medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture

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

1)  Nicomedes of Rome (?).  N. is a poorly documented but much venerated Roman martyr, absent from the _Depositio martyrum_ of the Chronographer of 354 and from the oldest witness of the (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology.  Our earliest testimony, a Passio (BHL 6062; later revision, BHL 6237) thought to be originally of the fifth or sixth century, is not a separate piece of writing but rather a segment of the much larger Passio of Nereus and Achilleus (BHL 6058).  The latter provides suspect stories for a number of saints some of whom are known to have existed because their burial places are attested archaeologically.  While there is always the possibility that N. himself is fictional, it does seem probable that when in this account (which makes him a priest martyred under Domitian) he is said to have been buried on the Via Nomentana outside the city that much at least is accurate and that at the time of its writing he had a _memoria_ in that vicinity.

Boniface V (619-25) erected at this reported burial site a basilica in N.'s honor that is a fixture in the seventh-century itineraries for pilgrims to Rome and that is reported to have been restored by Adrian I (772-95).  A feast on 1. June for the dedication of this church occurs in the Gelasian and the Gregorian sacramentaries, in the historical martyrologies of the Carolingian period, and in later manuscripts of the (ps.-)HM.  All of these also list N. for today.  A later Passio (BHL 6238), thought to be no earlier than the seventh century, gives 1. June as N.'s _dies natalis_ and makes him a martyr under Maximian.

N.'s relics are said to repose in Rome's church of Santa Prassede.  But all in Parma know that in 876 bishop Wibod brought them to today's Salsomaggiore Terme (PR) in Emilia, where they were used for the dedication of a new church in N.'s honor.  That church's twelfth-century successor was reworked in the fourteenth century, underwent later modifications (e.g. the nineteenth-century facade), and preserves remnants of the ninth-century original in the crypt and in lower portions of the walls.  A brief, Italian-language account of it is here:
http://tinyurl.com/glb2l
Some single views:
http://www.cattedrale.parma.it/allegato.asp?ID=209165
http://www.parchi.parma.it/allegato.asp?ID=140735
http://turismo.parma.it/allegato.asp?ID=207997

N. is second from the left in Benedetto Bembo's Polyptych of Torchiara (1462) formerly in the oratorio di San Nicomede in the castle of Torrechiara at Langhirano-Torrechiara (PR) and now in Milan's Castello Sforzesco:
http://tinyurl.com/fbfs2
There's a much clearer, black-and-white view of N. alone from this composition in the _Bibliotheca Sanctorum_, vol. 9, col. 982.


2)  Valerian of Tournus (d. ca. 178, supposedly).  V. is a martyr of Tournus (Saône-et-Loire) whose earliest church was already in existence in the sixth century when St. Gregory of Tours referred to it as a sanctuary (_In gloria martyrum_, 53).  Similarity in language suggests that Gregory is the textual source for V.'s entry under this day in the (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology.  V. has a very brief, legendary Passio of his own (BHL 8488) as well as a very similar account in the Passio of St. Marcellus of Chalon (BHL 5245, 5246), one or both of which would seem to underly his _elogia_ in Ado and in Usuard and whose earliest witnesses are dated to the later ninth century.

V.'s early Passio (there are others from a couple of centuries later) places his suffering in the persecution of the church of Lyon under Marcus Aurelius and has him angelically released from prison there along with the aforesaid St. Marcellus; the two then go their separate ways as evangelists.  After Marcellus' execution the provincial governor in Lyon hears from pagans that V. has been living at a secret little cell near Tournus and has been making many converts.  V. is arrested, declares his faith to the governor, refuses to sacrifice to the idols, and is first tortured and then executed by decapitation, sanctifying the ground with his body while his spirit ascends to heaven.  Thus far the Passio.

In 875 a monastery at V.'s church at Tournus received a community of Norman monks from Noirmoutier who brought with them relics of their own St. Philibert.  In the later tenth century, according to accounts from this house that do not name Philibert (BHL 8489 and 8490), V.'s miracle-working remains were translated to the crypt of the abbey church, which latter in 949 had become a mandatory pilgrimage venue in three Burgundian dioceses.  In the late eleventh or early twelfth century, when the newly rebuilt abbey church (now being called that of St. Philibert) was nearing completion, another church dedicated to V. arose nearby.  Used as a parish church, it survives as Tournus' now deconsecrated église Saint-Valérien.  Here's a view of it:
http://tinyurl.com/5656ay


3)  Nicetas the Goth (d. in the 370s).  The megalomartyr N. is first recorded in a seemingly late fifth-century Greek-language Passio (BHG 1339) written for his cult at the Cilician city of Mopsuestia (later Mamistra and now Yakapınar in Turkey's Adana province).  According to this account, he was a member of the Christian minority among the still mostly pagan Goths settled in Dacia.  Ordained priest while still young, he fell victim to anti-Christian persecution under king Athanaric and was executed by burning.  Aided by a miracle, N.'s loving friend Marinus obtained his body, brought it to Mopsuestia, and on a 15. September laid it to rest in a martyrion there.  A metaphrastic Passio (BHG 1340) adds to and otherwise alters this story in various ways.

Byzantine synaxary accounts attest to the existence of a church in Constantinople dedicated to N. and believed by some to hold his relics.  The Visoki Dečani monastery (near Peć in, depending on one's view of the matter, either the Republic of Kosovo or Serbia's province of Kosovo and Metohija) has what is said to be N.'s left hand:
http://www.kosovo.net/st013_y.jpg

A later thirteenth-century (betw. 1263 and 1270) fresco of N. in the nave of the monastery church of the Holy Trinity at Sopoćani in, depending on one's view of the matter, Serbia's province of Kosovo and Metohija or the Republic of Kosovo:
http://tinyurl.com/ps85mn
http://tinyurl.com/olxzlr
As often in Serbian art, N. is shown here as a military saint.

A very late thirteenth- or very early fourteenth-century (ca. 1300) fresco of N., attributed to Manuel Panselinos, in the Protaton church at Karyes on Mount Athos:
http://tinyurl.com/klhtox
http://tinyurl.com/r5dexk

An early sixteenth-century fresco (1502) of N. by Dionisy and sons in the Virgin Nativity cathedral of the St. Ferapont Belozero (Ferapontov Belozersky) Monastery at Ferapontovo in Russia's Vologda oblast:
http://www.dionisy.com/eng/museum/112/294/index.shtml
          

4)  Aper of Toul (d. early 6th cent.).  A. (also Aprus; in French, Epvre and Èvre) is the traditional seventh bishop of Toul and the second after the historically better attested Auspicius (fl. ca. 470).  He is also the saint of Toul's now vanished abbey that was already named for him in 626/27 and in whose church he received an Elevatio in 978.  A. has a Vita now often ascribed to Adso of Montier-en-Der, who in 935 was scholasticus at the abbey of Saint-Èvre (BHL 616); its earliest witnesses, like that of the less frequently encountered BHL 617, are of the eleventh century.  This makes him a native of the territory of Troyes and a paragon of charity and of interest in the life of the church from childhood who became a model bishop, who operated miracles, and who founded a basilica that from its location is clearly meant to be the church of the abbey.  A. also has a separate postmortem Miracula (BHL 618) of the later tenth century.

In the tenth century it was believed that a local saint of Troyes, Apronia, was A.'s sister.  Toul's bishop St. Gerard I, who was also responsible for A.'s Elevatio, bought her relics from the bishop of Troyes and deposited them not in the abbey but in his newly founded church of St. Gengulph (whose relics G. had bought from the bishop of Langres).  A.'s traditional year of death is 507.  His cult seems always to have been restricted to Lotharingia, where it is attested by numerous dedications, and to adjacent Champagne.

The originally twelfth-century église Saint-Èvre de Contrexéville (Vosges) retains its medieval belltower, three expandable views of which are here:
http://tinyurl.com/6nyxlb
The same church houses this sixteenth-century cult statue of E., whose provenance is unknown (it is said not to have been in the church at the end of the nineteenth century):
http://tinyurl.com/6sygwb


5)  Jordan of Pulsano (Bl.; d. 1145).  In 1139 today's less well known holy person of the Regno succeeded St. John of Matera both as abbot of the latter's relatively recently founded abbey at Pulsano on northern Apulia's Gargano Peninsula and as general of the nascent Pulsanese Benedictine congregation.  The sainted founder's later eleventh-century Vita (BHL 4412), thought to have been written by J.'s immediate successor, Bl. Joel (d. 1177), describes J. as as a good and just man, considerate both to God and to men, who governed _strenue, juste, pie, atque fideliter_.  This Vita also calls J. _beatus_ and associates him with the founder in the miraculous extrication of a wayward brother who while riding ahead of their party had fallen with his horse into a crevasse corresponding physically to the spiritual pit into which he had already sunk (the words used are _terrae vorago_ and _fovea_).

J.'s lectionary entry (BHL [Suppl.] 4452b) in the dismembered thirteenth-century Pulsanese codex preserved in the BAV (Vat. lat. 5419) and in the BN in Naples (ms. VIII C l3) says that he came from a prominent family of today's Monteverde (AV) in Campania, that he had been schooled at Benevento, where he lived with an uncle who mistreated him, and that, barely recovered from a serious illness, he had fled into a wood where John of Matera, then on his way from Capua to Apulia, discovered him and took him on as an acolyte.  During his brief generalship J. expanded his congregation's holdings in Apulia and increased its north Italian presence through the founding, at the behest of the bishop of Piacenza, of the monastery of Santa Maria di Quartazzola in today's Gossolengo (PC) in Emilia.  Today is his _dies natalis_.

J.'s cult was immediate, though his recognition as a saint seems to have been limited to the Pulsanese Benedictine congregation and (perhaps) to the former diocese of his native Monteverde, where he is also commemorated today.

The abbey church of Santa Maria di Pulsano (most of which is thought to have been built under abbot Joel) abuts, and uses as its apse, a cave said to have been revealed by the BVM to John of Matera in a vision as the site of his new monastery on the Gargano.   Here's a view of its sanctuary:
http://tinyurl.com/yrms5b
Those doorways on either side of the altar lead to chapels containing altars with the relics, respectively, of J. and of Bl. Joel.
Two multi-page sets of views of the abbey are here:
http://www.mondimedievali.net/Edifici/Puglia/Foggia/Pulsano.htm
http://www.manfredoniaeventi.it/archeologia/pulsano/index.htm

The Pulsanese codex mentioned above has been reproduced in facsimile (both parts) in Alberto Cavallini, ed., _Laus Deo, anima Pulsani.  Il Libro dell'Ufficio del Capitolo della Congregazione monastica degli eremiti di Pulsano_ (Città del Vaticano: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 2005).


6)  Catherine of Genoa (d. 1510).  The mystic C., also a dedicated carer for the sick, was a scion of one of Genoa's leading noble families, the Fieschi,  At the age of sixteen she was married to a scion of the equally prominent family of the Adorno, political and mercantile rivals of the Fieschi.  Their union proved unsuccessful in many ways: it was childless, the husband was unfaithful and abusive, and C. was increasingly withdrawn.  At about the age of twenty-five she underwent the first of a henceforth lifelong series of mystical experiences, began to engage in frequent prayer, and started taking the Eucharist almost daily.  C. also served as a lay attendant at a local hospital that ultimately she she came to manage.

C. is said to have in time converted her husband, who became a Franciscan tertiary and who also tended the sick.  Her Italian-language Life (with an account of her mystical experiences provided by by her last confessor) and edited writings were published posthumously in 1551.

Beatified in 1635, C. was canonized in 1737.

Best,
John Dillon
(last year's post revised and with the addition of Nicetas the Goth)

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