medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture

Today (14. October) is the feast day of:

1)  Callistus I, pope (d. 222). C. (also Calixtus) was elected bishop of Rome in 217, succeeding pope St. Zephyrinus. Our chief sources for him are the tendentious _Philosophoumena_ or _Refutatio omnium haeresium_ of an Hippolytus who tends be called H. of Rome and the not altogether reliable _Liber pontificalis_. According to Hippolytus, C. had been born into servile status and had twice been punished for crimes. In the second instance he had been sentenced to the mines in Sardinia and probably at that time ceased to be the property of his former master, a Christian of the imperial household. Some nine or ten years after C.'s release from the mines Zephyrinus put him in charge of the Christian cemetery that still bears C.'s name.  Herewith a multi-page site on the Roman cemetery of Callistus:
http://www.catacombe.roma.it/en/dettaglio.html 

In his brief pontificate C. condemned Sabellius for heresy. Though he died under Alexander Severus, who did not persecute, by the earlier fourth century C. had come to be considered a martyr.  The _Depositio martyrum_ of the Chronographer of 354 enters under today C.'s laying to rest at a milestone that accords with the location of the cemetery of Calepodius.  The latter is given as the site of C.'s burial by both the _Liber pontificalis_ and C.'s legendary Passio (BHL 1523; oldest witness is of the ninth century and a condensed version in hexameters is in the earlier to mid-tenth-century _De triumphis Christi in Italia_ of Flodoard of Reims).  C.'s remains are said to have been translated, perhaps by pope Gregory III (731-741), to Rome's church of Santa Maria in Trastevere where later Gregory IV (827-844) gave him the honor of a re-burial in the church's apse.

In 854 relics believed to be those of C. were translated by count St. Evrardus (Everardus) of Friuli to the monastery he had founded at today's  Cysoing (Nord) in French Hainaut.  The monastery, which lasted until 1792, took C.'s name but in 892 it became a dependency of the church of Reims and his relics, _teste_ Flodoard in his _Historia ecclesiae Remensis_, were translated thither in the same year and laid to rest next to those of St. Nicasius.

Since the early fifteenth century a head thought to be C.'s has been in St. George's Chapel of Český Krumlov Castle, Český Krumlov (in German: Böhmisch Krumau) in what's now the Czech Republic:
http://tinyurl.com/3935dbt 

C. as portrayed in an earlier thirteenth-century statue on the trumeau of the central portal of the north transept of the cathédrale Notre-Dame in Reims:
http://tinyurl.com/2ev9782
http://tinyurl.com/2cwvgok

C. (third from left) as depicted in the late thirteenth-century apse mosaic (ca. 1290; attributed to Pietro Cavallini) of Rome's Santa Maria in Trastevere:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/athomeinrome/857538928/sizes/o/

An expandable view of C.'s martyrdom as depicted as in a late thirteenth-century copy of French origin of the _Legenda aurea_ (San Marino, CA, Huntington Library, ms. HM 3027, fol. 143v):
http://tinyurl.com/27jsuz9

Spurious letters of C. are included in the collection known as the False Decretals. One of these decrees fasting in each of four seasons. Here's C. promulgating this decree as depicted in an earlier fourteenth-century (ca. 1326-1350) collection of French-language saint's lives (Paris, BnF, ms. Français 185, fol. 201r):
http://tinyurl.com/24l22es

C. (at left) as depicted in an earlier fourteenth-century copy (1348) of the _Legenda aurea_ in its French-language version by Jean de Vignay (Paris, BnF, ms. Français 241, fol. 60r):
http://tinyurl.com/2dc984p

C. (at left, baptizing) as depicted in a later fifteenth-century copy (1463) of Vincent of Beauvais' _Speculum historiale_ in its French-language version by Jean de Vignay (Paris, BnF ms. Français 51, fol. 9r):
http://tinyurl.com/23juwa9

Some views of the originally late fifteenth- or early sixteenth-century (before 1511) église Saint-Calixte at Savonnières-devant-Bar (Meuse):
http://mw2.google.com/mw-panoramio/photos/medium/35804023.jpg
http://mw2.google.com/mw-panoramio/photos/medium/35803992.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/2as6fwc
http://mw2.google.com/mw-panoramio/photos/medium/35804008.jpg


2)  Lupulus of Capua (?). This less well known saint of the Regno was prominently represented among the local saints of the now lost apse mosaics of the late fifth-/early sixth-century church of St. Priscus at today's San Prisco (CE), an extramural survivor of Old Capua, where he was also figured in the cupola mosaics together with St. Rufus of Capua. He appears in mangled entries for today and for tomorrow in the (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology. That early eighth-century inheritor of late antique Campanian festal practices, the Calendar of St. Willibrord from Epternach, records him under tomorrow (15. October) along with other Campanian saints. Under the name form Libulus he is entered under tomorrow by Rabanus Maurus and by Notker. Later medieval calendars of the diocese of Capua also have L.'s feast on 15. October.

Notices from the eleventh and twelfth centuries of a church dedicated to L. at Grottola in Campania and of a town called Sanctus Lupulus in northern Puglia testify to the dissemination of his cult.

Some views of a structure with which L. presumably will have been familiar, the amphitheatre of Roman-period Capua, now the Anfiteatro Campano at Santa Maria Capua Vetere (CE):
http://tinyurl.com/yzcec2d
http://tinyurl.com/4fr6xh
http://tinyurl.com/3lvthw
http://tinyurl.com/38zeec4
http://tinyurl.com/yn7nhp
http://tinyurl.com/39uztc4


3)  Gaudentius of Rimini (?). G. (in Italian, Gaudenzo or Gaudenzio) is a legendary early bishop of Rimini and that city's patron saint. His two Vitae are both very late (no witnesses earlier than the sixteenth century) and somewhat contradictory. They agree that G. was originally from Ephesus, that after voyaging to Rome he was sent by a pope to Rimini, that he there he preached, operated miracles, and made many converts, that he died on 14. October, and that he was buried in an extramural church dedicated to him. One Vita (BHL 3276) makes him a martyr under Diocletian; this accords, more or less, with G.'s mentions in Vitae of St. Mercurialis of Forlì and of St. Marinus of San Marino. The other Vita (BHL 3275) places his activity in third quarter of the fourth century, has him convert Arians to the Catholic faith, and has him martyred in ca. 360 by imperial officials.

G. as depicted on a grosso from Rimini of the communal period (1265-1385):
http://tinyurl.com/26tlvnp


4)  Donatianus of Reims (d. later 4th cent.).  We are uninformed about the historical D. (in Dutch, Donaas; in French, Donatien) other than that in the tenth century he was sixth in the by then at least more-than-a-century-old list of the bishops of Reims.  According to Flodoard of Reims in that century (_Historia Remensis ecclesiae_, 1. 5), his relics were then being honored in the maritime portions of the diocese of Noyon-Tournai.  One of those portions includes today's Bruges/Brugge, where relics said to be D.'s have been venerated since the ninth century, at first in the castle's chapel dedicated to the BVM and to D. and from ca. 900 in a larger church (itself rebuilt after a fire in 1184) on the same site that served as the city's cathedral until its demolition in 1799.

It was in D.'s chapel that Baldwin II, count of Flanders, took refuge from the Normans in 892 and in his church that Bl. Charles the Good, count of Flanders, was murdered in 1127.  Here's a model of the Carolingian-period church:
http://www.tanchelm.nl/images/tijd2.jpg

From 1931 to 1990 excavations on the site revealed remains of the old cathedral's Carolingian-period foundations.  Herewith some views showing the remains incorporated into Bruges'/Brugge's Crowne Plaza Hotel (one part is now used as a dining room):
http://www.pbase.com/weathercam_brugge/image/78975858
http://www.pbase.com/weathercam_brugge/image/78975893
http://tinyurl.com/ygvnd5f
http://www.pbase.com/weathercam_brugge/image/78975867
http://www.pbase.com/weathercam_brugge/image/78975863
http://image.pegs.com/images/cp/ostbe/ostbe_b30.jpg

A view of the much rebuilt later medieval church (at right) in Marcus Gerards' city map of 1562:
http://tinyurl.com/yleaeln

D., whose putative relics were translated into the city's present cathedral of the Holy Savior in 1834, has long been Bruges'/Brugge's principal patron saint.  Here he is at left in Jan van Eyck's Madonna and Child with canon Paele (1436), formerly on the high altar of D.'s cathedral and now in Brugge's/Bruges' Groeninge Museum / Musée Groeninge:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Jan_van_Eyck_069.jpg
http://www.wga.hu/art/e/eyck_van/jan/21paele/21paele0.jpg
Detail (D.):
http://www.wga.hu/art/e/eyck_van/jan/21paele/21paele1.jpg
D. (at left) as depicted in the Master of the St. Lucy Legend's Lamentation Triptych (ca. 1475), now in the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid :
http://obrechtmass.com/explore/altarpiecewebsize.jpg
D.'s reliquary in a recent procession:
http://tinyurl.com/yl9h2d9


5)  Fortunatus of Todi (d. perh. mid-6th cent.). We know about F. solely from some incidents recounted by pope St. Gregory the Great in his _Dialogi_ (1. 10). A potent exorcist and thaumaturge and a defender of the church, he was in his old age bishop of Todi during some part of Justinian's war of reconquest of Italy from the Goths. G. is Todi's patron saint.

Some views of Todi's Tempio di San Fortunato (begun in 1292):
http://www.casaleulivi.com/files/images/Todi-panoramica.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/64glh6
http://www.todi.net/fortunato.htm
http://www.moveaboutitaly.com/umbria/todi_san_Fortunato_it.html
http://tinyurl.com/kl6uj
Interior:
http://tinyurl.com/onxkt
http://www.thais.it/architettura/Gotica/HR/345.htm
http://www.thais.it/architettura/Gotica/HR/346.htm
San Fortunato houses an arm reliquary of F. ascribed to Cataluccio di Pietro (active, 1361-1419):
http://tinyurl.com/2a8dweq
The Italia nell'Arte Medievale page on this church :
http://tinyurl.com/25gykqk
Further views of architectural and pictorial details (can be slow to load):
http://tinyurl.com/yfw9f9n


6)  Angadrisma (d. ca. 695).  We know about A. (also Angadresima; in French, Angadrême) chiefly from Aigradus' Vita of St. Ansbertus of Rouen (BHL 520) written ca. 700.  This tells us that she was of the high nobility of Merovingian Francia, that her family originated in the territory of Thérouanne, that a cousin was St. Lambertus of Fontenelle, and that though she wished to remain virginal she was betrothed by her father to the young Ansbertus (who of course had not yet entered religion).  A. prayed that her beauty be turned to ugliness through what the text calls leprosy.  Her prayer was granted and her visage became ulcerated.  Doctors were called in but the more they worked on her the more deformed her face appeared.  Finally the marriage was called off by mutual consent of the two families.

A. then betook herself to St. Audoenus (Ouen) of Rouen and with his blessing became a nun, whereupon her physical beauty was restored to her.  She entered the monastery of Oröer near Beauvais, where in time she became abbess and where she died, aged more than eighty years.  Thus far Aigradus.  A.'s cult, thought to have been more or less immediate, survived Oroër's destruction by Northmen in 851; her putative remains were preserved at Beauvais (they are now in the cathedral).  She has a Vita of her own (BHL 453), whose only witness is of the eleventh century.

In 1321 A.'s veneration at Beauvais was renewed by its then bishop, the Norman noble Jean de Marigny (d. 1350; younger brother of Enguerrand de Marigny, chamberlain to Philip the Fair), who fixed the day of her feast in his diocese as 14. October.  In 1472 her shrine was displayed on the ramparts during Beauvais' successful resistance to the siege placed on it by Charles the Bold.  In the following year Louis XI decreed that A. be honored in an annual procession in gratitude for her aid in saving the city.  The number of late fifteenth- and sixteenth-century statues of A. surviving in Beauvais testifies in part to her civic popularity at this time.

Remains of A.'s monastery are said to exist underneath the sixteenth-century église Saint-Martin at Oroër (Oise), shown here:
http://tinyurl.com/2g8dse

A.'s chapel in Beauvais' cathédrale Saint-Pierre is graced by the late sixteenth-century statue of her seen here in increasingly closer views:
Distance view (lighted figure to the viewer's right of the choir, facing viewer):
http://tinyurl.com/39hemg:
Closer view, showing A. to the left of her chapel:
http://tinyurl.com/2mdl5z
Much closer view, showing A.'s face darkened to represent her "leprosy":
http://tinyurl.com/2ph3hh

Another statue of A. (late fifteenth- or sixteenth-century) in the cathedral of Beauvais:
http://tinyurl.com/3a3xp8
http://tinyurl.com/32j7qo
http://tinyurl.com/2pglgy

A couple of illustrated sites/pages on Beauvais' cathedral:
http://www.cathedrale-beauvais.fr/index.htm
http://www.romanes.com/Beauvais/


7)  Dominicus Loricatus (d. 1060).  We know about D. (in Italian, Domenico Loricato) from writings by St. Peter Damian, chief among them a closely posthumous little Vita (BHL 2239) written in response to a request from pope Alexander II for some hagiographic texts suitable for public reading.  According to Peter, D. was educated from childhood for the priesthood, which which latter he attained only to abandon it when he discovered that that his ordination might well have been tainted by simony on the part of his parents.  Turning to monasticism, he joined a Camaldolese community and devoted himself to meditation and an ascetic lifestyle.  Soon he was granted permission to become an hermit on the monastery's premises.  There he began the penitential practices for which he is known, in particular the wearing over his bare flesh of a mail shirt (_lorica_) that gave him his byname.   

D. was transferred to the Camaldolese house at Fonte Avellana at about the same time that Peter settled there.  The two became friends and Peter, specifying various of D.'s more extreme self-mortification and other penitential techniques, was later to call D. his teacher and his master.  When several years later Peter founded a new monastery, dedicated to the Most Holy Trinity, on the Marchigian side of Monte San Vicino D. was chosen to be its prior.  With the exception of a brief a period when he was back at Fonte Avellana and then prior at the monastery of St. Aemilianus at Congiuntoli in today's Scheggia e Pascelupo (PG) in Umbria, D. spent the remainder of his life at this house.

Thanks at least in part to Peter's Vita, D.'s cult was immediate.  In 1302 his relics were translated to the monastery church (which by this time had taken his name); since the eighteenth century they have reposed in a succession of churches dedicated to St. Anne in nearby Frontale, a _frazione_ of Apiro (MC) in the Marche.

Medieval parts of Fonte Avellana, some going back to D.'s own day, are visible in this Italian-language virtual visit (click on the outlines for views of individual spaces):
http://www.fonteavellana.it/it/home/monastero/visita.html

The ex-abbey of Sant'Emiliano at Congiuntoli has a mostly twelfth- and early thirteenth-century appearance.  An expandable view is here:
http://tinyurl.com/2mac7j
And a similar view is here:
http://tinyurl.com/yhm7jdp

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

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