medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (11. September) is the feast day of:
1) Protus and Hyacinth (d. 257, supposedly). P. and H., recorded for today in the _Depositio martyrum_ of the Chronographer of 354, are Roman martyrs of the cemetery of Basilla on the Via Salaria vetus. They are among the very few saints identified by name in pope St. Damasus I's inscription for the cemetery as a whole (_Epigrammata Damasiana_, ed. Ferrua, no. 47). Pope St. Symmachus (498-514) removed most of their relics to his newly built church of St. Andrew on the Vatican, where they were placed in the confessio. When H.'s early resting place, identified by a grave slab noting today as his day of laying to rest, was discovered in the cemetery in 1845, it contained ashes and fragments of charred bone wrapped in cloths of costly material. These are now thought to be relics deliberately left at the site by Symmachus. A section of the cemetery showing H.'s resting place (just above the majuscule 'G') is here:
http://tinyurl.com/naefst
And here's a view of his grave slab:
http://tinyurl.com/lh48ne
Part of an inscribed grave slab for P. was found nearby. The precise location of his resting place is unknown.
P. and H. are depicted in the sixth-century mosaics of Sant'Apollinare Nuovo at Ravenna. They are fixtures in the seventh-century itineraries for pilgrims to Rome. Their relics are among the great many that pope St. Leo IV (847-55) is said to have translated into the city, though given what were already on the Vatican and, if these were authentic, the relics of both saints that are said to have been brought to Seligenstadt in the reign of Louis the Pious (814-34), there may not have been much left of them to translate. The church of Santi Quattro Coronati is reported to have had P.'s head (or a piece of it) during Leo's pontificate; its continued presence there was noted in an inventory conducted in 1111. In the later Middle Ages Rome's now demolished church of San Salvatore de pede pontis claimed to have relics of both saints (these went to San Giovanni dei Fiorentini in 1592).
P. and H. have a highly legendary Passio (versions: BHL 6975 and 6976-77) that brings together in a single episodic narration various saints of their cemetery and others, notably St. Eugenia of Rome (25. December). This confection was known in some form to the ninth-century St. Ado of Lyon, who in his martyrology uses it for his _elogium_ of these saints. It makes P. and H. Eugenia's slaves or servitors who convert her to Christianity and who are martyred with her either under Valerian or -- according to Ado and Usuard -- under Gallienus (who is not known to have persecuted). P. and H. are entered for today in the (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology, in the historical martyrologies from Bede onward, and in the Old English Martyrology. They also have a notice in the so-called Menologium of Basil II (late tenth- or early eleventh-century).
Some views of the originally late eleventh-century church of Sts Protus (Pratt) and Hyacinth in Blisland (Cornwall), expanded in the later Middle Ages and restored in 1894:
Exterior
http://www.oliverscornwall.co.uk/blislandchurch2.jpg
http://www.sharons-tree.co.uk/images/Blisland%20Church.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/6g5pxd
Interior:
http://www.imageclick.co.uk/extended.asp?id=1962
http://tinyurl.com/6qegel
Some views of the originally thirteenth-century chiesa dei Santi Proto e Giacinto at Cavallari di Pizzoli (AQ) in Abruzzo:
http://tinyurl.com/6eqnyr
http://tinyurl.com/luorvz
Expandable views of two manuscript illuminations of P. and H. from the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, respectively:
http://tinyurl.com/6x6k7q
An expandable view of a late fifteenth-century (after 1482) ms. illumination of P. and H. with St. Eugenia:
http://tinyurl.com/6feuu2
A fourteenth-century (second quarter) ms. illumination of the martyrdom of P., H., and E. is shown here:
http://saints.bestlatin.net/gallery/protus_bnfms.htm
A fifteenth-century illumination (1463) of the same subject is shown here from an ms. of Vincent of Beauvais' _Speculum historiale_ in the translation of Jean de Vignay (Paris, BnF ms. Français 51, fol. 26r):
http://tinyurl.com/lah5zg
2) Felix and Regula (d. late 2d or very early 3d cent., supposedly). F. and his sister R., patron saints of Zurich, have a legendary Passio (earlier versions: BHL 2887, 2888) that makes them pilgrims who on the advice of St. Maurice of Acaunus (22. September) were traveling in the vicinity of Zurich when they sought martyrdom at the hands of the emperor Maximian's minions. Promptly arrested, they refused to venerate pagan idols, survived horrific tortures while at the same time stoutly professing their faith, were decapitated outside the city at a spot by the Limmat, and then picked up their severed heads from the river and walked to their resting places at the top of a nearby hill. Thus far the Passio, which seems to have been written for a feast of F., R., and companions.
Versions from of their legend the thirteenth century onward give F. and R. a servant named Exuperantius who is martyred with them and who also is a cephalophore. Still venerated in Zurich, E. has yet to grace the pages of the RM.
In the tenth century a church was built on an island in the Limmat where F. and R. were thought (or soon would be thought) to have been executed. Called in Latin and in German the 'Water Church' (modern German: Wasserkirche) since at least the mid-thirteenth century, it was rebuilt in the later Middle Ages. A stone in its crypt is traditionally called the Martyrs' Stone ('Märtyrerstein'):
http://tinyurl.com/lguckk
http://tinyurl.com/mnljyy
Views of the church itself:
http://tinyurl.com/n9ycuc
http://tinyurl.com/lbparp
An illustrated, German-language page on this church:
http://tinyurl.com/m3y68f
In seemingly the eleventh century a monastery church was built at a hilltop locale reputed to hold the graves of F. and R. (the monastery claimed foundation by Charlemagne; archaeological work at the site has yet to produce evidence of an earlier church or oratory as suggested by the Passio). That church was replaced by Zurich's present Grossmünster (ca. 1100-1220; later modifications), which was dedicated to F., R., and E. and which housed their putative remains until the latter's removal under Heinrich Bullinger in the sixteenth century. Herewith an exterior view of the Grossmünster and illustrated pages on it in German and in English:
http://tinyurl.com/n3onqk
http://tinyurl.com/m65yps
http://tinyurl.com/no4bqv
A series of illustrated, German-language pages on this church begins here (use menu at left to access the others):
http://tinyurl.com/mpu5pc
The beginning of the oldest witness to the Passio of F. and R. (Sankt Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. Sang. 225, pp. 473-478, written in a slightly later hand than that of most of this later eighth-century ms.):
http://www.e-codices.unifr.ch/de/csg/0225/473/medium
F. and R. in the Stuttgarter Passionale of 1130 (Württembergische Landesbibliothek Stuttgart, Cod. Bibl. 2° 56):
http://tinyurl.com/mvbdaw
A later fourteenth-century (1470-1475) illustrated manuscript with a German-language Life of F. and R. (Heidelberg, Universitätsbibliothek, Cod. Pal. germ. 111):
http://diglit.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/cpg111/
F., R., and E. in a seal of the city of Zurich from 1347:
http://tinyurl.com/ltcmq9
In this mural painting of ca. 1478, now in Zurich's Frauenmünster, F. and R. flank the Holy Trinity:
http://tinyurl.com/nroh6m
F., R., E., and two tormentors freed from overpainting in 1937 in a panel from a very late fifteenth-century altarpiece formerly in the chapel in the Grossmünster that housed their relics:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Felix_und_Regula.png
3) Elias the Speleote (d. ca. 960 [traditional]; ca. 930 [recent scholarship]). Today's less well known saint of the Regno was a Greek-speaking itinerant monk, thaumaturge, and monastic founder. According to his late tenth-century Bios (BHG 581 plus a Latin translation from ca. 1082), E. was born into a wealthy family of today's Reggio di Calabria (RC) who provided him with a good religious education. At the age of eighteen he crossed over into Muslim Sicily, where he lived as a hermit for about a year before going on to Rome. There E. visited the tombs of the Apostles and performed his first miracle, rendering immobile some brigands who had unwisely elected to attack him.
Returning to Calabria, E. attached himself first to a saintly abbot Arsenios and later, after spending several years at Patras in Greece, to St. Elias of Enna, then residing at the Saline near today's Gioa Tauro (RC). When that worthy departed for Constantinople never to return, he left his abode in the joint charge of his companion Daniel and of our E. (who, however, is never mentioned in the Daniel-influenced Bios of this other Elias).
E. moved on quickly to other places in Calabria, finally settling in a set of caves at today's Melicuccà (RC) near Seminara, where he founded what became a large and regionally famous Greek-rite monastic community. He died on 11. September in what the Bios unreliably says was the ninety-sixth year of his life and was buried in a tomb that he himself had dug in one of the monastery's caves. Many miracles were attributed to him in his lifetime; his grave, visited by numerous pilgrims some of whom sought relief while they slept by the tomb, was the site of many more. In some cases the incubation was repeated for more than one night.
In the eighteenth century, when the monastery had long since been closed and most of the caves had been filled in both by the action of earthquakes and by more regular geologic processes, E.'s tomb was rediscovered and his cult was renewed. Today it is still a place of pilgrimage, though (I believe) incubation is no longer practiced there.
Four views of the restored main cave are here:
http://www.provincia.rc.it/pagine/itinerari.php?t=testo_foto&cat=22
An illustrated, Italian-language account of the site, informed by archaeological findings, is here:
http://www.heliosmag.it/99/5/cenobioi.html
Further views:
http://web.tiscalinet.it/lpweb/grotta_s_elia.htm
A recently published archaeological study of the monastery at Melicuccà and of other Italo-Greek monastic sites in Calabria is Francesca Zagari, _L'eparchia delle Saline_ (Roma: Palombi, 2006).
The later eleventh-century Latin translation of E.'s Bios includes matter absent from the Greek text as we have it now. It has been edited by Maria Vittoria Strazzeri as "Una traduzione dal greco ad uso dei Normanni: la Vita latina di Sant'Elia lo Speleota", _Archivio storico per la Calabria e la Lucania_ 59 (1992), 1-108. An important recent article on the Bios (which latter is being re-edited by Enrico Morini of the Università di Bologna) is Stefano Caruso, "Sulla cronologia della Vita di S. Elia Speleota da Reggio", _Byzantion_ 70 (2000), 25-56.
4) Sperandia (d. 1276). The penitent and visionary Sperandia was born at Gubbio in Umbria in around the year 1216. According to her _Vita antiqua_ (BHL 7825), she was divinely inspired at the age of nine to adopt a penitential lifestyle. This decision did not go over well with her father and with other members of her family. After enduring many tribulations at their hands (for how long we are not told) S. exchanged her penitent's rags for a pig's hide and a belt of iron and, again acting on divine guidance, left home for good.
S. spent the bulk of her life as a wandering ascetic in towns of Umbria and the Marche, tormented by demons and gaining a reputation as a holy woman and thaumaturge. She seems to have made a journey to Rome. Still according to the _Vita antiqua_, her lifetime fame extended as far north as Venice. In about 1265 S. settled down at a mountain grotto outside of Cingoli (MC), founding there a community attested to by a donation of 1276 and by subsequent documents witnessing miracle accounts or bearing on relations between the town of Cingoli and what had become her convent.
Though the _Vita antiqua_ suggests rather strongly a life of Franciscan spirituality, tradition makes S. a Benedictine abbess. Local veneration seems to have been both strong and immediate. In 1633 her cult was confirmed for the dioceses of Gubbio, Osimo, and Sanseverino (Marche). Also commemorated by the Benedictines and in other orders, S. has yet to grace the pages the RM.
The Bollandists who edited the _Acta Sanctorum_ chose to call S. "Sperandea". In languages other than Italian she is often still so called, though this form seems contrary to the evidence of her _Vita antica_ (which calls her "Spera in Deo"), of its late fifteenth-century revision ("Sperandia"), of the latter's Italian-language revision ("Sperandina"), and of late medieval usage in both Gubbio and Cingoli ("Sperandia", "Spera in Deo", "Sperandeus", etc.). Together with its dubiously attested early bishop Exuperantius (24. January), S. is a patron saint of Cingoli, "Balcony of the Marche".
A recent interior photo of Sperandia's grotto is here:
http://www.volipindarici.it/viaggi/vivicitta/it_mar/cingoli1/index.htm
And a rather romantic exterior view of it from the nineteenth century is here:
http://xoomer.virgilio.it/estacchi/sper1.htm
Best,
John Dillon
(last year's post lightly revised and with the addition of Felix and Regula)
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