medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (13. February) is the feast day of:
1) Fusca and Maura, martyrs (?). According to their legendary Passio (BHL 3222, 3222c, 3223), F. was the fifteen-year-old daughter of a pagan family in Ravenna who together with her nurse M. was baptized in the Christian faith. She could not be persuaded by her father to apostasize. After she refused to sacrifice to pagan idols, she was tortured on the orders of the governor Quintianus. Finally killed with a sword-thrust, F. as she was dying asked that the same mercy be shown to M. (who was being tortured with her). Her request was granted and M. met her end in the same way.
Identifying the Quintianus of this story with the official of the same name who in her Latin acta is said to have ordered the execution of St. Agatha, early modern martyrologists ascribed the events in question to the Decian persecution. But no version of this Passio that has reached print is so specific about the time of these saints' suffering. Moreover, this seems to be a very late Passio, in origin perhaps no earlier than the eleventh century. Its earliest witnesses are said to be late eleventh- or early twelfth-century (an unpublished text in a passionary at Bologna) and twelfth-century (a fragmentary passionary from Rimini; BHL 3222c), respectively. The Passio documents a cult of Fusca initially localized in formerly Byzantine parts of northern Italy and later extended throughout the Veneto, Friuli - Venzia Giulia, and Istria. The cult's oldest recorded attestation is from the ninth-century Veneto. Our early sources from Ravenna itself are silent about it.
Most versions of the Passio of F. and M. end with a translation story in which their bodies arrived, miraculously or by the action of pirates, at Sabratha in Tripolitania (in today's Libya) and were there buried; centuries later they were brought back to Christendom, either to Ravenna (BHL 3233; thirteenth-century) or to Torcello in the northern part of the Venetian lagoon (BHL 3222; sixteenth-century), and a church was built to house their remains. As there is no evidence for the dedication of any church to F. _and M._, it could be that both Maura ("Moor") and the African locale from which their relics are said to have been returned are hagiographic inventions inspired by the name Fusca ("Darkish One"). M. could also be the Maura venerated since at least the later Middle Ages in the Ionian Islands of western Greece, where she's now identified as the M. of Timothy and Maura, martyrs celebrated on 3. May.
F. and M. were dropped from the RM in its revision of 2001. Each is venerated separately in the Veneto. The oldest surviving church dedicated to F. is Santa Fosca at Torcello, an originally late eleventh-/early twelfth-century structure connected by a colonnade to Torcello's much older ex-cathedral of the Blessed Virgin (the former cathedral of the diocese of Altino in exile).
Plan:
http://tinyurl.com/2m88h2
Illustrated, English-language account:
http://tinyurl.com/ygdmayq
Other views:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Torcello_2.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/ywrphl
http://tinyurl.com/2ue553
http://www.museumplanet.com/image/venice/trc/trc029.jpg
The chiesa [di] Santa Fosca in the _frazione_ of Santa Fosca in Selva di Cadore (BL) in the Dolomites is an early fifteenth-century rebuilding (consecrated, 1438) of an earlier church of the same dedication. Here's an illustrated, Italian-language site on it (click on "Notizie storiche", expand the box that comes up, and use its drop-down menu):
http://tinyurl.com/cvejdj
Other views:
http://tinyurl.com/cktjk8
http://hohenadl.de/chiesa.jpg
http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/9703153.jpg
http://mw2.google.com/mw-panoramio/photos/medium/9637375.jpg
Here's a brief video with views of the interior:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1OLnWnc4Es
2) Castor of Karden (or of Koblenz; d. 4th cent., supposedly). In 836 archbishop Hetto of Trier translated C. from a place that's now Karden in Treis-Karden (Lkr. Cochem-Zell) in Rheinland-Pfalz into a church he had built for him at Koblenz. According to C.'s rather later Vita (BHL 1642; oldest witness is thirteenth-century), C. thus became the patron saint of Koblenz, which latter had not had one previously. The same Vita provides a legendary back story for C. in which he is trained up in the church at Trier under bishop St. Maximinus (who ordains C. deacon and then priest) and then becomes at hermit at Karden, where he attracts disciples, dies on this day, and is buried in a local church. Much later, in the time of bishop Weomad (r., 762-91), when C. is already being honored with a cult, his remains are miraculously revealed and he is given a formal elevatio in the the church of St. Paulinus at Karden.
Thus far the Vita, which also recounts a miracle whereby the crew of a cargo vessel laden with salt denies some to C. and is promptly sunk in the Mosel by a violent storm. When the floundering crew repents, C. makes a sign of the cross and the vessel arises unharmed from underneath the water.
C.'s church at Koblenz was rebuilt in the twelfth century and was restored late in the nineteenth. Here's a plan of the Basilika St. Castor:
http://tinyurl.com/2alwyp
Some views:
http://tinyurl.com/yl3wktf
http://tinyurl.com/2h586l
http://tinyurl.com/ygk97zz
An originally medieval church dedicated to C. also exists at Treis-Karden:
http://www.treis-karden-mosel.de/stiftskirche.html
That page's assertion that C. came from Aquitaine relies on a dubious inference from the Vita. The canonry to which this church belonged was the seat of an administrative district of the archdiocese of Trier from the late ninth-century until the house's dissolution in 1802. For its history, see Ferdinand Pauly, _Das Stift St. Kastor in Karden an der Mosel_ (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1986; = Germania Sacra, N. F., Bd. 19, Tl. 3).
3) Gosbert (d. 874). Our chief sources for G. (also Gaudbert, Gautbert, Gauzbert, Gozbert, etc.) are St. Rimbert's Vita of St. Ansgar and Adam of Bremen's _Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum_. He was an associate (nephew, according to Adam) of archbishop Ebbo of Reims whom Ebbo provided to Ansgar in 832 to engage in the evangelization of Swedes as a missionary bishop. In 845 a campaign of harrassment resulted in the killing of G.'s fellow missionary, St. Nithard, and to G.'s expulsion from the place where he had been staying. G. withdrew to Saxony, became bishop of Osnabrück, and from there continued to promote missionary work among Swedes. In the later Middle Ages he was erroneously considered to have been one of the Martyrs of Ebstorf (d. 880).
4) Peter I of Vercelli (d. 997). The first of two sainted bishops of the Piedmontese city of Vercelli to be named Petrus, our P. commenced his episcopate in 978. Although nothing of his earlier life is known, his apparently faithful adherence to the Ottonian cause in Italy has led many to suppose that he may have been German.
In 997 P. was put to death at the order of Arduin of Ivrea, not yet proclaimed king of Italy but already a thorn in the imperial side. His body, laid to rest in his cathedral, became the focal point of a cult unfavorable to Arduin, who retaliated by having the building set on fire. A purely local saint, P. is celebrated liturgically only in the Archdiocese of Vercelli. Unlike Adelpretus II (Albert) of Trent, another bishop seemingly slain for political reasons, he has yet to grace the pages of the RM.
Vercelli's present cathedral is largely neoclassical. But its belltower is not:
http://tinyurl.com/39gq3f
http://tinyurl.com/2pndct
And the cathedral does have this lovely thirteenth(?)-century silver crucifix:
http://tinyurl.com/38o8ja
Some of the Archdiocese's early medieval treasures are shown here (incl., for students of Old English, a page from the Vercelli Book):
http://www.archeovercelli.it/duomo.html
5) Simeon Nemanja (d. 1199 or 1200). In 1196 the grand župan of Raška, Stefan Nemanja, who had consolidated his power in central and southern Serbia and had won official recognition of his rule from the emperor Isaac II Angelos, abdicated in favor of his second son Stefan (soon to be Stefan the First-Crowned) and retired under the name Simeon (Symeon) to the monastery he had founded at then very isolated Studenica near Kraljevo in today's Raška district of Serbia. In 1197, accompanied by a great retinue, he joined his youngest son St. Sava of Serbia at Mt. Athos where they began the rebuilding of the Chilandar (Hilandar) monastery, thenceforth a Serbian foundation. S. died there on this day.
When in 1207/08 Sava returned to Serbia he brought S.'s body to Studenica where it was observed to exude a sweet-smelling, balsamous substance (myrrh). In 1208 Sava wrote a Life of his father (his brother Stefan the First-Crowned wrote another and Sava's biographer Domentijan of Chilandar wrote a third) and in 1209, with an Office written by Sava, S. was canonized as Saint Simeon the Myrrh-Flowing. His tomb at Studenica became a national shrine of the nascent Serbian Orthodox Church. S. has yet to grace the pages of the RM.
The earliest surviving portrait of S. dates from the later 1230s or early 1240s and is in the chapel of St. Sava in the church of the Holy Ascension at the former Mileševa monastery near Prijepolje (Zlatibor dist.) in Serbia and is only partly preserved:
http://tinyurl.com/yfwmatc
Context (S. at far right, preceded by Sava [also that saint's earliest surviving portrait]:
http://tinyurl.com/yjvfstu
Possibly earlier would have been the original (1230s?) of this fresco, repainted in 1569, of S. (at left; Sava at center and king Radoslav at right) in the church of the Presentation of the Theotokos in the Studenica monastery near Kraljevo (Raška dist.) in southern Serbia:
http://tinyurl.com/yezo2l9
Detail (S.):
http://tinyurl.com/ycb7l8t
Radoslav's exonarthex (1230s) for this church included in its frescoes a scene (also repainted in 1569) depicting S.'s departure for Mt. Athos:
http://tinyurl.com/yz6dyku
Presumably, this will have been complemented by a depiction of S.'s translation back to Studenica.
S.'s chapel in the monastery church of the Holy Trinity at Sopoćani (Raška dist.) in southern Serbia has later thirteenth-century (1280s?) frescoes depicting his translation from Mt. Athos to Studenica (images greatly expandable):
http://tinyurl.com/yjub4uq
Here's S. as depicted in a slightly earlier fresco in the same church's nave:
http://tinyurl.com/yjj5pjy
S. as depicted in the earlier fourteenth-century (ca. 1313-ca. 1320) frescoes in nave of the King's Church (dedicated to Sts. Joachim and Anne) in the Studenica monastery near Kraljevo (Raška dist.) in southern Serbia:
http://tinyurl.com/ya73mdy
Detail:
http://tinyurl.com/yadtwhj
S. as depicted in the earlier fourteenth-century (betw. 1335 and 1350) choir frescoes in the church of the Holy Ascension at the Visoki Dečani monastery near Peć in, depending on one's view of the matter, either the Republic of Kosovo or Serbia's province of Kosovo and Metohija:
http://tinyurl.com/yaj9q2m
Detail:
http://tinyurl.com/y996bmv
An English-language account of the Studenica monastery:
http://tinyurl.com/yah39uj
An English-language account of the Chilandar monastery:
http://www.sv-luka.org/Chilandar/history.htm
6) Jordan of Saxony (Bl.; d. 1237). The Westphalian-born J., then a recent Master of Arts at Paris, met St. Dominic of Caleruega in 1219 and was urged by him to join the Order of Preachers. In the following year, when he had become both a deacon and Bachelor of Theology, J. did exactly that. He rose quickly in the order, succeeding Dominic as Master General in 1222. J. traveled widely, preached well, and received other persons of talent into the order, among them St. Albertus Magnus. The first Dominican writer of note, he is known for his little history of the order's beginnings, the _Libellus de principiis Ordinis Praedicatorum_, for his letters, and for various academic writings. J.'s sermons have been edited recently by Paul-Bernard Hodel: _Beati Iordanis de Saxonia Sermones_ (Roma: Institutum Historicum Ordinis Fratrum Praedicatorum, 2005).
J. perished in a shipwreck off Pamphylia while returning to Europe from a visit to the order's Province of the Holy Land. His body was brought to Ptolemais/Acre/Akko and was buried in the Dominican church there. J. has been venerated within the Order of Preachers since at least shortly after his death. His cult was confirmed in 1826. Here's J.'s portrait by Beato Angelico among the Dominican worthies in the chapter house of the convento (now Museo nazionale) di San Marco in Florence:
http://tinyurl.com/yenzkqj
Context of that roundel:
http://www.wga.hu/art/a/angelico/09/corridor/crucifi.jpg
Best,
John Dillon
(Matter from last year's post revised and with the additions of Gosbert and Simeon Nemanja)
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