medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
On Friday, November 5, 2010, at 2:34 pm, I wrote:
> 1) Galaction and Episteme (d. 250 or 251, supposedly)...
G. as depicted in the earlier fourteenth-century (betw. 1335 and 1350) frescoes in the nave of 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/25mxadp
5. November is also the feast day of the following less well known saint of the Regno:
Mark of Aeca (?). This less well known saint of the Regno is a very shadowy early bishop of Aeca (also Aecae), the Roman-period predecessor of the originally early tenth-century Troia (FG) in northern Apulia, whence he is also known as M. of Troia. He first comes to light in the (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology, where under 5. November one reads _in Ecas Marci episcopi._ M. is already a figure of legend in the later eighth-century, synthesizing Passio of Sts. Donatus, Felix, and companions (the Beneventan "Twelve Brothers"; BHL 2297), which ascribes to him the recovery of the bodies of D. and F., supposedly martyred under Maximian, and their burial in his city. The similarly legendary and synthesizing eleventh- or twelfth-century Passio of St. Castrensis (BHL 1644, 1645) includes him in its roster of African bishops who survive Vandal persecution to become saints of different locales in southern Italy.
At different times in the central Middle Ages M. (commemorated either on 5. November or on 7. October [the latter is also the feast day of pope St. Mark]) was considered an early bishop of, respectively, Frigento, Benevento, and Naples in Campania and, in Abruzzo, a bishop of the Marsi (today's diocese of Avezzano). He is thought by some to be the original of Peter the Deacon's purported St. Mark of Atina in what is now southern Lazio (whose church dedicated an M. was in Peter's telling dedicated on 5. October). M.'s own undated Vita (BHL 5301) is preserved only in an early sixteenth copy taken from that great hagiographic repertory of Vitae and Passiones of south Italian local saints, the since mutilated thirteenth-century _sanctorale_ of the chapter library of what is now Bovino (FG) in northern Apulia. This transforms him into a bishop of Lucera and gives him a _dies natalis_ of 7. October. Until recently, that was M.'s principal feast day in Bovino.
Bovino claims to possess M.'s relics; guesses as to when and under what circumstances they arrived vary considerably. In the late twelfth century a church dedicated to M. and housing his putative remains was built adjoining the town's cathedral of the BVM. Dedicated on 18. May 1197 and given an external entrance of its own but also accessible by means of a stairway from within the cathedral's transept, it is now known as the cappellone ("big chapel") di San Marco. Herewith two views of the exterior portal, with bishop M. figured in the center of the portal lunette:
http://tinyurl.com/2c3sb74
http://www.prolocobovino.it/AgendaInTasca/images/P1010002.JPG
In this aerial view M.'s church is partly visible behind the cathedral's right transept:
http://tinyurl.com/2em59pm
M.'s putative relics repose here under a baroque altar; they underwent a formal recognition in 1998. For display purposes the church of Bovino uses a splendid, late eighteenth-century reliquary bust:
http://www.prolocobovino.it/AgendaInTasca/images/PICT0060.JPG
Bovino's diocesan museum houses a fifteenth-century arm reliquary of M., shown here on a poster for the museum's recent re-opening:
http://tinyurl.com/2dg83af
While we're here, two illustrated, Italian-language pages on Bovino's mostly later twelfth- and earlier thirteenth-century cathedral, now the basilica (minore) di Santa Maria Assunta (a co-cathedral of the archdiocese of Foggia-Bovino), restored in the 1930s following severe earthquake damage:
http://tinyurl.com/3xw7gp2
http://tinyurl.com/2wrag9l
Other views:
http://rete.comuni-italiani.it/foto/2008/46086/view
http://www.flickr.com/photos/21307508@N05/2081901063
http://www.ciaobovino.com/Cathedral.htm
Two of the eighth- and ninth-century carved stones re-used in the cathedral's interior (cross and doves; Daniel with lions):
http://tinyurl.com/2fdvsuu
http://tinyurl.com/27gfe8n
TAN (further to 28. March's notice of St. Mark of Atina): At Atina, the civic patron is still St. Mark the Galilean and his patronal feast on 1. October includes a ceremony at the town's principal church of Santa Maria Assunta, as seen in these views from 2008 (the building seen first is Atina's _municipio_ or city hall):
http://tinyurl.com/2dr5uxm
M.'s liturgical feast in Atina falls on 28. April, close in time to that of St. Mark the Evangelist (25. April). Atina's chiesa di San Marco (still popularly believed to have been dedicated to to M. the Galilean) was built into Roman ruins; its own ruins now incorporate the gateway to Atina's nineteenth-century muncipal cemetery:
http://tinyurl.com/2ex38qe
For more on Mark the Galilean, see Herbert Bloch, _The Atina Dossier of Peter the Deacon of Monte Cassino: A Hagiographical Romance of the Twelfth Century_ (Città del Vaticano: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1998; its Studi e testi, no. 346).
Best,
John Dillon
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