medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (25. September) is the feast day of:
1) Cleophas (d. 1st cent.). C. (also Clopas or Clophas) is the named disciple traveling to Emmaus to whom the newly resurrected Jesus reveals Himself in Lk 24:13-31. If he is also the C. who at John 19:25 is the husband of Mary the sister of the BVM (Mary of Cleophas), then he is probably the father of Jesus' "brothers" James the Less et al. In St. Jerome's day what was said to have been C.'s house had been transformed into a church.
2) Firminus I of Amiens (d. later 3d cent., supposedly). Amiens has two sainted bishops named F. (in French and in Spanish, Firmin or Fermin). Today's F. is a legendary martyr with a Vita that's thought to be of the fifth or sixth century and that exists, apart from several briefer versions characterized as epitomes, in two versions (BHL 3002 and 3003), of which the latter is first attested from the tenth century and the former is first attested from the twelfth. According to these accounts, F. was born at Pamplona of noble, pagan parents who later became Christian thanks to the missionary work of St. Saturninus (Sernin, Cernin) of Toulouse. F. was instructed in the faith by a priest named Honestus who baptized him. Afterwards he entered the clergy of Toulouse, where he was ordained priest and later consecrated bishop.
Still according to these accounts, F.'s episcopal activity took place first in Pamplona and later as an evangelist in Aquitaine, Auvergne, and Anjou. He came to the attention of a Roman governor, who had him beaten with rods and then released. Thereafter F. settled at Amiens, where he made many converts and after many years was caught up in a persecution, refused to apostasize, and was executed by decapitation on this day. An also somewhat legendary Inventio of his remains is said to have occurred in the seventh century (BHL 3008; first witness is of the tenth century). The oldest datable witnesses to the cult F. the martyr are the later ninth-century Usuard and Wandelbert of Prüm.
By the tenth century today's F. and his also rather legendary successor Firminus II (a confessor; said in _his_ Vita to have been descended from one of the converts of Firminus I) had clearly differentiated cults at Amiens, each with a principal feast and a translation feast). Today's F. had an altar in Amiens' cathedral in 1217 and an Office several times revised in diocesan breviaries of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Not altogether surprisingly, today's F. also has a major cult at Pamplona, first attested from 1186 when Pamplona's then bishop received relics of F. from his counterpart of Amiens. At Pamplona F.'s cult is associated with the Running of the Bulls: in local tradition he was martyred in the same fashion as Saturninus had been: dragged to death by an enraged bull.
Here's a view of the three portals of the West front of Amiens' originally thirteenth-century cathedral of Notre-Dame:
http://tinyurl.com/47nb9j
The portal on the left (north portal, west front) is called that of F. (presumably today's F., as he's the major of the two homonyms). Here's a better view of him on its trumeau:
http://tinyurl.com/53uteo
In the cathedral the early sixteenth-century tomb of Adrien de Hénencourt in the choir has wooden carvings (before 1527) of scenes from F.'s Vita and F.'s Inventio. See the eight expandable views towards the bottom of this page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Fermin
An F. venerated anciently in England may be today's saint. Herewith a couple of post-Conquest churches at older sites:
a) The seemingly originally twelfth- and thirteenth-century St Firmin's Church, Thurlby by Bourne (Lincs):
http://tinyurl.com/4unhxv
http://tinyurl.com/y8jg9pz
http://tinyurl.com/25cpmhe
b) The originally thirteenth- and fourteenth-century church of St Firmin at North Crawley (Bucks):
http://www.waymarking.com/waymarks/WM4HNJ
3) Paul, Tatta, Sabinianus, Maximus, Rufus, and Eugenius (d. early 4th cent.?). This group of martyrs of Damascus has been entered under today in the RM since Baronio's time as a husband and wife and their four sons; it is not clear precisely what B.'s source was. P., S., and T. (also Tata) are entered under today in the Synaxary of Constantinople as martyrs of Damascus without indication of date. They are characterized there as _gnesioi adelphoi_, which probably means (since the legitimacy of their birth would not have been an issue) that they were figurative siblings. That datum in turn suggests that this synaxary entry was informed by a lost Passio, perhaps the Greek-language original of their Arabic-language one preserved in the earlier fourteenth-century Codex sinaiticus arabicus 395.
A Syriac Passio preserved in a manuscript of the ninth century (the newer portion of London, BL, Add. MS 14651, a palimpsest) is reported to present the group as martyrs under Maximian. A kanon (long hymn) in their honor has been attributed to Stephen the Sabaite (d. 796).
P., S., and T. as depicted (at left and center; at right, St. Euphrosyne of Alexandria) in September calendar portraits in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (betw. 1335 and 1350) of the narthex in the church of the Holy Ascension at the Visoki Deèani monastery near Peæ in, depending on one's view of the matter, either the Republic of Kosovo or Serbia's province of Kosovo and Metohija:
http://tinyurl.com/257ot9z
4) Solemnis (d. late 5th or very early 6th cent.). We first hear of S. (also Sollemnis, Solennis, etc.; in French, Solenne, Solein, etc.) from St. Gregory of Tours, who narrates (_In gloria confessorum_, 21) his inventio at a monastery at today's Luynes (Indre-et-Loire) followed by healing miracles at his tomb.
In apparently the eighth century an S. whom some identify with Gregory's S. and whom others do not received a legendary Vita (BHL 7816) presenting him as a royally appointed bishop of Chartres who blesses the still pagan Clovis with the sign of the cross to insure that he will be able to conquer his enemies and who when Clovis returns victorious baptizes him, thoughtfully associating St. Remigius of Reims in the ceremony that he, S., conducts. After a lengthy episcopate during which he cures a man born deaf, dumb, and blind and converts many to the faith through his preaching, S. dies on a day that according to which witness one is reading is either 24. or 25. September. At his death it seems to some that they saw a dove fly out from his mouth. A thief proclaims S. a saint, a miracle occurs at S.'s bier, and miracles continue at his tomb. Thus far this Vita.
How S.'s body subsequently wound up at the future Luynes in the diocese of Tours is never explained. A rather evasive Translation account (BHL 7820) whose oldest witnesses are dated to the fourteenth century purports to recount S.'s subsequent translation from the future Luynes back to the diocese of Chartres, where they are interred at Blois in a church of St. Peter. In the early eleventh century -- to judge from the archaeology of the site -- a small church at Blois believed to house S.'s relics was expanded and converted into the church of a canonry dedicated to him, Blois' collégiale Saint-Solenne. The latter received modifications in the twelfth and fifteenth centuries and was rebuilt in 1544 and in 1678; in 1697, with the erection of the diocese of Blois, it changed its titulature along with its rank and became the cathédrale Saint-Louis. Herewith some views of its partly eleventh- and twelfth-century crypte Saint-Solenne:
http://tinyurl.com/ybuf4bo
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3325/3438878068_dc68d67631_b.jpg
http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/2J7zr64gmArDphZvd0bduQ
Views of the twelfth-/sixteenth-century tower and sixteenth-century porch:
http://tinyurl.com/ydnshrj
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3411/3279174532_ed593a995f_b.jpg
Two views of S.'s early thirteenth-century window at the cathédrale Notre-Dame at Chartres:
http://tinyurl.com/y8n4xxs
http://tinyurl.com/y8q9scc
On the right pillar of the right portal of south porch of Chartres cathedral, Remigius is portrayed anointing Clovis and S. is depicted blessing him. Expandable images of these scenes are reachable from thumbnails in the top row here:
http://tinyurl.com/y9jqkvm
In the later Middle Ages S. was often celebrated on 24. September.
5) Aurelia and Neomisia (Neomasia, Noemisia), virgins (d. 9th cent. ?). According to their Passion and Translation to Anagni (BHL 817m), today's less well known saints of the Regno were sisters from somewhere in Asia Minor who made a pilgrimage first to the holy places in Palestine and then to major shrines in the West. Traveling south from Rome on the Via Latina, they were captured by Muslims who had besieged Capua and were beaten with rods to within an inch of their lives. A providential thunderstorm allowing them to escape, they made their way to what seems to have been today's Macerata (CE) in Campania, where they settled down and died in peace on 25. September of some unknown year. Venerated by inhabitants of the area, A. and N. were interred in a local oratory. During the papacy of St. Leo IX (1049-54) they were translated to the cathedral of Anagni (FR) in southern Lazio. Thus far the Passio.
BHL 817m is an obviously legendary document from which the Bollandists elected to print in the _Acta Sanctorum_ only brief extracts. It survives in a single early fourteenth-century manuscript (BAV, Chigianus C. VIII. 235) and forms the basis for these saints' Office at Anagni. Though in 841 there _was_ a destructive Muslim assault on old Capua (today's Santa Maria Capua Vetere), the Bollandists (BHL Suppl. 2 [1986], p. 106) hesitantly date A. and N. to "saec. XI (?)". The eleventh century seems to be the time when their cult first comes to light in our surviving records. When Anagni's present cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta was first built in the late eleventh and very early twelfth centuries, relics of A. and N. were placed alongside those of St. Secundina under an altar dedicated to her in the crypt of St. Magnus.
The cult of A. and N. was confirmed papally in 1903. In 2001 they were dropped from the RM. I don't know whether they're still celebrated at Anagni. Some Orthodox churches have adopted their cult and celebrate them today.
In these views of a fresco from 1324 in the aforementioned crypt, female saints often identified as A. and N. are shown flanking the cathedral's builder, bishop St. Peter of Anagni (also P. of Salerno and, with doubtful accuracy, P. de principibus; d. 1105):
http://www.fiab-onlus.it/staffett/im15/19.jpg
http://i42.tinypic.com/17vl2g.jpg
A closer view of the fresco:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3170/2309201153_0a2c3a5df7_b.jpg
A. and N. in another pair of frescoes in the crypt at Anagni:
A.:
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2132/2309944252_8da75c0992_b.jpg
N.:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3055/2309945034_95b5b503c4_b.jpg
6) Sergius of Radonezh (d. 1392). We know about the monastic founder and reformer of Russian monastic life S. from his monumental Life by Epiphanius the Wise (d. ca. 1420), a text that has generated numerous re-workings. According to Epiphanius (who was a monk of S.'s principal foundation northeast of Moscow), S., who had been baptized as Bartholomew, was the not at all academically inclined son of Russian boyar couple who when he was about fifteen years of age lost their lands in the vicinity of Rostov and removed to Radonezh in the principality of Moscow. Impoverished, the parents became agricultural workers and died when S. was about twenty. S. (at this point still B.) and his older brother Stephen, who was already a monk, then went into the wilderness and established an hermitage with a church dedicated to the Trinity.
Stephen returned to monastic life but S. stayed on and at the age of thirty-three took the monastic habit and the name Sergius. After a few years, when he had attracted twelve ascetic companions, S. converted the hermitage into a lavra. In 1354, with the support both of the metropolitan of Moscow and the patriarch of Constantinople, S.'s community became cenobitic under a version of the Stoudite Rule. It became an influential model for others (some of which claimed foundation by S.) and S., who is reported to have declined an offer to succeed as metropolitan of Moscow, became widely known as a holy man. He died on this day at the age of seventy-eight and was buried in the monastery's principal church of the Holy Trinity.
S. was officially made a patron of the Muscovite state in 1422 and his monastery of Trinity became a leading institution of the Russian church. Herewith a view of the originally earlier fifteenth-century (1422 onward) Trinity cathedral of the Trinity-Saint Sergius monastery (Troitse Sergiyeva lavra) in Sergiyev Posad (Moscow oblast):
http://tinyurl.com/2cvwtmy
Andrei Rublev is recorded as having painted in this church in 1425-1427. Depending on the date assigned to it, his icon of the Trinity is thought probably to have been painted either for this church or for its predecessor:
http://tinyurl.com/ywo47k
S. was glorified in the mid-fifteenth century. Here he is as depicted, with scenes from his Life, in a late fifteenth-century icon in the Trinity-Saint Sergius monastery's Trinity cathedral:
http://tinyurl.com/32k7hzu
and in an earlier sixteenth-century icon now in the Andrei Rublev Museum of Early Russian Art, Moscow:
http://tinyurl.com/39e3rx9
Best,
John Dillon (last year's post revised and with the additions of Paul, Tatta, Sabinianus, Maximus, Rufus, and Eugenius and Sergius of Radonezh)
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