medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (24. July) is the feast day of, among others, two martyrs celebrated separately at locations along different Roman roads in Italy at some distance from the Eternal City. These are:
1) Christina of Bolsena (?). C. is a martyr of the Via Cassia venerated at today's Bolsena (VT) in the Tuscia section of Lazio in what was once southern Etruria. Her cult there is attested archeologically from the fourth century onward and a saint of her name appears among the overwhelmingly Western virgin martyrs in the sixth-century mosaics of Sant'Apollinare Nuovo at Ravena. She has similar Passiones both in Greek and in Latin (BHG 301, 302; BHL 1749-59). The Greek ones, whose oldest known representative is a papyrus fragment of the fifth or early sixth century, make her a martyr of Tyre in Phoenicia, as do also her entry in the (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology and her earlier Latin Passiones (none seemingly older than the ninth century). Apart from these texts there's no ancient indication of C.'s having had a cult there.
C.'s later Latin Passiones specify an Italian locale rather than Tyre and convert an episode in which in earlier texts C. is thrown into the sea with a millstone tied to her neck (she survives and is baptized by Christ) into one in which she is instead cast into the Lake of Bolsena. After various torments she is shot to death with arrows. How her earlier dossier came to specify Tyre is a mystery; possibly an adjective _Tyrrhena_ ('Etruscan') in a now lost early Passio got corrupted into something that was copied as _Tyria_ ('Tyrian').
The narrative core of C.'s obviously legendary acta, thought to be an expansion of Eusebius of Caesarea' account of the Theodosia of his _De martyribus Palaestinae_, makes our saint a young virgin of Christian faith who refuses to sacrifice to idols set before her by her pagan father (a high public official) and who then undergoes a series of ineffective tortures before being killed by decapitation. What was believed to be her burial place at Bolsena developed from a late antique martyrium in a subterranean Christian necropolis into the tenth-century hypogean basilica shown here:
http://www.basilicasantacristina.it/images/piccole/ipogeo.jpg
Early medieval pilgrim itineraries and historical notices attest to the fame of this spot. Although in the eleventh and twelfth centuries relics said to be C.'s were translated to various places in Christendom, it is also claimed that her remains still reside at Bolsena in this tenth(?)-century container:
http://www.basilicasantacristina.it/images/piccole/tomba_2.jpg
Further views of the underground area and of the eleventh-century church above it are here:
http://www.basilicasantacristina.it/html/monumento.htm
And here's a view of the adjacent catacomb:
http://tinyurl.com/fau2s
Two ground-level views, showing the church's thirteenth-/fourteenth-century belltower and late fifteenth-century facade:
http://tinyurl.com/l3xsy
http://www.romeartlover.it/Franci22.jpg
A few illustrated pages on the ninth-century church of Santa Cristina de Lena, a UNESCO World Heritage site at Pola de Lena (Asturias):
http://tinyurl.com/5b8yyg
http://tinyurl.com/6m7la8
http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Cristina_de_Lena
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Cristina_de_Lena
http://tinyurl.com/5uwhbb
That latter page has an English-language version:
http://tinyurl.com/5wzgfk
More views (expandable) are here:
http://www.pbase.com/raulencio/preromanicoast
http://tinyurl.com/58uthh
Pisa's chiesa di Santa Cristina is documented from the eighth century onward. Several times rebuilt, it preserves a tenth- or eleventh-century apse (these views differently expandable):
http://tinyurl.com/667n6q
http://tinyurl.com/5d5kr4
http://tinyurl.com/6k29pc
St. Catherine of Siena is said to have received the Holy Stigmata in this church.
Here's C. (at right, after Sts. Theodore and Nicholas) in the tenth- and eleventh-century frescoes of the rupestrian chiesa di Santa Marina e Cristina at Carpignano Salentino (LE) in southern Apulia, a place that at the time of their creation was still part of the Greek West:
http://tinyurl.com/6bty9z
An Italian-language page on this church:
http://tinyurl.com/6znkbs
Some views of the originally twelfth-century church of the monasterio de Santa Cristina at Ribas de Sil (Ourense) in Galicia:
Exterior:
http://tinyurl.com/lb8qkf
http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/17178858.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/kq89v7
http://tinyurl.com/m9wzum
http://tinyurl.com/nwwwwe
http://tinyurl.com/n2bkhs
http://www.flickr.com/photos/enhiro/3515132907/sizes/o/
http://tinyurl.com/km6tdb
http://tinyurl.com/mg52l3
Interior and access to the cloister:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/enhiro/3515132013/sizes/o/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/enhiro/3515941048/sizes/o/
http://tinyurl.com/kvprjb
http://tinyurl.com/llts8q
http://tinyurl.com/lgnebg
http://tinyurl.com/m8nqe8
http://tinyurl.com/mxo3pr
http://www.flickr.com/photos/agushedem/3221852741/sizes/o/
Welf rule of Tuscia in the twelfth century is thought to have brought C.'s cult from Bolsena to Ravensburg in Baden-Württemberg, where it is documented from 1197 onward. The choir of the present Pfarrkirche St. Christina there dates from 1476. Some views:
http://tinyurl.com/5qqye2
http://tinyurl.com/5vcdcy
http://tinyurl.com/59g83y
A literarily noteworthy Latin Passio of C. is that by the eleventh-century Alfanus of Salerno (BHL 1759). Aldhelm has a much briefer version in his _De laudibus virginitatis_.
Sherry Reames' introduction to her TEAMS edition of William Paris' late fourteenth-century _Life of St Christina_ is here:
http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/teams/40sr.htm
And her text is here:
http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/teams/41sr.htm
An expandable view of C. being baptized by Christ in an illumination from a late fifteenth-century Roman breviary (Clermont-Ferrand, Bibliothèque municipale, ms. 69, fol. 481v):
http://tinyurl.com/5h9326
C.'s martyrdom as depicted in an eary fifteenth-century (ca. 1414) breviary for the Use of Paris (Châteauroux, Bibliothèque municipale, ms. 2, fol. 242v):
http://tinyurl.com/lsoevf
At Bolsena C.'s Passio is re-enacted annually (with hunky male torturers; in the developed legend she's said to have possessed great physical beauty). Views of one such pageant are at the foot of this page:
http://www.basilicasantacristina.it/html/culto.htm
And here are others:
http://www.eventiesagre.it/?id=1266
http://www.canino.info/inserti/tuscia/feste/santa_cristina/index.htm
2) Victorinus of Amiternum (?). This less well known saint of the Regno is a martyr of the Via Salaria venerated at the successor of ancient Amiternum, today's San Vittorino, now a _frazione_ of L'Aquila (AQ) in Abruzzo. The (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology, which lists A. for today (until quite recently the RM remembered him on 5. September), says that this was the place of his burial. A church dedicated to A. is attested here from 763 onward; in the eleventh century it (or its successor) had been rededicated to St. Michael the Archangel but in the twelfth it was back to being called after V. (hence the place's modern name). Today it is again a chiesa di San Michele, with a late twelfth-century fabric reworked in the early sixteenth. Various expandable views (pre-earthquake) are here:
http://tinyurl.com/m2hjer
Underneath the church are the catacombe di San Vittorino, described here (in Italian):
http://tinyurl.com/5u8ozl
and shown here (expandable views):
http://tinyurl.com/l5vnlx
One of the chambers contains a fifth-century memorial to A. erected by a bishop Quodvultdeus:
http://tinyurl.com/mc3p52
http://tinyurl.com/6ylthx
http://tinyurl.com/lycbny
http://tinyurl.com/m4vjru
Both the church and the catacombs were damaged during last April's earthquake and its aftershocks. They appear on the Italian Minister of Culture's list of 23. April 2009 of forty-four affected monuments in urgent need of repair and restoration.
According to the legendary acta of Sts. Nereus and Achilleus (BHL 6063-6066; fifth-century?), V. was martyred further to the west in what is now the Sabina district of Lazio by being suspended in the hot sulphurous waters of the Roman spa at Aquae Cotiliae (or Cutiliae), situated at today's Caporio near Cittaducale (RI). Some views of what's left of the latter are here:
http://www.geocities.com/cittaducale/terme.htm
According to Sigebert of Gembloux (writing over two centuries later), relics thought to be those of V. were among those translated to Metz by its bishop Dietrich I (Theoderic, Thierry) in 970.
Best,
John Dillon
(last year's post lightly revised)
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