medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture

Today (4. May) is the feast day of:

1)  Florian (d. 304, supposedly).  F. is widely venerated in Austria and Bavaria.  He has a late eighth- or early ninth-century prose Passio that exists in both a longer and a shorter version (BHL 3058, 3054).  These make him a Roman soldier (later, officer) martyred for his faith by being drowned in the Enns at Lauriacum in Noricum Ripense, today's Lorch in the city of Enns in Oberösterreich.  The very baroque abbey of Sankt Florian (Augustinian canons) at today's Markt St. Florian (also in Oberösterreich) is the descendant of a monastery, said to be first recorded from the eighth century, that arose at the reputed site of F.'s grave.  It has been a pilgrimage site ever since.  Though it lacks F.'s relics, it does possess a millstone with which F. may have been weighted down when he was thrown into the river:
http://cms.ttg.at/sixcms/media.php/3536/muehlstein.jpg
The chief bodily relics at Sankt Florian are those of the composer Anton Bruckner:
http://cms.ttg.at/sixcms/media.php/3594/9_bruckner_01.jpg

English-language translations of BHL 3054 and 3058 as well as other matter on F. will be found at this page of David Woods' "Military Martyrs" site:
http://www.ucc.ie/milmart/Florianus.html

Thanks to the watery manner of his martyrdom, F. is a protector against fire.  Representations of him extinguishing fires are abundant from the early modern period onward.  Here's a late medieval one (ca. 1450) from a gradual formerly of Sankt Florian and now in Vienna (Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Musiksammlung, Mus. Hs. 15947):
http://www.aeiou.at/aeiou.history.data.jpg/010602.jpg
And here's another, from a pillar in the Stadtpfarrkirche St. Johannes der Täufer in Rain (Lkr. Donau-Ries) in Bavaria:
http://www.rain.de/rundgang/16pfarrkirche-florian.jpg

But of course F. is not always shown putting out a fire.  So, for example, this illumination:
http://www.florian2004.at/downloads/Hl_Florian_Buchmalerei.jpg
In close-up (with better color and detail):
http://www.florian2004.at/downloads/Hl_Florian.jpg
Nor does he seem be putting out a fire in this partial view of a wooden statue of him, said to be from the earlier fourteenth century, at the aforementioned abbey of Sankt Florian:
http://cms.ttg.at/sixcms/media.php/3536/postkarte_02.jpg

Thumbnail views of two originally late medieval dedications to F. in Bavaria:
a) the Kirche St. Florian at Pöcking (Lkr. Starnberg):
http://tinyurl.com/4zabbq
b) an illustrated, German-language page on the pilgrimage church of Sankt Florian near Frasdorf (Lkr. Rosenheim) and a thumbnail view of the exterior:
http://tinyurl.com/cpalsn
http://tinyurl.com/652ccb

F. is the patron of Oberösterreich and in it of St Florian am Inn, whose originally thirteenth-/fourteenth-century parish church dedicated to F. is shown here:
http://tinyurl.com/dcdpqu
http://tinyurl.com/d9qcqy


2)  Antonina of Nicaea (d. 306, supposedly).  A. is a martyr of Nicaea entered under today in the later fourth-century Syriac Martyrology and in the (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology.  The latter reports -- seemingly from a now lost Passio -- that she suffered in the Diocletianic persecution, that she underwent various tortures, including being suspended by one arm for three days, that she was jailed for two years, and that her mode of execution was being burned alive.  Byzantine synaxaries, which also enter A. under 1. March and under 12. June, list all of the above torments but add that she was sewn into a sack that was then thrown into a marshy pool or lake.  Opinions differ as to whether in the Passio A. miraculously overcame the fire that had been intended to kill and then was drowned or if instead the latter were a later addition to / revision of that narrative.

A. as depicted in the earlier fourteenth-century (betw. ca. 1312 and 1321/1322) frescoes in dome of the monastery church of the Theotokos at Gračanica in, depending on one's view of the matter, either Serbia's province of Kosovo and Metohija or the Republic of Kosovo:
http://tinyurl.com/33nwfzz


3)  Silvanus of Gaza and thirty-nine companions (d. 309 or 310).  We know about S. et socc. from Eusebius, _Historia ecclesiastica_, 8. 13 and _De martyribus Palaestinae_, 7 and 13.  S. was a priest at Gaza (in the Syriac version of this text, which is fuller than the Greek, he previously had been a soldier) who with many of his fellow Christians was caught up in the persecution of Maximian and sent to the copper mines at Phaeno.  There he was elected bishop and there he was martyred by decapitation along with thirty-nine companions towards the very end of the persecution.  The (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology has S. put to death at Caesarea (presumably the one in Palestine) along with forty companions.

Byzantine synaxaries enter S. under 14. October as well as under today; their notices of him include the detail of his having been a soldier before becoming a priest, place his service in that capacity at Caesarea, and accord with the (ps.-)HM both on the number of his companions and the place of his/their execution.

What's left of S. (at right) as depicted in the earlier fourteenth-century  frescoes (betw. ca. 1312 and 1321/1322) of the monastery church of the Theotokos at Gračanica in, depending on one's view of the matter, either Serbia's province of Kosovo and Metohija or the Republic of Kosovo:
http://tinyurl.com/2c75mxx


4)  Cyriac of Jerusalem (d. later 4th cent., supposedly).  Fifth-century legends of the Finding of the True Cross invented a Jew who revealed the location of the then buried Holy Sepulchre (in which the True Cross was said to have been found).  In time, he came to be called Jude (probably a development from _Judaeus_).  A story circulated that, after assisting St. Helena in her great discovery, he converted to Christianity, took the name Kyriakos, was consecrated bishop of Jerusalem, and was martyred under Julian the Apostate.  Numerous Passiones attest to the medieval popularity of this tale.

C.'s martyrdom as depicted in an earlier fourteenth-century copy (ca. 1301-1350), with illuminations attributed to the Fauvel  Master, of a collection of French-language saint's lives (Paris, BnF, ms. Français 183, fol. 195r):
http://tinyurl.com/2385wka

C.'s martyrdom as depicted in an earlier fourteenth-century (1326-1350) copy of a French-language collection of saint's lives  (Paris, BnF, ms. Français 185, fol. 86v):
http://tinyurl.com/25bn4y2

C.'s martyrdom as depicted 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. 144v):
http://tinyurl.com/369xszg

The Acts of various councils give us the names of the bishops of Jerusalem for this period.  Strangely enough, C. (also Quiriacus) is not among the pontiffs so identified.  In 2001 C. ceased to grace the pages of the RM.  But his cult continues at the Italian port city of Ancona (AN) in the Marche.  C. is Ancona's legendary protobishop, said in a late and synthesizing Translation (BHL 7025f) to have arrived there after his conversion and to have been martyred at Jerusalem on a return visit, with his relics translated to Ancona by Galla Placidia in 434.  Today's home page of the archdiocese of Ancona-Osimo announces the Solennità di S. Ciriaco on this date; in recent years (but not this) it featured on this day a portrait of the mitred saint, showing him enthroned and holding a large cross surely representing the True one.

Ancona's most visible symbol of its devotion to its patron C. is its cathedral dedicated to him, built in the shape of a Greek cross, completed in 1189, and subsequently modified.  An English-language introduction to this structure, which only came to be called after C. in the thirteenth or early fourteenth century, is here:
http://tinyurl.com/52xkj2
An illustrated, Italian-language page on this building:
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duomo_di_Ancona
Further exterior views:
http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/739655.jpg
http://www.policentro2000.it/cattedrale_s.ciriaco.JPG
http://tinyurl.com/2elmsre
http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/8398004.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/24eh66f
http://tinyurl.com/23m32t3
http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/14087287.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/2az84mw
http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/17673688.jpg
http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/14087108.jpg
Interior views:
http://www5e.biglobe.ne.jp/~truffe/image/ancona2.jpg
http://www.clonline.org/image/20anniFrat/ancona/ancona1.jpg
C.'s display reliquary in the crypt:
http://tinyurl.com/248nfpj
There's a much better view on this poster for this year's festivities:
http://tinyurl.com/24283nm
C. (as Quiriacus) is depicted on the reverse of this late thireenth-/early fourteenth-century coin from Ancona:
http://numismatica-italiana.lamoneta.it/moneta/W-REPUAN/3

We don't get to Ancona very often on this list, so herewith some views, etc. of two Marian dedications, one in Ancona proper and the other slightly down the coast at Portonovo (AN):

a) The originally eleventh-/twelfth-century chiesa di Santa Maria della Piazza (reworked, early thirteenth century; restored, 1980):
Italian-language accounts with expandable views (in the second, the views are at the bottom of page):
http://tinyurl.com/38zhsf7
http://tinyurl.com/4trrbe
NB: The sculptured symbols of the evangelists John and Luke shown on that last page are at the cathedral and not at Santa Maria della Piazza.
A brief, English-language account with one expandable view:
http://tinyurl.com/39dy4x2
Further exterior views:
http://tinyurl.com/3vjzzn
http://tinyurl.com/3ns8c6
Expandable detail views of the exterior and views of remains (incl. wall paintings) of the two underlying paleochristian churches are here:
http://tinyurl.com/4ejgm5

b) The originally eleventh-century chiesa abbaziale di Santa Maria at Portonovo (restored, 1894ff.; 1988-95):
Italian language account:
http://tinyurl.com/6qdnxc
Views:
http://www.policentro2000.it/portonovo_chiesa.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/6rs3mq
http://tinyurl.com/5q3yfu
A page from Thais:
http://tinyurl.com/6kgzos


5)  Ladislaus of Gielnów (Bl.; d. 1505).  L. (Władysław) was born at Gielnów in the diocese of Gniezno in around 1440.  After philosophical and theological study at Kraków he entered the Observant Franciscan convent at Warszawa (Warsaw), making his profession there on 1. August 1457.  L. was several times his order's provincial for Poland, composed his province's ordinances that were approved at the general chapter in Urbino in 1498 (one of two such meetings in Italy that he is known to have attended), wrote religious works in prose and verse, instituted training for missionaries destined for Lithuania (for which reason he is sometimes called the Apostle of Lithuania), and in 1498 led a movement of mass prayer that was thought instrumental in Poland's defeat of separate incursions by Ottoman Turks and by marauding Tatars.

After a series of healing and other miracles L. was accorded a translation by the archbishop of Gniezno in 1572.  His cult was confirmed papally in 1750 by Benedict XIV, who three years later included him among the patrons of Poland and Lithuania.


6)  John Houghton, Robert Lawrence, Augustine Webster, and Richard Reynolds (d. 1535).  H. and L. were the priors, respectively, of the Charterhouses of London and of Beauvale in Broxtowe (Notts), of which latter H. had previously been prior for a brief time.  W., a monk of the Charterhouse at Sheen (Surrey), was previously prior of the Charterhouse of Axholme (Lincs).  R., a fellow of Corpus Christi, Cambridge and a friend of Sts. John Fisher and Thomas More, was a Bridgettine monk of Syon Abbey in Isleworth (Middlesex).  In the spring of 1535, following the passage late in the previous year of the Act of Supremacy, the three Carthusians attempted in vain to negotiate a form of the Oath of Supremacy acceptable to their consciences and were promptly imprisoned in the Tower.

On 28.-29. April H., L., and W. were tried by a special commission.  Found guilty, they were were executed as traitors (hanged, drawn, and quartered) on this day along with R., all wearing their religious habits, and with Bl. John Haile, a secular priest who was vicar of Isleworth who though named in the RM's elogium for the group was not canonized with them and who is excluded from their lemma.  One of H.'s arms was affixed to the gate of the London Charterhouse.  All four were canonized in 1970 as part of the Forty Martyrs of England (commemorated in the RM on different dates).

An English Heritage page on Beauvale Priory:
http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/server/show/nav.21048
An English-language Wikipedia page on that house, now a ruin:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beauvale_Charterhouse
More views here:
http://www.greasleyparish.com/beauvalepriory.htm 

A surviving section of the late medieval gateway of Syon Abbey:
http://tinyurl.com/2cnewuv

Best,
John Dillon
(last year's post revised and with the additions of Antonina of Nicaea and of John Houghton, Robert Lawrence, Augustine Webster, and Richard Reynolds)

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