medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture

Today (3. June) is the feast day of:

1a)  Lucillianus and companions (d. ca. 273, supposedly).  L.'s cult is attested to by the existence of a former martyrion in Constantinople next to the basilica of St. Michael, documented in tenth-century synaxaries, as well as by entries in various Eastern calendars, etc..  It is supposed, because of the coincidence of dates, that the Lucianus whose passion is commemorated on this day in the earlier ninth-century Marble Calendar of Naples is the same saint recorded under a slightly different name (perhaps the result of a malformed or misinterpreted abbreviation) and not the martyr Lucian of Antioch, the teacher of Eusebius.

L. has a legendary Passio (BHG 998y) that makes him a pagan priest of Nicomedia (today's İzmit  in Turkey) who became a secret Christian and who for two years managed not to perform sacrifices until a Jew turned him in, in the reign of Aurelian.  L. was arrested along with seventy others who were hiding with him.  After an interrogation that did not go well, he and four youths (Claudius, Hypatius, Paulus, and Dionysius) were sentenced to be burned alive.  As soon as they had together mounted the flaming pyre a sudden downpour extinguished the fire.  Though sudden downpours are not unusual in the Mediterranean region, the official in charge ascribed this one to magic operated by L.  All four were sent to Chalcedon and finally to Constantinople, where L. was crucified and his companions were beheaded.

L. as depicted in a June calendar portrait 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/3xua922

1b)  Byzantine synaxaries add a separate elogium of a virgin named Paula or Paulina who had comforted L. and his companions in prison, who collected their corpses, and who was also martyred.

P. as depicted in a June calendar portrait 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/35dyp8y

With its revision of 2001 the RM ceased to present elogia for L. and companions and for Paula.  They are celebrated today in Orthodox churches.


2)  Liphard of Meung-sur-Loire (d. ca. 570).  According to his largely legendary, elegantly written Vita (BHL 4931; seemingly of the ninth century), L. (also Liphart, Lifhard, Lifhart, Leifard, etc.) came from a distinguished family of Orléans, where he served for many years as a just and honorable judge.  At the age of forty-eight he was inspired to become a cleric and was forthwith ordained deacon by his bishop.  L. then retired with his disciple St. Urbitius to the hill of Meung and there founded a monastery, where he lived very ascetically and where through prayer and the application of his staff he caused the death of a huge, fire-breathing serpent that had been terrifying the locals.  He was ordained priest by the bishop of Orléans, operated miracles, saw the soul of abbot St. Theodemir of Micy being carried up to heaven, oversaw the latter's obsequies and gave Micy his disciple St. Maximinus (in French, St. Mesmin) to be its abbot.

Still according to the Vita, L. died at the age of 73, was buried by the bishop of Orléans (who erected new buildings at the monastery), and was succeeded by St. Urbitius.

In 1068 L.'s monastery was converted to a canonry and in 1104 he was accorded an Elevatio in the abbey church, which at this time was dedicated to him.  L. is the patron saint of Meung-sur-Loire (Loiret), of Bucy-Saint-Liphard (Loiret), of Oinville-Saint-Liphard (Eure-et-Loir), and of Terminiers (Eure-et-Loir), all in the diocese of Orléans, and, in the diocese of Paris, of Villetaneuse (Seine-Saint-Denis), where a succession of churches dedicated to him goes back to the thirteenth century.  In Jean de Meun(g)'s part (ca. 1275) of the _Roman de la Rose_, the Old Woman swears by L. at line 13160: "par saint Lifart de Meün!"

Some views of the eleventh- to thirteenth-century collégiale Saint-Liphard (ou Saint-Lifard) at Meung-sur-Loire:
Exterior:
http://tinyurl.com/25sluao
http://tinyurl.com/27sy98y
http://tinyurl.com/2awste5
http://tinyurl.com/26vqjy3
http://en.structurae.de/photos/index.cfm?JS=16448
Interior:
http://tinyurl.com/27t4orr
http://tinyurl.com/2cetqfm
http://tinyurl.com/25nhg7z
http://tinyurl.com/2b2y62w
http://en.structurae.de/photos/index.cfm?JS=16450
Exterior and Interior:
http://tinyurl.com/29gx7ly

An exterior view of the église Saint-Liphard at Oinville-Saint-Liphard:
http://tinyurl.com/2bnerrg

L. slaying the dragon at far right in the lower registers of the Saint-Apollinaire Window (1205-15 and 1328) at the cathedral of Notre-Dame at Chartres:
http://tinyurl.com/6d54rd
L. holding the dragon on a leash in the _Grandes Heures d'Anne de Bretagne_ (ca. 1503-1508):
http://expositions.bnf.fr/bestiaire/grand/drag_07.htm


3)  Oliva, venerated at Anagni (d. 6th or 7th cent., supposedly).  O. is venerated not only at Anagni (FR) in southern Lazio but also at Castro dei Volsci (FR), Trivigliano (FR), Cori (LT), and, slightly further to the south in what was once territory of the Regno, at Pontecorvo (FR) on the left bank of the Liri.  Our first notice of her is of Anacletus II's dedication of an altar to her next to her remains at Anagni in 1133.  O.'s church, in which both the altar and the remains were housed, was demolished in the later sixteenth century, after which the remains were translated to the crypt of Anagni's cathedral, where they still repose.  Churches dedicated to O. at Castro dei Volsci and at Trivigliano are said to go back to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries respectively.

At Cori, O.'s present church consists of two adjacent buildings, one of the fifteenth century (1460-85, when it served a house of Augustinian Hermits) and the other earlier.  In the first of the views here both structures can be seen to the left of the belltower:
http://www.romeartlover.it/Gregcor2.jpg
http://www.parcolepini.it/salvalartecori/DSCN8722.jpg
While that ensemble might qualify Cori's Santa Oliva as a finalist in the 'saints of the day" Ugliest Church contest, attached to the newer building is a very pleasant cloister dating from 1480.  This, and the rebuilding of the church, were projects of a native of Cori and general of the Augustinians, Ambrogio Massari, "il Coriolano" (d. 1485).  A view of the cloister:
http://www.nuovipanorami.it/italia/lazio/cori/chiostrooliva.jpg
Three views of capitals in the cloister are here, at bottom:
http://www.nuovipanorami.it/italia/lazio/cori/cori.html
A better view of the capital with the rams' heads:
http://www.storiarte.altervista.org/
The older part of the church was built over the remains of a Roman temple (Cori has preserved several of these) that now serve as the crypt.  There's a view and a Danish-language discussion here (scroll down to SANT OLIVA KIRKEN):
http://www.cori.dk/rundtur_i_cori.htm
On Massari see now Carla Frova, Raimondo Michetti, and Domenico Palombi, eds., _La carriera di un uomo di curia nella Roma del Quattrocento: Ambrogio Massari da Cori, agostiniano : cultura umanistica e committenza artistica (Roma: Viella, 2008).

O.'s dating is said to be from her Office at Anagni.  I have no idea how old that text is.


4)  Genesius of Clermont (d. shortly after 660).  G. (in French, Genet, Genêt, Genest, Genès) was archdeacon and then bishop of Clermont in Auvergne (now Clermont-Ferrand) and the teacher and early advisor of his successor St. Praejectus (in French: Priest, Prix, etc.).  The latter's contemporary Vita (BHL 6916) speaks highly of G., as does also that of a slightly later successor, St. Bonitus (BHL 1418).  G. has his own very late Vita (BHL 3311) that makes him a member of a senatorial family and has him compelled by Rome to accept election as bishop when he would rather have withdrawn and become a hermit.  G. is said to have used his own money to found a church at Clermont dedicated to St. Symphorianus.  Conceivably, this will have been the predecessor of one of the later churches of St. Genest in or near Clermont.


5)  Conus of Diano (d. early 13th cent. ?).  Today's less well known saint of the Regno is the Benedictine monk Conus, patron of Teggiano (SA) in the Vallo di Diano.  According to his brief Vita (BHL 1943; published in the _Acta Sanctorum_ "ex vetusta membrana Dianensi"), C. was born to a noble family in the _terra Diani_, that is, in the small city of Diano (Teggiano's medieval name and its modern one until 1862) and its outlying possessions.  A prenatal omen implied his sanctity.  When C. was barely eight years old, he began by divine influence to engage in forms of self-denial and self-mortification.  Unbeknownst to his parents, he soon entered the Benedictine abbey of Santa Maria at nearby Cadossa.

There C. eagerly accepted instruction in grammar and in logic and at the same time overcame his abbot's doubts about his fitness for monastic life.  One day he was observed by his parents, who were on the premises in order to get wood.  C. evaded them by hiding in a burning oven.  When found by the abbot, who had gone searching for him, he emerged completely unscathed.  One other day, while the monks were dining, a voice from above called to C., announcing that he would be called by God that night.  During that night he did indeed pass away; on the following day the monks buried him.  Later, the "Italicum regnum" having been convulsed by war, the monks abandoned the abbey and fled in fear to safer places.

Still according to the Vita, in 1261 people of Padula (another town in the Vallo di Diano) tried to sneak away with C.'s body.  But people of Diano also went to Cadossa, drove off their rivals, and upon entering the abbey were greeted by a great fragrance emanating from C.'s tomb.  When the tomb was opened, C.'s body was discovered to be incorrupt.  C. was brought back to Diano and buried in the town's principal church (now Santa Maria Maggiore).

Guesswork has given C. a traditional birthdate in the late twelfth century.  The absence of adult miracles has caused him to be represented as youthful.  The Vita probably dates from the late fourteenth or early fifteenth century.  It was polished up humanistically for a printed version in 1595 and has served as the base for various early modern and modern Lives of C.  The latter have added such entertaining miracles as C.'s preventing Santa Maria Maggiore's belltower from collapsing in 1300 and his heroic defense of Diano's castle when in 1497 king Federigo was cannonading it in order to compel the capitulation of its rebel lord, Antonello Sanseverino, prince of Salerno and, in modern times, a local hero for the Dianesi.  C. has been credited with saving Diano/Teggiano several times since.

In the later Middle Ages Diano was in effect the southern capital of the extensive territory controlled by the Sanseverino counts of Marsico.  To give one an idea of its position, here's a view of today's Teggiano on its hill overlooking flatter portions of the Vallo di Diano:
http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/6716757.jpg
A guided tour (in Italian) of the medieval town is here:
http://www.prolocoteggiano.it/storia.php
That tour's page on Santa Maria Maggiore:
http://tinyurl.com/262dqep
This church is now a cathedral: the diocese, today united with that of Policastro to the southwest, was erected in 1850.  C. is co-patron of the diocese of Teggiano-Policastro.
Expandable views of several of Teggiano's medieval churches are here:
http://www.altravita.com/cilento-teggiano.php

Further west, C. is the patron of Laureana Cilento (SA), medievally and indeed until Italian unification called Lauriano.  Also in the Cilento is a church dedicated to a C. in Castelcivita (SA), known until 1863 as Castelluccio.  There, however, the C. is Conon of Bida, a.k.a. Conon the Thaumaturge (celebrated today in Castelcivita; in the Greek church, commemorated on 5. March).  The latter, who may have been our C.'s name saint (or, if our C. is a fiction explaining an older local cult, that cult's original honoree), was the saint of a once regionally important, originally tenth(?)-century Greek monastery in rural Camerota (SA) on the southern edge of the Cilento, where it has bequeathed its name to a large wood of Aleppo pines called the Pineta di San Cono/Sant'Iconio.  Our C.'s cult was confirmed papally in 1871.  Emigrants have brought it to other parts of the world, perhaps most notably to Uruguay, where C. is the patron of the city of Florida.


6)  Morandus (d. ca. 1115).  M. has two Vitae, one (BHL 6019) that makes him a member of a Gallic noble family of Worms who was educated there and who knew Alemannisch and another (BHL 6020) that makes him a German to begin with.  These accounts agree that while on pilgrimage to Compostela he arrived at Cluny, found the life there agreeable, made his profession, and was sent by abbot St. Hugh of Cluny to a dependency in Auvergne and then, because of his linguistic attainments, to a newly founded dependency at today's Altkirch (Haut-Rhin) in the then German-speaking southern Alsace.  There M. displayed numerous virtues and effected miraculous cures.  Other healing miracles followed his death; several translations followed in the monastery church of St. Christopher.  A hymn transmitted along with BHL 6019 has M. canonized papally in what would seem to be the later twelfth century.

M. had a widespread cult as a Cluniac saint.  Later he was adopted by the Hapsburgs as one of the saints of their extended family; a fragment of what is said to be his skull is preserved in Vienna's cathedral.  Another is kept in the modern église Saint-Morand at Altkirch.  The latter building houses M.'s later twelfth-century tomb, in which he was venerated by numerous pilgrims and which in the fifteenth or early sixteenth century received a sculpted image of him as a _gisant_.  Three views of M.'s tomb there occur about halfway down this page devoted to him:
http://www.steinbach68.org/saint_morand.htm
Two other views of the tomb, as well as one of M.'s head reliquary of 1428, are here:
http://www.lieux-insolites.fr/alsace/morand/morand.htm
 
Best,
John Dillon
(last year's post revised)

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