medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (18. May) is the feast day of:
1) Venantius of Camerino (d. 251 or 253, supposedly). V. is the principal patron of Camerino (MC) in the Marche. He has been venerated there since at least the eleventh century and quite possibly since at least the fifth or sixth century, when the predecessor of Camerino's church dedicated to him seems to have been built. His eleventh- or twelfth-century Passio (BHL 8523; there are later, expanded versions), which makes him a fifteen-year-old native of Camerino martyred under Decius or Valerian, is a very close reworking of the Passio of the similarly youthful Agapetus or Agapitus of Praeneste (BHL 125), so close, in fact, that the Second Supplement to the BHL calls it a copy with the names changed. Despite what one reads in the old _Catholic Encyclopedia_ (whose entry for him prefers to 'Venantius' the name-form 'Wigand'), etc., we really don't know anything about V. prior to his veneration in the central and later Middle Ages.
V.'s cult seems to have attained significantly increased importance in the thirteenth century, when he begins to be figured artistically as a civic defender holding a sword and/or a standard. Also dating from the end of the thirteenth or the early fourteenth century is his impressive marble tomb in Camerino's basilica di San Venanzio. V. is said to have replaced in the fourteenth century Camerino's previous principal patron, the ninth-century bishop St. Ansovinus. This may have happened earlier: in 1259 troops of king Manfred of Sicily sacked Camerino and brought V.'s relics, but not A.'s, to Naples, where they remained until 1269. The 117-line Latin poem _Gentibus ut pateat, Venanti sancte, futuris_ recounting V.'s removal and celebrating his return is a monument of later thirteenth-century political verse.
Camerino's basilica di San Venanzio, badly damaged by an earthquake in 1799, was rebuilt neoclassically in the nineteenth century. It retains a thirteenth-century apse and belltower and a fourteenth-century main portal surmounted by a rose window:
http://tinyurl.com/2u8keff
http://tinyurl.com/3twajb
http://tinyurl.com/4quo4g
http://www.claudiocolombo.net/Ciclogiro2004/Paginefoto/263-Camerino.htm
http://medioevo.org/artemedievale/Pages/Marche/Camerino.html
http://www.flickr.com/photos/paoloprojo/3484576016/sizes/o/
The flanking figure on the left in the lunette is said to be bishop St. Porphyry, one of the characters in V.'s Passio. The corresponding space on the right once held a statue of V. himself; this was destroyed in the aforementioned earthquake. I have not been able to find a Web-based view of V.'s monumental tomb. There is a photograph of it in the _Bibliotheca Sanctorum_, vol. 12, col. 970.
V. is also the principal patron of the nearby city of Fabriano (AN), which latter until the eighteenth century was served by the diocese of Camerino. Its originally twelfth-century church dedicated to V., rebuilt in the early seventeenth century, preserves some "gothic" chapels with fourteenth-century frescoes by Allegretto Nuzi, including the representation of V. shown here:
http://www.fabrianostorica.it/chiese/cappellesanve.htm
Fabriano's Pinacoteca Civica "B.Molajoli" houses this polyptych by the same artist (V. is the saint on the far right):
http://www.fabrianostorica.it/musei/immagini/allegret.jpg
Yet another depiction of V. by Allegretto Nuzi (this time with John the Baptist):
http://www.fabrianostorica.it/oda/giovannivenanzio.htm
Two fifteenth-century pictorial representations of V. as patron of Camerino are this by Giovanni Boccati from a polyptych of 1468 in the parish church of Belforte sul Chienti (MC):
http://www.cultura.marche.it/CMDirector.aspx?id=2221
and this famous one by Carlo Crivelli from his Polyptych of San Domenico di Camerino now in the Brera Gallery in Milan (1482?; V. at right, next to St. Peter Martyr):
http://tinyurl.com/m4ury
V. appears in dedications and later medieval calendars from a number of places in central Italy. A spectacularly scenic instance is the hermitage (_eremo_) named for him that spans the gorge of the Aterno at Raiano (AQ) in Abruzzo, where his cult is first recorded from the twelfth century. In view of its physical location, the hermitage may have been dedicated to V. in his capacity as patron saint of those in danger of falling from high places (in his Passio, V. suffers no harm from having been thrown down from Camerino's high city wall). Some views (all pre-dating the earthquake in the Aquilano of 6. April 2009):
http://www.raianoscuola.it/dove_siamo/eremo_gole.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/2wgcn7
http://tinyurl.com/2wcobb
http://tinyurl.com/3awn4k
http://tinyurl.com/29fj4k3
http://tinyurl.com/2w6hn4k
http://www.enit.it/foto-ad/images/big/abr_0007.jpg
More views of Raiano's eremo di San Venanzio are here:
http://tinyurl.com/ozyw4p
A later addition to V.'s Passio brings this locale into V.'s story by having him seek refuge there from persecution. V. is the patron saint of Raiano and, in Umbria, of San Venanzo (TR). Thanks to damage from last year's earthquake, the originally later fifteenth- or early sixteenth-century structures at the hermitage at Raiano are now closed.
TAN: The hermitage was expanded in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Here are some pre-earthquake views of its terracotta Lamentatio Christi of ca. 1510 and of some of its later decor:
http://www.abruzzoeappennino.com/public/paesi/raiano/004.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/qlkgh4
http://www.provincia.laquila.it/GalleriaFoto.aspx?N=88
http://tinyurl.com/2fpzsxg
Bl. Cesare Baronio entered V. in the RM. In 1670 Clement X, a former bishop of Camerino, extended V.'s cult to the Roman Catholic church as a whole. The church of the Annunziata at Piedimonte Matese (CE) in Campania, where V. has been specially venerated since 1707, claims to have his skull (thus making him -- however dubiously -- a partial saint of the Regno). V. was removed from the RM in 2001.
2) Potamon, Hortasius, Serapion, and companions (d. ca. 340). P. was bishop of Heraclea in Upper Egypt and a friend and supporter of St. Athanasius the Great (whose writings and those of St. Epiphanius are our principal sources for him). During the persecution of Maximinus Daia in 310 he was tortured so severely that he lost an eye and became permanently lame. These badges of his suffering made a lasting impression upon his fellow Fathers at the Council of Nicaea (325). A double martyr, he died of a clubbing in Alexandria at the hands of Arian opponents of Nicene orthodoxy. The (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology enters him under today's date and names the priests Hortasius (Ortasius) and Serapion and not a few others as his fellow martyrs at Alexandria. In the medieval Latin tradition P.'s name assumed several forms, e.g. Potamion, Potomon, Patamon, Pantamon.
3) John I, pope (d. 526). A Tuscan by birth, John was an elderly senior deacon at Rome when he became its bishop in 523. On the recommendation of Dionysius Exiguus, he adopted the Alexandrian method of computing the date of Easter. Boethius dedicated three of his theological tractates to J. According to the _Liber Pontificalis_, J. restored the church of Sts. Felix and Adauctus. In 526, at the behest of king Theodoric, J. undertook a mission to Constantinople to persuade the emperor Justin I to cease his persecution of T.'s fellow Arians in the East. Though he was received with honor and though he obtained most of what was sought, he did not persuade Justin to gratify T.'s chief desire, that Arians forcibly converted to Catholicism be allowed to revert to their previous belief.
On J.'s return to Ravenna Theodoric expressed his displeasure at this failure by withdrawing his official favor and protection and by ordering J. to remain at Ravenna rather than permitting him to return to Rome. Worn out from his travels and stressed by by the uncertainty of what might happen next, J. died soon after. His body, already reported to work miracles, was quickly brought back to Rome and was interred in Old St. Peter's on 27. May (his former feast day). He is considered a martyr.
4) Erik of Sweden (d. ca. 1160). Erik IX (Erik Jedvardsson, Erik den Helige) became Sweden's king in 1156. He was killed in about 1160 while defending his throne against a rival claimant. After several years in which Sweden was ruled by a king from the previous royal house, E.'s son Knut (d. 1196 or 1197) came to the throne in 1167 and sought to reinforce the authority of the new dynasty by having E. declared a martyr. E.'s liturgical cult is first attested in a calendar of the diocese of Uppsala from 1198. In 1273 his relics were removed from Gamla Uppsala (Old Uppsala, the former capital) and were placed in Uppsala cathedral, where they now repose in a shrine made in 1574 to replace one destroyed during the Reformation:
http://tinyurl.com/oou7mt
http://tinyurl.com/qqszkz
A fourteenth(?)-century statue of E. in the late medieval parish church of Gamla Uppsala, a re-working of the former cathedral's twelfth-century central tower and choir:
http://tinyurl.com/qjmfly
http://tinyurl.com/r7t2pe
Some views of the church (dedicated to the Holy Trinity), of its medieval crucifixes, and of its gilded altarpiece:
http://tinyurl.com/pl6jej
http://tinyurl.com/pufgku
http://tinyurl.com/r8uw25
http://tinyurl.com/o3mpuw
http://www.worldisround.com/articles/333561/photo2.html
http://www.terragalleria.com/images/europe/swed6138.jpeg
http://members.virtualtourist.com/m/p/m/191f8b/
http://tinyurl.com/q9xt44
http://tinyurl.com/q4ktqv
http://tinyurl.com/pe9gjl
http://web.comhem.se/~u18344626/images/paulus06.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/oflujr
The third seal of the city of Stockholm, first used in 1376, bears a portrait of E.:
http://tinyurl.com/4lg6n2
A sculpture of E. from ca. 1400 (a very similar portrait):
http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fil:EricHolySweden.jpg
E. (again clean-shaven) in a sculpture in Stockholms Medeltidsmuseum (Museum of Medieval Stockholm):
http://cache.virtualtourist.com/2528113-Other_Museums-Stockholm.jpg
http://www.histdoc.net/pic/erik.jpg
E. at left (St. Olaf of Norway at right) in a late medieval sculpture in the church of Överselö in Strängnäs township (Södermanlands län):
http://www.kyrkokartan.se/057658/images/57658_77990745
http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bild:Overselo_Olof02.jpg
http://web.stallarholmen.com/hembygd/bild.asp?id=81
E. (at right in the first view) in a vault painting of ca. 1450 in the same church:
http://tinyurl.com/oulda6
http://tinyurl.com/qeas3n
A view of a mural painting (fifteenth-century) of E. in the church of Brunnby in Höganäs (Skåne län):
http://www.heiligenlexikon.de/Fotos/Erik_von_Schweden2.jpg
An illustrated page on that church, whose oldest portions are said to be of the twelfth century:
http://www.musikikullabygd.se/brunnby.html
A mural painting (sixteenth-century) of E. in the church of Söderala (Gävleborgs län):
http://tinyurl.com/4vsjg6
In legend E. brought Christianity to Finland through military conquest. For their exploits in this poorly attested enterprise he and his bishop of Uppsala, St. Henry of Uppsala (or of Finland) received a lasting cult in Finland, evidenced _inter alia_ by an altar at the originally fourteenth-century cathedral of Turku (consecrated in 1400 when E. became a co-dedicatee of the cathedral) and by their joint portrayal (in separate ships) in a detail of the earlier fifteenth-century brass monument (ca. 1420) commemorating St. Henry at his former burial place at Nousiainen (Swedish: Nousis) in Varsinais-Suomi in Finland:
http://www.heiligenlexikon.de/Fotos/Erik_von_Schweden.jpg
Here's a view of the originally earlier fifteenth-century (1420-25) church of St. Lawrence and St. Erik at Mynämäki (Swedish: Virmo) in Varsinais-Suomi in Finland:
http://tinyurl.com/5yvyv3
Uppsala cathedral (begun, 1287; consecrated, 1435; rebuilt after a fire in 1702; restored, late nineteenth cent.) is also dedicated to L. and E. (as well as to Norway's St. Olaf). It replaced on the same site a twelfth-century church built at E.'s reputed place of martyrdom. Some exterior views:
http://tinyurl.com/pudmew
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uppsala_Cathedral
http://tinyurl.com/2cbzf2c
West portal:
http://tinyurl.com/phdcne
South portal:
http://tinyurl.com/23t8qem
Interior:
http://tinyurl.com/o63ofx
http://tinyurl.com/oqm4df
Expandable views of medieval textiles in the cathedral treasury and (rather less good) of the cathedral's fifteenth(?)-century mural paintings of scenes from E.'s life (and from that of St. Henry of Uppsala) are here:
http://www.greydragon.org/trips/stockholm/index4.html
E.'s martyrdom, from the aforementioned mural paintings:
http://www.ne.se/neimage/1087282.jpg
E. is Sweden's national saint (since 1. October 1861 its Roman Catholic patron saint has been Bridget of Sweden). Medieval attempts to secure papal recognition of E.'s cult produced Vitae and miracle accounts (BHL 2594, etc.) but were unavailing. In the RM he is commemorated today with the designation Sanctus (and already was so prior to the revision of 2001).
Best,
John Dillon
(last year's post revised)
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