medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (22. September) is the feast day of:
1) Maurice of Acaunus and companions (d. late 3d or very early 4th cent., supposedly). Our first information about the soldier-saint M. comes from the _Passio Acaunensium martyrum_ (BHL 5737, etc.; multiple versions) ascribed to the early fifth-century St. Eucherius of Lyon. This account, whose earliest witness is of the seventh century, asserts that the late fourth-century bishop Theodore of Octodurum (today's Martigny in the Swiss canton of Valais north of the Great Saint Bernard) had had revealed to him the location at nearby Acaunus (today's Saint-Maurice in the same canton) of the bodies of M., the chief administrative officer of a military legion called "the Thebans", and others (a few of whom are named) of the same unit, which latter in its entirety had been put to death under Maximian for its refusal to abjure Christianity and in whose honor Theodore had erected at Acaunus a martyrial basilica adjacent to a cave in a cliff.
Blatant anachronisms have caused modern scholars to view the story of M. et socc. as fiction. Opinions differ as to whether the reported inventio, the building of the basilica, and the narrative's Eucherian authorship are also fiction. There is at least a fair probability that they are and that the whole is the foundation legend for the monastery at the site that existed in some form around the year 500 and that in 515 was re-founded by St. Sigismund, who in the following year became king of the Burgundians. Intermittent royal patronage coupled with reported miracles insured the cult's early medieval popularity in Gaul, reflected for example by M.'s mention in St. Gregory of Tours' _In gloria martyrum_, by the (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology's listing for today of Maurice and his companions, and by St. Ado of Vienne's inclusion of them in his martyrology along with a version of their Passio.
In the ninth century the abbey became a canonry; in 1128 its canons adopted the Rule of St. Augustine. In the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries it experienced an upswing in its fortunes that has left such artistic monuments as this twelfth-century reliquary of St. Candidus (one of M.'s companions):
http://tinyurl.com/2zwsug
this twelfth- or thirteenth-century shrine for M.'s relics:
http://tinyurl.com/38aklx
and the twelfth-century shrine for the children of St. Sigismund, bearing on one end one of the better known representations of M.:
http://tinyurl.com/38john
http://tinyurl.com/2j8wr6
An illustrated, English-language page on the abbey of Saint-Maurice d'Agaune:
http://home.eckerd.edu/~oberhot/moment9.htm
A view of its originally eleventh-/twelfth-century belltower (restored after its collapse in 1942 when part of the cliff came down on the church):
http://tinyurl.com/33l8xr
In 937 Otto I established a monastery dedicated to M. at Magdeburg, where after her death in 946 his first wife, Edith (a daughter of the Anglo-Saxon king St. Edward the Elder) was laid to rest. In 951 Otto married into the Burgundian royal family and in 960 king Rudolf II presented him with relics said to be those of M. These were placed in Magdeburg's cathedral, founded by Otto after his victory over the Hungarians at the Lechfeld in 955 and also dedicated to M. (in 1363 a re-dedication upon completion of the nave added St. Catherine of Alexandria). Starting in the twelfth century M. had come to be thought of as a Moor; Magdeburg's cathedral has a relatively early visual example in this statue of M. from about 1260:
http://tinyurl.com/4j9we3
http://tinyurl.com/3xunzk
Some views of the cathedral:
http://tinyurl.com/34qjmk
http://tinyurl.com/2qy5bh
http://tinyurl.com/3bjtr5
http://tinyurl.com/27pesz
Angers' twelfth- to fifteenth-century cathedral is also dedicated to M. A French-language account is here:
http://tinyurl.com/3789le
Two pages of expandable views begin here:
http://tinyurl.com/348qun
Other expandable views:
http://tinyurl.com/2pt4s6
Some single views:
http://tinyurl.com/2dtdqb
http://tinyurl.com/2b7t58
http://tinyurl.com/yuhkh9
West portal, details:
http://tinyurl.com/yvhep6
http://tinyurl.com/2f3hpx
Views of the glass windows are accessible here:
http://ica.princeton.edu/metcalf/browse.php?p=2200&s=s
2) Basilla (d. 304). B. (also Bassilla, Basila) is a Roman martyr of the Via Salaria vetus, listed for today in the _Depositio martyrum_ of the Chronographer of 354, where the year of her death is given as 304. The cemetery in which she was laid to rest has been called that of Basilla since at least the year 234 and presumably bears the name of its donor, an earlier homonym. The (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology's entry for our B. under today's date says that the cemetery is named for her (_Romae via Salaria vetere in cimiterio eiusdem natale Basillae_; 'At Rome on the Via Salaria vetus in her own cemetery the _dies natalis_ of Basilla'). That she had come to be considered one of the cemetery's tutelary saints is clear from a fourth- or fifth century century inscription found there and now in the Museo Cristiano Pio-Lateranense:
DOMINA BASSILLA COM
MANDAMVS TIBI CRES
CENTINVS ET MICINA
FILIA[m] NOSTRA[m] CRESCEN[.]
QVE VIXIT MEN X ET D[i]ES
('Lady Basilla, we Crescentinus and Micina commend to you our daughter Crescen[suffix lacking]. She lived ten months and [number lacking] days.'). The inscription is reproduced in Giovanni Battista de Rossi, _Il Museo Epigrafico Cristiano Pio-Lateranense_ (Roma: Tipografia della Pace, 1877), pl. VIII, no. 17, and (enlarged from de Rossi) in the _Bibliotheca Sanctorum_, vol. 2., cols. 965-66).
The (ps.-)HM in its customary untidiness records B. under other days: 23. January, 20. May, and 11. June. The historical martyrologies of the Carolingian period, followed by the RM until the latter's revision of 2001, entered B. under 20. May.
In the highly legendary Passio of Sts. Protus and Hyacinth (Latin versions: BHL 6975 and 6976-77; Greek versions: BHG 607w-608b in the _Passio sanctae Eugeniae_) B. is said to have been a niece of the emperor Gallienus (r. 253-68) who becomes a Christian under the patronage of St. Eugenia of Rome and the tutelage of her servitors P. and H. Desirous to remain a virgin, she refuses a marriage arranged for her by the emperor. Whereupon the disappointed spouse-to-be accuses B. of being a Christian and Gallienus (who is not known to have persecuted Christians) gives B. a choice: marry or be decapitated. Few on this list will find it difficult correctly to guess B.'s decision. Versions of this story will be found in the historical martyrologies from Florus of Lyon through to the pre-2001 Roman Martyrology.
B. is among the saints whose remains pope Paschal I (817-24) is said to have translated to Santa Prassede.
3) Sadalberga (d. ca. 665-670). We have two sources for the life of the monastic founder and visionary S. (also Salaberga). The first is an episode in Jonas of Bobbio's Vita of St. Columban in which St. Eustasius of Luxeuil as a guest of the girl S.'s noble parents effects her recovery from blindness. The second, on whose reliability opinions differ (Krusch in the MGH dismissed it as ninth-century invention; English-language scholars, including several in very recent decades, are considerably more accepting) is her own Vita (versions: BHL 7463, 7463b, 7464). This is written for an abbess Anstrude, presumably S.'s own daughter of the name. Krusch thought that dedication to be part of the fiction; to others the Vita's later seventh-century context rings true.
According to her Vita, S. married twice. Whereas her first husband died quickly, S. had five children by her second husband, St. Blandinus, a counselor of king Dagobert I. Later they separated: B. became a hermit and S. founded a double monastery at Langres which she ruled as abbess, tempering the Columbanian Rule with that of St. Benedict, and which she later moved to Laon. Her visions occurred close to the time of her death. S.'s _dies natalis_ is today; she was succeeded as abbess by her daughter St. Anstrude. Her cult survived at Laon and spread to other places in northwestern France.
4) Emmeram (d, ca. 685-690). The little that we know about E. (also Emmeran, Emeran, Heim(h)rammus, Haimeran, Heimeran) comes from Arbeo of Freising's lightly regarded and clearly legendary _Vita et Passio sancti Haimhrammi martyris_ (versions: BHL 2538, 2539), written in the 770s.
According to this account, the nobly born A. was a native of Aquitaine became a bishop and who traveled to Regensburg to be a missionary to idolaters in Bavaria. He was welcomed by the duke and achieved a reputation as a holy man. Later a daughter of the duke confided in E. that she had become pregnant out of wedlock. Moved by compassion for what might have been her fate, E. counseled her to name him as the father and then set off on pilgrimage to Rome. The daughter followed E.'s advice, whereupon her brother with some companions/minions pursued E., caught up with him at a place since identified as Klein Helfendorf in today's Aying (Lkr. München), tied him to a ladder, and dismembered him with a saw. Six weeks later E.'s remains were brought back to Regensburg and were given honorable burial in the monastery church of St. George.
In the decades preceding Arbeo's writing, an abbot of Freising erected a church in E.'s honor at the place where he had been killed and a bishop of Regensburg gave him an Elevatio and a new church in that city. Thus far Arbeo. E.'s cult is first attested in a mid-eighth-century sacramentary from Regensburg. Usuard added him under this date in the second edition of his martyrology.
The monastery at Regensburg where E. was buried soon took his name. It grew to be very powerful and spread his cult though its numerous dependencies. Herewith three views of what's left of the monastery's late medieval gatehouse:
http://tinyurl.com/luprox
http://tinyurl.com/n9lksq
http://tinyurl.com/nly9va
http://www.burgenseite.com/kapitell/rgb_st_emmeram_kap_07.jpg
http://www.burgenseite.com/kapitell/rgb_st_emmeram_kap_08.jpg
A surviving "romanesque" bit (with a "gothic" doorway) in the monastery church:
http://tinyurl.com/nvrr4f
E.'s resting place in the crypt:
http://tinyurl.com/mzuczr
A German-language history of the crypt:
http://tinyurl.com/mmhjrk
Two capitals (ca. 1100) in the crypt:
http://www.burgenseite.com/kapitell/rgb_st_emmeram_kap_20.jpg
http://www.burgenseite.com/kapitell/rgb_st_emmeram_kap_24.jpg
English-language and German-language information sheets on the originally eleventh-century Stadtpfarrkirche St. Emmeram in Wemding (Lkr. Donau-Ries) in Bavaria:
http://www.thomasgraz.net/glass/gl-1699.htm
http://www.wemding.de/Verkehrsamt/Rundgang/emmeram.html
Views of this church:
http://www.globopix.de/detail.asp?idi=97&i=2&pagina=7
http://www.globopix.de/detail.asp?idi=97&i=2&pagina=8
http://www.globopix.de/detail.asp?idi=97&i=2&pagina=9
A German-language account of the originally twelfth-century Pfarrkirche St. Emmeram in Spalt (Lkr. Roth) in Bavaria:
http://www.spalt.de/data/stEmmeram.php
facade view:
http://tinyurl.com/lvlysp
exterior of choir:
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/119/314139377_a1e394bb49_o.jpg
A German-language account and a larger view of the originally twelfth(?)-century Kappelle St. Emmeram in Taiting (Lkr. Aichach-Friedberg) in Bavaria:
http://tinyurl.com/krufq9
http://images.bistum-augsburg.de/108007309844348.jpg
Best,
John Dillon
(Maurice and companions lightly revised from last year's post)
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