medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture

Today (25. October) is the feast day of:

1)  Minias (ca. 250, supposedly).  Saint Minias or, as he is better known, San Miniato is first recorded in a charter from Charlemagne of 786 making mention of a "basilica of Minias, martyr of Christ, situated at Florence, where his venerable body reposes."  Usuard's martyrology gives us our first mention of M.'s feast day (today).  According to his not entirely confidence-inspiring Passio (BHL 5965-5970; multiple versions, none attested earlier than the ninth century), M. was a soldier -- in some later accounts, also the son of an Armenian king -- whose martyrdom at Florence during the Decian persecution culminated in death by decapitation.  In one development of the legend, M.'s execution took place by the Arno, whereupon the saint picked up his severed head, swam across the river with it, and (doughty cephalophore that he was) carried it uphill to a spot that became his final resting place.

That spot, of course, is the site of Florence's basilica di San Miniato al Monte, an early eleventh-century structure with notable decor from the twelfth century onward.  A brief, English-language account of it:
http://www.san-miniato-al-monte.com/
and its accompanying photo gallery (expandable views):
http://www.san-miniato-al-monte.com/san_miniato_photo_gallery.htm
Another English-language guide:
http://www.mega.it/eng/egui/monu/sminiat.htm

Views of the west facade:
http://tinyurl.com/3bfng5
http://tinyurl.com/39q3xx
This facade has a thirteenth-century mosaic showing (left to right) the BVM, Christ, and M.  Five expandable views are here:
http://tinyurl.com/9y93b

Interior views:
M. himself (fourteenth-century; attrib. to Jacopo del Casentino):
a -- on display in the church:
http://tinyurl.com/8qbmu
b -- view with English-language discussion:
http://www.vivahotels.com/uk/sanminiato_casentino_uk.htm
Tabernacle, ambo, etc.:
http://tinyurl.com/bouam
Apse mosaic (again with M.):
http://tinyurl.com/ap32p
Mosaic floor in nave (eleventh-century), various views:
http://tinyurl.com/2g5z9n

Frescoes in the sacristy (Spinello Aretino; ca. 1387, restored in 1840;
Italian-language account with two expandable views):
http://www.coopfirenze.it/info/art_2821.htm
More frescoes (still in the sacristy):
http://www.encyclopedie-universelle.com/images/Image164.jpg
Vault frescoes in the crypt (Taddeo Gaddi; 1342):
http://tinyurl.com/5pcmlo

Various:
http://tinyurl.com/cwzw3
http://tinyurl.com/ynvh5s

An altar in the crypt
http://tinyurl.com/5puuf4
http://www.mega.it/min/duo/eb.jpg
contains M.'s putative remains, relics which from at least the eighth century onward have been thought to be those of a local martyr.  That is certainly possible, but the oddness of M.'s name and its Greek-seeming termination have provoked the reasonable counter-hypothesis that these are really relics of the famous St. Mennas of Egypt deposited here in a late antique oratory.  Over time, and in the absence of any early Life of Mennas, the cult here will on this view have been transformed into that of a local saint.

M.'s cult has been widespread in Tuscany since at least the central Middle Ages.  A well known instance is the town of San Miniato (PI), which latter no longer has a medieval church dedicated to M.  One surviving example of such a dedication is the pieve di San Miniato a Rubbiana at San Polo in Chianti (FI):
http://www.sottolarco.it/pieve.htm
http://tinyurl.com/yjp9fjx


2)  Chrysanthus and Daria (d. ca. 283, supposedly).  C. (in Early Modern English: Crisaunt) and D. are Roman martyrs of the Via Salaria nova whose burial site there is attested by St. Gregory of Tours, by the late sixth-century _Index oleorum_ of abbot John of Monza, and by the early seventh-century guidebooks for pilgrims at Rome.  They have a sixth- or seventh-century legendary Passio in longer and shorter versions (BHL 1787, 1788) that makes them husband and wife and that places their death under Numerian (r. 283-84); Regino of Prüm (d. 915) places it under N.'s father, Carus (r. 282-83).  C. and D. are entered for today in the (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology and in the early ninth-century Marble Calendar of Naples; in the medieval West they were often celebrated on 29. November or 1. December.  In the Greek church their feast day is usually 19. March.

In the ninth century relics believed to be those of C. and D. were translated from Rome to today's Prüm (LKr. Bitburg-Prüm) in Rheinland-Pfalz (844, by Prüm's abbot Markward) and to today's Oria (TR) in southern Apulia (886, by Oria's bishop Theodosius).  Other putative relics of these saints placed by pope St. Paschal I in Rome's Santa Prassede are said to have been translated to the Lateran Sancta Sanctorum by pope Stephen V (885-91).  The relics at Prüm were translated to today's Bad Münstereifel (Lkr. Euskirchen) in Nordrhein-Westfalen in 848 for the dedication of a newly built monastery of C. and C.  The latter's originally eleventh- and twelfth-century church of C. and D. (restored, nineteenth and twentieth centuries) is now a parish church (Roman Catholic).  Some views:
http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/19943685.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/yhobcym
http://www.fotocommunity.de/pc/pc/display/15597918
http://tinyurl.com/ylgbjum
An illustrated, Italian-language page (expandable views and plans at bottom) on Oria's originally late ninth-century rupestrian cripta dei Santi Crisante e Daria is here:
http://tinyurl.com/5nw2pm

C. as depicted in the earlier fourteenth-century (1335-1350) frescoes in the nave of the church of the Holy Ascension at 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:
http://tinyurl.com/ykbgg7h

A fourteenth-century manuscript illumination of the martyrdom of C. and D. (St John's College, Cambridge, MS B.9 fol. 136r; _Vies des saints_):
http://tinyurl.com/5gykfk

Another fourteenth-century manuscript illumination of the martyrdom of C. and D. (Paris, BnF, ms. Français 185, fol. 77r; _Vies des saints_):
http://tinyurl.com/69z99q


3)  Crispin and Crispinian (d. later 3d or early 4th cent., supposedly).  It is unknown whether C. and C. (in French, Crépin et Crépinien) are martyrs of Rome, where they are unattested prior to the early seventh-century _Itinerarium Malmesburiense_'s notice of their burial site in the church of Sts. John and Paul on the Caelian, or of Soissons, where according to the sixth-century St. Gregory of Tours there was already a basilica dedicated to them (_Hist. Franc._, 5. 34 and 9. 9).  They have a legendary, probably later eighth-century Passio (BHL 1990), in which they are presented as cobblers of Roman origin working at Soissons and martyred under Maximian for their Christian proselytizing.  Florus, Ado, and Usuard make them martyrs at Soissons under Diocletian.

C. and C. are the patrons of Soissons (Aisne), where an extramural abbey at their aforementioned basilica flourished from the ninth century onward.  Medievally, their cult was widespread in northern and eastern France and in Brittany.  Relics believed to be theirs are thought to have been brought to Hamburg a little after 830 and to have been placed in the crypt of Osnabrück's cathedral (the predecessor of the present one) in around 850.  After Agincourt (25. October 1415), C. and C. having the Memorial for this day, their cult experienced an uptick in England (Henry V acknowledged rather St. John of Beverley, whose translation feast this was).  The abbot of C. and C. at Soissons is recorded as having been among the dignitaries attending the funeral of Charles VI in 1422; we are not told whether he were obliged to dress as a penitent.

An illustrated, French-language page on the originally twelfth-/fifteenth-century église Saint-Crépin-et-Saint-Crépinien at Saint-Crépin-Ibouvillers (Oise) in Picardy:
http://www.vivrastcrepin.fr/eglise.htm
Many expandable views here:
http://www.vivrastcrepin.fr/albums/souvenirs/index.html

Views of the originally twelfth-century église Saint-Crépin-et-Saint-Crépinien at Bréançon (Val-d'Oise) in Île-de-France (rebuilt and expanded, early sixteenth century):
http://tinyurl.com/65g9x9
http://tinyurl.com/5uw8hh

An illustrated, French-language page on the originally fourteenth-century église Saint-Crépin-et-Saint-Crépinien at Barc (Eure) in Normandy:
http://tinyurl.com/4khx2l
A gallery of expandable views of this church is here:
http://www.communes.com/haute-normandie/eure/barc_27170/

Views of the originally fifteenth-century (ca. 1452; tower restored, 1912) église Saint-Crépin-et-Saint-Crépinien at Saint-Crépin (Hautes-Alpes) in the Alpes portion of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur:
http://tinyurl.com/65pjg6
http://www.saintcrepin.com/entree1.gif
http://tinyurl.com/6oftdm

Views of the originally late fifteenth-century église Saint-Crépin (1487; restored, early twentieth century) at Château-Thierry (Aisne) in Picardy:
http://tinyurl.com/599fta
http://tinyurl.com/yfr8wx5
http://www.chez.com/omois/images/ct%20st%20crepin.jpg
http://www.otsichateau-thierry.com/image%20sit/%E9glise6.jpg

The martyrdom of C. and C. in a later fifteenth-century (1463) copy of Vincent de Beauvais' _Speculum historiale_ as translated by Jean de Vignay (Paris, BnF, ms. Français 51, fol. 89v):
http://tinyurl.com/yjo6lc5 

Expandable views of two other fifteenth-century manuscript depictions of C. and C. are here:
http://tinyurl.com/6lj24p

Expandable views of very late fifteenth-century panel paintings of C. and C. by Pietro Ruzzolone, now in the Museo diocesano in Palermo, are here:
http://tinyurl.com/yjhdtav

A not very good view (can anyone point to a better?) of the very early sixteenth-century altarpiece, by Giovanni Martino Spanzotti assisted by his then student Defendente Ferrari, in Turin cathedral's capella dei santi Crispino e Crispiniano (C. and C. at left and right in the central register and with scenes from their Passio in the predella):
http://tinyurl.com/yjqkh9s
 

4)  Fronto of Périgueux (d. 4th or 5th cent.?).  F. (in French, Front) is the saint of the former abbey named for him at Périgueux and that city's fabled protobishop.  His cult is thought to be of sixth-century origin at the earliest and he has a rich collection of legendary Vitae (BHL 3182-3187) from the eighth century onward.  The earliest of these underlies F.'s notices in the ninth-century martyrologists, makes him a native of what seems to be today's Lanquais (Dordogne) -- the toponym has been misinterpreted as Lycaonia in Asia Minor -- whose parents were already Christian, and has him a flee local persecution and in Rome be recruited by St. Peter to evangelize in his native land.  Back in the Périgord, F. destroys temples, converts many, rids the region of a great serpent, and founds in Périgueux a church dedicated to St. Stephen (the city's medieval cathedral).

Thanks to an infusion of episodes from a Vita of his homonym the Desert Father St. Fronto of Nitria, the Vitae also give F. an eremitic character.  Other developments make him one of the Seventy (or Seventy-two) Disciples and, before going on to Périgueux, a co-founder of Le Puy (whose legendary founder St. George of Le Puy-en-Velay is in the earliest Vita already associated with F.).  His cult has spread widely in today's France.

F.'s major monument is the formerly extramural abbey church of Saint-Front at Périgueux.  Since 1669 the city's cathedral, this is an originally twelfth-century structure whose core is in the form of Greek cross supporting five domes.  It was rebuilt somewhat imaginatively in the nineteenth century.  Herewith a distance view and a few sets of views:
http://fr.trekearth.com/workshops/982584/photo148010.htm
http://tinyurl.com/yzba3dw
http://tinyurl.com/yzhuvxn
http://tinyurl.com/yg9ukwc     
http://tinyurl.com/ykn8qaw

Other dedications to F.:
a)  The originally eleventh- and twelfth-century fortified église Saint-Front at Saint-Front-sur-Lémance (Lot-et-Garonne):
http://www.flickr.com/photos/12167448@N05/3341493571/sizes/l/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/12167448@N05/3342332678/sizes/l/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/12167448@N05/3342330424/sizes/l/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/12167448@N05/3341496387/sizes/l/
b)  The originally eleventh- or twelfth-century église Saint-Front at Saint-Front (Haute-Loire):
http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/24023502.jpg
http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/24023624.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/ylo5ngu
c)  The originally twelfth-century église Saint-Front at Saint-Front-la-Rivière (Dordogne):
http://tinyurl.com/yho44eo
http://tinyurl.com/yzxzw7c
d) The originally twelfth-/sixteenth-century église Saint-Front at Neuilly-Saint-Front (Aisne):
http://tinyurl.com/yfbw9e6
http://tinyurl.com/yzb56mp

F. with several dragons and with the seventy canons whom he is said to have provided to his foundation of Saint-Étienne at Périgueux, as depicted in a later fifteenth-century (1463) copy of Vincent de Beauvais' _Speculum historiale_ in its translation by Jean de Vignay (Paris, BnF, ms. Français 50, fol. 325r):
http://tinyurl.com/ygtp6rs


5)  Gaudentius of Brescia (d. ca. 410).  G. is traditionally the eighth bishop of Brescia.  We know about him chiefly from his surviving sermons and from the correspondence of others, notably St. Ambrose of Milan, who consecrated him bishop in about 390.  G. had been on pilgrimage in the Holy Land when he was elected bishop (ca. 387).  He returned with the relics of various saints for which he then built at Brescia a church called _Concilium Sanctorum_.  Both St. Ambrose and Rufinus of Aquileia attest to his merits as a preacher.  G. was one of five clerics whom pope St. Innocent I sent to Constantinople in 404 or 405 in a failed attempt to secure the recall of the exiled Chrysostom, who sent G. a surviving letter of acknowledgment (_Ep._ 184). 

G.'s relics are said to be kept in Brescia's chiesa di San Giovanni Evangelista, an originally late medieval successor to his _Concilium Sanctorum_.  Some exterior views of this building:
http://tinyurl.com/62wfuo
http://www.panoramio.com/photos/original/13177908.jpg

Best,
John Dillon
(last year's post lightly revised and with the addition of Fronto of Périgueux)

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