medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture

Today (17. January) is the feast day of:

1)  Anthony of Egypt (d. ca. 356).  The desert father A. (in English also Antony; also A. [the] Abbot, A. the Great, and A. the Hermit) is probably well known to everyone on this list through his Athanasian Bios (BHG 140), either directly or through one or more translations.  Apart from one letter in Greek and seven (perhaps not authentic) surviving in Latin translation, his sayings in the _Apophthegmata Patrum_, and some details in a Bios of St. Pachomius, this is really our only source for A. in his lifetime (St. Jerome's subsequent treatment of A. in his Vita of St. Paul of Thebes, also widely read in the Middle Ages, is essentially fiction).  An idealizing model for imitation, influential in the conversion of St. Augustine of Hippo, it presents A. as an unlettered man of great wisdom who gave away his goods and retired to the desert.  There he fought with demons and attracted disciples whom he organized as a monastic community before retreating again into near solitude.

A.'s reputation was already impressive in his lifetime.  His cult, which will have been virtually immediate, is attested in the East starting in the fifth century.  In the West, where Evagrius of Antioch's fourth-century translation of A.'s Bios into Latin (BHL 609) enjoyed very widespread circulation, A. is entered under today in the martyrologies from Bede onward.

In the eleventh century relics believed to be A.'s were brought to a church in the Dauphiné near Vienne at today's Saint-Antoine-l'Abbaye (Isère) that in 1083 became a possession of the Benedictines of Montmajour near Arles.  That church was soon replaced by a larger one dedicated to A. and consecrated by Calixtus II in 1119.  An adjoining hospice, said to have been founded in the late eleventh century, was the Benedictine hospital of St. Anthony at Vienne.  In the thirteenth century this was also the headquarters of a new monastic order, the Hospitallers of St. Anthony the Hermit (popularly, of St. Anthony of Vienne), organized in 1218 from what previously had been a lay body.  In 1290 the Hospitallers effected the expulsion of the Benedictines from what hitherto had been the latter's priory.  In 1297 they became canons regular under the Rule of St. Augustine.  Herewith a brief, French-language history of the abbey church (now a paroissiale):
http://tinyurl.com/yeolv5
Some exterior views:
http://sites.google.com/site/valeriesebastienstage/Abbaye.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/yeqs9n9
http://tinyurl.com/yja6hh8
http://tinyurl.com/75d546
http://tinyurl.com/6mh93k
http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/3323123.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/y9vevpv
A view of the interior:
http://tinyurl.com/6p8zxk
Multiple views of the church (mostly details) are here:
http://flickr.com/photos/jean_avenas/sets/72157604995163415/

A.'s putative relics repose in a seventeenth-century châsse in the main altar:
http://www.adolphus.nl/xus/antonius/antonins/066antk.jpg
http://www.adolphus.nl/xus/antonius/antonins/schrijnk.jpg
http://www.joerg-sieger.de/isenheim/extras/mittel/i01c_02.jpg
Well, perhaps not all of them.  The Benedictines of Montmajour claimed to have been in possession of all but one arm and to have removed these in 1290 to Montmajour.  Pilgrim badges indicating those relics' presence are reported to have been found at the site of the latter abbey (now a ruin).  In 1490, to prevent their appropriation by the Hospitallers of Vienne, who had just come into possession of Montmajour (a union that lasted only until 1495), the abbey's relics were moved into Arles proper.  The renewed veneration of some that were said to have survived profanation in the French Revolution was permitted in 1859 by the Sacred Congregation of Rites.  Since 1999 at least one of these (part of a skull) has been on display in Arles at Saint-Trophime:
http://tinyurl.com/ydpf44g
While we're here, a few illustrated pages on Montmajour:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montmajour_Abbey
http://tinyurl.com/yaldhuz
http://montmajour.monuments-nationaux.fr/   

Here's an expandable image of an earlier fifteenth-century pilgrim's badge from a shrine of A.:
http://www.musee-moyenage.fr/homes/home_id20392_u1l2.htm
Given the badge's approximate date, the mention by the Musée National du Moyen Age of Saint-Antoine-en-Viennois but not Montmajour as the object's possible point of origin has the appearance of an unfortunate taking of sides.  But perhaps St. Anthony badges from Montmajour look very different. 

Here's an illustration from an early fifteenth-century Life of A. created for Saint-Antoine-en-Viennois and now in the National Library of Malta (the Hospitallers of St. John having absorbed those of St. Anthony in 1777):
http://tinyurl.com/2y839p
An English-language account of the manuscript begins about halfway down this page:
http://tinyurl.com/29cvdx

Some other visuals:

A. as depicted in the mid-eleventh-century mosaics of the Nea Moni on Chios:
http://tinyurl.com/ylhysyt

A.'s originally very late eleventh- or early twelfth-century church at Aidone (EN) in Sicily, incorporating parts of an earlier structure.  The upper portion of the nave and the belltower are early modern.  Two views:
http://www.quiaidone.it/images/santonioabate.jpg
http://www.quiaidone.it/images/Sant'AntonioAbate.jpg

A.'s originally twelfth-century church at Billy-Chevannes (Nièvre) in Bourgogne, restored in 1998-1999:
http://www.adolphus.nl/xus/antonius/aland/franab/billy04.jpg
http://www.adolphus.nl/xus/antonius/aland/franab/billy03.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/ycojd9w
The apse before renovation:
http://tinyurl.com/y8glghv

The Temptation of A. as figured on an earlier twelfth-century (ca. 1120-1140) nave capital from the basilique Sainte-Marie-Madeleine at Vézelay (Yonne) in Bourgogne, now in the adjacent Musée Lapidaire:
http://tinyurl.com/ycw4vty

The originally later twelfth-century église Saint-Antoine in Braize (Allier) in Auvergne:
http://tinyurl.com/ye86wyg

The seemingly originally twelfth- or thirteenth-century rupestrian cripta di Sant'Antonio Abate in Matera (MT) in Basilicata.  Views of the interior (the second with a fifteenth-century fresco of A.), part of the complex of four churches known as the Convicinio di Sant'Antonio:
http://tinyurl.com/2rocnr
http://tinyurl.com/2kx2ha

The originally early thirteenth-century (begun, 1205) église Saint-Antoine in Saint-Antoine de Pont-d'Arratz (Gers) in Gascogne:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/44894818@N00/2296656650/
http://tinyurl.com/yhfkyae
Views of this church's fifteenth-century reliquary of A. occur towards the bottom of this page:
http://antonins.over-blog.com/categorie-10334534.html

A. in a thirteenth-century fresco in the church of the Peribleptos (now Sv. Kliment Novi) in Ohrid:
http://tinyurl.com/yg5y5s2

The later thirteenth-century (1269) portal of A.'s church at Rome:
http://www.romeartlover.it/Vasi126.htm#S.%20Antonio%20Abate

The mid-fourteenth-century (1345-62) chiesa di Sant'Antonio Abate at Sansepolcro (AR; medievally Borgo Sansepolcro) in Tuscany:
http://tinyurl.com/2valxj
Portal (relief: 1350; A. at left):
http://tinyurl.com/2kyk9v

The later fourteenth-century (ca. 1360-1363) Cappella (di Sant'Antonio) del Tau in Pistoia (PT) in Tuscany, frescoed by Niccolò di Tommaso and others between 1370 and 1400:
http://digilander.libero.it/pistoia_tour/cappella_del_tau.htm
Two Italian-language pages dealing with aspects of A.'s cult here:
http://www.comune.pistoia.it/scoperta_citta/scoperta/scoperta_43.htm
http://www.comune.pistoia.it/scoperta_citta/scoperta/scoperta_44.htm

A fourteenth-century fresco of A. in the chiesa di San Giorgio in Lemine in Almenno San Salvatore (BG) in Lombardy:
http://tinyurl.com/33zc69

A fresco of A., said to be of the late fourteenth century, in the chiesa/oratorio dell'Annunciata (before 1399) at Cislago (VA) in Lombardy:
http://tinyurl.com/2798ct
NB: The preferred local spelling _is_ 'Annunciata' (with a 'c').

A.'s originally late twelfth-century church, substantially modified in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and especially noteworthy for its early to mid fifteenth-century frescoes, at the Precettoria di Sant'Antonio di Ranverso in Buttigliera Alta (TO) in Piedmont, in the later Middle Ages a monastery of the Hospitallers of Saint Anthony:
http://tinyurl.com/ysd2u9

A. at right in a greatly expandable view of a pair of panel paintings from 1408 by Mariotto di Nardo, now in the Minneapolis Institute of Arts:
http://www.artsmia.org/viewer/detail.php?v=12&id=1628#

A. at far right in the San Giovenale Triptych (1422; attributed to Masaccio) in the pieve di San Pietro at Cascia di Reggello (FI) in Tuscany:
http://tinyurl.com/ywpgzx

The Temptation of A. as depicted in the earlier fifteenth-century Hours of Marguerite d'Orléans (Paris, BnF, ms. Latin 1156 B, fol. 173r):
http://tinyurl.com/y8ux7bl

A.'s originally fourteenth-century church, rebuilt from 1441 to 1470 and with late fifteenth-/early sixteenth-century frescoes, at San Daniele del Friuli (UD) in Friuli-Venezia Giulia:
http://www.tamtamtravel.com/opera.php?opera=713

A.'s cemetery church at Pelugo (TN) in Trentino - Alto Adige, with scenes from A.'s life painted on the exterior (the seated A. over the entrance is signed and dated 1474):
http://www.campanedirendena.it/notizie/santonio.htm

A.'s originally late fifteenth-century church (consecrated, 1488; rebuilt in the nineteenth century) at Pravisdomini (PN), Friuli-Venezia Giulia:
http://tinyurl.com/yp8nl2
http://tinyurl.com/2ec5kr
http://tinyurl.com/23ugk9
http://tinyurl.com/yozx9s

A fifteenth-century wooden statue of A. in the Hospice de la Charité at Beaune (Côte-d'Or) in Bourgogne:
http://tinyurl.com/yfmzwf7

The recently restored very late fifteenth-century wooden statue of A. belonging to the Chiesa della Pianca at San Giovanni Bianco (BG) in Lombardy:
http://tinyurl.com/26wwbw

A late fifteenth- or very early sixteenth-century wooden statue of A. (attributed to Nicholas of Haguenau), now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York:
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/grmn_2/ho_1988.159.htm

An early sixteenth-century wooden statue of A. now in the State Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg:
http://www.hermitagemuseum.org/html_En/02/hm2_3_0_7_10.html

A. at right as depicted in the early sixteenth-century frescoes (1502) by Dionisy and sons in the Virgin Nativity cathedral of the St. Ferapont Belozero (Ferapontov Belozersky) monastery at Ferapontovo in Russia's Vologda oblast:
http://www.dionisy.com/eng/museum/123/137/index.shtml

A. as depicted by Matthias Grünewald in the First View of his Isenheim Altarpiece (betw. 1510 and 1515):
http://www.wga.hu/art/g/grunewal/2isenhei/1view/1view2l.jpg
Detail:
http://www.wga.hu/art/g/grunewal/2isenhei/1view/1view2l1.jpg

The Temptation of A. as depicted by Matthias Grünewald in the Third View of his Isenheim Altarpiece (betw. 1510 and 1515):
http://www.wga.hu/art/g/grunewal/2isenhei/3view/3view2r.jpg

Other visuals of A. will be found in the recent 'saints of the day' post for Paul of Thebes (10. January) at:
http://tinyurl.com/yemqewy


2)  Sulpitius II of Bourges (d. 647).  S. (in Latin also Sulpicius; in French, Sulpice), the second sainted archbishop of Bourges of this name, is differentiated from his homonymous predecessor either by number or by the appellation Pius (as opposed to Sulpitius I Severus [29. January]).  He was born into a noble family of the diocese of Bourges, where after some years as a pious and very charitable lay person he entered the clergy under archbishop St. Austregilus, was ordained deacon, and became director of the cathedral school,  From there he went to the court of Chlotar I, returning in 624 to succeed Austregilus.  According to his Vitae (BHL 7927-7930), as bishop he protected the poor, founded monasteries, converted Jews, built a church at the city's port, and got Clovis II to restore the city's tax immunity that had been cancelled by Dagobert I.  Among his disciples were Sts. Desiderius of Cahors and Remaclus.

Towards the end of his life S. named a coadjutor and retired to a monastery he had founded.  His Vitae credit him with various miracles, both lifetime and posthumous.  An early ninth-century successor made his feast a required celebration within the diocese.  In the central Middle Ages numerous churches were dedicated to him, including a twelfth-century predecessor of today's Saint-Sulpice in Paris, which latter is said to have some of his relics.  S.'s cult is widespread throughout Francophone Europe.

An illustrated account of the originally twelfth-century église Saint-Sulpice-de-Bourges at Saint-Sulpice-le-Dunois (Creuse) in the Limousin:
http://www.paysdunois.fr/article583.html

A brief French-language account of the église Saint-Sulpice at Saint-Sulpice-de-Favières (Essonne) in Île-de-France, a mostly thirteenth- and fourteenth-century pilgrimage church incorporating part of a twelfth-century predecessor called the Chapelle des Miracles:
http://tinyurl.com/784e7x
A set of views starts here:
http://www.panoramio.com/photo/10227166
Other views:
http://le91.free.fr/tourisme/favieres.htm
http://i1.trekearth.com/photos/91050/stsulpice.jpg
http://catholique-evry.cef.fr/Saint-Sulpice-de-Favieres,683
http://tinyurl.com/9mqxtz
A view of the Chapelle des Miracles:
http://tinyurl.com/a8ayay

Best,
John Dillon
(last year's post revised)

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