medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (27. March) is the feast day of:
1) Rupert (d. ca. 717). R. (also Ruprecht) was a Frankish noble whom duke Theodo of Bavaria, who was related to him by marriage, had brought into his lands as a bishop by 696. According to at least one of his early Vitae (BHL 7393), R. previously had been bishop of Worms. Where he established his see is not altogether clear. Traditionally considered the first bishop of Salzburg, he seems at to have founded a couple of small monasteries and at least one church in the general area. Both the year and the place of his death are unknown; the leading candidate for the latter is Worms. In the later eighth century bishop St. Virgil brought R.'s putative remains to Salzburg for the erection there of his new cathedral. The day of that translation, 24. September, is the date of R.'s feast in the dioceses of Salzburg, Freising, and Munich. Today is his accepted _dies natalis_ and his feast day in the Roman Calendar.
R. is the patron saint of Salzburg, whose cathedral is dedicated both to him and to St. Virgil. His cult is widespread in Bavaria and in those parts of Austria and Italy that once belonged to the diocese of Salzburg.
The artifacts shown on this page (a bishop's staff and a flask for journeys) are traditionally said to have been R.'s:
http://tinyurl.com/2vqpvh
As is also this cross belonging to the Pfarrkirche St. Martin in Bischofshofen (Sankt Johann im Pongau) in Land Salzburg and displayed either in Bischofshofen's Museum am Kastenturm or in the diocesan museum in Salzburg (when one has it, the other displays a copy):
http://www.english.ox.ac.uk/coursepack/rood/images/rupert.html
http://tinyurl.com/y9zvnkl
http://tinyurl.com/yc83oml
http://tinyurl.com/yaduqml
http://tinyurl.com/yc22w28
http://tinyurl.com/yaurrp3
This cross (or perhaps the modern copy) has recently been on display in the church itself:
http://tinyurl.com/yfx9dlw
For more see Anton Scharer, "Duke Tassilo of Bavaria and the Origins of the Rupertus Cross", in Richard Gameson and Henrietta Leyser, eds., _Belief and Culture in the Middle Ages. Studies presented to Henry Mayr-Harting_ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 69-75.
An illustrated, English-language page on Vienna's originally twelfth-century church dedicated to R.:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruprechtskirche
An illustrated, German-language page on the same church is here:
http://www.ruprechtskirche.at/guided_tour/de-tour.htm
Two capitals in bell chamber openings in the tower of this church:
http://www.burgenseite.com/kapitell/st_rupert_kap_1a.jpg
http://www.burgenseite.com/kapitell/st_rupert_kap_3.jpg
The same church's wooden statue of R. from around 1370:
http://www.ruprechtskirche.at/fragmente121a1.htm
This church was once the seat of the city's salt bureau. As bishop of Salzburg, R. became a patron saint of salt merchants. In his iconography he is often shown with a small keg or bucket for salt. Here's a fifteenth-century example in the Pfarrkirche zum heiligen Petrus at Sankt Peter am Kammersberg (Murau) in Land Steiermark:
http://tinyurl.com/c2x5de
And here's an example from ca. 1520, originally in the Rupertikirche at Stainach-Niederhofen (Liezen) in Land Steiermark and now in the diocesan museum in Graz:
http://www.graz-seckau.at/content/allgemeines/img/bild06.jpg
Another view of that statue and a German-language discussion of it are here:
http://www.niederhofen.at/seiten/erforschen_detail23.html
In territories where both R. and St. Virgil were widely venerated, it is sometimes difficult to determine the identity of a sainted bishop without the attribute of salt, e.g. this one from ca. 1300 in the Pfarrkirche zum hl. Rupert at the locality of Sankt Rupert am Kulm in Ramsau am Dachstein (Liezen) in Land Steiermark:
http://www.burgenseite.com/faschen/st_rupert_kulm_faces_10.jpg
or this statue from 1460 in the same church (generally thought to be a representation of R.):
http://tinyurl.com/d69cjj
An illustrated, German-language page on the aforementioned, originally late twelfth- or very early thirteenth-century Pfarrkirche zum hl. Rupert at Sankt Rupert am Kulm:
http://tinyurl.com/crl963
A brief, English-language account of the same church:
http://tinyurl.com/cbhmnp
Other views:
http://tinyurl.com/d66dqe
http://tinyurl.com/d6nogs
http://www.kircheninfo.com/content/view/full/2051
An illustrated, German-language page on the originally thirteenth-century Filialkirche Heiliger Ruprecht at Sirnitz-Hochrindl in Albeck (Feldkirchen) in Land Kärnten:
http://tinyurl.com/cxt7r3
An illustrated, German-language page on the Filialkirche Heiliger Ruprecht at Obergottesfeld (Spittal an der Drau) in Land Kärnten, first recorded from 1166 and rebuilt in the fifteenth or sixteenth century:
http://tinyurl.com/dm6owd
An illustrated, German-language page and couple of other views of the seemingly originally mid-fourteenth-century Pfarrkirche zu den heiligen Rupert und Virgil in Dorfgastein (Sankt Johann im Pongau) in Land Salzburg:
http://www.dorfgastein.at/360.html
http://tinyurl.com/yhu77r2
http://gastein-im-bild.info/eb/edoki2a.html
http://www.orgelsite.nl/kerken20/dorfgastein.htm
For an illustrated, German-language account of the mostly fifteenth-century Pfarrkirche zum hl. Rupert at Uttendorf im Pinzgau (Zell am See) in Land Salzburg, go here:
http://www.pfarre-uttendorf.at/
and in the menu at left, click on "Kirchen/Kapellen"
2) Frowin (Bl.; d. 1178). The monk F., whom the abbeys of Sankt Blasien in the Black Forest and Einsiedeln in Switzerland later claimed as one of their own, became abbot at Engelberg in today's Canton Obwalden in the 1140s, putting an end to to a period of several years in which differing parties strove for the leadership of this house. The author of a work on seven books on free will and of a commentary on the Lord's Prayer, he is best known for the establishment at Engelberg of an important scriptorium.
F. has yet to grace the pages of the RM. Here he is at right (at left, the scribe Richene) in a dedication portrait at the beginning of the third and final volume of the Frowin Bible (Engelberg, Stiftsbibliothek, Codd. 3-5; Cod. 5, fol. 1r):
http://tinyurl.com/y9dpmj2
An illustrated, German-language on this scriptorium:
http://www.obwaldner-kultur.ch/publikationen/kloster.htm
3) Pellegrino of Falerone (Bl.; d. 1233). We know about P. (in English, also Peregrine) from the early fourteenth-century _Actus beati Francisci et sociorum eius_ now ascribed to Ugolino of Montegiorgio. A son of the lord of what now is Falerone (FM) in the Marche, he was studying at Bologna when, probably in 1222, he heard St. Francis of Assisi preach there and petitioned immediately to join the Friars Minor. Francis, it is said, decreed that P. should be a lay brother. Despite his learning and his connections in the minor nobility, P. remained a lay brother for the rest of his fairly brief life. Miracles were ascribed to him in his lifetime; not long after his death in today's San Severino Marche (MC) a cult arose, strengthened by reported posthumous miracles.
P. is though probably to have been buried in a castle church at San Severino Marche that was in the charge of Friars Minor. Toward the end of the thirteenth century his remains were re-interred in that town's then newly built church of San Francesco al Castello. In 1585 they were installed in a wooden casket in what is now the Santuario della Madonna dei Lumi at his native Falerone, where until the late twentieth century sufferers from toothache sought cures through contact with one of his relics. P.'s cult was confirmed at the level of Beatus in 1821.
Here's a view of an engraving of the church of San Francesco al Castello at San Severino Marche commissioned very shortly before its demolition in 1866:
http://i3.ebayimg.com/02/i/001/10/c0/b460_1_sbl.JPG
4) Panacea (Bl.; d. ca. 1383). P. (Panaxia, Panasia, etc.) is poorly documented. Her cult centers on two towns in the diocese of Novara in Piedmont, Quarona and Ghemme, both in today's Vercelli province. The only surviving medieval witnesses to her legend are a few frescoes now or formerly in churches in the area. According to local tradition, P.'s father came from Quarona, where she spent her brief life, and her mother, who died when R. was three, came from Ghemme. The father remarried. When P. was fifteen her stepmother, who hated her and abused her, found her alone at prayer in the countryside near their home (P. is variously said to have been out gathering wood or tending sheep) and beat her to death with objects that have been variously described but which usually include a wooden shaft of some sort.
Prodigies are said to have accompanied P.'s death and her subsequent burial at Ghemme, where a church was erected over her gravesite. Her cult is attested from the fifteenth century onward.
P.'s suffering as depicted in a late fifteenth-century detached fresco said to have come from a chapel dedicated to P. at Quarona:
http://www.quaronasesia.it/SANGIOVANNI/sgiov07.jpg
The church now housing the fresco (the much rebuilt San Giovanni al Monte just outside of Quarona) contains a number of fresco fragments from the thirteenth century through the sixteenth. An illustrated, Italian-language guide starts here (follow the arrows at lower right):
http://www.quaronasesia.it/SANGIOVANNI/san_giovanni_1.htm
Best,
John Dillon
(last year's post revised and with the addition of Bl. Frowin)
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