. was a monk of English origin who was sent by Sigfrid to missionize in Västmanland.  There he is said to have founded the aforementioned monastery, to have baptized locals in an adjacent spring, and to have operated miracles.  In 1463 his remains were translated to the cathedral at Västerås, where they were housed in a shrine until the Reformation.

D. as portrayed on the fourteenth-century bronze baptismal font of Munktorps kyrka:
http://tinyurl.com/6frbz5
A mid-fifteenth-century depiction of D. in Överselö kyrka in Strängnäs township (Södermanlands Län):
http://tinyurl.com/5tmx4m

This Swedish-language page offers thumbnail views of Munktorps kyrka (in two parts: the eleventh-century "Davidskyrkan" and the mostly thirteenth- to sixteenth-century "Stora kyrkan") and of the cover of his spring there:
http://www.koping.se/kopingtemplates/Page.aspx?id=5845
Better views of the church:
http://www.hedstromsdalen.com/bilder/sid5_h16.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/5h7mla


7)  Bonaventure of Bagnoregio (d. 1274).  This well known early Franciscan theologian and General of his order probably needs no introduction to subscribers to this list.  For those who would like to read one, here's his entry in the _Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy_:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/bonaventure/

B. died at Lyon during the Second Council of Lyon.  That city's bishop, Peter of Tarentaise (Bl. Innocent V), preached his funeral sermon.  He was buried in Lyon's convent of the Observant Franciscans and in 1434 was translated to its then unfinished church now known as the Sanctuaire Saint-Bonaventure.  During this translation B.'s head was declared to be incorrupt.  B. was canonized in 1482.  The church in which he then reposed was dedicated to him upon its completion in 1484.  A French-language virtual visit to this structure (begun in 1327) is here:
http://tinyurl.com/2er4pz
Some other views:
http://www.lyon-photos.com/diaporama/grande_1467.htm
http://tinyurl.com/27bvfo
http://tinyurl.com/ysux5q
Multiple views (expandable by left-clicking):
http://www.fotop.net/Newbie/StBonaventure

Best,
John Dillon
(matter from older posts lightly revised and with the addition of Gumbert of Ansbach)

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