medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture

Today (15. December) is the feast day of:

1)  Valerian of Abbenza (d. 457).  V. is a martyr of the Vandal persecution in Africa.  Our only source for him is Victor of Vita's sometimes tendentious _Historia persecutionis Africanae provinciae_.  An octogenarian, V. was expelled from the city of which he was bishop.  His decree of banishment included a provision forbidding others to shelter him and he spent the brief remainder of his life on public roads.  V. entered the historical martyrologies in the second edition of the martyrology of Florus of Lyon.


2)  Maximinus of Micy (d. ca. 520, supposedly).  According to his early ninth-century Vita (BHL 5817) by Berthold of Micy, M. (in French: Mesmin, Même) was the first abbot of the monastery of Micy on the Loire near Orléans.  This institution was believed to have been founded by Clovis towards the beginning of the sixth century; whether it really was that old is unknown.  Relics said to be those of M. were preserved in the abbey church.  Among his alleged disciples are St. Leonard of Noblac and M.'s reputed successor as abbot, St. Avitus.  Excerpts translated by Thomas Head from Berthold's Vita of M. are here:
http://urban.hunter.cuny.edu/~thead/berthold.htm

According to the Vita, M. was initially buried not at the abbey but in a spot of his own choosing where earlier he had killed a dragon.  This place is now La Chapelle-Saint-Mesmin (Loiret).  Its originally late eleventh-/twelfth-century église Saint-Mesmin has been much rebuilt.  Herewith some views showing its partly restored early twelfth-century west portal.  The second link is to a set of photographs whose views of the church are in the fifth line from the top:
http://tinyurl.com/6fjc83
http://tinyurl.com/3664fb
http://tinyurl.com/3duels
http://tinyurl.com/32o574

The former prieuré Saint-Mesmin at Sainte-Maure-de-Touraine (Indre-et-Loire), dating from ca. 1060, was converted into a parish church in the thirteenth century and became private property with the suppression of the abbey in 1793.  Here are two fairly recent views of the present structure:
http://tinyurl.com/2yc6z6
http://www.francebalade.com/valvienne/stemaumesm2.jpg


3)  Adalbero of Metz (d. 1005).  As bishop of Metz, A. (in French, Adalbéron) is Adalbero II.  A son of Frederick I of Upper Lorraine and of Beatrix, a sister of Hugh the Great, father of Hugh Capet, he was raised at the abbey of Gorze.  A. became bishop of Verdun through family influence in 984 and in the same year gave up that see for the more important one at Metz.

According to his eleventh-century Vita (BHL 29) by Constantinus, abbot of the monastery of St. Symphorian at Metz (which A. re-founded and in whose church he was buried ), A. vigorously defended his church's property interests against various local nobles, a number of whose castles he successfully besieged, while at the same time avoiding imperial military service for himself and his men through annual money payments most of which came from his personal resources.  Said to have practiced self-mortification by fasts and by the continuous wearing of a hair shirt, he turned his palace into an hospital during a pestilence and himself tended the sores of the afflicted.  In addition to the re-establishment of St. Symphorian, A. endowed the abbey of St. Maurice at Épinal, founded by his predecessor, made it a house for women, and established convents for women in Metz and at Neumünster in today's Luxembourg.

The abbey church of St. Maurice and St. Goery at Épinal, made of wood in A.'s time, was rebuilt in stone in the mid-eleventh century and underwent major modifications into the thirteenth century.  Herewith some views of the present basilique Saint-Maurice at Épinal:
http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/9167527.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/y8wmnyr
http://tinyurl.com/ycyujpq
http://tinyurl.com/y9lkuyx
http://tinyurl.com/ybvvj3z
http://tinyurl.com/yem4ujo
Multiple views:
http://www.lorrainesud.com/epinal.html
http://tinyurl.com/y8kc8ej
http://tinyurl.com/y8fgpju

A. has yet to grace the pages of the RM.  In recent centuries the diocese of Metz has commemorated him, as a Beatus, on 13. or 14. December.  Today is his day of commemoration, as a Saint, by the Église Orthodoxe de France.


4)  Marinus of La Cava (Bl.; d. 1170).  This less well known holy person of the Regno was abbot of the Benedictine monastery of the Most Holy Trinity at what is now Cava de' Tirreni (SA) in Campania.  It is said that when, shortly after his election in 1146, he went to Rome to receive the blessing of the pope he was awarded not only that but also the Roman monastery of San Lorenzo in Formoso (now known as San Lorenzo in Panisperna) in order to reform it according to Cavensian discipline.  In 1149 M. got the same pope (Eugenius III) to make Holy Trinity at La Cava an abbey _nullius_.  In 1156 he got king William I to confirm all the abbey's rights and possessions and to proclaim its status as a royal abbey.

During his lengthy time in office M., who had previously been the abbey's vestiarius (which put him in charge of a lot more than vestments), greatly increased the abbey's substance and embellished its church with marbles and with a polychrome mosaic floor.  Though earthquakes and rebuilding have caused the loss of almost all this adornment, the abbey church retains a cosmatesque ambo from these years:
http://tinyurl.com/ozn96
Here's a view of the twelfth-century crypt, with re-used columns said to be originally of the ninth or tenth century:
http://www.scafati2.it/Cava/cripta.jpg

M.'s cult was confirmed papally in 1928.

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

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