medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (25. December) is the feast day of:
1) The Nativity of Jesus Christ. Good cheer to all!
The Nativity as depicted in the late tenth- or very early eleventh-century so-called Menologion of Basil II (Città del Vaticano, BAV, cod. Vat. gr. 1613):
http://tinyurl.com/28c3nlz
The Nativity as depicted in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (1330s) of the church of the Hodegetria 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/2fbgewt
Expandable detail views of that portrayal are here:
http://tinyurl.com/y94vpvl
Perhaps others on this list have Nativity images that they would wish to share.
2) Anastasia of Sirmium (d. ca. 304, supposedly). A. is a martyr of Sirmium in Pannonia, today's Sremska Mitrovica in Serbia. Her cult was brought to Rome before the development of her romance-like, late antique Passio (BHL 401). The latter is a lengthy and complicated attempt to provide a narrative for the dedicatee of Rome's titular and stational church of Sant'Anastasia, where in the sixth century, when it was still just the _titulus Anastasiae_, A. was already celebrated, as she still is, at the second Mass on Christmas (the Mass at dawn). A noteworthy recent contribution to the study of A.'s cult is Paola Francesca Moretti's _La Passio Anastasiae. Introduzione, testo critico, traduzione_ (Roma: Herder, 2006). An English-language review of that is here:
http://tinyurl.com/y9pjwmu
In the heavily restored procession of the virgin martyrs (ca. 561) along the north wall of Ravenna's basilica di Sant'Apollinare Nuovo A. follows Daria and precedes Justina. In this view she's second from left:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/pelegrino/4694161707/
A.'s martyrdom as depicted in the late tenth- or very early eleventh-century so-called Menologion of Basil II (Città del Vaticano, BAV, cod. Vat. gr. 1613):
http://tinyurl.com/2c4azk7
A. has been venerated since the early Middle Ages as a healer of the effects of poison. In that role (in Greek, A. _pharmakolytria_), for which she has a separate Passio (BHG 81; earliest witness is of the ninth century), she is widely depicted holding a medicine bottle, as here in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (1330s) of the church of the Hodegetria 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/2ccv8bb
or here in a thirteenth- or fourteenth-century fresco in the narthex of the originally twelfth-century church of the Panagia Phorbiotissa at Asinou (Nicosia prefecture) in the Republic of Cyprus (scroll around to the right; she's just past St. George [who in turn is just past St. Mamas on his lion]):
http://cyprus.arounder.com/asinou_church/CY000008416.html
(there's a black-and-white photograph of this portrait at p. 95 of Michael Angold, ed.,_Eastern Christianity_ [= _The Cambridge History of Christianity_, vol. 5; Cambridge Univ.Pr., 2008])
or in this fourteenth- or fifteenth-century icon from Thessaloniki, now in the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg:
http://tinyurl.com/2cz9zws
For a brief overview of A. and her cult in the Byzantine world, see Jane Baun, _Tales from Another Byzantium:
Celestial Journey and Local Community in the Medieval Greek Apocrypha_ (Cambridge Univ. Pr., 2007), pp. 117-120, available here for those with good access to Google Books:
http://tinyurl.com/24zpb7k
Orthodox churches celebrate A. on 22. December.
A. as depicted in a later thirteenth-century Book of Hours from Liège (Den Haag, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, ms. 76 G 17):
http://tinyurl.com/38fs4tw
A. in prison (at left) 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. 95v):
http://tinyurl.com/2e6oqa5
The abbey church of Santa Maria in Sylvis, an eighth-century foundation (762) at today's Sesto al Règhena (PN) in Friuli-Venezia Giulia, shelters in its crypt a sarcophagus of St. Anastasia. Herewith a distance view, followed by a close-up:
http://tinyurl.com/9mwaz5
http://flickr.com/photos/renzodionigi/2930600389/sizes/l/
Considered a masterpiece of Lombard sculpture, it may be a reworked abbatial throne.
While we're here, some illustrated pages on this abbey:
http://www.prosesto.org/inglese-abbazia.htm
http://users.libero.it/abatermanno/
This page has some very nice expandable interior views of the church, showing some of the frescoes:
http://www.natisone.it/messe/archivio/messe323.htm
This blog post offers other views, also expandable, of the abbey (views of the church mostly towards the end):
http://tinyurl.com/a63jj7
Further views, also expandable and mostly of frescoes:
http://www.lucabaradello.it/reghena.html
The monastery dedicated to empress St. Theophano and to A. Pharmakolytria at today's Vassilika (Chalkidiki prefecture) in northern Greece claims to be an earlier sixteenth-century successor to one founded by St. Theophano in the 880s and likewise dedicated to A. Rebuilt in the nineteenth century following its destruction in the Greek War of Independence, it preserves what is said to be A.'s skull.
A small Greek monastery dedicated to A. near Matino (LE) on the Salentine Peninsula in Apulia is first attested from 1099; in the later Middle Ages it was a dependency of the larger Greek house of San Mauro near Gallipoli. The monastery was dissolved in the fifteenth century but its chapel survived until the seventeenth century when it was replaced by a fairly standard rural church. A fairly recent study is Aldo De Bernart, _Una fondazione bizantina nel basso Salento. Santa Anastasia a Matino_ (Galatina: Congedo, 1990).
A more substantial deep southern dedication to A. is the cathedral of Santa Severina (KR) in Calabria, built from 1274 to 1295 over an early eleventh-century predecessor and repeatedly rebuilt from the seventeenth century to the early twentieth:
http://tinyurl.com/24pfuzp
http://tinyurl.com/236w9r8
The adjacent eighth- or ninth-century baptistery (not its original function) preserves an early medieval baptismal font. Herewith an exterior view of this recently restored structure, considered the oldest surviving building from Byzantine Calabria (the entrance shown is a late medieval addition):
http://tinyurl.com/aakvs
An Italian-language account with several greatly expandable views at the foot of the page:
http://tinyurl.com/2af35kx
A brief video with views from before and after the baptistery's recent interior renovation:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8hecvvZKio
The same is true for Motta Sant'Anastasia (CT) in eastern Sicily (in the first view, that's Mt. Etna in the background):
http://tinyurl.com/7dh8zy
http://www.babbidamotta.it/ingiro/img24.jpg
http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/19169510.jpg
The 'Motta' part of its name is the equivalent of French 'motte' and has the same basic meaning. The most probable explanation of the 'Sant'Anastasia' part is that it too once referred to the eminence upon which the town sits and that its original form, in Greek, was Anastasis (in this instance not Resurrection but rather the more generic Upstanding). In Sicilian Arabic it was Nastasiah. The conversion to a "saintly" toponym, already attested in the eleventh century, will have been analogous to the development of Santa Severina from ancient Siberene. Although A. is indeed the town's patron saint, her relic in its principal church (now dedicated to Our Lady of the Rosary) arrived only in 1703, officially replacing an earlier one dubiously claimed to have been brought to the town in 1408.
The castle is really a Norman keep, constructed between 1070 and 1074 and given to the bishop of Catania in 1091. In the later Middle Ages it became a baronial possession. Renovated in the fifteenth century, it was restored in the twentieth and now serves as a hall for gatherings and special events. Some views follow:
http://tinyurl.com/236e3ed
http://tinyurl.com/2b2j9by
http://www.mondimedievali.net/Glossario/mottasanast01.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/2c9a23h
This is how the building appeared in the early twentieth century, when the town had just acquired it from the former baronial owners:
http://tinyurl.com/dn8wh
The large building near the castle (as seen in the last several views) is Motta Sant'Anastasia's originally thirteenth(?)-century chiesa matrice (principal church) di Maria Santissima del Rosario, greatly rebuilt in the early modern period.
The chiesa di Sant'Anastasia in Tissi (SS) in northwestern Sardinia is originally of the twelfth or early thirteenth century but was expanded in the seventeenth. Herewith a brief, Italian-language account and some exterior views (most are slightly expandable):
http://tinyurl.com/a79x42
http://www.arketipoweb.com/Il_territorio_di_Tissi/10_01.htm
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sandropatrizia/779807290/
At Zadar (Italian: Zara) in Croatia, A. is the principal patron saint (feast day: 15. January). The city's italianate cathedral of Sv. Stosija (S. Anastasia), housing a sarcophagus containing A.'s supposed remains (translated from Constantinople), was built in two phases, one in the twelfth century and one in the thirteenth. The facade, incorporating an earlier rose window under the smaller upper one, dates from 1324; the belltower is chiefly modern. The church was leveled by bombing in World War II; most of what one sees today is therefore reconstruction. Herewith a few exterior views:
http://tinyurl.com/yatcsus
http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/25971630.jpg
http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/24440374.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/y899lh9
Apse view (the polygonal church on the left is Sv. Donat):
http://sinjal.hr/wp-content/gallery/izleti/zadar_donat.jpg
Interior view:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/paco_calvino/455584823/sizes/l/
One of A.'s Passiones has her martyred on the island of Palmaria. This is probably the island anciently so called in the Pontine Islands off the coast of southern Lazio; its name today is Palmarola. But there are other candidates: the Palmaria off Portovenere (SP) in southern Liguria and Palmaia off Piombino (LV) in Tuscany. An Anastasia has been venerated in coastal Tuscany since at least 1085, when the bishop of Populonia translated to Pisa the remains of a saint of this name. At Piombino, where today's A. is the patron saint, her cult is apparently at least as old as the thirteenth century. Also originally from the thirteenth century is the cappella di Sant'Anastasia in the castle of Lerici (SP) near Portovenere. Here's a view of that chapel:
http://tinyurl.com/ycbf37p
Verona's largest "gothic" church is the formerly Dominican pile popularly known as Santa Anastasia after its original dedication as well as that of a predecessor church on the same site. Begun in the late thirteenth century, since 1307 it has honored St. Peter Martyr as well and the official name of its parish is San Pietro da Verona in Sant'Anastasia. Completed (except for the facade) in the fifteenth century, it was restored in 1878-1881. A detailed, Italian-language account of it and of the adjacent San Giorgetto is here:
http://tinyurl.com/7r63z
An English-language account with several panoramas (use your mouse to stop and proceed at your own speed) and with some static views at the foot of the page:
http://www.verona.com/en/guida-verona/chiesa-di-santa-anastasia/
Some exterior views (incl. the fifteenth-century belltower):
http://tinyurl.com/b6fxt
http://www.froehlich.priv.at/galerie/verona04/original/stf316.html
Front view, with San Pietro Martire (until 1424, San Giorgio; popularly, still San Giorgetto) at left:
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immagine:Santanastasiaverona.jpg
http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/17154035.jpg
Main portal, sculptural details and faded frescoing:
http://www.aboutromania.com/verona9.html
http://tinyurl.com/385dtyshttp://www.shakespeareinitaly.it/anastasiaverona.JPG
The portal was once adorned with fifteenth-century reliefs of scenes from Peter Martyr's life; two of these remain:
http://tinyurl.com/yjg9mrc
A restored Peter Martyr on the trumeau:
http://www.verona.com/index.cfm?page=immagini_dettaglio&id_immagine=248
Some interior views (most are expandable):
http://tinyurl.com/m9q8b
http://tinyurl.com/8ahky8
http://tinyurl.com/nd8s4
http://tinyurl.com/rfa2m
http://tinyurl.com/mjr8x
The Italia nell'Arte Medievale page on this church (but the site, alas, is still off-line):
http://tinyurl.com/ya4odtp
3) Peter the Venerable (Bl.; d. 1156). Abbot of Cluny from 1152, he befriended Peter Abelard and through his writings fought heresy, Judaism, and Islam. In the latter context, he commissioned a Latin translation of the Qur'an.
For visual interest, herewith some views, etc. of what remains of the abbey at Cluny:
http://romanes.com/Cluny/
http://www.art-roman.net/cluny/cluny.htm
http://www.art-roman.net/cluny/cluny2.htm
http://www.art-roman.net/cluny/cluny3.htm
http://architecture.relig.free.fr/cluny1.htm
http://www.sacred-destinations.com/france/cluny-abbey.htm
http://www.kunsttrip.nl/kerken/cluny/cluny.htm
4) Jacopone of Todi (Bl.; d. ca. 1306). Jacopo dei Benedetti (_Jacopone_ is a nickname; an English-language equivalent would be 'Big Jim') was a lawyer who after the sudden death of his wife gave away his wealth and became a penitent, first on his own and later as a Franciscan tertiary. An adherent of the Spiritual party, he declared Boniface VIII's election to have been invalid. For that he was not only excommunicated but also imprisoned for the remainder of B.'s pontificate. J. is best known for his numerous _laude_ (hymns of praise) written in Umbrian vernacular for the use of his order. The evidence for the frequently encountered assertion that J. was the author or probable author of the _Stabat mater dolorosa_ is late and unconvincing.
J. died on this day at the Poor Clares' convent of San Lorenzo at the Umbrian town of Collazzone, not far from Todi. He was buried at the Franciscan convent of Monstesanto (or Montecristo) in Todi. In 1596 J.'s remains were reburied beneath the main altar of Todi's Franciscan church of San Fortunato. Here's a view of his memorial there (with what is now viewed as an error in the month of J.'s death):
http://tinyurl.com/279vxy5
J. has yet either to achieve formal beatification or an entry in the RM. The Franciscan Martyrology commemorates him under today.
J. as depicted by Paolo Uccello (d. 1475) in the cathedral of Prato (PO) in Tuscany:
http://tinyurl.com/2jpzr2
Best,
John Dillon
(last year's post revised)
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