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medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (4. October) is the feast day of:
1) Petronius of Bologna (d. ca. 445). Bologna's principal patron saint, P. is thought to have been elected bishop of Bologna in about 432. That the first two surviving writers to mention him (St. Eucherius of Lyon; Gennadius of Marseille) were both associated with the monastery of Lérins suggests that he may have studied there. P., whose relics were the subject of an Inventio in Bologna's Santo Stefano complex in 1141, has an artistically written and rather legendary twelfth-century prosimetric Vita (BHL 6641), a later medieval Office, and also legendary late medieval Italian-language Vite. His huge, originally late fourteenth- to seventeenth-century church in Bologna is not that city's cathedral. An illustrated, Italian-language page on this pile:
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basilica_di_San_Petronio
And the pertinent page from Italia nell'Arte Medievale is here (but the site is still off-line):
http://tinyurl.com/48ngmg
Other views of Bologna's basilica di San Petronio:
Exterior (some showing the main portal before the huge portrait of P. was added to it):
http://tinyurl.com/y99p76n
http://tinyurl.com/y8crjyc
http://tinyurl.com/yc9gmkx
http://www.nyhoff.net/wallpapers/bologna_04.jpg
http://www.nyhoff.net/wallpapers/bologna_07.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/ycvbcuf
http://tinyurl.com/y9c2qp5
http://travel.webshots.com/photo/2125766100084374364UJEmbN
http://tinyurl.com/ybfboc6
Main portal (the Porta Magna):
http://www.wga.hu/art/q/quercia/bologna/40portal.jpg
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sarahahaha/3943634227/sizes/l/
P., at right, in the sculptures of the lunette:
http://flickr.com/photos/copetan/2247040046/sizes/l/
Views of the other portals in the unfinished facade:
http://tinyurl.com/y8qucdm
http://tinyurl.com/yar9byl
http://tinyurl.com/ycq73he
The portals are noted for Jacopo della Quercia's early fifteenth-century reliefs. These are shown and discussed here:
http://www.bluffton.edu/~sullivanm/quercia/quercia.html
Better photographs (images expandable) are at:
http://www.thais.it/scultura/bosnpet.htm
http://www.wga.hu/frames-e.html?/html/q/quercia/bologna/index.html
Interior views:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e2/Bologna054.jpg
http://www.flickr.com/photos/pmpm/3431884937/sizes/o/
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/31/Bologna055.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cf/Bologna050.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/ybpcyff
http://tinyurl.com/yb5j6y5
The capella dei Re Magi (a.k.a. capella Bolognini) is now perhaps best known for its fresco of the Last Judgment, executed in ca. 1415 by Giovanni da Modena (Giovanni di Pietro Faloppi):
http://tinyurl.com/y8qdgoo
Detail (Mohammed at right):
http://neveryetmelted.com/wp-images/LastJudgementMohammed.jpg
http://www.artnet.com/Magazine/FEATURES/moore/moore10-2-3.asp
Returning to this view:
http://tinyurl.com/y8qdgoo
the frescoes at right belong to a cycle by the same artist depicting scenes from P.'s legend. Here's another view, with the chapel at left:
http://tinyurl.com/ydogd58
Access to this chapel is now severely restricted (I believe that the official version is "closed for restoration"; the likelihood of damage by a person or persons whose passions have been inflamed by the depiction of Mohammed in Hell furnishes another reason). Does anyone have better views to share of its fresco cycle of P.?
P.'s fourteenth-century tomb in the chiesa del Santo Sepolcro in Bologna's Santo Stefano complex:
http://tinyurl.com/ybmf7z6
http://tinyurl.com/yevwsy5
http://tinyurl.com/yae44uh
http://tinyurl.com/ycabzj9
http://tinyurl.com/yajhszj
http://tinyurl.com/ybjppr4
The head of the skeleton believed to be that of P. was translated into San Petronio in 1390; the remainder stayed in Santo Sepolcro until 2000.
P. surrounded by scenes from the Passio of St. Stephen in a fifteenth-century fresco now in the Martyrium of the Santo Stefano complex in Bologna:
http://tinyurl.com/yee4bs8
Michelangelo's statue of P. (1494-95) on the tomb of St. Dominic in Bologna's basilica di San Domenico:
http://tinyurl.com/42alc8
http://tinyurl.com/yekqzje
A useful recent book on P. and his cult, with scholarly articles and with texts of the twelfth-century Vita and his later medieval Office, is Enzo Lodi, ed., _San Petronio. Patrono della città e diocesi di Bologna_ (Bologna: Edizioni Renografica, 2000; xiii, 298pp.).
2) Quintinus, venerated at Meaux (d. 6th cent.?). According to his rather late Passio (BHL 6998; oldest witness is of the twelfth century), Q. (in French, Quentin) was a noble in the service of a count or duke named Guntram. When he repeatedly spurned the adulterous advances of G.'s wife, she had him killed in the territory of Tours. He had a cult medievally at Tours, at Meaux, and at Paris.
3) Aurea of Paris (d. 666). We know about A. (in French, Aure) from Jonas of Bobbio's Vita of St. Columban (BHL 1898) and from St. Audoenus' Vita of St. Eligius of Noyon (BHL 2474). In 663 Eligius placed her in charge of a women's monastery that he had founded at Paris. A. is said to have died of a pestilence that nearly put paid to her house. A is one of Paris' patron saints; several commemorative sermons on her survive (BHL 814-816).
The upper cover of the Évangéliaire dit de sainte Aure, a ninth-century Gospels venerated medievally as a relic of A. (Paris, BnF, site Arsenal, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, Rés. Ms. 1171) :
http://tinyurl.com/yc3fon2
The cover itself is later; its ivory plaque has been dated to the tenth century.
A manuscript illumination of A. from an early fifteenth-century breviary for the Use of Paris (Châteauroux, Bibliothèque municipale, ms. 2, fol. 362r):
http://tinyurl.com/yaolees
4) Thomas of Celano (Bl.; d. ca. 1260). Today's fairly well known holy person of the Regno was born around 1190 in the Marsican town for which he is named. A relatively early follower of St. Francis of Assisi, he was commissioned by Gregory IX in 1228 to write a life of the saint, which he did; in the 1240s he then wrote a second using anecdotes and other material either previously omitted or not yet supplied at the time of the first writing. Known for convenience as the _Vita prima_ and the _Vita secunda_ of Francis, these were supplanted within his order by St. Bonaventure's _Legenda maior_ (1263) but survived a subsequent Franciscan directive that they be destroyed.
T.'s other uncontested writings include a treatise on the miracles of St. Francis and the sequence _Sanctitatis nova signa_. Controversially attributed to T. is the prose _Legenda sanctae Clarae virginis_ (1255-56) written for the canonization of St. Clare; possibly her contemporary _Legenda versificata_ is by him as well. It was once customary to assign to T. the famous sequence _Dies irae_, but the latter's textual history and relatively early style of versification are against this.
In his last years T. was chaplain to the convent of Poor Clares at today's Valdevarri, a locality of Sante Marie (AQ) in Abruzzo. He was buried there but in the sixteenth century his remains were removed to the Franciscan church of San Francesco in Tagliacozzo (AQ), where they are today. Here's an illustrated, Italian-language account of this originally thirteenth-century structure (rebuilt in the fifteenth century and later modified):
http://tinyurl.com/24tpjz
Other views of this church:
http://www.freevax.it/ITINERARI/Simbruini/DSC02624.JPG
http://www.flickr.com/photos/53366513@N00/56800268/sizes/l/
http://tinyurl.com/ye9uh9w
http://www.flickr.com/photos/53366513@N00/3024818503/sizes/l/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lowbatt/3939138652/sizes/l/
http://tinyurl.com/ybnp9vc
A not very good view of T.'s effigy reliquary is here:
http://tinyurl.com/y85gago
4. October is T.'s day of remembrance among the Franciscans; at Celano he is celebrated on the second Sunday of this month.
5) Francis of Assisi (d. 1266). The doctissimi of this list require no introduction to the founder of the Order of Brothers Minor. Herewith links to the Sacred Destinations main page and gallery page on the basilica di San Francesco in Assisi:
http://tinyurl.com/y8jjxfz
http://tinyurl.com/ya8ox32
Another illustrated, English-language account of the basilica:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basilica_of_San_Francesco_d%27Assisi
Best,
John Dillon
(last year's post revised and with the addition of Francis of Assisi)
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