medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture

Today (1. July) is the feast day of:

1)  Martin of Vienne (d. very early 4th cent.?).  M. is traditionally the third bishop of Vienne.  If the tradition is accurate, he will have died before the Council of Arles in 314, when Vienne was represented by a bishop Verus.  In the ninth century bishop St. Ado of Vienne claimed in his chronicle that M. was a martyr and a disciple of the apostles, a claim repeated in Viennois sources of the eleventh century.  The abbey of Saint-Martin de Vienne at Vienne (from 1113 to its closing in 1779 a dependency of the abbey of Saint-Ruf in Valence) claimed him as its saint.

The seemingly very late seventh- or early eighth-century (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology enters M. jointly with the later fifth-century bishop St. Mamertus on 11. May.  M. has been celebrated today since at least Ado's time.


2)  Domitian of Saint Rambert (d. later 4th cent., supposedly).  According to his legendary Vita (BHL 2250; probably later than the ninth century, as it appears to have been unknown to St. Ado of Vienne), D. was a Roman who when he was not quite fifteen lost his father to Arian persecution and his mother shortly thereafter out of grief.  When Julian the Apostate became emperor D., fearing more of the same, fled to Gaul, where he was ordained by St. Hilarius of Arles and later obtained from St. Eucherius of Lyon an hermitage in the wilderness.  There he lived ascetically, operated miracles, converted locals from paganism, and attracted disciples with whom in the first year of an emperor Valentinian (probably Valentinian I, r. 364-75, is meant) he founded a monastery on land whose not altogether authentic act of donation is incorporated in the Vita.

D.'s monastery took his name but later changed its appellation to that of St. Rambert (13. June), a martyr whose relics it had received.  It was located in today's Saint-Rambert-en-Bugey (Ain).  The visible remains of its tenth- or eleventh- to thirteenth-century abbey church consist of an apse with two absidioles, called locally the crypte Saint-Domitien:
http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/15125854.jpg
and of some sculptural fragments in the little church above, whose exterior is shown here:
http://www.rndm.org/images/strambertchapel.jpg
http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/15125109.jpg


3)  Theodoric of Saint-Thierry (d. 533).  According to his seemingly Carolingian-period Vitae (BHL 8059 and 8060), T. (in French, Thierry) abandoned his wife when she would not accept a chaste marriage.  He then betook himself to St. Renigius (Remi) of Reims, who suggested that he and the holy abbess Susanna should found a monastery on the nearby wooded height called Mount Or.  Following his instructions R. and S. went there and settled at a spot shown to them by an angel who had descended over the mountain in the form of an eagle.  T. is said to have had many disciples, including his father, whom he converted from a life of brigandage.  Several lifetime miracles and many posthumous ones are recorded for this largely legendary founder of a major monastery located in the diocese of Reims at what was later called Mont d'Or and is now Saint-Thierry (Marne).

Herewith three pages with expandable views of illuminations in a tenth-century Gospels from the abbaye de Saint-Thierry near Reims (Reims, Bibliothèque municipale, ms. 8, fols. 3r, 46r, 69r):
http://tinyurl.com/3qtzqm
http://tinyurl.com/3qewc5
http://tinyurl.com/5yo7qt


4)  Eparchius (d. ca. 558).  St. Gregory of Tours informs us in the _In gloria confessorum_, cap. 99, that E. (in French, Eparque, Ybar, Ybard; also Separchius, whence French Cybar, Cybard) was a cleric of the Périgord who later moved to Angoulême, where he founded a small monastery whose way of life was so simple that while he was yet alive no bread was baked there and when bread was needed it was brought in from outside.  Gifts of gold and silver were used to succor the poor and to ransom captives.  In another act of charity E. is said to have freed and to have restored to health a condemned criminal who had been sentenced to death and who when he was rescued by E. seemed already to have paid that penalty.

E. has a seemingly Carolingian-period Vita (BHL 2559) that makes him the grandson of a count whom he served as _cancellarius_ for fifteen years before entering a monastery at Sediacum (thought to be Seyssac), details numerous miracles, and reports the presence of a basilica over his grave.  The latter is surely to be understood as the church of former abbey of Saint-Cybard located in what is now a section of Angoulême.  A multi-page site on that is here:
http://tinyurl.com/5v6rvo
That site has a page on E.'s grotto/chapelle there (the belief that this was E.'s cell is probably as old as the monastery, which latter is thought to go back to the early ninth century):
http://tinyurl.com/6aa7cf
Remains of the abbey:
http://tinyurl.com/5okrhv

Some exterior views of the originally twelfth-century église de Saint-Cybard at Plassac-Rouffiac (Charente):
http://www.trekearth.com/gallery/photo755762.htm
http://www.trekearth.com/gallery/photo644367.htm
http://tinyurl.com/6jkvoo
A page of multiple views (greatly expandable), including several of the interior:
http://tinyurl.com/294whtf

The originally twelfth- and thirteenth-century église paroissiale de Saint-Cybard at Cercles (Dordogne), once a priory church of C.'s abbey at Angoulême, is famous for its capitals.  Herewith its fiche from Patrimoine de France and one distance view of the exterior:
http://tinyurl.com/6d9ukk
http://rando21.free.fr/g36/e01/p6.jpg
Sixty views start here (mostly of interior sculpture):
http://tinyurl.com/6mxcg4

Views of the originally thirteenth-century église de Saint-Ybard at Saint-Ybard (Corrèze):
http://pagesperso-orange.fr/brive/st%20ybard%20fond.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/l3ck7f
http://tinyurl.com/4y3ljz
http://tinyurl.com/4u27tq


5)  Nicasio Burgio (d. 1187, supposedly).  Local tradition documented from at least 1347 onward and primarily genealogical in origin makes N. a Hospitaller from Sicily who died for his faith in the Holy Land.  The standard story today, which seems to have taken shape in the early modern period, is that N. accompanied the grand master of the Hospitallers, Roger des Moulins, to Palestine, was at the battle of Hattin (4. July 1187), where Roger was killed, succeeded Roger on the field as captain of the remaining Hospitallers, was taken captive, and was one of the knights of that order executed at Ptolemais (Acre) in the battle's aftermath.  Roger's death prior to Hattin, at the battle of Cresson (1. May 1187; reliably reported by two independent contemporary sources), leads one to question the factual basis of this account and to wonder when exactly, and under what conditions, N. really met his end.

The family promoting this story -- called de Burgio after its castle of that name near Agrigento -- claimed descent from Chamut (Hammud) the last Muslim emir of Castrogiovanni (today's Enna [EN]), whose defeat by the Normans in 1087 and subsequent conversion to Christianity is recorded by Geoffrey Malaterra.  Echoes of this problematic claim occur in accounts of N.  In the fifteenth century one of the de Burgio married the heiress of Caccamo (PA) in north central Sicily and brought to that town his family saint already venerated in other parts of Sicily.  In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries N. enjoyed an extensive cult centering on Caccamo.  Whereas his patrocinio is celebrated there on the last Sunday of August and on the Monday following, his liturgical feast is today.

Two views of Caccamo are here, one showing the old town (which has kept much of its thirteenth-century street plan) beneath the castle and the other the castle itself:
http://www.netgalaxy.it/fotodicaccamo.htm
A modern representation of N. (Caccamo in the background):
http://www.enrosadira.it/santi/n/nicasio.jpg
Another view of Caccamo provides a better impression of the local terrain:
http://sicilyweb.com/foto/pa/caccamo/caccamo22.jpg

Views of N.'s family home, the recently "restored" Castello Peralta or Castello Saraceno at Burgio (AG):
http://www.comune.burgio.ag.it/castello.htm
http://www.comune.burgio.ag.it/images/castello%20saraceno.JPG

With regard to Hattin, it's perhaps worth noting that monks fleeing Syria after the subsequent Islamic capture of Jerusalem were in 1188 given permission to reside at a Benedictine priory established less than twenty years earlier at Rifesi (AG), only a few kilometers distant from Burgio.  The monastery church, now known as the Santuario di Rifesi, survives in somewhat altered shape.  A couple of exterior views showing twelfth-century features are here:
http://www.comune.burgio.ag.it/rifesi.htm
A slightly larger version of the first view:
http://www.comune.burgio.ag.it/mentaerifesi.htm

Best,
John Dillon
(last year's post very lightly revised)

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