medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (18. December) is the feast day of:
1) Namphano, Miggin (formerly emended to Mygdon), Sana(m)ë, and Lucitas (?). We know of the existence of these martyrs of North Africa from a letter of Maximus of Madaura to St. Augustine of Hippo, preserved in the latter's correspondence (_Ep._ 16). Maximus styles N. _archimartyr_, a term that Delehaye quite reasonably took to mean "pre-eminent martyr" and that others of a more literal or wish-fulfilling bent interpret as "first martyr" (usually without informing their readers that any other meaning is even possible). According to Maximus, all four were venerated by Christians of Madaura (the ancient predecessor of Mdaourouch in Algeria). It is not known whether any were a companion in martyrdom of any of the others. The place or places of their martyrdom is/are likewise unknown.
N. (also Namfanon and Namphanio) appears in the (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology under today's date at about the middle of a very long list of African martyrs. There is no indication that the others enjoyed any veneration medievally.
Expandable views of the remains of late antique buildings at the site of Madaura (or Madauros) are here, the last showing what's left of a Christian basilica:
http://tinyurl.com/yho6xao
2) Gatianus (d. late 3d or early 4th cent., supposedly). G. (also Catianus and Gratianus; in French, Gatien) is the legendary protobishop of Tours. According to Gregory of Tours' _Historia Francorum_, he was one of a group of missionaries sent from Rome in 250 to evangelize Gaul and was bishop of Tours for fifty years. G. has several quite fictional medieval Vitae (BHL 3267-69) as well as at least one miracle collection (BHL 3270). In time he came to be associated with St. Dionysius (Denys) and was re-dated to the first century as one of the legendary apostolic founders of the church of France.
Depictions of G. (thirteenth-/early sixteenth-century) in manuscripts of the Bibliothèque municipale at Tours:
http://tinyurl.com/2thlfp
Tours' late twelfth-/early sixteenth-century cathedral of Saint-Gatien was rededicated to G. in the fourteenth century. The previous titular was St. Maurice. Herewith a plan and a few views.
Plan:
http://tinyurl.com/y4bosx
Views (multiple):
http://en.structurae.de/structures/data/photos.cfm?ID=s0011458
http://www.kathedralen.net/tours/tours00.html
http://homepage.mac.com/lavigne1/PhotoAlbum30.html
http://www.sacred-destinations.com/france/tours-cathedral.htm
West front:
http://two.archiseek.com/archives/8670
http://tinyurl.com/yblhxz
Nave:
http://www.uquebec.ca/musique/orgues/france/tourssg3.jpg
http://www.uquebec.ca/musique/orgues/france/tourssg2.jpg
Chevet:
http://tinyurl.com/troc8
Stained glass:
Louis IX at Sens with the Crown of Thorns:
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/loui/hob_37.173.3.htm
Rose window:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/baloulumix/2361676913/sizes/o/
Various:
http://tinyurl.com/4njfgz
http://tinyurl.com/3pblpa
3) Flavitus of Champagne (d. earlier 7th cent., supposedly). F. (in French: Flavit, Flavi, Flavy) is a saint of the diocese of Troyes, where medievally a priory church dedicated to him today's Saint-Flavy (Aube) kept his putative remains. His legendary, late Merovingian- or Carolingian-period Vita (BHL 3025), first attested in a manuscript dated to the later ninth century, makes him a married Lombard prisoner of war kept along with his wife as servants of a champenois notable named Montanus. M.'s wife, attracted by F.'s physical beauty but unable to seduce him, calumniated the saint before her husband, who then banished F. to a woodland where he raised a great herd of swine. After further incidents involving a miraculous healing spring that F. had called into being and the cures both of M. and of persons either blind, demoniac, or physically ill, M. granted F. and F.'s wife Apronia their freedom.
Apronia became a nun and F., who had now been tonsured and elevated to the priesthood by a bishop Lupus, became an hermit in the wood where he had lived before. With water from his spring he cured a lethally snake-bitten son of king Chlotar (seemingly Chlotar II) and obtained from that monarch the release of some prisoners of war. Today is his _dies natalis_. Thus far F.'s Vita. It is not clear to me whether he is the F. who is entered under 2. December in late medieval Paris calendars (perhaps Erik Drigsdahl can tell us whether this is so).
Herewith two pages of views of the originally twelfth-/sixteenth-century église Saint-Flavy in the homonymous _commune_ near Tours:
http://aubetdh.free.fr/saintflavy/eglise/002.htm
http://tinyurl.com/ygsu9vv
F. has yet to grace the pages of the RM. But that should not keep one from raising a glass of Cuvée Saint-Flavy in remembrance of him.
4) Flannan (fl. 7th cent., supposedly). F. (the name is an oxytone) is the patron saint of the diocese of Killaloe, where he is remembered as its first bishop. The first martyrology to record his feast is the early seventeenth-century Martyrology of Donegal. His untrustworthy Vita (several versions: BHL 3024-3024e) appears to be a twelfth-century production. This makes him an abbot of the monastery at Killaloe who traveled to Rome and received papal consecration there (the diocese of Killaloe, erected in 1111, incorporated several monasteries ruled by abbot-bishops) as well as a member of the royal family that dominated the place in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.
The originally thirteenth-century cathedral of Killaloe (county Clare) is dedicated to F. Herewith some views:
http://tinyurl.com/yzhrpqw
http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/23269721.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/ylfegey
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mcgervey/280848289/sizes/l/
The CRSBI page (the acronym is that of the Corpus of Romanesque Sculpture in Britain and Ireland) on this church has many views of sculptural details:
http://www.crsbi.ac.uk/search/county/site/id-cl-kilca.html
The cathedral's relatively recently reconstructed Kilfenora Cross (twelfth-century):
http://www.pbase.com/dhaslam/image/79094600
A smaller church in the immediate vicinity, seemingly originally from ca. 1100, called the Oratory of St Flannan:
http://walks.iwai.ie/derg/graphics/killaloe2_600.jpg
This church's CRSBI page:
http://www.crsbi.ac.uk/search/county/site/id-cl-kilor.html
More views of the cathedral and the smaller church:
http://www.drakkart.com/eire2/category/killaloeballina/
5) Wynnebald (d. 761). W. (also Winnebald; in German, Wunibald) was an Anglo-Saxon noble of Wessex, the brother of Sts. Willibald and Walburg(a) and the son of St. Richard of England (not that that was his real name, of course). From 720 to 723 he accompanied "Richard" and Willibald on a pilgrimage intended to include the Holy Land. But only Willibald got that far: the father died at Lucca and W. fell ill in Rome, staying there when his brother continued on in 723. With the exception of one trip home W. remained at Rome, studying theology, until 739, when he joined St. Boniface at what is now Ohrdruf (Lkr. Gotha) in Thüringen. W. served as a missionary in Thüringen and Bavaria until Boniface called him to Mainz in 747.
W. was an effective preacher but preferred solitude to town life. In 751 he founded a double monastery at today's Markt Heidenheim (Lkr. Weißenburg-Gunzenhausen) in Bavaria. He died there on this day and was succeeded by his sister. By the time of his Vita by the Anglo-Saxon nun Hugeburc (Huneburc) of Heidenheim (BHL 1297; between 778 and 781) several miracles were credited to him. His apparently incorrupt relics and those of Walburg(a) were translated, probably about a century later, to nearby Eichstätt, where Willibald had been the first bishop. Here's W. as depicted in Eichstätt's Pontifical of bishop Gundekar II (1057–1075):
http://tinyurl.com/4jrzcf
In the early seventeenth century relics of all three were translated from Eichstätt to Scheer (Lkr. Sigmaringen) in Baden-Württemberg, where they are still kept in the originally fourteenth-century church of St. Nikolaus. Here's a view of W.'s later thirteenth- or early fourteenth-century reliquary bust:
http://tinyurl.com/52lf4g
Best,
John Dillon
(last year's post lightly revised and with the additions of Flavitus of Champagne and Flannan)
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