medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture

Today, March 28  is the feast of:

Priscus, Malchus, and Alexander (d. 258 or 259) According to Eusebius, Historia ecclesiastica (our source for these three saints), Priscus, Malchus, and Alexander were young men who resided together on a small farm in the vicinity of Caesarea in Palestine. During the Valerianic persecution they first hid themselves but then reproached each other until they decided to go together and proclaim their Christianity to the Roman governor. They were tortured and were executed by exposure to wild beasts. Entered for today in the (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology, they were accompanied in the ninth-century historical martyrologies by brief elogia drawn from Rufinus' translation of Eusebius.

Cyril of Heliopolis and companions (d. 362).  We know about these martyrs from a series of sensationalizing accounts at Theodoret, Historia ecclesiastica, 3. 3.  Cyril was a deacon of the church of Heliopolis in Syria (now Baalbek in Lebanon); in the reign of Constantius II he had incurred the lasting enmity of the city's pagans by destroying several of their temples' cult statues.  After the accession of the emperor Julian Cyril was seized by a pagan mob some of whom tortured him, cut open his belly, and removed and devoured his liver. Still according to Theodoret, the perpetrators were divinely punished by the falling out their teeth all at once, by the rotting away of their tongues, and by the loss of their eyesight.
   Cyril's companions, who are celebrated along with him (and with tomorrow's St. Mark of Arethusa) in Orthodox churches but who have yet to grace the pages of the RM, suffered with him only by being fellow martyrs of the Julianic persecution. They are unnamed priests and holy virgins, said to have been slain at Gaza and at Ascalon by having barley poured into incisions in their stomach cavities and by being then set out as a meal for pigs, and the victorious athlete Aemilianus, said to have been burned alive at Durostorum on the order of the governor of Thrace.
   Aemilianus (at right; at left, one of the martyrs named Marinus) as depicted in the frescoes (betw. 1335-1350) in the Visoki Dečani monastery near Peć in, depending on one's view of recent events, the Republic of Kosovo or Serbia's Kosovo province: http://tinyurl.com/yll987o

Sixtus III, pope (d. 440) A native of Rome, Sixtus succeeded pope St. Celestine I on 31 July 432. Working with the emperor Theodosius II, he was successful in reconciling the churches of Antioch and Alexandria, which had been at odds thanks to St. Cyril of Alexandria's belief that the Antiochenes were really Nestorian. Earlier claimed by Pelagians as a sympathizer, Sixtus made sure to distance himself from Pelagianism and, in 439, refused to permit the exiled Julian of Eclanum to return to his see in what's now Irpinia. He founded the first monastery recorded for Rome and built in that city two important structures that, however altered, are still with us today: the Lateran Baptistery and Santa Maria Maggiore. S.'s _dies natalis_ is 19 August, the day of his feast in the diocese of Rome. His general commemoration today follows his placement in the martyrologies of Ado and of Usuard.

Spes (d. c513) Spes founded the monastery of Campi (near Norcia, Italy) and served as its first abbot. He was totally blind for 40 years but his eyesight returned 15 days before his death - clearly miraculous by early medieval standards, but I understand that modern medical pragmatists say this is explainable in scientific terms.

Gunthram(nus) (d. 592) One of the sons of Chlothar I and St. Radegunde, after the latter's death in 561 Gunthram received Burgundy, Arles, and Marseille in the division of the Frankish kingdom. As king he made his capital at today's Chalon-sur-Saône, generally supported the interests of Austrasia over those Neustria, and, lacking sons of his own, adopted the young king of Austrasia, his nephew Childebert II, making him his heir in Burgundy and his other territories. He founded the monastery of St. Marcellus at Chalon, gave generously to churches in his realm, and protected churchmen. St. Gregory of Tours thought highly of him, praising him for his mildness, generosity, support of the church and even recounting some miracles that Gregory had personally witnessed. In his later years Gunthram repented of various earlier misdeeds (divorcing his wife and executing his physician) and increased the level and the extent of his pious donations. His cult seems to have been more or less immediate.    
   The dynastically significant meeting of Gunthram and Childebert II, usually placed at today's Andelot-Blancheville (Haute-Marne), seems to have been a frequent matter for illustration in late medieval histories of France. Herewith three specimens:
   a)  Paris, BnF, ms. Français 2813 (ca. 1375-1380), fol. 50v: http://tinyurl.com/yc8f5sm
      mise-en-page: http://tinyurl.com/yf4ndle
   b)  Paris, BnF, ms. Français 73 (late fourteenth- or fifteenth-century), fol. 50r: http://tinyurl.com/3xn9sw
   c)  Paris, BnF, ms. Français 6465 (this part ca. 1455-1460), fol. 45v: http://tinyurl.com/3be2q7
      mise-en-page: http://tinyurl.com/yzyomst

Tutilo (d. c 915) Tutilo was a monk of St. Gall who seems to have been good at everything. He was good-looking, eloquent, a poet, orator, architect, painter, sculptor, metallurgist, mechanic, and musician. As if that weren't enough, he was also known for his obedience and prayerfulness as well as his self abnegation. He headed the school of St. Gall.

Eustratius of the Kievan Caves (d. c1097).  What is related about about the monk-martyr Eustratius comes from an account in the thirteenth- to fifteenth-century Patericon of the monastery of the Kievan Caves. According to this, Eustratius was a monk of that monastery who was captured by Cumans when they raided Kiev (this happened in 1096) and who along with other Christians was then sold to a Jewish merchant of Cherson (now a suburb of Sevastopol). The merchant attempted to force Eustratius and the others to convert to Judaism; they refused and starved themselves instead.  The others all died but Eustratius, who is also known as Eustratius the Faster, was still alive after fourteen days, whereupon his owner had him crucified and and stabbed with a spear. The body of this second Christ was then thrown into the sea.
   Eustratius' body rose again and was found in a cave where it operated many miracles. Next, the emperor in Constantinople expelled the Jews of Cherson and had their elders put to death for mistreating Christians. Eustratius' persecutor was hanged from a tree. Thus far the Kievan Patericon.  Eustratius has yet to grace the pages of the RM.  

Stephen Harding (d. 1134) The Anglo-Saxon Harding was a monk of Sherborne in Dorset who in the later eleventh century moved to the Continent, where he studied in France and took the name Stephen. After a pilgrimage to Rome he entered the abbey of Molesme in about 1085. Strict as life at Molesme was, it was not strict enough for him, so he joined a secession that in 1098 founded the abbey of Cîteaux. In 1109 he was elected abbot here and through the arrangements he made with his house's first four daughters had a formative role in the creation of the Cistercian order. Those houses (La Ferté, Pontigny, Clairvaux, and Morimond) were all were male, but in the early 1120s Stephen had a major role in the establishment of the first Cistercian house for women, the convent at Tart near Cîteaux. In 1133 he resigned his office for reasons of ill health. He was canonized in 1623.
   Here's Stephen (at left), presenting a church to the BVM: http://cistercians.shef.ac.uk/image_gallery/pages/0191.php
      Detail (Stephen): http://tinyurl.com/d5kpjs

Conus/Cono/Conon of Naso (d. 1236) was abbot of the Greek-rite monastery at today's Naso in northern Sicily. His Vita tells us that Conus made his profession at the Greek monastery of St. Philip at Fragalà, where he had Sts. Sylvester of Troina and Lawrence of Frazzanò as spiritual guides, and notes his operation of various miracles. Considered a saint at Naso and at San Cono, a town founded in the early modern period for agricultural workers originally from Naso, he is a Blessed in the eyes of the Roman church. His cult was confirmed for Naso in 1630, with Double feasts in June (principal feast) and in September (translation). Today is Conus' day of commemoration in the new RM (2001, rev. 2005).

Jeanne-Marie de Maillé (d. 1414) Jeanne-Marie was a noblewoman from the area of Tours. She married a baron and lived with him as a virgin for 16 years. When he died in 1362 she became a Franciscan tertiary and spent the rest of her life in poverty in Tours - not so much from religious conviction as because her husband's relatives were mean to her. J-M's cult was confirmed in 1871.





Happy reading,
Terri Morgan
--
"I'd gladly turn the other cheek,
but my tongue is always firmly planted in it."
- Flannery O'Connor 

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