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MEDIEVAL-RELIGION  July 2009

MEDIEVAL-RELIGION July 2009

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Subject:

saints of the day 2. July

From:

John Dillon <[log in to unmask]>

Reply-To:

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

Date:

Wed, 1 Jul 2009 18:46:26 -0500

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medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture

Today (2. July) is the feast day of:

1)  Processus and Martinian (?).  P. and M. are Roman martyrs of the Via Aurelia.  Absent from the _Depositio martyrum_ of the Chronographer of 354, they are recorded for today in the (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology (as well as for 31. May and 1. July), in the Gelasian and Gregorian sacramentaries, and in the Marble Calendar of Naples.  Their cult is at least as old as the late fourth century when their now vanished martyrial church near the basilica of St. Pancras is already attested.  About a century later pope St. Gregory the Great delivered a sermon on their feast there.  That sermon (PL 76, cols. 1232-38) tells us nothing about the historical P. and M. but it does tells us that they were invoked as healers and that during the time of the Gothic siege (537-38) a woman had seen the two saints dressed as monks.

P. and M. have a legend that seems also to be at least as old as the later fourth century, as it already occurs in Pseudo-Linus' _Martyrium beati Petri apostoli_ (BHL 6655).  This makes them Peter's jailers at Rome, converted by him and subsequently martyred.  P.'s and M.'s own Passio (BHL 6947; earlier than the ninth century) adds details.

The _Bibliotheca Sanctorum_'s entry for P. and M. carries a black-and-white view of them in fresco, dated to the eighth century, in the Titulus Aequitii (a later third-century hall underneath an early medieval church dedicated to pope St. Sylvester) next to the crypt of Rome's San(ti Silvestro e) Martino ai Monti.  I have been unable quickly to locate a view of this fresco.  For a Roman context, however legendary, here's a link to Marjorie Greene's views, on medrelart, of the Mamertine Prison:
http://medrelart.shutterfly.com/438
And here are some views of the Titulus Aequitii:
http://www.sotterraneidiroma.it/index.php?v=ipo&ipogo=7
http://tinyurl.com/l85t5a
http://tinyurl.com/lqwrem
http://tinyurl.com/n9yxtg
http://tinyurl.com/kol59v
http://tinyurl.com/leshuw
http://tinyurl.com/lsfrpq

P. and M. as depicted in an early twelfth-century Office lectionary from the abbey of Saint-Pierre de la Couture at Le Mans (Le Mans, Bibliothèque municipale, ms. 227, fol. 13r):
http://tinyurl.com/3vs6ak

P. and M. in a Roman Missal of about 1370 (Avignon, Bibliothèque municipale, ms. 136, fol. 252r):
http://tinyurl.com/6exhtw

And here they are in a window from 1439-1442 in Florence's cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore attributed to Agnolo Lippi under the supervision of Lorenzo Ghiberti:
http://tinyurl.com/6nzy4e   


2)  Liberatus, Bonifacius, Servius, Rusticus, Rogatus, Septimus, and Maximus (d. 483).  Liberatus was the abbot of Gafsa in Africa Byzacena, to which the deacon Bonifacius, the subdeacons Servius and Rusticus, and the monks Rogatus, Septimus, and Maximus all belonged.  According Victor of Vita they were arrested during the persecution of the Vandal king Huneric, taken to Carthage, bound, and placed in a transport ship that was set afire once it reached open water.  When the flames had burned them very badly the martyrs were finished off with oar-blows to the head.  The RM, following the _dies natalis_ provided by Victor, now enters them for today.  Previously it had entered them under 17. August, the day used for them in the martyrologies of Ado and Usuard.


3)  Monegundis (d. 6th cent.).  St. Gregory of Tours tells us in his _Vita Patrum_, cap. 19, that M. (also Monegunda) was a married woman of Chartres who after the premature deaths of her daughters became a recluse in a specially prepared cell on her own premises, that when a girl who had been her attendant withdrew form her service God provided sustenance for her, that she operated miraculous cures, and that, fleeing her growing fame, she went to Tours and established herself in a little cell near the tomb of St. Martin.  M.'s husband brought her back to Chartres, installing her there in her previous cell.  But with prayer and fasting, and through the aid of St. Martin, she was able to return to her cell at Tours.  There she gathered a small community of women religious, operated many more cures, died, and was buried in her cell, where miracles continued to occur.

M. is entered for today both in the (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology and in liturgical sources from Tours from the ninth century onward.  Ado entered her under 1. July, Usuard entered her for today.  M.'s putative relics, which had been preserved at Tours' monastery of Saint-Pierre-Puellier, were profaned by Huguenots in 1562 but are said to have been recovered in large part.  At Chimay in Belgian Hainaut an M. who may or may not have been originally the same saint and whose veneration there is attested from 1119 was also celebrated on 2. July.  Her relics are said to have been burned in 1552.  In 2006 the remnants of a ninth-century collégiale and of an older church beneath it were found at Chimay.  Their connection with M. is conjectural.

Here's a view of the originally early sixteenth-century (1512) église paroissiale Sainte-Monegonde at Orphin (Yvelines):
http://site.orphin78.free.fr/ste_monegonde.jpg


4)  Swithun (d. 862).  We know little about the historical S. (also Swithin).  He became bishop of Winchester in 852 or 853; his charter record (not devoid of forgeries) begins in 854.  Over a century later a popular cult had developed at his grave outside the Old Minster and on 15. July 971 his remains were translated into that church (dedicated to Sts. Peter and Paul).  That it had been raining heavily at the time (recorded by Wulfstan Cantor in his metrical Translation account [BHL 7947]) may underlie his having become an English weather saint.  Healing miracles continued after the translation and a few years later a jeweled reliquary donated by king Edgar was placed in a shrine built over S.'s former gravesite.  The latter was incorporated in the Minster's westwork of 980; other relics of S. were kept on the main altar.  On 15. July 1093 S.'s wonder-working remains were translated to the cathedral, then new, where they remained until their profanation in 1538.
 
A page on S.'s shrines at Winchester:
http://www.britannia.com/church/shrines/sw-shrine.html

M. has a late eleventh-century Vita (BHL 7943) that links him to king Æthelwulf (d. 855) and that includes the building of churches and his inviting the needy rather than the rich to his table among his activities as a model bishop.  It includes among S.'s miracles a tale of an elderly woman of Winchester who had been sleeping at home with the door open when a wolf entered and carried her off to the woods, where its howling threatened to bring other wolves to the scene.  The woman prayed to S., the wolf fell asleep, and the woman was able to get away safely pursued by a now awakened wolf that no longer was able to harm her.

S.'s cult spread to France and to Norway.  Stavanger's much rebuilt cathedral, originally erected in the 1120s by a bishop who came from Winchester, was dedicated to him.  Closer to Winchester, the eleventh-century church at Corhampton (Hamps) preserves wall paintings depicting scenes from S.'s miracles.  See the views and discussions here:
http://www.astoft.co.uk/corhampton.htm
and here:
http://www.paintedchurch.org/corhampt.htm
S.'s fourteenth-century church at Old Weston (Cambs) has a wall painting of a seated bishop very plausibly interpreted as S.:
http://www.paintedchurch.org/owestswi.htm


5)  Lidanus (d. 1118).  Today's less well known saint of the Regno is best known for activity outside the territory of the former kingdom.  But he was born in today's Civita d'Antino (AQ) in Abruzzo, where he is honored today as a local boy who made good, and he is associated in his twelfth-century Vita et Miracula (BHL 4919-4920) with the great Benedictine abbey of Montcassino, now in Lazio but medievally in Regno territory.  The bearer of an unusual name (accented on the first syllable since at least the sixteenth century and thought by some to be a version of Lygdamus), he founded from Montecassino a monastery on land he had just inherited near Sezze (ancient Setia) in southern Lazio.  Sezze is located in the Monti Lepini at the former eastern edge of the Pontine Marshes; L.'s monastery, dedicated to St. Cecilia (said to have been his mother's name), included marshy territory.

The Vita (whose author calls himself Dionysius) tells us that L. was greatly annoyed by the constant confused noise of the area's numerous little frogs and that, smiting the marsh with his staff, he admonished them to be silent and to cease disturbing a man of God.  Which, not surprisingly, they did: the miracle was that they stayed silent.  According to Dionysius, not a peep has been heard out of them since.

L. lived at his monastery for seventy-two years (if we assume that the young Lidanus of the Vita was eighteen when he founded the monastery, that gives him a life span of four score years and ten) and was buried in its church.  His remains were later translated to Sezze proper and interred in its cathedral, where they remain today.  L.'s cult was confirmed by Leo X.  One of Sezze's patron saints, he lives on in the names of many of his present-day _concittadini_.  Here's L. as depicted in his oldest surviving image, on a cover of a fourteenth-century manuscript in the capitular archive at Sezze containing his revised Vita et Miracula by John, bp. of Sezze (BHL 4921):
http://tinyurl.com/n2te9y 
L.'s modern display reliquary in Sezze's cathedral of Santa Maria:
http://tinyurl.com/lvhlkx
(Most of L.'s relics are kept under the cathedral's high altar.)

Sezze's cathedral was rebuilt in 1364 in "Cistercian Gothic" style (the Cistercian houses of Fossanova and Casamari are relatively nearby).  It was rebuilt again in 1594, at which time it assumed its present peculiar appearance with the main entrance located in what had been the apse and the main altar sited where previously the main entrance had been.  Some views:
http://www.romeartlover.it/Sezze4.jpg
http://www.setino.it/inchiesta07-b.htm

L.'s monastery was situated at a place called _ad Tres Arcus_ ('At the Three Arches').  Just outside Sezze there is a row of Roman-period arches named after him.  Herewith some views of the Archi di San Lidano:
http://www.sezzeweb.it/images/dekstop/archi1024.jpg
http://www.setino.it/inchiesta07-b.htm

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

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