medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (2. December) is the feast day of:
1) Bibiana (?). B. is a very poorly attested martyr of Rome, first recorded in the _Liber Pontificalis_ where we are told that pope St. Simplicius (468-83) dedicated a basilica to her near the Licinian palace. She has a legendary Passio in differing versions (BHL 1322-1323) that makes her a martyr under Julian the Apostate (for western saints, a good indicator of fiction). Her basilica was rebuilt in the thirteenth century by Honorius III and was reworked, largely on the same plan, by Bernini in 1624-26. Herewith a view of the interior, showing ancient Roman columns said to have belonged to the fifth-century church:
http://tinyurl.com/24bde9
Marjorie Greene has another view of some of the ancient columns in Santa Bibiana in her medrelart album on this church:
http://medrelart.shutterfly.com/activityfeed/85
2) Pi(g)menius of Rome (?). P. is a somewhat less poorly attested Roman martyr who was attracted into the legend of Bibiana and whose entry for today in the (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology led to B.'s being commemorated on this day in the RM. P. was laid to rest in the cemetery of Pontianus on the Via Portuensis. In addition to his inclusion in B.'s Passio he has one of his own, BHL 6849-6849a.
3) Chromatius of Aquileia (d. 407 or 408). Bishop of Aquileia from 388, C. was a friend both of St. Jerome and of Rufinus of Aquileia. He encouraged the latter to undertake his translation of Eusebius' _Ecclesiastical History_. A correspondent of Ambrose of Milan, C. seems both from his sermons and from buildings dated in part to his episcopacy to have been about as active as A. in consecrating churches and martyria. One of these was the structure at Aquileia now referred to as the basilica di Monastero, parts of whose sacristy and of two phases of mosaic flooring survive in the structural complex of the present eleventh-/fourteenth-century patriarchal basilica. Herewith a few views of the remains of this basilica:
http://www.aquileia.net/images/musei02.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/ud8ne
http://tinyurl.com/27bgoh6
The nave of the patriarchal basilica replaced a predecessor whose early fourth-century mosaic floor was uncovered a little less than a century ago. Measuring some 700 square metres, it is said to be the largest early Christian mosaic floor in western Europe. Herewith some views of a monument with which C. will certainly have been familiar:
http://tinyurl.com/2cfuus
http://tinyurl.com/6abevv
http://tinyurl.com/y67pb6
http://tinyurl.com/ycvq8a
Italia nell'Arte Medievale has two pages on the patriarchal basilica at Aquileia, the second one focussing on the originally ninth-century crypt and its earlier twelfth-century frescoes (but, alas, the site is again off-line at the moment):
http://tinyurl.com/ykxqadm
http://tinyurl.com/yfmj4fg
4) Silverius, pope (d. 537). Like his father, pope St. Hormisdas, whose epitaph he wrote (MGH, Antiquitates, 1: _Poetae Latini aevi Carolini_, vol. 1, p. 114; _Liber Pontificalis_, ed. Duchesne, vol. 1, p. 274), this less well known saint of the Regno hailed from what is now Frosinone in southern Lazio. He was a subdeacon when in early June 536 king Theodahad compelled the Roman clergy to elect him their bishop, succeeding St. Agapitus I, who had died in Constantinople. The holders of power in Constantinople (especially, it would seem, the empress Theodora) had a candidate of their own for that position, the deacon Vigilius who at the time was papal aprocrisarius to their court. After Belisarius entered Rome in December of that year S.'s position became perilous. Accused of having collaborated with the Gothic enemy, he was degraded and removed from his post on 11. March 537.
S. was exiled to Patara in Lycia, where the local bishop took it upon himself to persuade Justinian that there had been a miscarriage of justice. S. was sent back to Rome to face a trial and, if convicted, re-assignment to a new see. Instead, Vigilius had him exiled to one of the larger Pontine islands (probably today's Palmarola but perhaps Ponza itself), where an abdication seems to have been extracted from him in November and where his death on this day is thought to have been hastened by starvation and neglect. S. was buried on the island; his body was never taken elsewhere. (That and not his birthplace is what makes S. a saint of the Regno). Miracles were reported at his grave, which latter became a pilgrimage destination. An eleventh-century calendar from the monastery of the BVM on the Aventine grants S. the status of martyr. He is the patron saint of Ponza (LT) in southern Lazio.
A dedicatory inscription from a priest Hilarus celebrating S.'s safety (recovery from illness?) was discovered in 1962 in Rome's basilica of Santa Pudenziana. Here's a view:
http://tinyurl.com/6jmceu
5) Francus of Francavilla (Bl.; d. early 11th cent., supposedly). This less well known holy person of the Regno is a co-patron of Francavilla al Mare (CH) in Abruzzo. He belongs to a cult of Sette Santi Fratelli ('Seven Holy Little Brothers'; in some accounts they are as many as nine) whose individual members are venerated on different days in different Abruzzese towns. Brief Italian-language accounts of them are here:
http://www.casoli.info/casoli/prata/prata02.htm
According to the _Croniche ed antichità di Calabria_ of Fra Girolamo Marafioti (Padova, 1601), who drew on accounts furnished by correspondents in Benevento, F. and his colleagues in the cult were Greek-rite monks from Calabria who moved to today's Abruzzo as a community under a hegumen called Hilarion and who after the latter's death in the pontificate of Eugenius IV (1431-47) became hermits in separate locations along the great chain of central Appennine peaks now known as the Maiella. But at least some were venerated earlier than this.
Twentieth-century scholars resolved the difficulty by positing that Marafioti had confused Eugenius IV with the earlier Sergius IV (1009-1012) and by then hypothesizing that F. and his colleagues had come from Greek-rite monasteries in Calabria that had been abandoned in later tenth century in consequence of Muslim raids. Were there any earlier documentation for the belief that F. et al. were Greeks from the south, this view would be more plausible. The chances are excellent that these are local saints whom subsequent community memory first adapted to the paradigm of hermits of the Maiella (of whom there were a great many) and later to the well-known paradigm of The Saint Who Has Come to Us from Afar. Their cult (confirmed papally in 1893) was promoted by Franciscans of Abruzzo who honored them as their predecessors in this region. F. has yet to grace the pages of the RM.
6) Oderisius I, abbot of Montecassino (Bl.; d. 1105). The name of this less well known holy person from the Regno is sometimes given as Odorisius. A scion of the counts of the Marsi, he was educated at Montecassino under abbot Richerius. Two of O.'s brothers were Atto, bishop of Chieti and Transmundus, abbot of San Clemente a Casauria and bishop of Valva. In 1059 pope Nicholas II made him a cardinal; for close to thirty years O. served the papacy in Rome. In 1087 O. was back at Montecassino as prior and in September of that year he was elected abbot to replace Desiderius II (who was now pope as Victor III).
Known to historians for his correspondence with the emperor Alexius I Comnenus in support of the First Crusade, O. continued Desiderius' work in bringing the abbey to a state of proper splendor and usefulness. In particular, O. was responsible for a major expansion of the abbey's library and promoted the work of its scriptorium, many of whose products are described in Francis Newton's monumental study, _The Scriptorium and Library at Monte Cassino, 1058-1105_ (Cambridge University Press, 1999). O. has yet to grace the pages of the RM.
6) John of Ruusbroec (Bl.; d. 1381). Rather little is known about the life of the Flemish mystic J. His town of origin is today's Ruisbroek near Brussels, whose older spelling Ruusbroec (in English, sometimes also Ruysbroeck) is often used in his nomenclature to differentiate him from the fifteenth-century architect generally known as Jan van Ruisbroek. Raised by his mother (there is some suspicion that he may have been illegitimate), in order to attain a more than rudimentary education he was sent at the age of eleven to Brussels and lived there with a wealthy relative who for some thirty years would serve him as a surrogate parent. J.'s mother later moved to Brussels too, where she became a beguine and was separated from her son.
The relative was a chaplain at the collegiate church of St. Gudula in Brussels and it was at the chapter school there that he was educated for the church. He was ordained priest in 1318 and in time became a choral vicar at St. Gudula and later a chaplain there. In 1343 he, a friend, and his surrogate father founded a monastic community at Groenendael in today's West-Vlaanderen that in 1350 became a house of canon regular with J. as its prior. J. held this post until his death.
During his very long life J. wrote at least eleven spiritual treatises in Middle Dutch, of which his _Die geestelike brulocht_ (in English, _The Spiritual Espousals_) is considered his masterwork. Once translated into Latin, these and seven of his letters formed the basis of his European reputation. The latter suffered a serious setback when they were condemned by Jean Gerson, the chancellor of the university of Paris, who had been asked to review them in 1399. But J.'s esteem remained strong at Groenendael, whose earlier fifteenth-century institutional history by Henricus Pomerius drew on both the local archive and a now lost early Vita to create a picture of him that is our chief biographical source for him. Late in their lives J. had been in contact with Geert Grote, the founder of the Devotio Moderna movement in the northern Netherlands; there too his writings found a warm and continued reception.
J. was beatified by St. Pius X in 1908. He entered the RM in its revision of 2001.
Some views, etc. of Brussels' mostly thirteenth- to fifteenth-century now cathedral church of St. Michael and St. Gudula (over an eleventh-century crypt):
http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathedraal_van_Sint-Michiel_en_Sint-Goedele
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Michael_and_Gudula_Cathedral
http://www.trabel.com/brussel/brussels-ch-churchstmichael.htm
http://tinyurl.com/7rfy3r
A ground plan and a brief architectural history are here:
http://tinyurl.com/9gyyg5
A multi-page, illustrated, English-language guide to the crypt begins here:
http://tinyurl.com/8gub96
Four virtual tours of the building (not including the crypt) are available here:
http://bruxelles.arounder.com/cathedral/
This expandable view of a later fifteenth-century painting, by the Master of the View of Saint Gudula, of the Preaching of St. Gaugeric, shows one of the church's towers not yet completed:
http://www.worldvisitguide.com/oeuvre/O0018284.html
Rosemary Hayes has some photos of this church on the second page of her Brussels album on Shutterfly:
http://hayesmilligan.shutterfly.com/22
A reduced reproduction of an engraving of the abbey of Groenendael from 1560 (NB: the transcription of the caption at top center leaves something to be desired):
http://tinyurl.com/27ueoqc
For readers of English, a recent book of note on J. is Geert Warnar, _Ruusbroec: Literature and Mysticism in the Fourteenth Century_, tr. Diane Webb (Leiden: Brill, 2007).
Best,
John Dillon
(last year's post lightly revised and with the addition of John of Ruusbroec)
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