medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture

Today (13. December) is the feast day of:

Lucy (d. 304, supposedly).   This L. (usually referred to with geographic specification, the others all having their own identifiers) is an early martyr of Syracuse.  Her cult is first attested from the late fourth- or early fifth-century epitaph of Euskia, a woman of about twenty-five years of age who was laid to rest at Syracuse in the Christian cemetery now known as that of San Giovanni and who, in the words of her husband, _anepauseto te heorte tes kyrias mou Loukias_ ('died on the feast of my lady Lucy').  Here's a view of the epitaph:
http://www.kairos-web.com/images/iscrizione.jpg
A reproduction of the inscription with the letters made more distinct  (and with an Italian-language translation) is here:
http://www.carasantalucia.it/documenti/euschia.htm
The inscription is no. 20 in Santi Luigi Agnello, _Silloge di iscrizioni paleocristiane della Sicilia_ (Roma: "L'Erma" di Bretschneider, 1953), with the edited text on p. 23 (and in preceding Tavola I) and commentary on pp. 65-66.

Seemingly from the fifth century is the oldest known version of L.'s Passio (BHG 995).  This makes her an affianced young woman of Syracuse who has vowed secretly to remain virginal and who makes a pilgrimage with her mother to the tomb of St. Agatha at Catania.  At L.'s suggestion the mother, who suffers from an incurable flux, touches the tomb and is healed.  Agatha appears to L. in a vision and reveals that it was really L.'s faith that operated her mother's cure.  L. then reveals to her mother her desire to remain virginal and begins to live in poverty as well.  This displeases L.'s fiancé, who reports her to the authorities as a Christian (this is during Diocletian's persecution).  L. is arrested, refuses to sacrifice to the gods of the state, predicts the downfall of Diocletian and Maximian, is sentenced to serve in a brothel (but a team of bullocks is unable to pull her there), undergoes torture, and is decapitated.  A church is built over her grave.

In the sixth century L.'s cult is first documented from peninsular Italy, where she appears along with St. Agatha in the procession of the virgin martyrs in Ravenna's basilica di Sant'Apollinare Nuovo (mosaics dated to ca. 561) and in the _Nobis quoque_ of the Roman canon of the Mass (first documented from the seventh century in a form that had undergone revision; according to St. Aldhelm, Agatha and Lucy were added by pope St. Gregory the Great).  By the end of that century there were monasteries dedicated to L. in Syracuse and in Rome.  A Mass for her first appears in the early seventh-century Gregorian Sacramentary and by the end of that century a Latin version of her originally Greek Passio had come into being (BHL 4992; adapted by Aldhelm in his _De virginitate_).

BHL 4992, which became standard in the medieval Latin West, is usually faithful to its Greek predecessor but changes L.'s manner of death to a sword blow that allows her to live long enough to receive the Eucharist before expiring.  In the ninth century L. was the subject of a kanon (a lengthy hymn form) by St. Methodius I, a native of Syracuse and Sicily's only patriarch of Constantinople, and in the same century her Greek Passio was revised and expanded at Syracuse in a form (BHG 995d) that seems generally not to have supplanted its predecessor.  In the eleventh century another kanon honoring L. was composed by St. Bartholomew of Grottaferrata.  An Italian-language translation of that is here (scroll down to, or set your browser to find, "La poesia di un innamorato di S. Lucia - III parte "):
http://amicisantalucia.blogspot.com/

Only in the fourteenth century does the story appear whereby L. blinds herself in order to deter a persistent suitor (to whom she then sends her eyes).  To judge from early references, some version was already in existence before then.  L. occurs three times in Dante's _Commedia_ (_Inferno_ 2. 94-117; _Purgatorio_ 9. 52-63; _Paradiso_ 32. 136-38); in the first two instances L.'s eyes are singled out for attention.  The Latin noun _lux_, _lucis_ denotes 'light' but has extended meanings of 'insight' and 'eyesight'; all of these were associated with L., either spiritually or metaphorically or in connection with problems with one's eyes.  A similar progression is observable in the case of the Greek St. Photeine ('Luminous', 'Enlightened'), who like L. became a patron of those with disorders of the eye.

In the year 970 relics alleged to be L.'s were translated to Metz.  According to Siegebert of Gembloux (writing over two centuries later), these were brought over the Alps by bishop Dietrich I of Metz, who had obtained them at ruined Corfinium in what is now Abruzzo (if this report is true, either St. Pelinus' putative remains were not then in Corfinium or else they weren't thought worth taking).  Siegebert's contemporary the Cassinese historian Leo Marsicanus reports that in 1039 the Byzantine general George Maniakes during his evanescent conquest of eastern Sicily had L.'s remains removed from her tomb at Syracuse and sent to Constantinople.

What is believed to be the same set of remains translated in 1039 was brought at some time in the twelfth or thirteenth century to Venice (the report that doge Enrico Dandolo had them sent there after the conquest of Constantinople in 1204 is late and problematic), where they still are.  Here are some views of the putative L. reposing in Venice's Santi Geremia e Lucia (the silver mask was added in 1955 by the then patriarch of Venice, Angelo Roncalli, the future pope John XXIII):
http://tinyurl.com/yq5hp3
http://tinyurl.com/yuje58
http://www.kathpedia.com/images/a/a8/SantaLucia.jpg
These views are from when L. was on loan to the Archdiocese of Syracuse in December 2004:
http://tinyurl.com/2cm243
http://tinyurl.com/376j55

In the early twelfth century, with Syracuse in Latin Christian hands, her extramural, sixth-century martyrial basilica was built anew incorporating portions of its predecessor.  Now called Santa Lucia al Sepolcro (or S. L. Extra Moenia) and shown here:
http://tinyurl.com/2ul6lt
, it is a three-aisled, three-apsed basilica that underwent substantial reconstruction in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries and again seventeenth century (when the portico so prominent in the photographs was added).
Some interior views are here (starting in eighth row down):
http://tinyurl.com/2wa7py
Against the pilaster on the right in this view is a pillar against which L. is said to have been tortured:
http://tinyurl.com/2qyrnu
Another view of this object of piety:
http://tinyurl.com/yuyva4

A side view shows in the foreground the octagonal, seventeenth century Tempietto del Sepolcro designed to house bodily relics of L. that never arrived:
http://tinyurl.com/bn6qb
Closer views, from other directions:
http://tinyurl.com/369fnl
http://tinyurl.com/2c2w8l
This structure is built over what was traditionally thought to have been the site of L.'s ancient tomb and displays what is said to have been her loculus:
http://tinyurl.com/yeknnu3

The ancient cemetery beneath the Tempietto del Sepolcro is known as the Catacomba di Santa Lucia.  In the early Middle Ages the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste were venerated there.  An Italian-language account, with one view, is here:
http://tinyurl.com/y93jupr
Other views of this cemetery:
http://tinyurl.com/yd37rgf
http://tinyurl.com/yb7pvbs
http://tinyurl.com/ydeog77
A recent book on the cemetery: Mariarita Sgarlata and Grazia Salvo, _La Catacomba di Santa Lucia e l'Oratorio dei Quaranta Martiri_ (Siracusa:  Pontificia Commissione di Archeologia Sacra, 2006).


A few more visuals pertaining to Lucy's veneration within the temporal limits of this list:

CHURCHES:
a)  The originally late ninth-century abbey church of L. (Sv. Lucija) at Jurandor near Baška (Krk) in Croatia:
http://img145.imageshack.us/img145/9243/jurandvor26ie2.jpg
http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/2903670.jpg
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mmior/3423619544/sizes/o/
http://tinyurl.com/yeby8js
http://img72.imageshack.us/img72/2923/jurandvor30vo3.jpg
http://img329.imageshack.us/img329/5140/jurandvor29ni7.jpg
Italian-language account with expandable views:
http://www.isola-di-krk.net/croazia/lapide-di-baska.html
Four expandable views are here:
http://tinyurl.com/55wxcp
Several views of the church occur towards the end of this set:
http://picasaweb.google.com/McKnightTudor/Croatia6
English-language page (with expandable view) of the historic inscription once in this church (where it has now been replaced by a copy) and mentioning it by name several times:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ba%C5%A1ka_tablet

b)  The originally eleventh-century chiesa di Santa Lucia in Brindisi (BR) in Apulia, with an originally eighth(?)-century crypt (both since substantially modified):
http://www.brindisiweb.com/monumenti/santa_lucia.htm
http://tinyurl.com/5ekbm7

c)  The originally twelfth-century ermita de Santa Lucia at Sos del Rey Católico (Zaragoza):
http://www.arquivoltas.com/5-Zaragoza/990499-SosStaLucia.htm
apse view:
http://www.aragonromanico.com/cincovillas/sos7a.htm

d)  The originally twelfth-century church of the abbazia di Santa Lucia at Rocca di Cambio (AQ) in Abruzzo, starting with a brief, illustrated Italian-language account about a third of the way down this page:
http://www.roccadicambio.it/page.php?17
Another view:
http://tinyurl.com/3das6h
Illustrated, Italian-language account of its fourteenth-/fifteenth-century frescoes (most views at bottom):
http://tinyurl.com/3cbvyj
L. next to the BVM and Christ Child:
http://tinyurl.com/29yrsa
More views of the frescoes:
http://tinyurl.com/yscf8d
http://tinyurl.com/243jmr
http://tinyurl.com/28l4es
Views of damage suffered by this church as a result of last April's terrible earthquake in the Aquilano and its aftershocks are here, starting with the last view in the top row:
http://tinyurl.com/ybetdnn

e)  The originally thirteenth-century chiesa di Santa Lucia at Magliano de' Marsi (AQ) in Abruzzo:
Illustrated, Italian-language accounts:
http://tinyurl.com/2vxchf
http://tinyurl.com/3cr3p7
Facade (partial view):
http://www.coralepadrefrancesco.it/images/SantaLucia.jpg
Detail of the SATOR inscription in one of the plaques mounted in the upper facade:
http://www.duepassinelmistero.com/_borders/Rotas-Magliano.jpg
The fifteenth-century fresco recently uncovered in the lunette of the central portal (the flanking saints identified as L. and as Martin of Tours):
http://tinyurl.com/2lqozz
Italian-language account of that fresco:
http://tinyurl.com/39je7p

f)  The originally thirteenth-century (ca. 1264) St.-Lucia-Kirche in Wulsbüttel (Lkr. Cuxhaven) in Niedersachsen:
Illustrated, German-language page:
http://tinyurl.com/yevlp4z

g)  The originally mid-fourteenth-century chiesa di Santa Lucia in Treviso (TV) in the Veneto:
English-language account:
http://www.trevisoinfo.com/chiesasantalucia.htm
Exterior (at left here):
http://tinyurl.com/37yq62
Interior (two views here, in the third row from bottom):
http://tinyurl.com/3bpnzt

PAINTINGS:
h)  Expandable views of not a few manuscript illuminations of L. from the twelfth to the fifteenth century are here (not in chronological order):
http://tinyurl.com/5uv436

i)  A late thirteenth-century (ca. 1285-1290) illumination of L.'s martyrdom from the Livre d'images de Madame Marie (Paris, BnF, ms. nouvelles acquisitions françaises 16251, fol. 99v):
http://tinyurl.com/yd5vaz4

j)  An earlier fourteenth-century illumination, from a collection of French-language saint's lives, depicting immobile Lucy and the bullocks (Paris, BnF, ms. Français 183, fol. 108r):
http://tinyurl.com/ycpb6bg

k)  An earlier fourteenth-century (1348) illumination, from a copy of the _Legenda aurea_ in its French-language version by Jean de Vignay, depicting L. and Agatha at the latter's tomb (Paris, BnF, ms. Français 241, fol. 13v):
ttp://tinyurl.com/ydur7v5

l)  Four panels depicting scenes from L.'s Passio from a dismembered later fourteenth-century altarpiece by Giovanni di Bartolommeo Cristiani, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in new York:
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/iptg/ho_12.41.1-4.htm

m)  An early fifteenth-century illumination of L. from the Prayer Book of Michelino da Besozzo, now in the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York:
http://www.wf-f.org/stlucy.html

n)  A mid-fifteenth-century (ca. 1446) predella panel, by Lorenzo Veneziano, of L. at the point of martyrdom, now in the Gemäldegalerie of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin:
http://tinyurl.com/58f847

o)  A later fifteenth-century (1463) manuscript illumination of scenes from L.'s Passio, in a copy of Vincent de Beauvais' _Speculum historiale_ in its French-language version by Jean de Vignay (Paris, BnF, ms. Français 51, fol. 95v):
http://tinyurl.com/yayharg

p)  A later fifteenth-century painting of L. and of scenes from her Passio, by Quirizio da Murano, now in the Pinacoteca dell’Accademia dei Concordi in Rovigo (RO) in the Veneto:
http://www.concordi.it/pinacoteca/opere.htm

q)  A later fifteenth-century painting of St. Anthony Abbot and L. by Carlo Crivelli, now in the
Muzeum Narodowe in Kraków (image expandable):
http://pintura.aut.org/SearchProducto?Produnum=133012

r)  L. in a predella panel of the Mary Magdalen retable (ca. 1550) at Contes (Alpes-Maritimes):
http://i24.servimg.com/u/f24/09/04/27/32/retabl10.jpg

Best,
John Dillon
(matter from last year's posts lightly revised)

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