medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture

Today (31. May) is the feast day of:

1)   The Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary (ca. 4 BCE).  The pregnant Mary's visit with her kinswoman Elizabeth, then pregnant with St. John the Forerunner (Lk 1:39-56) is commemorated in this feast, whose earliest secure attestation is said to be its adoption by the Order of Friars Minor in 1263.  In 1369 pope Urban VI, in a decreee published by his successor, Boniface IX and fixing its date on 2. July (the day used for another Marian feast in Constantinople's church of the Theotokos at Blachernae), extended the feast to the entire Roman church.  In the later Middle Ages it appears on calendars at a number of different dates.  The day fixed by Urban remained the feast's day in the general Roman Calendar until the latter's revision promulgated in 1969, when it was moved to today.

Herewith a few Visitations:

a)  Paris, BnF, Ms. Grec 510 (St. Gregory of Nazianzus, _Orationes_; betw. 879 and 882), fol. 3r (upper right):
http://tinyurl.com/2fxwqyc

b)  L'Île-Bouchard (Indre-et-Loire), prieuré Saint-Léonard, at right on an apse capital (earlier eleventh-century; at left, the Annunciation). 
http://www.art-roman.net/ilebouchard/ilebouchard6.jpg
Context:
http://tinyurl.com/26u288x

c)  Paris, BnF, ms. Grec 1208 (Jacob of Coccinobaphi, _Orationes encomiasticae in SS. Virginem Deiparam_; betw. 1201 and 1250), fol. 203r (at right):
http://tinyurl.com/2d2qdfh

d)  Paris, BnF, ms. Arsenal 1186 (Psalter of St. Louis and Blanche of Castile; ca. 1225), fol. 16r (lower register):
http://tinyurl.com/23rlh4e

e)  Évreux, Bibliothèque municipale, ms. lat. 4 (models for the illumination of psalters; ca. 1230), fol. 151v:
http://tinyurl.com/lyxx9l

f)  Besançon, Bibliothèque municipale, ms. 54 (Cistercian psalter; ca. 1260), fol. 7v:
http://tinyurl.com/mocqez
Context:
http://tinyurl.com/lyc6ok

g)  Carpentras, Bibliothèque municipale, ms. 77 (\1) (psalter for the Use of Reims; later 13th cent.), fol. 44v:
http://tinyurl.com/m2okfy

h)  Marseille, Bibliothèque municipale, ms. 111 (Hours for the Use of Thérouanne; ca. 1280-1290):
http://tinyurl.com/nvkkwm
Context:
http://tinyurl.com/nglpgf
http://tinyurl.com/nxvh3a

i)  Giotto, fresco in the Arena Chapel, Padua (ca. 1302-1306):
http://www.wga.hu/art/g/giotto/padova/2virgin/mary10.jpg

j)  Dallas, TX, Bridwell Library, Southern Methodist University, ms. 13 (Hours for the Use of Sarum; ca. 1330), fol. 29r:
http://tinyurl.com/ngyfwt

k)  Avignon, ms. 121 (psalter and Hours; ca. 1330-1340), fol. 16v:
http://tinyurl.com/mrdpys

l)  Chantilly, Musée Condé, ms. 65 (Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry; early 15th cent.):
http://tinyurl.com/ngyxvd

m)  Beato Angelico, Cortona, Museo Diocesano, panel painting (Annunciation Altarpiece, predella panel; 1433-1434):
http://www.wga.hu/art/a/angelico/04/3predel2.jpg

n)  Workshop of the Master of the Rajhrad Altarpiece, Prague, St. Agnes of Bohemia Convent, panel painting (St. James Altarpiece; ca. 1430-1440):
http://tinyurl.com/ko6ts9

o)  Paris, BnF, ms. Latin 9474 (Grandes Heures d'Anne de Bretagne; ca. 1503-1508), fol. 36v):
http://tinyurl.com/237tb8s


2)  Petronilla (?).  P. (also Petronella) is a Roman martyr of the cemetery of Domitilla on the Via Ardeatina.  Not mentioned in the _Depositio martyrum_ of the Chronographer of 354, she had a burial place behind the apse of the the underground basilica erected by pope St. Siricius (384-99) in honor of Sts. Nereus and Achilleus.  A wall painting in that part of the church, discovered by De Rossi in the early 1870s, shows P., identified as a martyr, holding the hand of the matron Veneranda:
http://membres.lycos.fr/siteimageedl/paleo/photos/49.jpg
http://muvtor.btk.ppke.hu/etalon/316.jpg

If the _Liber Pontificalis_ may be trusted on this point, by the time of pope Paul I (757-67), P.'s remains were kept in that church in a sarcophagus identifying her as Aur[elia] Petronilla,  She may have been related to the Flavians, some of whom, having become Christian, founded the cemetery and some of whose males bore the cognomen Petro.  The age of the cemetery (late first- or very early second-century) and the similarity of P.'s name to that of St. Peter gave rise to the belief that she had been his daughter.  P., no longer a martyr, appears in this role in the originally late antique Passio of Sts. Nereus and Achilleus (BHL 6058, 6060, 6063, perhaps others), whence she entered the historical martyrologies and ultimately the RM.

The martyr P.'s resting place is in all the seventh-century itineraries for Rome pilgrims; one even refers to the church there as dedicated to her.  In the eighth century Paul I moved her sarcophagus at the behest of king Pepin to the Vatican, where it was placed in the circular building near Old St Peter's that became known as the Chapel of St. Petronilla and that was especially significant to rulers of France.  When the present St. Peter's was built, that chapel was demolished and a chapel dedicated to P. was established in the new building.  A very different dedication to P. is her church at Whepstead (Suffolk), shown and discussed here:
http://www.suffolkchurches.co.uk/whepstead.htm
Another view:
http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/21924
Petronell in today's Petronell-Carnuntum (Niederösterreich) owes its name to its church dedicated to P.  Here's a view of the present Pfarrkirche Sankt Petronilla (originally ca. 1200):
http://tinyurl.com/6g8t27
Here's the page for May, with an entry for P. at bottom as a virgin martyr, in the painted liturgical calendar in the presbytery of the thirteenth-century oratory of San Pellegrino at Bominaco, a locality of Caporciano (AQ) in Abruzzo (the so-called Calendario Valvense):
http://tinyurl.com/m2p5m8

P.'s construction had several aspects during the later Middle Ages.  Here she is, healing the sick (or at least receiving supplications from them), in an earlier fourteenth-century illuminated collection of French-language saint's lives (Paris, BnF, ms. Français 185, fol. 218r):
http://tinyurl.com/2a4lu3z
P. (with St. Juliana "of Nicomedia" at left) as Peter's daughter with a very large key in the reconstructed early fifteenth-century rood screen at St Mary, North Elmham (Norfolk):
http://tinyurl.com/2gc23o
P. as Peter's daughter serving at table (fifteenth-century panel painting by Sano di Pietro):
http://www.godecookery.com/afeast/dining/din011.html
P. healing the sick and serving at table in a copy from 1463 of Vincent of Beauvais' _Speculum historiale_ in its French-language version by Jean de Vignay (Paris, BnF, ms. Français 50, fol. 323v:
http://tinyurl.com/2doqm4t
P.'s martyrdom as depicted in a copy from 1419 of the Elsässische Legenda Aurea (Heidelberg, Universitätsbibliothek, Cod. Pal. germ. 144, fol. 385r:
http://tinyurl.com/chgpz
P. depicted as a martyr in a panel of the Mary Magdalen retable (ca. 1550) in the Musée de Contes at Contes (Alpes-Maritimes):
http://www.musee-contes.fr/admin/uploads/objet83.jpg


3)  Hermias (d. 2d or early 3d cent.).  The RM, following the so-called Menologion of Sirlet, commemorates H. as a soldier martyred Comana in Pontus under an emperor Antoninus (generally assumed to be either Antoninus Pius or Marcus Aurelius, though there were persecutions under Septimius Severus and Caracalla, both of whom used Antonine nomenclature).  H. is said to have borne his torments with such fortitude that an executioner was converted by his example and shared his fate.

A legendary Greek Passio (BHG 744) makes H. an _old_ soldier, locates his martyrdom in Comana in Cappadocia, gives him a set of horrific tortures (including three days in a hot oven from which he emerges unscathed), omits the converted executioner, introduces a pagan priest who after H. is unharmed by poison the priest had given him converts to Christianity and is martyred, and has H. suspended head-first for three days before his sufferings are ended by decapitation.

H.'s martyrdom as depicted (far right) in a May calendar scene in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (betw. 1335 and 1350) in the narthex of the church of the Pantocrator at the Visoki Dečani monastery near Peć in, depending on one's view of recent events, the Republic of Kosovo or Serbia's province of Kosovo and Metohija:
http://tinyurl.com/36v6sc2


4)  Cantius, Cantianus, and Cantianilla (d. ca. 304).    According to their legend, preserved in a sermon by St. Maximus of Turin and in several versions of their Acta (BHL 1543, etc.), C., C., and C. were two brothers and a sister of a Roman aristocratic family martyred along with their tutor St. Protus at a place called Aquae Gradatae_ near Aquileia.  Known collectively as the Cantiani, they are in all the historical martyrologies.  Their cult, attested to for Aquileia by Venantius Fortunatus, spread widely in today's northern Italy and Slovenia as well as down the Adriatic to Chieti province in Abruzzo, where the much rebuilt church dedicated to them at Paglieta is originally of the twelfth century.  Putative relics of C., C., and C. traveled much farther.  This page on their cult at Étampes (Essonne) includes several brief medieval texts pertaining to them as well as a reproduction of their depiction in a manuscript illumination of ca. 1470 (Mâcon, BM, ms. 3, fol. 176v):
http://www.corpusetampois.com/che-17-fleureau-c08.html
And here they are in an illumination of ca. 1414 in a breviary according to the Use of Paris (Châteauroux, BM, ms. 2, fol. 184v.):
http://tinyurl.com/5rs96p

Remains of a fourth-century memorial structure belonging to this cult have been excavated at the reputed site of of these saints' suffering, today's San Canzian d'Isonzo (GO) in Friuli - Venezia Giulia.  These included sarcophagi inscribed with the names of the Cantiani's two companions Protus and Chrysogonus.  Human remains found under an altar there have been said to be those of two males and a female, all closely related.

Herewith an illustrated, English-language page on the fifteenth-century church of St. Cantianus (sv. Kancijan) at Kranj in Slovenia:
http://www.ntz-nta.si/en/default.asp?id=5844
Another English-language account:
http://www.slovenia.info/?cerkev=790
A view of the (?fifteenth- and) early sixteenth-century church of St. Cantianus at the locality of Britof in Kanal ob Soči (in Italian: Canale d'Isonzo) in Slovenia:
http://tinyurl.com/5bgpqh
There's an English-language account of that church here (scroll down to: Saint Kancijan Church in Britof):
http://www.tic-kanal.si/cultural_heritage/2006091809584567/
One of the thumbnail views on this page:
http://www.aquileia.net/basilica_3.htm
is of the fourteenth-century "sarcophagus" (thought to be probably an altar frontal) in the Patriarchal Basilica at Aquileia depicting the Cantiani and Protus.


5)  Silvius of Toulouse (d. later 4th cent.).  We know about S. (also Sylvius, Salvius) from the late antique Passio of St. Saturninus of Toulouse (BHL 7495-96).  This makes him an early bishop of Toulouse, who begins construction of the basilica that would house Saturninus' remains but who dies leaving the task to be completed by his successor St. Exuperius.  In the medieval catalogues of Toulouse's bishops (of which the earliest was compiled in 1296), S. always occupies the third position.  In 1265 a tomb presumed to be his was discovered in the basilique Saint-Sernin along with those of S. and of three other saints.  The first chapel on the right-hand side of the ambulatory is dedicated to S.; in the plan shown here it's no. 15:
http://tinyurl.com/54pfvk
Here's an exterior view of the chevet with the chapelle Saint-Sylve visible behind some ornamental tree:
http://www.zigurrat.nl/fotos/sernin.jpg
An interior view of that chapel, showing S.'s former châsse:
http://pmaude.free.fr/Sernin/pages%20images/sylve.htm


6)  Camilla da Varano (Ven.; d. 1524).  We know about the monastic founder and mystic C. chiefly from her own autobiography, the _Vita Spirituale_, and other writings (twenty-two in all, written in an elegant Latin).  The daughter of a lord of Camerino, she came from a noble family of the Marche whose women as well as whose men had been educated humanistically since the earlier fifteenth century.  This privileged background did not prevent her either from practicing from childhood a devotion to the Passion or from entering in 1481 a very strict house of Poor Clares at Urbino, where two years later she made her profession and took the name Battista.

In 1484 with assistance from her father C./B. founded a small house of Poor Clares in Camerino and in 1505 at the behest of Julius II she founded another at Fermo.  After two years she returned to Camerino, where despite being often abbess she was able to lead a largely contemplative life.  Today is her _dies natalis_.  She reposes in the crypt of the church of her convent of Santa Chiara at Camerino.

C./B.'s cult was confirmed papally in 1843.  She was declared Venerable in 2005 and will be canonized this coming 17. October.

An Italian-language account of the treasures (many dating from C./B.'s lifetime) of the museum of the monastero di Santa Chiara in Camerino is here:
http://tinyurl.com/2cwmawa  
Some highlights are shown here (click on "Raccolta foto" at lower right):
http://tinyurl.com/2gyklp3
Expandable views of two frescoes in the convent and of its late fifteenth-century wooden choir are at bottom here:
http://tinyurl.com/23k8b75
A thumbnail view of C./B. on display in the church is here:
http://tinyurl.com/2bpzcaa

Best,
John Dillon
(last year's post revised and with the addition of Camilla da Varano)

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