medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture

Today, March 2, is the feast day of:

Troadius (d. 250 or 251)  According to St. Gregory of Nyssa's Bios of St.
Gregory the Thaumaturge (Gregory of Neocaesarea), when during the Decian
persecution that saint was in hiding at some distance from Neocaesarea in
Pontus, he announced one day that a young Christian of noble birth named
Troadius had been arrested in that city, brought before the governor,
condemned to death, and executed.  This astounded Gregory's audience.  A
deacon then went into Neocaesarea and returned bearing confirmation of
Gregory's revelation.  Thus far Gregory of Nyssa.
   Byzantine synaxaries record Troadius under today's date as a martyr under
Decius but do not specify his city.

Quintus the Thaumaturge/the Confessor/of Phrygia (d. c283) Our sources for
Quintus are at least partly legendary Byzantine synaxary accounts, one of
which (BHG 2377) is in the so-called Menologion of Basil II. Born in Phrygia
of Christian parents, he is said to have migrated to Aeolis and there to
have devoted himself to serving the poor. At (Aeolic) Cyme the Roman
governor tried to make him sacrifice to the idols but stopped, either
because Quintus through his prayers had cured him of demonic possession or
because an earthquake destroyed the temple and its statues. Not long
afterward, another magistrate had Quintus arrested and tortured. He too gave
up when Quintus was instantly healed of his injuries. Thus enabled to
continue his ministry, Quintus died in peace a few years later. His
suffering is said to have occurred in the reign of Aurelian (270-75).
   The synaxaries record Quintus today and on July 2. In the menaea his
feast occurs in early May. Quintus has yet to grace the pages of the RM. He
is commemorated today in some but by no means all Orthodox churches.

Ceadda / Chad (d. 672?) The youngest of four brothers; Cedd, Cynebil, and
Celin, all of whom were eminent priests, Chad was a disciple of St. Aidan at
Lindisfarne. After studying in Ireland he returned to his native
Northumbria, where he assisted his brother St. Cedd in the latter's
foundation of the monastery of Lastingham and succeeded him as abbot in 664.
In the same year he was consecrated bishop of Northumbria in place of the
absent St. Wilfrid (who had been chosen but had ambled off to Francia and
was taking his time coming back). Two of the bishops who consecrated him
were not in communion with Rome. When in 669 St. Theodore of Tarsus and of
Canterbury arrived from Rome, he ordered Chad to resign so Wilfrid could be
instated. Chad did so but soon was appointed by Theodore as bishop of the
Mercians, establishing himself at Lichfield. He died in the great plague.
   Chad was noted for his humility and his piety. When in about 700
Lichfield's cathedral of St. Peter was first built, his remains were brought
to it. Bede describes his shrine, and the habit of mixing dust from Chad's
tomb with water, to be drunk by ailing humans and beasts. There they stayed
until the reign of Henry VIII, when his shrine was destroyed and his relics
were dispersed. In 2003, excavations beneath Lichfield Cathedral revealed
remains of its early eighth-century predecessor, including a sunken chamber
thought to have been the site of Chad's first shrine.  Recovered were three
fragments of a carved limestone panel depicting an angel, some of whose red
polychromy was still visible. According to Rosemary Cramp, the panel had
been part of a casket: http://tinyurl.com/24zwb4 . See also:
http://www.lichfield-cathedral.org/angel.htm


Charles the Good (blessed) (d. 1127) Charles of Flanders seems to have been
a rather nice count. The son of St. Canute of Denmark, after his father was
killed in 1086, the infant Charles went with his Flemish mother Adela of
Flanders to the Flemish court, and in 1119 became count of Flanders. He was
personally devout and fed the poor in a famine and was very generous in
other alms. His was murdered in his castle church of St. Donatien in Bruges
while he was 1) hearing mass, 2) praying, and 3) passing out alms with both
hands (if the chief chronicler of the event, Galbert of Bruges, can be
believed) and was proclaimed a martyr who had been slain while performing a
religious duty. He seems to have been a strong and reasonably pious ruler,
polished off by a clan of ministeriales he threatened to return to servile
status.  He enjoys a cult that was confirmed papally at the level of Beatus
by Leo XIII in 1882.
   Charles' murder as depicted in a (c1375-1380) copy of the Grandes
chroniques de France (Paris, BnF, ms. Français 2813, fol. 206v):
http://tinyurl.com/yfnq6ou , http://tinyurl.com/yk85g83

Luke Casalius/Luca Casali (d. earlier 12th century?) is yet another Luke
venerated in Sicily, this time at two towns in today's Enna province,
Nicosia and Agira. Today's Luke has a Vita (BHL 4979) redacted from now lost
manuscripts at Nicosia by Ottavio Gaetani SJ (d. 1620). This account tells
us that Luke was born at Nicosia and that he was educated in early childhood
by the praefectus (head) of the monastery of St. Philip at Agira who was
then staying in a Nicosia suburb. When Luke was ten, this person brought him
to the monastery, where he became a monk and later was ordained priest.
   Having exhibited all sorts of exemplary behavior, Luke in time was
elected praefectus but declined, only to relent when his monks got the pope
to persuade him to accept. His conduct in office was praiseworthy, though he
went blind while administering his charge.
   Luke's blindness led to a miracle. On the way back to Agira from a visit
to his family in Nicosia the monks who were his companions convinced him
that a crowd of townspeople was following in the hope of hearing a sermon.
Luke obligingly preached to a landscape devoid of people (other than the
saint and his companions), whereupon the rocks that lay about the place
responded with a chorus of 'Amen', thus proving his sanctity to the
astonished tricksters. Luke died at the monastery in Agira and was buried
there; upon the urging of the people of Agira, the pope entered him in the
number of the saints. The people of Nicosia, wishing to honor one of their
own, dedicated a church to him on the spot where the rocks had responded to
his preaching. Thus far his Vita.
   Luke's cult blossomed in 1575, when he freed Nicosia from a plague
(presumably the same one from whose ravages Corleone was spared that year
through the intercession of St. Leo Luke). Nicosia made him its patron and
celebrated his feast at public expense. Toward the end of the sixteenth
century, Luke's presumed remains, along with those of Philip of Agira and of
other saints, were discovered in a hidden resting place in the abbey. With
the exception of a relic granted to Nicosia, they remain there today.
Agira's originally twelfth-century church of the Most Holy Savior
(Santissimo Salvatore) houses a mitre and the head of a pastoral staff
traditionally believed to have been Luke's.  Shown in the last illustration
on this page: http://digilander.libero.it/agira1/s_s_salvatore.htm , they
are probably those of a fourteenth-century abbot. In what seems to have been
Luke’s time this house was a priory of St. Mary of the Latins (Santa Maria
Latina) in Jerusalem. In the later twelfth century it became the center of
that abbey's operations and from that time forward its heads were styled
abbot.

Fulk of Neuilly (blessed (d. 1201) The subject of an unconfirmed cult, Fulk
was a priest in Neuilly-sur-Marne near Paris who won fame for his
penitential sermons. Innocent III commissioned him to preach the 4th
Crusade, but he died before it began. He was known for his lack of
asceticism (in fact, one chronicler notes that he would eat any food set
before him).

Henry Suso (d. 1366) Henry Suso was a German noble who joined the Dominican
order at a young age. He studied with Meister Eckhart and became one of the
great spiritual writers of the later Middle Ages. Henry was the author of
the familiar carol "In dulci jubilo" which was dictated to him by angels,
who also invited him to dance to it - the carol being, of course, a dance
form in origin, as the angels well knew.


happy reading,
Terri Morgan
--
"Nobility depends not on parentage or place of birth, but on breadth of
compassion and depth of loving kindness. If we would be noble, let us be
greathearted."  - anon.   [log in to unmask]

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