medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture

Today, March 14, is the feast day of:

Alexander of Pydna (d. early 4th century) According to Greek synaxary
accounts, Alexander was a priest at Pydna who was successful in gaining many
converts for Christianity and who in the persecution of Galerius
(Diocletian's colleague who ruled from Thessalonica) was severely tortured
and finally executed by decapitation. He has a brief, legendary Passio that
consists primarily of his response to an interrogation by Galerius and of a
scene in which the emperor sees four men wearing white stoles bear
Alexander's soul to heaven, after which he accedes to a request that
Alexander's body be taken to Thessalonica for Christian burial. The emperor
Nicephorus Phocas (963-969) is said to have presented Alexander's skull to
the recently founded Great Lavra on Athos.

Lazarus of Milan (d. mid-5th cenury) Lazarus is traditionally the
seventeenth bishop of Milan. St. Ennodius of Pavia has an epigram on him
that tells us that he could with a severe look repress sinners but show a
serene countenance to the innocent. Medieval catalogues of Milan's bishops
say that he ruled for eleven years, died on this day, and that he was buried
in the basilica of the Holy Apostles (now San Nazaro Maggiore). In the
Ambrosian Rite to avoid its occurrence during Lent his feast is moved
forward to February 11.

Leobinus/Leubinus/Lubinus/Lubin or Loubin (French) of Chartres (d. after
552) was born near Poitiers. He spent time as a hermit and then joined a
monastery near Lyons, becoming their sixteenth bishop. According to his
seemingly ninth-century Vita, he was a Gallo-Roman native who had a monastic
education, became a disciple of St. Avitus of Perche. He was captured by
Franks who tortured him to reveal where the monastery's treasure was hidden,
then returned to Avitus and stayed with him until the latter's death,
afterward was ordained deacon, became head of a monastery, and finally
bishop of Chartres. He signed the Acta of the synods of Orléans in 549 and
Paris in 552. Today is his dies natalis.  Leobinus' cult spread fairly
widely in France but is centered on Chartres and the Perche.
   The fourth item on this page is an expandable view of a
fourteenth-century pilgrim's badge from Chartres portraying Leobinus:
http://peregrinations.kenyon.edu/photobank/page5.html

Boniface Curitan / Boniface Kyrin of Ross (d. c660) Boniface may have been a
Roman and was certainly bishop of Ross in Scotland. He did missionary work
among the Picts and Scots and according to the Aberdeen Breviary, is
credited with founding 150 churches and oratories in Scotland (as well as
encouraging the adoption of Roman ways). His relics worked many miracles
after his death.

Eutychius (d. 741) Eutychius was a patrician Greek, captured while fighting
Arabs at Carrhae (upper Mesopotamia, near Urfa). He and several companions
were tortured and killed. This counts as martyrdom because they were offered
life if they would apostacize. Eutychius’ relics worked many miracles.

Matilda of Saxony (d. prob. 968) Born c895 as the offspring of Saxon and of
Danish-Frisian nobility, the pious Matilda received at the convent at
Herford an upbringing suitable for her class and then was married to Henry,
son the Duke of Saxony. In 919 Henry became king of the Germans and Mathilda
became queen. Matilda had a reputation for piety, especially after Henry's
death in 936, although she did help her younger son Henry rebel against her
older son, Otto I. Of her many foundations, the one for which she is best
remembered is the convent of St. Servatius and St. Dionysius at Quedlinburg
in today's Sachsen-Anhalt. This was founded by the royal pair on the castle
hill; its original church was the castle's chapel. A new church was built in
the late tenth and early eleventh centuries, was rebuilt in the early
twelfth century, and was later expanded. Mathilda and Henry repose in its
crypt. A view of Matilda's sarcophagus is here:
http://www.othersideorg.de/qlb/html/kunst2.htm

Pauline of Thuringia (Blessed; d. 1107) Pauline was born in c. 1067 a member
of Saxon nobility. She married twice, and after the death of her second
husband In the early years of the twelfth century established in the
Thüringer Wald a double monastery whose women were herself and a few
comrades and whose men were monks of the Benedictine abbey of Hirsau. About
a year after founding this institution she undertook a journey to Hirsau but
died en route at Münsterschwarzach in Bavaria. From 1112 to 1132 an
impressive church was built at her monastery and in 1122 her remains were
translated to it from Münsterschwarzach. The monastery, which had been
dedicated to the BVM, became known as Paulinzelle (Pauline's Cell) and was
for a while very wealthy. A monk of Hirsau, one Sigeboto, wrote Pauline's
Vita. The monastery church, built on the model of the one at Hirsau, was
consecrated in 1124.  The monastery became all male in the fourteenth
century and was closed in 1536.

Eva of Liège (Blessed) (d. 1265) We know about Eve chiefly from references
to her in the Vita of her friend St. Juliana of Liège (BHL 4521). She
appears to have come from a wealthy family and was persuaded by the somewhat
older Juliana to become a recluse at the church of St. Martin in Liège
(whence she is also known as Eva of Saint-Martin). Juliana visited her there
regularly and it was with her that Juliana took refuge when in 1246 she was
forced for the first time to leave the monastery of Mont-Cornillon where she
was prioress. Eva and Juliana shared a strong devotion to the Eucharist and
promoted at Liège, with only temporary effect, the institution of a feast
honoring the Body of Christ.  When in 1264 Urban IV, a former archdeacon of
Liège, extended the previously local feast of Corpus Christi to the entire
Roman church, he sent to Eva (Juliana being already deceased) a bull
announcing this development.
   Eva seems to have been in her early sixties when she died in the
following year. Her cult was immediate; it was approved papally, at the
level of Beata, in 1902. Eva entered the RM in its revision of 2001.





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

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