medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture

Today (28. January) is the feast day of:

1)  Aemilianus of Trevi (d. ca. 305, supposedly).  A. (also Milianus) has a Passio (BHL 107) that makes him an Armenian who late in the third century arrived at Spoleto, where he impressed Christians with his piety, asceticism, and preaching ability.  With papal approval he was made bishop of nearby Trebia(e), today's Trevi (PG) in Umbria.  Arrested during the Diocletianic persecution, he underwent various tortures, was exposed unsuccessfully to wild beasts, and finally was decapitated at nearby Bovara while bound to a young olive tree.  When the Passio was written an olive tree was being pointed out as the very one to which he had been tied.  A. is the patron saint of Trevi, whose former cathedral (the diocese is now united with that of Spoleto) is named after him.  At some point his putative remains were removed to Spoleto, where in 1660 they were discovered in that city's cathedral; today they are back in Trevi.

What is thought to be the oldest olive tree in Umbria is located in Bovara; it owes its preservation to the local belief that it is the tree that witnessed A.'s martyrdom.  A couple of expandable black-and-white views of it are here:
http://www.protrevi.com/protrevi/olivoSe1.asp
Trevi itself is an attractive hill town.  For a panoramic view, see:
http://www.protrevi.com/protrevi/images/Trevi,pan01.jpg

Exterior views of Trevi's originally twelfth- or early thirteenth-century church of Sant'Emiliano (rebuilt in the nineteenth century and expanded in the early twentieth):
http://www.protrevi.com/protrevi/semil.asp
http://tinyurl.com/7ozkm
Tympanum (fifteenth- or early sixteenth-century):
http://tinyurl.com/a6nkw
http://tinyurl.com/cxtzw
Commentary on the tympanum (by Bill Thayer, a classical archeologist much travelled in Umbria):
http://tinyurl.com/7n6g7
The interior is mostly neoclassical (neo-Albertian, actually).  But not the interior of this apse:
http://www.protrevi.com/protrevi/semil35.asp

Views of other medieval churches in and near Trevi (PG) may be found here:
http://tinyurl.com/8oyj7

There is a text of the _Passio sancti Miliani_ in Carlo Zenobi, _Trevi antica, dal neolitico fino al 1214_ (Foligno: Maria Raffaella Trabalza editore, 1995).


2)  John of Réôme (d. ca. 545).  We know about the monastic founder J. (also J. of Réomé) chiefly from his Vita (BHL 4424) written by Jonas of Bobbio late in 659 at the request of monks of J.'s abbey, with whom Jonas had recently stayed.  According to Jonas, who seems to have been drawing at least chiefly upon oral tradition, J. was born to a senatorial family at today's Tonnerre (Yonne) in the diocese of Langres.  At about the age of twenty he became a hermit.  Having attracted disciples and having experienced difficulty in managing his little community of hermit monks, he later betook himself to Lérins, where he learned monastic discipline and whence after a year and half he returned at the bidding of his bishop.  Using the Rule of Macarius, which he had brought from Lérins, J. established a proper monastery in the same place as before, lived very ascetically and to a great old age, was famous for miracles, and was venerated by kings. 

An illuminated initial V (the beginning of _Vir per cuncta predicandus Iohannes_) from an early eleventh-century manuscript of Jonas' Vita of J. (Semur, Bibliothèque municipale, ms. 1, fol. 16r) is shown fairly far down on this page and discussed in the preceding French-language texts:
http://cem.revues.org/document368.html

J. is considered a pioneer of cenobitic monasticism in Gaul.  After his death the monastery, which later claimed royal foundation, took his name.  In the sixth or seventh century it was moved from the original site near the source of the stream Réôme in today's Corsaint (Côte-d'Or) to what is now Moutiers-Saint-Jean (also Côte-d'Or) in Bourgogne.  Most of the abbey's buildings were sold as state property in 1797 and were then demolished.  The same fate befell the abbey church in 1831.  Sculptural elements from the church are now in museum collections on at least two continents.  Herewith some views of a mid-thirteenth-century doorway now in the collections of the the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York:
http://www.metmuseum.org/TOAH/hd/arch/ho_32.147.htm
http://flickr.com/photos/wallyg/2038591893/sizes/l/
http://flickr.com/photos/wallyg/2039388390/sizes/l/
http://flickr.com/photos/wallyg/2039389410/sizes/l/
and of a capital now in Harvard University's Fogg Art Museum (Cambridge, Massachusetts):
http://www.horstkannemann.de/grieser.html
and of another now in the Musée national du Moyen-Age (Musée de Cluny) in Paris:
http://www.insecula.com/oeuvre/O0000438.html


3)  Charlemagne (Bl.; 814).  "Carles li reis, nostre emperere magnes" (the opening words of the _Chanson de Roland_) was canonized by the pro-imperial antipope Paschal III in 1165 and enjoyed a later medieval cult especially in the empire and in France.  One reads in some potted notices that his cult was confirmed by Benedict XIV (1740-1758) but C.'s notice at the "Santi Beati" site
http://www.santiebeati.it/dettaglio/91756
is careful to point out that Benedict was not yet pope when he observed in his _De servorum Dei beatificatione_ that C.'s traditional cult constituted the equivalent of beatification.  C. (who does not appear in the RM) is celebrated liturgically today in the cathedral of Aachen, where the celebration is a locally permitted feast, and at the abbeys of Metten (Lkr. Deggendorf) in Bavaria and Müstair (Münster; founded by C.) in Graubünden, where it is "tolerated" by the Sacred Congregation of Rites.

C. (at far left, being blessed by St. Giles) in a twelfth-century fresco on the north wall of the crypt of St. Clement in the cathédrale de Notre-Dame in Chartres:
http://tinyurl.com/y9yojjo

C. in a late twelfth- or early thirteenth-century relief over the north door of the facade of the cattedrale di San Donnino in Fidenza (PR) in Emilia-Romagna:
http://tinyurl.com/ycnel6k

Some views of C.'s shrine (1215) in the cathedral of Aachen:
http://tinyurl.com/2ao9pd
http://tinyurl.com/yvmohk
Here C.'s designation _SANCTVS_ appears very clearly (left to right in lower register: St. Leo III; C.; archbishop Turpin of Reims, thought to have been the author of the _Historia Karoli Magni_):
http://tinyurl.com/22cujz

The early thirteenth-century (ca. 1225) Charlemagne window in the cathédrale de Notre-Dame in Chartres:
http://tinyurl.com/ylkmbwm
http://tinyurl.com/yzm89mh
Detail views are accessible from here (three pages):
http://tinyurl.com/yb62km3
http://tinyurl.com/y986gk5
http://tinyurl.com/yahvwu8

Some views of C.'s reliquary bust (ca. 1349) in the cathedral treasury at Aachen:
http://www.bonnensia.de/geschichte/karl034.htm
http://tinyurl.com/2kyj36
http://tinyurl.com/2bfu6j

Nimbed C. (ca. 1388), in a pontifical and missal for the Use of Luçon (Paris, BnF, ms. Latin 8886, fol. 400v):
http://expositions.bnf.fr/fouquet/grand/f628.htm


4)  Julian of Cuenca (d. 1208).  The diocese of Cuenca was erected in 1182 by pope Lucius III on the heels of the Christian reconquest of this strategically important town in today's Castilla-La Mancha.  J. was its second bishop, installed in 1198 (so the diocese of Cuenca; on another view, 1196).  Previously he was archdeacon of Calatrava in the archdiocese of Toledo.  According to diocesan records he died on 20 January 1208 (on another view, the year of his death was 1206).  It is not clear why today became his feast day.  Most of what is recounted of him (e.g. that he was for years an itinerant preacher, that he supported himself by manual labor, and that even as bishop he continued to work as a basket maker) first appears in late sixteenth- and seventeenth-century hagiography and is rather suspect.

J.'s cult was confirmed papally, at the level of Saint, in 1551.  Along with Our Lady of Sorrows he is a co-patron of the diocese of Cuenca.  Remains believed to be J.'s were discovered in 1518 in Cuenca's originally late twelfth- to fifteenth-century cathedral of the BVM and were accorded an Elevatio then.  They now repose there in an eighteenth-century altar.  Herewith some illustrated accounts of this mostly "Gothic" church:
http://tinyurl.com/yahr9r6
http://www.arteguias.com/catedral/cuenca.htm
http://www3.planalfa.es/diocesiscuenca/catedral.htm
http://www.uv.es/charco/documentos/cated_cuenca.htm
Other views:
http://tinyurl.com/ybkfhu3
http://tinyurl.com/y9l6v3q


5)  Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274).  Today's well known saint of the Regno was a nephew of one of the kingdom of Sicily's great nobles, Tommaso d'Aquino, count of Acerra and grand justiciar of the realm.  His father, Landolfo d'Aquino (the count's younger brother), was the lord of Roccasecca, the castle where T. was born.  Educated first at Montecassino and then at the University of Naples, T. shocked his family by becoming a Dominican novice.  Unhappy at this turn of events, T.'s father had him kidnapped and held at another castle until he (T.) should come to his senses.  After almost two years T. managed to escape with the aid of his sister Theodora and then entered upon the life's work that would make him famous.  For that, one may read Ralph McInerny's account of T. in the _Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy_:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aquinas/
T. was canonized in 1323.

A few views of what's left of the castle at Roccasecca (FR) in southern Lazio are here:
http://tinyurl.com/28dpo8

T. died at the Cistercian abbey of Fossanova at today's Priverno (LT), also in southern Lazio.  A touristy, English-language account of the abbey's architectural highlights is here:
http://www.initaly.com/regions/church/church4.htm
Various views of the abbey church (begun, 1187; consecrated, 1208) and other of its monuments (cloister, chapter house, etc.) are here:
http://tinyurl.com/mrbyb
and here (a two-pager at Italia nell'Arte Medievale):
http://tinyurl.com/ybesd7n
http://tinyurl.com/y9cqxpo

T. offering his _Catena aurea_ to Urban IV as depicted in a late thirteenth- or early fourteenth-century copy of that work (Dijon, Bibliothèque municipale, ms. 72, fol. 2r):
http://tinyurl.com/yh7mwuk

The Triumph of T. as depicted in an earlier fourteenth-century (ca. 1340) panel painting by Francesco Traina now in Pisa's chiesa di Santa Caterina d'Alessandria:
http://www.wga.hu/art/t/traini/thomas.jpg

The Triumph of T. as depicted in a later fourteenth-century (ca. 1365-1368) fresco by Andrea Bonaiuti (Andrea da Firenze) in the former chapter room, now the Cappella Spagnuola, of Florence's basilica di Santa Maria Novella:
http://www.wga.hu/art/a/andrea/firenze/3left1.jpg
Detail (T.):
http://tinyurl.com/lcfae

T. teaching and T. praying as depicted in a later fourteenth-century (ca. 1378-1383) book of prayers (Avignon, Bibliothèque municipale, ms. 6733, fols. 6r and 6v):
http://tinyurl.com/yl7d5sm
http://tinyurl.com/yjwkbyd

T. at prayer in an earlier fifteenth-century (1423) panel painting by il Sassetta (Stefano di Giovanni) now in the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest:
http://tinyurl.com/mz3h87

T. as depicted (at far right, upper register of saints) in an earlier fifteenth-century (ca. 1441-1442) fresco by Beato Angelico in the chapter room of the convento (now Museo nazionale) di San Marco in Florence:
http://www.wga.hu/art/a/angelico/09/corridor/crucifi.jpg
Detail (T.):
http://www.cptryon.org/prayer/special/aquin-c.jpeg

T. as depicted in a later fifteenth-century (1471) panel painting by Benozzo Gozzoli now in the Louvre:
http://www.wga.hu/art/g/gozzoli/5various/7aquinas.jpg

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

**********************************************************************
To join the list, send the message: join medieval-religion YOUR NAME
to: [log in to unmask]
To send a message to the list, address it to:
[log in to unmask]
To leave the list, send the message: leave medieval-religion
to: [log in to unmask]
In order to report problems or to contact the list's owners, write to:
[log in to unmask]
For further information, visit our web site:
http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/medieval-religion.html