medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (21. August) is the feast day of:
1) Cyriaca of Rome (d. 258, supposedly). C. is the saint of a Roman cemetery named for her and a supposed martyr of the Via Tiburtina absent from the _Depositio martyrum_ of the Chronographer of 354 and lacking any indication of veneration prior to the seventh century. In the Passio sancti Polychronii (BHL 4753; earliest version, late fifth-century?) she is a widow associated with St. Lawrence but not in this text treated as a saint. The Life of pope St. Sylvester in the _Liber Pontificalis_ has Constantine donating to what's now San Lorenzo fuori le Mura a property called _Veranum fundum_ that during a time of persecution had been seized from a religious woman named Cyriaca. Seventh-century itineraries for pilgrims to Rome record her tomb near that of St. Lawrence. The Life of pope St. Hadrian I (d. 795) in the _Liber Pontificalis_ calls C. _beata_; Sergius II (844-47) translated relics believed to be hers to today's San Martino ai Monti.
C. has a legendary Passio (BHL 2055) whose earliest witness is of the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century. This gives 23. August as her _dies natalis_ and has her buried on her property in the _ager Veranus_, not far from the grave of St. Lawrence. That her feast falls today is apparently down to Cardinal Baronio. Inscriptions from the cemetery of Santa Ciriaca are mounted on cloister walls at San Lorenzo fuori le Mura:
http://flickr.com/photos/antmoose/1690199685/
2) Euprepius (d. 3d cent.). E. (also Euprepis) is by all indications (some of which are old enough to go back to late antiquity) the first bishop of Verona. His date is calculated from that sixth bishop, Lucilius, attested from around 340. E.'s first surviving mention comes at verse 40 of the very late eighth- or very early ninth-century _Versus de Verona_:
Primum Verona predicavit Euprepis episcopus ("The first to preach at Verona was bishop Euprepis").
E.'s cult is first recorded in Verona's fourteenth-century martyrology, where he is entered for today. In the very late fifteenth century his putative remains, along with those of other of Verona's early bishops, were found in the city's church of San Procolo. Since 1806 they have resided in the crypt of San Zeno Maggiore.
3) Luxurius (d. ca. 304, supposedly). L. (Sardinian: Lussurgiu; Italian: Luxorio, Lussorio; also Ruxurius, Ruxorius, Rossore) is entered in the (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology both for today, where the earliest text reads _In sardinia luxurii. traiani_ and for 26. September, where the corresponding text is _Et in sardinia. Luxurii_. Modern scholars, aware that 21. August is also given as L.'s _dies natalis_ by the sixth-century inscription noted in the next paragraph, resolve the doublet in today's favor. _traiani_ is thought to be the textual remnant of a reference to ancient Forum Traiani in central western Sardinia, today's Fordongianus (OR), specified in L.'s probably eleventh-century Passio (BHL 5092-5092c) as his place of martyrdom. The Passio makes L. a Christian soldier decapitated during the Great Persecution.
L.'s cult is of considerable antiquity. In the late sixth century Gregory the Great, writing to the bishop of Cagliari (_Ep._ 9. 197), refers to a Sardinian monastery dedicated to saints Gabinius and Luxurius but does not give a location for it. L.'s originally early twelfth-century church at Fordongianus is built over a late antique (fourthth-/fifth-century) crypt with an attached U-shaped burial passage that in the sixth century received a surviving memorial inscription proclaiming this the place of L.'s martyrdom; a supplementary line records a renovation of the seventh century or slightly later.
A view of that inscription is reproduced on the upper cover of the dust jacket of P. G. Spanu, _Martyria Sardiniae. I santuari dei martiri sardi_ (Oristano: S'Alvure, 2000), whose pages 97-114 discuss the archaeology of this crypt in some detail and with copious illustrations. Spanu, whose introductory matter offers a valuable survey of the documentation for all the martyrs treated in his book, reprints at pp. 189-92 the three versions of the Passio that have been published thus far (the relatively early one in Vat. lat. 6453, fols. 81-82, remains largely unpublished). Toponymic evidence of uncertain validity has been used to support the view that L.'s cult was widespread on Sardinia by the year 1000.
An Italian-language account (with good views) of L.'s church at Fordongianus is here:
http://web.tiscali.it/romanicosardo/mioweb4/fordongianus.htm
One should take with several grains of salt the statement that this church was built by the Victorines of Marseille.
Another illustrated, Italian-language account:
http://tinyurl.com/5rfhh5
Exterior views and views of the crypt and of its restored frescoes are here:
http://www.forumtraiani.it/index1.html?/gchiesaest1.html
(for the second page, click on the arrow at lower right).
The last three views on this page (all expandable)
http://spazioinwind.libero.it/guysca/fordongianus.htm
show the crypt in somewhat greater detail.
And here's the corresponding SardegnaCultura page with further views in its Galleria:
http://tinyurl.com/lcml34
The Passio gives L. two companions in martyrdom, the boys Cisellus (in Italian, Cesello as well as Cisello) and Camerinus. In the 1080s the putative remains of all three saints were translated to Pisa and placed in a newly founded monastic church outside of Pisa dedicated to either to them or to L. alone (the monastery was once called that of San Luxorio and the place is now the Pisan _frazione_ of San Rossore). A Pavian inventory of 1236 records the presence of all three bodies in that city's church of San Pietro in Ciel d'Oro (famously the resting place of St. Augustine of Hippo, said in the later Middle Ages to have been translated from Sardinia by king Liutprand in the eighth century).
The usual view is that C. and C. are part of a fiction connecting L.'s martyrdom with Cagliari (where according to the Passio all three were arrested and the boys were executed). C. and C. were dropped from the RM in 2001 but are still venerated in the archdiocese of Cagliari.
In 1274 L.'s monastery at Pisa was assigned to the Umiliati. In the early 1420s, with Pisa now under Florentine control, a skull believed to be L.'s was brought from this monastery to the Umiliati's church of Ognisanti in Florence. Sometime between 1422 and 1427 Donatello made for this relic a gilt bronze reliquary bust now in Pisa's Museo Nazionale di San Matteo. Some views of that object:
http://www.bramarte.it/400/img/don7.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/2bg6qp
http://www.thais.it/scultura/sch00038.htm
In the early seventeenth century, during the _corpi santi_ episode on Sardinia, the archdiocese of Cagliari recognized an originally later twelfth-century rural church at today's Selargius (CA) in the Campidano as the site of the martyrdom of L., C., and C. Septenary and plenary indulgences granted by Paul V in 1614 and 1619 for worshiping at this church confirmed its previously undocumented importance. All three saints are venerated there. Some views of this church (now often called simply that of San Lussorio):
http://tinyurl.com/lr6qcn
http://tinyurl.com/lre33f
4) Sidonius Apollinaris (d. late 5th cent.). A native of Lyon, Gaius Sollius Modestus Apollinaris Sidonius came from a Gallo-Roman family of senatorial rank. His father-in-law Avitus became emperor in 455 (in the West only and not recognized by the Eastern emperor Marcian). S., who accompanied Avitus to Rome, survived both A.'s downfall in 456/57 and the subsequent revolt in Lyon, and was on terms of friendship with A.'s immediate successor Majorian. In 471 he was elected bishop of today's Clermont-Ferrand, undertook the defense of Auvergne against the Visigoth Euric, and -- with the exception of a brief and troubled period of exile in Rome and in Milan -- lived under Visigothic rule once the emperor Julius Nepos had sold Auvergne to Euric. We know about him chiefly from his own extensive correspondence.
S.'s cult seems to have been immediate, both at Clermont and on his estate of Avitacum. The originally eleventh-century église Saint-Sidoine at the latter's successor, today's Aydat (Puy-de-Dôme), had some of his remains until their dispersal in the French Revolution. Other relics, said to have been in Provence since at least 1093, are at Saint-Maximin-la-Sainte-Baume (Var). Here's a page on S.'s much rebuilt church at Aydat (zooming on the thumbnail brings up a different view!):
http://tinyurl.com/5jx6ss
Other views of this church:
http://tinyurl.com/myqubp
http://tinyurl.com/mgq44b
http://tinyurl.com/l7zskl
Here's S. as depicted in the later thirteenth-century ambulatory windows of Clermont-Ferrand's cathédrale Notre-Dame-de-l'Assomption:
http://lesruesdelyon.hautetfort.com/media/02/01/1952444116.jpg
And here's an expandable view of a thirteenth-century arm reliquary thought probably to be of S. Formerly at the priory of Saint-Saëns at Gournay (Seine-Maritime) in Normandy, it is now in Rouen's Musée départemental des antiquités de la Seine-Maritime:
http://tinyurl.com/lhlmfj
Best,
John Dillon
(last year's post lightly revised)
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