JiscMail Logo
Email discussion lists for the UK Education and Research communities

Help for MEDIEVAL-RELIGION Archives


MEDIEVAL-RELIGION Archives

MEDIEVAL-RELIGION Archives


MEDIEVAL-RELIGION@JISCMAIL.AC.UK


View:

Message:

[

First

|

Previous

|

Next

|

Last

]

By Topic:

[

First

|

Previous

|

Next

|

Last

]

By Author:

[

First

|

Previous

|

Next

|

Last

]

Font:

Proportional Font

LISTSERV Archives

LISTSERV Archives

MEDIEVAL-RELIGION Home

MEDIEVAL-RELIGION Home

MEDIEVAL-RELIGION  November 2009

MEDIEVAL-RELIGION November 2009

Options

Subscribe or Unsubscribe

Subscribe or Unsubscribe

Log In

Log In

Get Password

Get Password

Subject:

saints of the day 20. November

From:

John Dillon <[log in to unmask]>

Reply-To:

medieval-religion - Scholarly discussions of medieval religious culture <[log in to unmask]>

Date:

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:58:03 -0600

Content-Type:

text/plain

Parts/Attachments:

Parts/Attachments

text/plain (105 lines)

medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture

Today (20. November) is the feast day of:

1)  Basil of Antioch (d. 2d cent.).  B. is entered under today in the later fourth- or early fifth-century Syriac Martyrology as being one of the "older martyrs" (i.e. those before the Diocletianic persecution).  He is also entered under today, along with an otherwise unidentified Dionysius, in the (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology.  The latter repertory has another entry for him, along with an Auxilius and a Saturninus, on 27. November.  That entry, now considered multiply erroneous, underlay the commemoration under that day in the pre-2001 RM of the the three saints so named.  Restoring B. to his better attested day leaves us as much in the dark as before about details of his life and suffering.


2)  Dorus of Benevento (?).  The cult of this poorly documented saint of the Regno is attested by pope St. Leo I in a letter of 448 (_Ep._ 417 Jaffe-Wattenbach).  His putative relics were among those translated on 15. May 1119 by archbishop Landulf II to his recently built cathedral (the present one, which has since undergone modifications, horrific bomb damage in World War II, and a modern rebuilding).


3)  Hippolytus of Condat (d. later 8th cent.).  According to the mid-twelfth-century catalogue of the abbots of the monastery of Condat (for most of the Middle Ages called Saint-Oyend; today's Saint-Claude [Jura] in Franche-Comté), H. was a bishop and abbot who served in the former capacity for seven years and in the latter capacity for twenty-six years.  While some, both medievally and recently, have supposed that he was the homonymous bishop of Belley listed in that diocese's eleventh-century catalogue of bishops, the combination of evidence pointing to that H.'s having lived in the sixth century and the presence of a bishop H. of the abbey of Condat among the subscribers of the acts of the council of Attigny in 762 makes it appear that the two are distinct.

Some views and a brief, English-language discussion of H.'s originally twelfth(?)-century but much rebuilt church at Saint-Hippolyte (Doubs) will be found toward the bottom of this page:
http://home.eckerd.edu/~oberhot/romanesque-jura.htm
Other views:
http://clochers.free.fr/base/sthippo.html
    
H. is also the titular of the église collégiale Saint-Hippolyte in Pontigny (Jura), founded in about 1430.  Some views of that church:
http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/9833983.jpg
http://mw2.google.com/mw-panoramio/photos/medium/7181475.jpg
http://mw2.google.com/mw-panoramio/photos/medium/10049328.jpg
http://mw2.google.com/mw-panoramio/photos/medium/10049332.jpg
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeanmannecy/2790344426/sizes/o/


4)  Edmund the Martyr (d. 869 or 870).  E. was a king of the East Angles slain in battle against invading Danes.  He has very brief notices in the _Anglo-Saxon Chronicle_ (under 870) and in Asser's _Vita Alfredi_ (cap. 33).  His veneration as a saint is first documented from coinage of the later ninth and early tenth centuries.  Abbo of Fleury's late tenth-century _Passio_ of E. (BHL 2392) presents him as a willing victim for his people who sacrifices himself to certain torture and death in order to prevent further bloodshed.  Abbo further relates the miraculous Inventio of E.'s head by Christians who already had his body and his later translation to a splendid church at the royal vill of Beadericesworth (later, Bury St Edmunds).  Relics believed to be those of E. were venerated there until the Dissolution.

Penny (before 905) commemorating E.:
http://tinyurl.com/68ash6
Abbey gate (mid-fourteenth-century) at Bury St Edmunds (Suffolk):
http://tinyurl.com/6g5cy3
E. at left on a panel of the Wilton Diptych (ca. 1395-1399) in the National Gallery, London:
http://tinyurl.com/5ho5m2
E. in a glass roundel (ca. 1420-1440):
http://flickr.com/photos/66122200@N00/342266730


5)  Gregory the Decapolite (d. ca. 841).  We know about the visionary and thaumaturge G. chiefly from his closely posthumous Bios (BHG 711) attributed to Ignatius the Deacon.  A native of Irenopolis in the Isaurian Decapolis (in today's southwestern Turkey), he spent fourteen years in a monastery headed by a maternal uncle of his and then began a period of wandering that took him to Ephesus, to Proconnesus, through Thrace and Macedonia to Thessalonica, thence to Corinth, thence by ship to Reggio di Calabria, and thence to Rome where he is said to have stayed for three months and to have sought pope Leo III's aid against the iconoclast emperor Leo V.  On his return trip he lived for a while as a hermit at Syracuse and then traveled to Thessalonica by way of Otranto.

In his second stay at Thessalonica G. acquired as a disciple the young St. Joseph the Hymnographer (3. April), with whom he visited Constantinople and whom he sent on his disastrous mission to pope Gregory IV.  As both the Bios and a canon by Joseph attest, his cult was immediate.


6)  Bernward of Hildesheim (d. 1022).  Our chief source for B.'s life is his Vita by his former teacher Tangmar (d. ca. 1002) as supplemented by others (BHL 1253, 1254).  After study at Hildesheim and then at Mainz, where he was ordained priest, he spent six years as a chaplain at the imperial court where he was tutor to the future Otto III.  In 993 B. was consecrated bishop of Hildesheim, where he reformed episcopal government, founded the abbey of St. Michael, and defended his city against incursions of Northmen.  He created an impressive episcopal library and was an important patron of many arts.

B. was buried in the abbey church of St. Michael, to whose monks his cult was authorized by a council at Erfurt in 1150.  Papal canonization ensued in 1193.  In the following year B.'s relics were divided, some going to the cathedral and others remaining in the abbey upon whose suppression in 1803 they passed to the church of the Magdalene.

Hildesheim's abbey church of St. Michael was begun by B. very early in the eleventh century and was completed by his successor St. Godehard in 1033  Here's an illustrated, English-language page on it:
http://tinyurl.com/7lgyx
Further views:
http://tinyurl.com/3bte4v
http://tinyurl.com/2jms2j
http://tinyurl.com/2v65gw

The cathedral of the BVM at Hildesheim (the "Hildesheimer Dom") was initially built by B. during the period 1010-1020.  Subsequently modified, horribly bomb-damaged in World War II, and since rebuilt, it has at least two pieces of liturgical furniture dating from its adornment by B.:
A paschal candlestick (commonly referred to as a column because of its form and because it is an imitation of Trajan's column in Rome):
http://hvanilla.sakura.ne.jp/hildesheim/image/hildesheim14.jpg
http://hvanilla.sakura.ne.jp/hildesheim/image/hildesheim15.jpg
and a great _corona_ (suspended holder for multiple lamps or candles) used for extra illumination on special feasts:
http://hvanilla.sakura.ne.jp/hildesheim/image/hildesheim21.jpg
B.'s bronze doors for this cathedral also survive:
http://tinyurl.com/6dj7s2
Expandable views of some panels start about a quarter of the way down this page:
http://tinyurl.com/6kpa86
This early eleventh-century pair of altar candlesticks is traditionally thought to date from B.'s time:
http://tinyurl.com/fl9og

A page of views of B.'s reliquary shrine in the Magdalenenkirche at Hildesheim:
http://tinyurl.com/6ntc4y


7)  Cyprian of Calamizzi  (d. ca. 1215).  This less well known saint from the Regno (also C. of Reggio; in Italian: Cipriano di Calamizzi, often C. dei Calamizzi) was a medical doctor from a wealthy family of Reggio di Calabria who by turns became a monk, then a hermit on family property at Pavigliana in the coastal hills south of the medieval city (whence he is also sometimes called Cipriano di Pavigliana), and finally abbot of the extramural Greek monastery of St. Nicholas of Calamizzi near the outflow of the river Calopinace.

In the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries the area around Reggio was rural and largely Greek-speaking, with a populace that supported numerous small monasteries as well as a cultured elite of lay professionals descended from the nobility of what until recently had been a Byzantine possession.  C., who seems to have been responsible for the development of a locally significant scriptorium at the Calamizzi monastery (which he rebuilt and embellished), represents a link between these two elements of the population.

Both C.'s Bios (BHG Supp., 2089; written by March 1242) and the surviving hymns in his honor (four stichera and a theotokion) are modest productions.  But the former is noteworthy for its survival only at the monastery of St. Catherine in the Sinai.  Though its presence there is explainable from that monastery's having had a dependency at Messina, diagonally across the strait from Reggio, it also serves as a reminder that texts of Italo-Greek origin could travel widely in the greater Byzantine cultural area.  A prose prayer for healing found in Italo-Greek manuscripts circulated under C.'s name as well as anonymously.

C.'s monastery of St. Nicholas survived the seismic sinking of the Calamizzi promontory in 1562 but fell victim to the very destructive earthquake of 1783.  There are caves in the hills around Pavigliana that were once hermitages; C. is thought to have lived for a while in one of these.

In this map of today's Reggio, Punta Calamizzi is no. 10 and the area of it that sank is colored blue-green:
http://tinyurl.com/34hzrw
In that map, no. 4 is the area of the medieval city.  The latter's outline is still plainly visible in this map of the city from 1700:
http://tinyurl.com/2bsg84


8)  Ambrogio Traversari (Bl.; d. 1439).  A student of the emigre Greek professor Manuel Chrysoloras, the Camaldolese monk A. was the leading early Quattrocento translator (into Latin) of Greek patristic writings, General of his order from 1431 to 1434, and a moving spirit of the Council of Florence.

An expandable view of the explicit of a fifteenth-century manuscript of A.'s translation of the _De mystica theologia_ of pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (Cittŕ del Vaticano, BAV, ms. Pal. lat. 148, fol. 106v):
http://tinyurl.com/6huso2
 
Best,
John Dillon
(last year's post very lightly revised and with the addition of Hippolytus of Condat)

**********************************************************************
To join the list, send the message: join medieval-religion YOUR NAME
to: [log in to unmask]
To send a message to the list, address it to:
[log in to unmask]
To leave the list, send the message: leave medieval-religion
to: [log in to unmask]
In order to report problems or to contact the list's owners, write to:
[log in to unmask]
For further information, visit our web site:
http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/medieval-religion.html

Top of Message | Previous Page | Permalink

JiscMail Tools


RSS Feeds and Sharing


Advanced Options


Archives

March 2024
February 2024
January 2024
December 2023
November 2023
October 2023
September 2023
August 2023
July 2023
June 2023
May 2023
April 2023
March 2023
February 2023
January 2023
December 2022
November 2022
October 2022
September 2022
August 2022
July 2022
June 2022
May 2022
April 2022
March 2022
February 2022
January 2022
December 2021
November 2021
October 2021
September 2021
August 2021
July 2021
June 2021
May 2021
April 2021
March 2021
February 2021
January 2021
December 2020
November 2020
October 2020
September 2020
August 2020
July 2020
June 2020
May 2020
April 2020
March 2020
February 2020
January 2020
December 2019
November 2019
October 2019
September 2019
August 2019
July 2019
June 2019
May 2019
April 2019
March 2019
February 2019
January 2019
December 2018
November 2018
October 2018
September 2018
August 2018
July 2018
June 2018
May 2018
April 2018
March 2018
February 2018
January 2018
December 2017
November 2017
October 2017
September 2017
August 2017
July 2017
June 2017
May 2017
April 2017
March 2017
February 2017
January 2017
December 2016
November 2016
October 2016
September 2016
August 2016
July 2016
June 2016
May 2016
April 2016
March 2016
February 2016
January 2016
December 2015
November 2015
October 2015
September 2015
August 2015
July 2015
June 2015
May 2015
April 2015
March 2015
February 2015
January 2015
December 2014
November 2014
October 2014
September 2014
August 2014
July 2014
June 2014
May 2014
April 2014
March 2014
February 2014
January 2014
December 2013
November 2013
October 2013
September 2013
August 2013
July 2013
June 2013
May 2013
April 2013
March 2013
February 2013
January 2013
December 2012
November 2012
October 2012
September 2012
August 2012
July 2012
June 2012
May 2012
April 2012
March 2012
February 2012
January 2012
December 2011
November 2011
October 2011
September 2011
August 2011
July 2011
June 2011
May 2011
April 2011
March 2011
February 2011
January 2011
December 2010
November 2010
October 2010
September 2010
August 2010
July 2010
June 2010
May 2010
April 2010
March 2010
February 2010
January 2010
December 2009
November 2009
October 2009
September 2009
August 2009
July 2009
June 2009
May 2009
April 2009
March 2009
February 2009
January 2009
December 2008
November 2008
October 2008
September 2008
August 2008
July 2008
June 2008
May 2008
April 2008
March 2008
February 2008
January 2008
December 2007
November 2007
October 2007
September 2007
August 2007
July 2007
June 2007
May 2007
April 2007
March 2007
February 2007
January 2007
December 2006
November 2006
October 2006
September 2006
August 2006
July 2006
June 2006
May 2006
April 2006
March 2006
February 2006
January 2006
December 2005
November 2005
October 2005
September 2005
August 2005
July 2005
June 2005
May 2005
April 2005
March 2005
February 2005
January 2005
December 2004
November 2004
October 2004
September 2004
August 2004
July 2004
June 2004
May 2004
April 2004
March 2004
February 2004
January 2004
December 2003
November 2003
October 2003
September 2003
August 2003
July 2003
June 2003
May 2003
April 2003
March 2003
February 2003
January 2003
December 2002
November 2002
October 2002
September 2002
August 2002
July 2002
June 2002
May 2002
April 2002
March 2002
February 2002
January 2002
December 2001
November 2001
October 2001
September 2001
August 2001
July 2001
June 2001
May 2001
April 2001
March 2001
February 2001
January 2001
December 2000
November 2000
October 2000
September 2000
August 2000
July 2000
June 2000
May 2000
April 2000
March 2000
February 2000
January 2000
December 1999
November 1999
October 1999
September 1999
August 1999
July 1999
June 1999
May 1999
April 1999
March 1999
February 1999
January 1999
December 1998
November 1998
October 1998
September 1998
August 1998
July 1998
June 1998
May 1998
April 1998
March 1998
February 1998
January 1998
December 1997
November 1997
October 1997
September 1997
August 1997
July 1997
June 1997
May 1997
April 1997
March 1997
February 1997
January 1997
December 1996
November 1996
October 1996
September 1996
August 1996
July 1996
June 1996
May 1996
April 1996


JiscMail is a Jisc service.

View our service policies at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/policyandsecurity/ and Jisc's privacy policy at https://www.jisc.ac.uk/website/privacy-notice

For help and support help@jisc.ac.uk

Secured by F-Secure Anti-Virus CataList Email List Search Powered by the LISTSERV Email List Manager