medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture

Today (14. April) is the feast day of:

1)  Tiburtius, Valerian, and Maximus (?).  T. is a Roman martyr of the cemetery of Praetextatus, entered under this date in the (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology along with other martyrs named Valerian and Maximus.  Their appearance in this compilation under other dates and at other cemeteries has been rationalized by the supposition that Valerian and Maximus had been buried elsewhere and that their remains were later brought into proximity with those of T. at his resting place.  But V. and M. may have had martyred homonyms (they have very common names) and matters are further complicated by the existence in the seventh century of a martyr's church for a T. at the cemetery _ad Duas lauros_ on the Via Labicana.  He was probably the saint of this name celebrated on 11. August with the legendary Susanna of Rome and may well have been the T. of _Epigrammata Damasiana_, 31.

Legendarily, T., V., and M. are brought together in the Passio of St. Cecilia, where V. is C.'s husband in a chaste union, T. is his brother, and M. is a Roman official who converts and is martyred with them.  This Passio's _dies natalis_ for T., V., and M. (21. April) was used medievally for their joint Roman feast on that day.  Seventh-century pilgrim itineraries for Rome report today's T. as still reposing in the cemetery of Praetextatus.  In the eighth century pope St. Gregory III restored their burial sites and in the ninth pope St. Paschal I transferred the remains of T. and companions to his rebuilt church of Santa Cecilia in Trastevere.  Arnolfo da Cambio's late thirteenth-century ciborium in that church places statues of T., V., M., and C. in niches at the upper corners:
http://tinyurl.com/t3nyg
http://tinyurl.com/ckuk7s
http://tinyurl.com/crsfr8
In these views of the originally ninth-century apse mosaic, V. is the second saint on Christ's left:
http://tinyurl.com/dltmt3
http://tinyurl.com/dx2bqy

T., V., and M. repose with C. in the crypt.  The latter though rebuilt in the early twentieth century retains its medieval cosmatesque floor:
http://tinyurl.com/2e4nho
A different view of the floor:
http://tinyurl.com/y2n5y8

Two expandable views of a later fourteenth-century north Italian miniature depicting T., V., and M. (Avignon, Bibliothèque municipale, ms. 136, fol. 235v):
http://tinyurl.com/5n6dqn
V. (center) and T. (to V.'s left) as depicted with Cecilia, musicians, and ladies in a later fifteenth-century (1463) copy of Vincent de Beauvais' _Speculum historiale_ in its French-language version by Jean de Vignay (Paris, BnF, ms. Français 51, fol. 8r):
http://tinyurl.com/y34m6cv
An expandable view of a later fifteenth-century Flemish miniature depicting V. with C. (Mâcon, Bibliothèque municipale, ms. 3, fol. 149v):
http://tinyurl.com/6zxke6
An expandable view of Francesco Botticini's later fifteenth-century painting of C. flanked by V. and T., now in the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid:
http://pintura.aut.org/SearchProducto?Produnum=14841


2)  Berenice, Prosdoce, and Domnina (d. ca. 304).  We know about these Antiochene martyrs who perished near Gerapolis in Phrygia chiefly from a notice in Eusebius of Caesarea (_Historia ecclesiastica_, 8. 12. 3-5), from a sermon on them by Eusebius of Emesa (ed. Wilmart, _AB_, 38 [1920], 241-84), and from two sermons by St. John Chrysostom (BHG 274, 275; _PG_ 50, 629-640 and 641-644).  In these texts they are anonymous but from many other references to them we know that they were reputed to have been a wealthy, beautiful, and well regarded matron of Antioch on the Orontes named Domnina and her daughters B. (in modern vernaculars often Bernice) and P.  When the Great Persecution broke out they fled Antioch and sought safety at Edessa.  But their hiding place was discovered and D.'s husband, the father of B. and P., was prevailed upon to recall them.  Arrested by soldiers at Gerapolis and fearing that the daughters (at least) would be violated, they drowned themselves in a nea
rby river.

St. Augustine of Hippo (_De civitate Dei_, 1. 26) attests to the widespread popularity of these saints' cult in late antiquity.  P. and B., in that order, appear under 20. April in the later fourth-century Syriac Martyrology.  All three (with B. called Veronica, as she often would be in the medieval West, and P. called Prosdocia _vel sim_.) are entered under today in the (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology.  Early confusion as to the time of year in which these martyrs suffered led to P.'s also appearing in the (ps.-)HM under 19. October, a date under which the whole group was often celebrated in the Latin West and then frequently in association with the Antiochene martyr Pelagia (whose own feast day is 8. October).  Similarly the Synaxary of Constantinople records them under 4. October.

 
3)  John of Montemarano (d. 1094 or 1095).  Today's less well known saint of the Regno is the first known bishop of today's Montemarano (AV), a population center in south central Irpinia that seems to have been raised to episcopal dignity only in the eleventh century.  He has a very brief medieval Vita (BHL 4414) and a set of presumed remains said to have been incorrupt at the times of their respective translations within Montemarano's then cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta in 1624 and 1726.  J.'s cult was confirmed in 1906.
 
According to the Vita, J. was a monk whom pope St. Gregory VII, during his exile in Salerno, named as bishop upon the request of the clergy and people of Montemarano.  It has been inferred from this that J. was of local origin.  He is said to have led the people in prayer when a church at Montemarano that he had dedicated became unusable due to an infestation of worms; this expression of collective piety caused the church's priest to confess that he had fouled this temple by using it repeatedly for sexual trysts.  On another occasion, J. was in charge of a group of laborers engaged in clearing land near the river Calore; when it proved impossible to provide sufficient wine for them, J. had water drawn from the river, blessed it, and the Lord, honoring his servant, converted it into wine.

Montemarano's Santa Maria Assunta was rebuilt in 1494 to such an extent that it received a new consecration.  It has been rebuilt several times since, most recently after the great Irpine earthquake of 1980.  The crypt retains some medieval capitals visible here:
http://tinyurl.com/la7k2
and preserves in its central apse two frescoes that have been dated to the late eleventh or twelfth century:
http://tinyurl.com/y5g4pn5
One of these portrays a seated bishop who has been identified as J.  J.'s remains are kept in the altar beneath.


4)  Bernard of Tiron (d. 1117).  The Benedictine reformer and monastic founder B. (also Bernard of Abbeville, Bernard of Ponthieu) entered religion at the abbey of Saint-Cyprien near Poitiers.  After about ten years there he was sent with a companion to the abbey of Saint-Savin-sur-Gartempe, where he became prior and instituted reform.  To avoid being elected abbot he withdrew as an hermit to the forest of Craon in Maine.  When the monks of Saint-Savin discovered where he was, B. fled to the Île de Chausey in Brittany.  But he kept in touch with Saint-Cyprien and allowed himself to be recalled there at the end of the eleventh century as prior with the understanding that he would succeed a failing incumbent as abbot, which he shortly did.

A dispute with Cluny, which claimed rights over Saint-Cyprien, caused B. to be put under interdict and gave him the opportunity both to return to an eremitical existence and to engage in itinerant preaching.  A famous example of the latter activity is his sermon at Coutances from before 1105, when he defended the right of hermit monks to preach and attacked clerical marriage.  In 1109, with the assistance of Rotrou III, count of the Perche, and of bishop St. Ivo of Chartres, B. founded a small settlement, with a chapel dedicated to St. Anne, in the woods of the Perche not far from the castle of Tiron.  In 1113 or 1114 he moved the nascent abbey, with a new dedication to the Holy Trinity, to its present site on the property of a dependency of the cathedral chapter of Chartres at today's Tiron-Gardais (Eure-et-Loire).  B. died there on this day a few years later.

According to the impressive Vita by his disciple Geoffroy le Gros (BHL 1251), B.'s cult was immediate.  He was canonized in 1861.

After B.'s death the abbey of Tiron became the seat of an Order of reformed Benedictines, the Tironensians or Order of Tiron (now a Benedictine congregation).  A brief and not altogether reliable French-language guide to the abbey, with views of its rebuilt church, is accessible here (click on 'Visite guidée'):
http://www.mairie-thiron-gardais.fr/histoire.htm#
The church has some fifteenth(?)-century choir stalls:
http://tinyurl.com/d5mhsw
http://tinyurl.com/cke5mc
http://tinyurl.com/dfwhmz

The originally eleventh-century abbey church of Saint-Savin-sur-Gartempe is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.  A page of expandable views is here:
http://tinyurl.com/dgovej
Another view:
http://tinyurl.com/5arlv2
Two pages of mostly expandable views of the building's architecture and of its decor begin here:
http://www.art-roman.net/stsavin/stsavin.htm


5)  Lidwina (d. 1433).  L. (Liduina, Ludwina, Lidwigis, etc.) was born into a poor family in the Netherlandic city of Schiedam.  At the age of fifteen she fell while ice skating and broke a rib.  Her injury never healed, complications ensued, and for the remainder of her life she was bedridden and suffered greatly.  L. fasted -- for the last twenty years of her life she is said to have eaten only the Eucharist -- and received visions.  Some medical historians consider L. to have been a victim of Multiple Sclerosis.  She has a Vita (BHL 4923-24) written before 1436 by a Father Hugo, subprior of the Sint-Elisabethklooster at Rugge near Den Briel, and another (BHL 4926) by the Franciscan Johannes Brugman that survives in various versions and was very popular.  L. was canonized in 1890.

An illustration in a printing of Brugman's _Vita S. Lydwinae_ from 1498 and depicting L.'s accident is thought to be the oldest surviving pictorial representation of of ice skating:
http://tinyurl.com/2gprht

This advertisement, by a Catholic bookstore and church-supply store, of a reprint of an English-language translation of J. K. Huysmans' retelling of L.'s Vita calls her story incredible:
http://www.marianland.com/saints086.html
You would think that if this account were that hard to credit the least that the proprietors of this store could do would be to keep their doubts to themselves.

Best,
John Dillon
(last year's post lightly revised and with the addition of Berenice, Prosdoce, and Domnina)

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