medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (4. July) is the feast day of:
1) Theodore of Cyrene (d. ca. 304, supposedly). A bishop T. of Cyrene in the Libyan Pentapolis and his companions Irenaeus the deacon amd Serapion and Ammonius the lectors are entered variously in manuscripts of (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology under 7. April and 26. March (the same commemoration differently recorded through a confusion of Kalends and Ides). In the ninth century Florus of Lyon entered them in his martyrology under the latter date; in this he was by followed by St. Ado of Vienne and by Usuard. A saint of the same name has been venerated in Eastern churches on today's date since before the tenth century, the date both of the Georgian-language version (in St. Catherine's Monastery, Sinai, cod. Sinaiticus 34) of a calendar from Palestine pre-dating the Byzantine liturgy and of a menologium entry (BHG 2428) summarizing a now lost and seemingly legendary Passio of T.
That summary omits T.'s aforementioned companions but gives him new ones in the form of the Christian ladies Lucia, Aroa or Rhoa, and Cyprilla (who have their own Passio, BHG 2093) and has them all martyred under Diocletian. The Coptic synaxary of Alexandria attributed to the thirteenth-century Michael, bishop of Atrib and Malig records under today separate feasts of T., bishop of the Pentapolis and T. bishop of Corinth, the latter with the female companions and other personages of BHG 2428. These are clearly the same saint with two hagiographic traditions; less clear is our T.'s relationship to the similarly named Theodore of Cyrenia in Cyprus, said to have been martyred under Licinius (BHG 2435-2438).
In the later sixteenth century cardinal Baronio entered into the RM two T.'s of Cyrene, one under 26. March from the Western martyrologies and one under today from a Greek menologium. Following the aforementioned calendar from Palestine (as this records under today a St. Andrew who is probably A. of Crete [d. ca. 740; see no. 4, below] it's no older than the [ps.-]HM), the RM commemorates T. on today only and dispenses in this commemoration with his companions.
2) Laurianus (?). L. (in French, Laurien and Laurian) is a saint of Berry whose cult is first attested from the ninth century in the earliest manuscripts of the (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology, two of which place his death at Bourges with one of these further specifying a locality now identified with today's Vatan (Indre).
L. has a legendary Passio in two forms: a brief version (BHL 4795) whose earliest witness is of the tenth century and a longer one (BHL 4796) whose earliest witness is of the eleventh century. The latter makes him a Pannonian who is ordained priest at Milan and who having fought Arianism at Seville for seventeen years as its bishop moves on by divine inspiration to Rome and then to Tours and finally to Vatan where after being decapitated by soldiers sent from Seville by a king named Totila (oh, those evil Arian Goths!) he gets up, holding his head, and enjoins his slayers to take it back with them in order free that city and its territory from a great drought. They do this and the drought is ended.
The manuscript of the (ps.-)HM that specifies L.'s veneration at Vatan (in the Passio he is first buried in a cave and later translated to a chapel erected to him there) also notes the translation of his head to Seville. A cult of L. is attested in two fifteenth-century breviaries for the Use of Seville; his absence from the lists of that city's bishops indicates that at the very least his episcopal dignity is a Berrichon invention. Back in Berry, a chapel dedicated to L. at today's Chapelle-Saint-Laurian (Indre) staffed by canons was already in existence by 1012. Liturgical manuscripts attest to L.'s veneration at Moissac in the tenth century and in Tours in the twelfth.
3) Bertha of Blangy (?). B. (in Latin, Berta and Bertha; in French, Berthe) is the saint of the former abbey at today's Blangy-sur-Ternois (Pas-de-Calais). Apart from one later Miracle account (BHL 1270), her dossier (Vita, BHL 1266; various Miracle and Translation accounts, BHL 1267-1269) appears to have been written for that house's foundation or re-foundation from Fécamp in 1031/32. These give her a genealogy in the upper reaches of Frankish and English nobility in the time of Clovis II and make her a pious widow with five daughters who founds the monastery, retires there with her two eldest daughters, and lives there as a simple recluse until her death. The same set of texts has her remains brought in the ninth century under pressure of the Northmen first to Mainz and ultimately to today's Erstein (Alsace), where they are said later to have been discovered and returned to Blagny, all _non sine miraculis_.
When the Benedictine abbey of Blangy was closed in 1791 and its buildings were sold off (most are gone now), the relics venerated there as B.'s were preserved in their châsse from 1627. Now housed in the town's église Saint-Gilles, they have remained the focus of a local cult. Some views:
http://tinyurl.com/lna5x3
ttp://tinyurl.com/n7ux3v
http://tinyurl.com/lfrvn9
Another view of the église Saint-Gilles is here:
http://tinyurl.com/ncs4de
A cult of B. exists as well at Febvin-Palfart (Pas-de-Calais). See the two discussions on this illustrated, French-language page:
http://tinyurl.com/ngq5yn
Since the twelfth century there has been a chapel dedicated to B. at Pargny-Filain (Aisne) in Picardy at a spring associated with one of her miracles. It's been rebuilt several times. Here's an illustrated, French-language account (more views are at the second link at bottom):
http://tinyurl.com/l48mfo
4) Andrew of Crete (d. ca. 740). We know about A. (also Andrew of Gortyn) chiefly from his perhaps ninth-century Bios by Nicetas the Patrician (BHG 113; the basis for several later Bioi) and from his homilies and other writings. Born in Damascus, early in life he entered the monastery of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, where in time he became a notary of the Great Basilica. Sent to Constantinople in 685, he governed an orphanage and a poorhouse there. At some time between 692 and 713 A. was made bishop of Gortys (also Gortyn; the metropolitan see for Crete). In addition to his homilies he is known for his hymns, especially for his lenten Great Canon in 250 strophes. A. died on this day at Erissos on Lesbos.
An English-language translation of A.'s Great Canon, divided into four portions for lenten liturgical reading, is accessible from here:
http://tinyurl.com/24phfdg
A. as depicted ca. 1300 in a fresco attributed to Manuel Panselinos in the Protaton church on Mt. Athos:
http://tinyurl.com/yfp528t
Detail (A.):
http://tinyurl.com/yg8a8cu
A. as depicted in a somewhat degraded 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/26xxsyn
Some views of the remains of the originally Justinianic basilica of St. Titus at Gortys that was A.'s cathedral:
http://tinyurl.com/2nkww3
http://www.l2n.de/pictures/heraklion/gortys/IMG_9944_hp.jpg
http://flickr.com/photos/13293703@N00/2909344045
http://tinyurl.com/acgswm
http://flickr.com/photos/aogg/2510008510/
http://www.l2n.de/pictures/heraklion/gortys/IMG_9954_hp.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/lgu4h6
http://kreta.rovnou.cz/images/fotky/kreta-gortis-titos.jpg
Two views of the originally eleventh-century (or slightly earlier) church of A. in the village of Atsicholos in Gortyna (Arcadia prefecture), the Cretan city's homonym in the Peloponnese:
http://tinyurl.com/m5ls3f
http://tinyurl.com/mohkzp
5) Ulrich of Augsburg (d. 973). We know about U. (in Latin, Udalricus) chiefly from his late tenth-century Vita et Miracula by Gerhard of Augsburg (BHL 8359-8360) and, to a lesser degree, from the earlier eleventh-century Vita by abbot Berno of Reichenau (BHL 8362). A scion of the counts of Dillingen in Swabia he was educated at Sankt Gallen before becoming chancellor to his uncle bishop St. Adalbero of Augsburg. Upon the latter's death in 909 U. withdrew to his family's estates; he returned to Augsburg as its bishop in 923. During his lengthy episcopate he personally exercised monastic austerity and demanded the same of his household, rebuilt the monastery of St. Afra, worked to remedy losses caused by raiding Magyars and built at Augsburg a defensive wall against them, and got along very well with Otto I.
U.'s cult, fortified by miracles at his tomb, was immediate. His canonization by John XV at the Lateran in 993 is said to have been the first papal canonization. In 1187 his relics were translated to Augsburg's newly rebuilt abbey church of Sts. Ulrich and Afra (U.'s joint titulature is first recorded from 1061). Augsburg's present Basilika St. Ulrich und Afra is a late fifteenth-century building with baroque overlay. Some distance views (those at the second location are expandable):
http://www.st-ulrich-und-afra.de/
http://tinyurl.com/3d3um5
An illustrated, German-language page with expandable interior and exterior views:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basilika_St._Ulrich_und_Afra
The Sacred Destinations page on this church:
http://tinyurl.com/nska94
U.'s casket on his altar there:
http://tinyurl.com/28nxl8u
U. asleep, with St. Afra, as depicted in a later fifteenth-century panel painting (ca. 1480) kept in this church:
http://tinyurl.com/253x3d2
Three differently illustrated, German-language pages on the originally later twelfth-century Gaukirche St. Ulrich in Paderborn:
http://tinyurl.com/2ehw36z
http://tinyurl.com/2av73dq
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaukirche_St._Ulrich_%28Paderborn%29
Two further interior views:
http://tinyurl.com/23vd3ua
http://www.summorum-pontificum.de/bilder/paderborn_2.jpg
U. as depicted in a mid-thirteenth-century fresco in the church of St. Michael at St. Michael im Lungau in Austria's Land Salzburg:
http://www.burgenseite.com/faschen/st_michael_faces_5.jpg
U. is often shown in art with the fish that, when he was accused by a malicious guest of having offered him meat on Friday, miraculously appeared on the guest's plate in place of the meat that U. had served him the night before and that the guest had kept in order to make his accusation. He is so depicted at left in this fresco of ca. 1400 in the church of St. Martin at St. Martin im Lungau in Austria's Land Salzburg:
http://tinyurl.com/lzt84e
An Italian-language account of the originally fourteenth-century chiesa di San Udalrico in the _frazione_ of Corte Inferiore in Rumo (TN) in Trentino - Alto Adige:
http://tinyurl.com/33rwbcw
The German-language version of that page:
http://tinyurl.com/26u5xhw
Single views of this church:
http://tinyurl.com/2ads2od
http://www.maddalene.it/foto/detail.asp?iType=59&iPic=337
http://tinyurl.com/27lnz4d
http://tinyurl.com/2cduq5w
http://tinyurl.com/2b7hhs6
http://www.maddalene.it/foto/detail.asp?iType=59&iPic=338
This church preserves (in large part) a fresco of the Last Supper executed in 1471 by the Baschenis brothers:
http://www.maddalene.it/foto/detail.asp?iType=59&iPic=339
6) Elizabeth of Portugal (d. 1336). A grand-niece of St. Elizabeth of Hungary, E. (in Portuguese, Isabel and Isabella) was a daughter of Pedro III of Aragon and of his queen Costanza, daughter of king Manfred of Sicily. She was married at the age of twelve to king Diniz of Portugal, bore him children including his successor Alfonso IV, lived very piously, and made charitable donations to pilgrims, to the sick, to the poor, and to reformed prostitutes. After Diniz's death in 1325 E. adopted a Franciscan habit, made a pilgrimage to Compostela, and retired to a convent of Poor Clares she had founded in Coimbra. E. died at Estremòz while undertaking a diplomatic mission of peace. Her body was brought back to Coimbra, where a cult ensued. Canonized papally in 1625, E. is Coimbra's patron saint and one of the patron saints of Portugal.
Some exterior views of the Poor Clares' convento de Santa Isabel de los Reyes at Toledo, founded in the fifteenth century:
http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/7615338.jpg
http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/7638280.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/kwxjz5
http://tinyurl.com/ldyq8p
A page of mostly interior views:
http://www.pbase.com/michaval/convento_de_santa_isabel
Best,
John Dillon
(last year's post revised)
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