medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (11. October) is the feast day of:
1) Philip the Deacon (d. 1st cent.). P. immediately follows St. Stephen in the list of apostolically chosen deacons of Jerusalem at Acts 6:5. In Acts 8:51-3 he converts many in Samaria, including Simon Magus. In Acts 8:26-40 he travels on the road to Gaza and before he reaches Caesarea converts and baptizes an Ethiopian eunuch and official of queen Candace. In Acts 21:8-9 Paul and his companions stay at Caesarea with the preacher P. and we learn that he had four unmarried daughters who prophesied. In Jerome's day one could visit P.'s house in Caesarea and see the rooms occupied by his daughters. P. is traditionally said to have died a confessor, either in Caesarea or in Tralles.
In the medieval Latin West P. was commemorated on 6. June along with his daughters, as he also was in the RM until its revision of 2001 (when the daughters were dropped from the elogium and the commemoration was changed to today, P.'s traditional feast day in the Greek church).
2) Nicasius, Quirinus, Scubiculus, and Pientia (d. 1st cent., supposedly). N., Q., and S. (in French, Nicaise, Quirin, and Scuvicule or Égobille) are shadowy saints of the Vexin normand who were treated as martyrs when in 872 they were the subjects of an Inventio at Rouen contemporary with that of St. Audoenus (Ouen, etc.). In the also later ninth-century Martyrology of Usuard Pientia (in French, Pience) replaced S. as one of N.'s companions. Later she was to join them in a sequence of legendary Passiones (BHL 6082, etc.; not attested before the eleventh century) that makes them missionaries sent to the region by pope St. Clement I and martyred there under Domitian. In these accounts, clearly based on the Passiones of St. Dionysius (Denis) of Paris, N. is a bishop, Q. is a priest, and S. a deacon; in the night after their death by decapitation all three are said to have picked up their heads and to have walked to today's Gasny (Haute-Normandie).
At some point during the years 1079-1110 N. was added, in first position, to the catalogue of Rouen's bishops. Most of Q.'s presumed relics (as well as an arm bone of N. and some bits of S.) had already traveled to Malmédy in today's East Cantons of Belgium, where in 1042 they were accorded a formal elevation. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries N.'s cult spread fairly widely, while the others enjoyed more limited veneration. P. was connected legendarily with St. Clarus (Clair) of today's Saint-Clair-sur-Epte (Val-d'Oise) and shared his cult.
Two views of N.'s early fourteenth-century statue in the église collégiale Notre-Dame at Écouis (Eure), showing him as a partial cephalophore (Écouis' proximity to Rouen and the statue's manufacture from stone from nearby Vernon argue for this being a representation of today's N. and not his better known homonym of Reims):
http://www.collegiale-ecouis.asso.fr/photos/nicaise.JPG
http://tinyurl.com/ykotxjj
An illustrated, French-language guide to the church itself:
http://www.collegiale-ecouis.asso.fr/htm/B_la_collegiale.htm
An illustrated, French-language guide to the thirteenth- to sixteenth-century église Saint-Nicaise at Rouen (expandable views at the foot of the page):
http://tinyurl.com/2pd4pc
3) Tarachus, Probus, and Andronicus (d. ca. 305, supposedly). T., P., and A. are martyrs of Cilicia, entered under today in the (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology as martyrs of Anazarbus in Cilicia, under 27. September as martyrs of Tarsus in Cilicia, and on several other days simply as martyrs of Cilicia. Byzantine synaxaries record under 12. October (one of their other days in the [ps.-]HM) that the fifth-century bishop Auxentius of Mopsuestia erected a basilica in their honor outside that city, using relics furnished from Anazarbus. There are testimonies to their fifth- and sixth-century cult in Jerusalem and in Antioch; Constantinople had at least two churches dedicated to them.
T., P., and A. also have a legendary and synthesizing late antique Greek Passio (BHG 1574) that makes them citizens of different cities who were arrested in the Great Persecution, tortured at Tarsus and at Mopsuestia, and decapitated on 10. October (another of their days in the [ps.-]HM) at Anazarbus. A Latin translation (BHL 981) of that account underlies Usuard's elogium for them (under today) in his martyrology. Though only T. is said to have been a soldier -- and in the Passio it is made clear both that he was a _former_ soldier and that he waived the military privilege of exemption from a form of torture -- all three are customarily depicted as military saints.
The martyrdom of T., A., and P. (from left to right: P., the youthful A., and the elderly T.) as depicted in the so-called Menologion of Basil II (Città del Vaticano, BAV, Vat. gr. 1613; later tenth- or very early eleventh-century):
http://tinyurl.com/2f99r29
A. as depicted in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (betw. ca. 1312 and 1321/1322) in the nave of the monastery church of the Theotokos at Gračanica in, depending on one's view of the matter, Serbia's province of Kosovo and Metohija or the Republic of Kosovo (caution: the first of these images is off axis by 45 degrees):
http://tinyurl.com/2eb6vva
http://tinyurl.com/267ozrl
T. as depicted in the early fourteenth-century (1315-1321) mosaics of the Chora church (Kariye Camii) in Istanbul:
http://tinyurl.com/32ypufw
http://tinyurl.com/36gw5sz
A. as depicted in the early fourteenth-century (1315-1321) mosaics of the Chora church (Kariye Camii) in Istanbul:
http://tinyurl.com/yf89vb5
http://tinyurl.com/2excwnm
The martyrdom of T., A., and P. as depicted in an October calendar scene in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (betw. 1335 and 1350) of the narthex in the church of the Holy Ascension at the Visoki Dečani monastery near Peć 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/yfnzyg6
T. (in the roundel with the green background) as depicted in the mid-fourteenth-century frescoes of the arch between the intermediate and the western bay in the church of the Holy Apostles in the Patriarchate of Peć at Peć 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/yzzmns2
4) Firminus of Uzès (d. after 552). F. (in French, Firmin) was bishop of Ucetia in Gallia Narbonensis, today's Uzès (Gard) in southern France between the Gardon and the Cévennes. A friend of St. Caesarius of Arles, he took part in the councils of Orléans of 541 and 549 and in that of Paris in 552. He was also a contributor to St. Cyprian of Toulon's Life of Caesarius. In or slightly before 544 the Roman subdeacon Arator praised F. in his _Historia apostolica_ (a.k.a. _De actibus apostolorum_) as someone whose fame extended even unto Italy. The year of his death is unknown. Usuard gives today as his _dies natalis_. A cult at his tomb (presumably in the then cathedral of Uzès) is attested from the ninth century onwards.
In 1090 work commenced at Uzès on a new cathedral, dedicated to St. Theodoritus (the town's new patron). Badly damaged in the sixteenth century, that structure was replaced in the seventeenth by the present cathedral, which latter still houses F.'s relics (most of them, at least). Herewith some views of the cathedral's twelfth-century belltower, the Tour Fenestrelle:
http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/876327.jpg
http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/24616441.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/yl339vc
http://tinyurl.com/ylh4ykg
The parish church at Saint-Germain (Gard) possesses relics said to be of F. F. is the patron saint of Gordes (Vaucluse) in the Luberon, whose early eighteenth-century church is dedicated to him. Its medieval predecessor had been dedicated to the BVM.
5) Gummarus (d. later 8th cent.?). G. (in Latin also Gummarius; in Dutch also Gomarus; in French usually Gommaire; in French and English sometimes Gomer) is the traditional founder of Lier/Lierre in Belgium's province of Antwerpen/Antwerp. According to the episcopal annals of Cambrai, in 1024/1025 his body, characterized as that of a noble layman, reposed in a house of canons near Mechelen/Malines. In all probability that house was identical with the community at Lier/Lierre for whom his at least very largely legendary earliest Vita et Translatio (BHL 3694) was written at some time in the first half of the eleventh century.
This and subsequent versions present G. as a pious courtier under Pepin the Short who, returning after years of military service, restored peace to his troubled home, who was buried at his estate, and whose body was translated -- _non sine miraculis_ -- to an oratory he had founded nearby at Lier/Lierre. Some forty years later a monastery that had come into being there accorded him an Elevatio. G.'s postmortem miracles included his successful defense of the monastery's buildings from destruction during a raid by Northmen in which a priest was martyred while saying Mass. Thus far his Vita et Translatio.
Some views of Lier's/Lierre's originally later fourteenth- to mid-sixteenth-century Collegiale Sint-Gummaruskerk / église collégiale Saint-Gommaire (the jubé dates from 1536-1538):
Exterior:
http://tinyurl.com/27k37yy
http://tinyurl.com/2484bko
http://tinyurl.com/2cmydov
http://tinyurl.com/2fqym7w
http://tinyurl.com/378rm42
http://tinyurl.com/34nsll5
http://tinyurl.com/29q5f88
http://tinyurl.com/28up3od
Interior:
http://tinyurl.com/2w46w7m
http://tinyurl.com/2b9nqld
http://tinyurl.com/39tbbbv
http://www.flickr.com/photos/e3000/1535691574/
http://www.sintgummaruskerktelier.be/Foto%27s/Interieur/Dia%2003.jpg
Relics believed to be G.'s now repose in this church in the early modern reliquary shown here:
http://tinyurl.com/2enjhcz
http://tinyurl.com/2unvswn
The church is famous for its fifteenth- and sixteenth-century stained glass windows.
Prior to the Reformation the originally late fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century Westerkerk in Enkhuizen (Noord-Holland) was dedicated to G. Herewith two illustrated, Dutch-language pages on it:
http://www.omdenkhuizen.nl/5
http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westerkerk_%28Enkhuizen%29
6) Bruno I of Köln (d. 965). B. was the youngest son of Henry the Fowler and his second wife, queen St. Matilda of Ringelheim. He was educated at the cathedral school of Utrecht and, a few years after his brother Otto had become king of the Germans, at court, where he received the dignity of abbot of Lorsch. In about 940, when B. was fourteen or fifteen years old, Otto made him his chancellor. B. accompanied Otto on the latter's Italian descent of 950. In the following year he became Otto's arch-chaplain. In 953 he exchanged his chancellorial position for the archbishopric of Köln and was made a temporal lord as well with the title of duke (a responsibility and status that through numerous successors evolved into the electorate of Köln). The latter position entailed representing his brother's interests in the western reaches of the kingdom and for a while B. was also regent of the duchy of Lorraine.
B. is said to have reformed ecclesiastical discipline in his diocese; as a metropolitan he was careful to appoint his students to suffragan sees. In the year following Otto's imperial coronation in 962 he was sent to France to resolve a dispute between Lothar III and Hugues Capet. He died at Reims on this day while returning to his archdiocese; in accordance with his wishes his body was brought to Köln and laid to rest in the abbey church of St. Pantaleon. B. quickly became a saint of this house, which he had founded in 955. His Vita (BHL 1468) by Ruotger of Sankt Pantaleon lays stress on his piety and his monastic virtues. B.'s cult was confirmed papally in 1870 for the diocese of Köln at the level of Saint; he entered the RM in 2001 with the same designation.
Sankt Pantaleon was rebuilt after B.'s death first under Otto's patronage and then under that of his daughter-in-law the empress Theophano (in Western sources usually given the phonetic spelling Theophanu). It was further rebuilt in the later twelfth century. Herewith illustrated accounts of this church (English-language; German-language):
http://tinyurl.com/4j7hxm
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Pantaleon_(K%C3%B6ln)
Other sets of views (in the first of these the church is misidentified as St. Gereon):
http://tinyurl.com/462g63
http://tinyurl.com/4bkdwl
7) Gaudentius of Gniezno (d. 1006). G. (his Latin name; his Slavic one was Radim or Razdim) was a brother of St. Adalbert of Prague who was ordained priest and who accompanied him as a missionary in Prussia. G. was with his brother when the latter was murdered in 997 and was one of those who returned his body to today's Gniezno in Poland. At Rome in 999 G. was consecrated bishop of Gniezno; in 1000 he became an archbishop with metropolitan authority over the sees of Kraków, Wrocław, and Kołobrzeg. We know about him from the early Vitae of St. Adalbert of Prague and from Book IV of Thietmar of Merseburg's _Chronicon_. G. has been venerated as a saint since at least the twelfth century.
8) Meinhard of Livonia (d. 1196). We know about M. from the chronicles of Henry of Livonia and Arnold of Lübeck. He was a canon regular of Segeberg in Holstein who in the early 1180s accompanied German merchants to what is now Latvia and who there established, probably in 1884, a church at today's Ikšķile (in German, Üxküll) at the mouth of the Daugava. In 1185/86 archbishop Hartwig II of Bremen named him bishop; in 1188 by pope Clement III confirmed his see as a suffragan of Bremen. The mission made some converts but ultimately was not very successful. In the early 1190s local authorities, fearing that M. would return with a German invasion force, prevented him from leaving. M. was buried at Ikšķile; in the late fourteenth century his remains were brought to the cathedral in Riga. M.'s cult was approved papally in 1993.
Some views of Riga's originally thirteenth-century cathedral (1211-1270):
http://www.galenfrysinger.com/latvia_riga_cathedral.htm
http://tinyurl.com/4epyts
Best,
John Dillon
(last year's post lightly revised and with the addition of Gummarus)
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