medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture

Today, March 13, is the feast day of:

Euphrasia (d. c420) "In the reign of Theodisius the First, Antigonus,
governor of Lycia, and his wife, Euphrasia, were blessed by god with a
little daughter, who was named after her mother." Euphrasia’s father died
when she was only one year old. Although Euphrasia (a kinswoman of Emperor
Theodosius I) was betrothed to a senator at age five, her mother moved with
Euphrasia to a family estate in Egypt, near a large and severe convent. They
both joined the convent. Emperor Arcadius eventually sent for Euphrasia to
marry her senator, but she managed to convince him that she be allowed to
give her inheritance to the poor, free her slaves, and continue life as a
consecrated virgin, proving her resolve with great acts of humility and
miracles before her death at age thirty. (For example, she once stood
upright in one spot for thirty days until she lost consciousness.)

Leander of Seville (d. 600 or 601) An older brother of St. Isidore of
Seville, Leander saw to Isidore's education and preceded him as archbishop
of Seville in 578. The leading light of his time in the Visigothic church,
he was a friend and correspondent of Gregory the Great, whom he had gotten
to know c580 when they were both in Constantinople. While there, Leander
appears to have collected books and connections that helped jump-start a
little "Visigothic renaissance." He was the author of anti-Arian treatises
which have not survived and was credited with the conversion to Catholicism
both of king Leovigild's son, St. Hermenegild (whose wife and whose mother
were both Catholic), and of Leovigild's successor, king Reccared I.  His
surviving writings are the closing sermon of the third council of Toledo
(589) and a treatise, De institutione virginum et de contemptu mundi,
dedicated to his sister, St. Florentina. He is honored in Spain as a doctor
of the church.
   Gregory the Great's Moralia in Iob is addressed to Leander. Here's an
illumination from a manuscript (Dijon, Bibliothèque municipale, ms. 168,
fol. 5r; dated 1111) showing both of them at the head of Gregory's prefatory
letter to Leander: http://tinyurl.com/2u7nk5
   And here again are the two of them, at the opening of the same letter in
another twelfth-century manuscript, Saint-Omer, Bibliothèque de
l’agglomération, ms. 12):
http://www.bml.firenze.sbn.it/gregorio/preview/img_schede_big/24.jpg
      Expandable views of two other versions of this double portrait are
here: http://tinyurl.com/2rz8t3

Mochoemoc/Pulcherius (d. c. 656) Mochoemoc was born in c580, and from c597
was a monk at Bangor (Ireland) under Comgall. Later he founded the monastery
of Liath-Mochoemoc, serving as abbot until his death. “Mochoemoc” is a name
of serpentine nomenclature. "Mo" is an affectionate element, "my" attached
to the names of some Irish saints. Thus Mochoemoc may be the same as St.
Kennoch, venerated around Glasgow - who, by the way, was given a sex-change
operation by a scribal error and is often called Kevoca. Kevoca is an
alternative form of Mochoemoc. He founded a large number of monasteries and
was a teacher of St Dagan and St Cuanghas.
      His existence is miraculous enough, and would never have happened had
it not been for his exceptionally holy aunt, Íte, who promised her sister
Ness and her brother-in-law Béoán that they would bear a saintly son. Béoán
was beheaded in battle before her prophecy was fulfilled, but Íte was never
one to let a little thing like death stand in her way.  She marched to the
battlefield and recovered his body, but couldn't find his head amid all the
carnage. So she prayed to God and of a sudden the head came flying through
the air and landed solidly back in place, without any trace of his wounds
remaining. Then Béoán and Ness celebrated his return to the living in grand
fashion, with the result being Mochaomhóg, who became a saint, the founder
and abbot of Liath, and one of Íte's most famous foster-children. Her
best-known foster-son is Brénainn the Navigator.

Gerald of Mayo (d. 732) The Northumbrian Gerald became a monk at
Lindisfarne. He and other monks left England for Ireland along with St.
Colman when Irish liturgical practices were forbidden; Gerald became a monk
on Inishbofin. When the English and Irish monks couldn't get along together,
the monastery of Mayo was founded on the mainland for the English; Gerald
succeeded Colman as abbot there. But the Roman rite caught up with them
there, too, and Gerald probably lived long enough to see it.

Ansewin/Hanse-Win Bishop of Camerino (c840) was a native of Camerino, in
Tuscany. He retired in early life into the solitude of Castel-Raymond, near
Torcello, after his ordination as priest.

Roderic and Solomon (d. 857) Roderic was an unfortunate victim of the
interreligious tensions in Spain in the 850s. He was a priest at Cabra. One
fine day, his two brothers (one a Muslim, one a lapsed Christian) beat him
unconscious when he tried to get between them in an argument. The Muslim
brother then paraded Roderic through the streets proclaiming that he wished
to become a Muslim. Roderic escaped, but the same brother then denounced him
to the authorities as an apostate from Islam. So he was imprisoned, loudly
protesting that he had never given up Christianity. He met another man
charged with apostasy, Solomon, in prison. After a long imprisonment, they
were both beheaded, their Muslim guards threw the pebbles stained with their
blood into a nearby stream to keep people from taking them as relics.

Ansovinus of Camerino (d. 868) According to his tenth-century Vita by the
monk Eginus or Iginus, Ansovinus (who signed himself Ansuinus and whose now
customary name form is a back-formation in Latin from Italian Ansovino) came
from a family of today's Camerino in the Marche and was Louis II's
confessor. Elected bishop of Camerino, he at first refused the honor and,
when he finally did accept, did so only after reaching an understanding with
the king that he would be exempt from the latter's military service as he
had now to serve the church alone. Ansovinus was consecrated bishop by Leo
IV. He took part in a council at Rome called by pope St. Nicholas I in 861.
His Vita ascribes to him several miracles and notes both his generosity to
the poor and his peacemaking among factions. Ansovinus died on this day in
the eighteenth year of his episcopacy. His remains now lie in a late
fourteenth-century sarcophagus in the crypt of Camerino's early
nineteenth-century cathedral.
   The bishop in this panel painting of two saints (the other is obviously
St. Jerome) by Carlo Crivelli (d. c1498) used to be identified as St.
Augustine of Hippo. But the institution that possesses it, the Accademia di
Venezia, convinced that it was part of a now dismembered triptych from the
cathedral of Camerino, now identifies him as today's Ansovinus:
http://www.wga.hu/art/c/crivelli/carlo/saints.jpg
      previous identification: http://tinyurl.com/cs8ose
      present identification: http://tinyurl.com/cls6wf

Kennocha (about 1007) On March 13th, the Ancient Scottish Church
commemorated S. Kennocha, a virgin, who, desirous of consecrating herself
wholly to Jesus Christ, met with long and vehement opposition from her
parents and friends.

Agnellus of Pisa (Blessed) (d1236) was born in 1194 in Pisa and joined St.
Francis in 1212. Acting on the instructions of St. Francis, in 1217 Agnellus
lead a party of brothers who established the order's first house in greater
Paris. This was at Saint-Denis. Later Agnellus opened another house in Paris
proper and began his order's association with the university in that city.
In 1224 he was sent to England at the head of another small party to begin
making foundations there. After some time in Canterbury and London Agnellus
moved on to Oxford, established his order's school of theology at the
university there, and in 1229 appointed Robert Grosseteste to teach in it.
Matthew Paris is our source for Henry III's having employed Agnellus as an
intermediary between himself and the rebel Richard Marshal, third Earl of
Pembroke. 
   Despite his associations with universities and with a court, Agnellus is
said to have insisted upon living in accordance with the Franciscan ideal of
poverty.  He died of dysentery at age 41. His cult was confirmed papally in
1892. 

Boniface of Savoy (blessed) (d. 1270) Boniface was a member of the ruling
family of Savoy. He became a Carthusian and then bishop of Belley in 1232.
In 1241 he went on from there to be an extremely unpopular archbishop of
Canterbury. Apparently nobody in England ever thought Boniface was a saint,
but he died while back in Savoy, and his cult was confirmed for Turin in
1830.

Eric of Perugia (d. 1415) The subject of a popular cult, Eric is a good
example of the hagiological mind at work. He was a Danish pilgrim who died
in a hospital at Perugia. But soon popular imagination made him a Danish
prince (or perhaps king), with all proper accompanying virtues.


   
happy reading,
Terri Morgan
--
Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in
school.  ~Albert Einstein

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