medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture

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

1)  Zephyrinus, pope (d. 217).  The surviving portion of Z.'s entry in the so-called Liberian Catalogue (shortly after 352) tells us that he was bishop of Rome from 198 to 217.  He succeeded pope St. Victor I and was followed by pope St. Callistus I.  His entry in the _Liber Pontificalis_ says that he was a native of Rome and ascribes to him with doubtful accuracy some regulations of church practice.  According to the tendentious _Philosophoumena_ or _Refutatio omnium haeresium_ of an Hippolytus who tends be called H. of Rome, Z. was simple and uneducated and did not do enough to please H. when it came to repressing heresies.  Absent from the _Depositio martyrum_ of the Chronographer of 354, he is considered a martyr in later medieval calendars. 

The eighth- or ninth-century calendar of male saints in the atrium of Rome's San Silvestro in Capite shows him celebrated, along with St. Tarsicius, on 26. July:
http://tinyurl.com/5harwr
In accordance with Z.'s entry in the _Liber Pontificalis_ the ninth-century martyrologies of Ado and Usuard record Z. (not characterized as a martyr) under 26. August.  That is also where he was in the general Roman Calendar until his removal in the latter's revision promulgated in 1969.  His commemoration today in the RM follows the first of two entries for him in the (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology (the other is under 21. December). 

Here's Z. as depicted in a late fifteenth-century Roman Breviary of French origin (Clermont-Ferrand, Bibliothèque municipale, ms. 69, fol. 536r):
http://tinyurl.com/yaoxn3l  


2)  Liberalis of Rome (?).  L., whose name at times is given as Liberatus (probably a misguided late antique emendation of an erroneous reading _Liberatis_ such as appears in the oldest manuscript of the [pseudo-]Hieronymian Martyrology), is a martyr of the cemetery _in Clivum cucumeris_ or _ad Septem palumbas_ on the Via Salaria, where in the seventh century he reposed in an underground chamber beneath a basilica dedicated to a martyr named John.  As one might infer from the foregoing, L. is recorded in seventh-century guidebooks for pilgrims to Rome.  The L. entered under today or under tomorrow in witnesses of the (ps.-)HM, usually identified therein as a martyr of the East but in one later manuscript said to be of Rome, is assumed to be our L.

Two brief, fifth-century inscriptions concerning L. survive in the collection of epigraphic verse known as the _Sylloge Laureshamensis quartus_ (preserved in a ninth-century manuscript from Lorsch, now Città del Vaticano, BAV, Pal. lat. 833).  From the first of these we learn that a certain Florus had erected L.'s mausoleum and that, in Florus' understanding, L. was a consul martyred under the same princeps who had advanced him to the consulate.  Since L. is absent from the consular fasti, a common assumption is that he had been a suffect consul.  Why it should be taken as a certainty that Florus was correctly informed on this point eludes me.  The second inscription says that L.'s tomb had been profaned during a war (Alaric's sack in 410?) and that L.'s faithful devotee Florus had restored it.


3)  Philogonius (d. ca. 323).  P. (also Filogonius) is the traditional twenty-second bishop of Antioch after St. Peter.  According to St. John Chrysostom's Homily 6, he had been a lawyer before being chosen bishop.  According to Theodoret (_Historia ecclesiastica_, 1. 3), P. completed the rebuilding of Antioch's Old Church that had been started by bishop Vitalis.  At the time of Chrysostom's sermon (later 380s), P.'s feast day was today. 


4)  Ursicinus of the Jura (d. early 7th cent.).  U. (in French also Ursanne) is the eponymous founder of the former monastery of Saint-Ursanne (canton Jura; in German: St. Ursitz) in Switzerland.  He has an eleventh-century Vita (BHL Novum Supplementum, p. 846; no BHL no.) that makes him a student of St. Columban at Luxeuil who left that house with C. when the latter was driven out but who then went his own way and became an hermit in the valley of the Doubs, where he built an oratory dedicated to St. Peter and attracted followers who preserved his memory.  Columban's early biographer Jonas of Bobbio is silent concerning U. 

U.'s cult is attested from the later seventh century onward.  In eleventh-century litanies from the diocese of Besançon his name follows those of saints of Luxeuil.  In the later Middle Ages U. occurs as well in calendars of Basel and of Mainz.  The monastery he is said to have founded is first attested from the ninth century, when it was a dependency of Saint-Germain-des-Prés in Paris; in 1040 it is recoded as belonging to Moûtier-Grandval; and in 1077 it became a possession of the prince-bishop of Basel.  This house was converted to a canonry in about 1119, with the prince-bishop as its provost.  Its originally twelfth- to fifteenth-century collégiale Saint-Ursanne (restored, 1904-1905), built over an eleventh-century crypt, contains among its numerous early medieval sarcophagi one said to have been U.'s.  Expandable views of the church are here:
http://tinyurl.com/ay7jsv
More views (not expandable) are here, including one of several of the church's sarcophagi:
http://tinyurl.com/8lqzup
Greatly expandable views, incl. one of the sculptures on the south portal:
http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/20480612.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/yzuqw9u
The last two rows here have expandable views of details of the tympanum sculptures:
http://tinyurl.com/y9afkwr
Detail (U.):
http://tinyurl.com/yet9vn7
A smaller view of the full portal:
http://galerie.dbls.org/displayimage.php?pid=1&fullsize=1

Further views of the interior:
http://tinyurl.com/y98wgtj
http://tinyurl.com/9stcwz
http://tinyurl.com/ye5xbro
http://tinyurl.com/ycvdnt5
http://tinyurl.com/787upj
http://tinyurl.com/yawzmm9
http://tinyurl.com/yc6wbwk
http://tinyurl.com/yddb3fq
Views of the crypt:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lamiacucina/2404806947/
http://tinyurl.com/yetmyd2
http://tinyurl.com/ykmyntz
http://tinyurl.com/ybk42ko

The originally late fourteenth-century cloister, restored in 1551 and again in 1906:
http://tinyurl.com/ye5ow8u
http://tinyurl.com/ya4tvjk
http://tinyurl.com/yboepng
http://www.trekearth.com/gallery/photo415883.htm
The much rebuilt former parish church of Saint-Pierre (the "romanesque" church that preceded today's collégiale) at the far end of the cloister is now used as an exhibition hall (note the sculptural fragments and the sarcophagi):
http://tinyurl.com/yhcgvne
http://tinyurl.com/yafnur8


5)  Dominic of Silos (d. 1073).  Of noble birth, D. is said to have been a shepherd in his youth.  Whether this were simply an instance of aristocratic participation in the pastoral economy of of D.'s region (La Rioja) or instead/also an imitation of the local saint Aemilian of the Cowl / Millán de la Cogolla (12. November) is not clear.  D. subsequently became a cleric and was ordained priest by the bishop of Nájera.   Briefly an hermit, at about the age of thirty D. became a monk of the great monastery of San Millán de la Cogolla, whose priory in his home town of Cañas he then reformed.  In 1038 D. was summoned to the mother house itself and quickly was named prior there.  When he opposed a raid on San Millán's treasury by king Garcia (G. de Nájera) of Pamplona/Navarre, the latter had him demoted and subjected him to public ridicule.  In about 1040, having had enough of this, D. moved on to Castile.

There, in 1041, D. was appointed abbot of the decayed monastery of San Sebastian at Silos.  He reformed this house as well and with the aid of royal and other wealthy patrons converted it over the next thirty years into a flourishing spiritual institution and a home of art and culture.  Postmortem miracles led to D.'s translation in 1076 from a tomb in the cloister to one in the church of the abbey, which later came to be called after him.  D.'s earliest Vita (BHL 2238) was written by his disciple Grimaldo for his canonization; its _miracula_ were added to by a series of other hands.  The oeuvre of the poet Gonzalo de Berceo (d. 1252) includes a _Vida de Santo Domingo de Silos_.  D.'s cult was confirmed in 1720 and in 1733; he entered the RM in 1748.

For Grimaldo's Vita of D. see Vitalino Valcárcel, _La "Vita Dominici Siliensis" de Grimaldo: Estudio, edición crítica y traducción_ (Logroño: Instituto de Estudios Riojanos, 1982).  A recent study in English is Anthony John Lappin, _The Medieval Cult of Saint Dominic of Silos_ (Leeds: Maney Publishing for the Modern Humanities Research Association, 2002).

Views of San Millán de la Cogolla were given in November's notice of that monastery's eponym.  See:
http://tinyurl.com/yzg4lqs

Some visuals, etc. pertaining to the monastery of Santo Domingo de Silos (Burgos), Castilla y León.  Distance views (early modern structures):
http://tinyurl.com/yun8zt
http://www.artehistoria.jcyl.es/artesp/jpg/HIS18453.jpg
Multiple views of the cloister and the chapter room:
http://www.astragalo.net/burgos/silos.htm
Multiple views (expandable), including various works of art:
http://tinyurl.com/2kg99l

Cloister (eleventh-/twelfth-century):
Spanish-language account:
http://www.abadiadesilos.es/claustro.htm
Individual views:
http://www.arteguias.com/imagenes/silos2.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/ygh4525
http://tinyurl.com/2vk7yg
http://tinyurl.com/tvw8x
http://catholicmusicnetwork.com/images/artists/silos2.jpg
Multiple views (expandable):
http://www.terres-romanes.lu/silos.htm
http://tinyurl.com/32c9or

Cloister pillar reliefs:
http://www.bornemania.com/civ/romanesque_architecture/santo-domingo-descent-from-.jpg
http://www.bornemania.com/civ/romanesque_architecture/santo-domingo-burial.jpg
http://www.bornemania.com/civ/romanesque_architecture/santo_domingo_doubting_thomas.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/vf73c
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Silos-Duda.jpg

D.'s former tomb in the cloister:
http://www.artehistoria.jcyl.es/artesp/jpg/HIM18806.jpg
http://www.humnet.ucla.edu/santiago/silos.html
http://www.arteguias.com/imagenes/tumbasilos.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/2l55eu

Details of the enameled copper frontal (betw. 1165 and 1170) on D.'s tomb in the church:
http://www.artehistoria.jcyl.es/historia/obras/9322.htm
http://tinyurl.com/2w5wbr

A black-and-white view of an altar frontal (ca. 1400; in the form of a retable) dedicated to D., seemingly from Navarre and now in the Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, is given in this account of the piece by Ana Galilea Antón:
http://www.euskomedia.org/PDFAnlt/arte/15449459.pdf

Bartolomé Bermejo's portrait of D. enthroned (ca. 1477; center panel of a retable) now in the Prado in Madrid:
http://tinyurl.com/2ycw2c

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

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