medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture

Today, April 3,  is the feast of:

Pancras of Taormina (d. c90?) A legend tells that Pancras was a native of Antioch, converted by Peter and sent as a missionary to Sicily, where he is supposed to have become first bishop of Taormina. The legend reports that he was very successful, but was eventually stoned to death by pagans (or murdered by bandits).

Sixtus (Xystus) I, pope (d. c125) The seventh pope, Sixtus was in office for a little over ten years. He was responsible for decrees ordering that people should join clergy in saying the Sanctus at mass, and that only clergy should touch altar vessels. Questionable testimony to his having been a martyr gave him his former place in the general Roman Calendar (6 April). He is still celebrated liturgically at Alatri in southern Lazio, where his putative remains, less some that have been transferred to Alatri's sister-city city of Alife in Campania, are said to have reposed since 1132. Citizens of Alife were bringing them from Rome, where supposedly they had been newly discovered, to their own town so that their presence might help to suppress a pestilence. But when the relics arrived in Alatri they could not be moved any further. In Alatri S. is celebrated on 11 January and (patronal feast) on the Wednesday immediately after Easter.  Today is his day of commemoration in the new (2001) RM. 

Ulpian/Vulpian/Ulpianus (d. 306).  We know about Ulpian from Eusebius, De martyribus Palaestinae, 5. 1.  He is said to have been a young man who in the Great Persecution suffered at about the same time as yesterday's St. Apphianus. Ulpian's place of suffering was Tyre; he was tortured, scourged, and finally thrown into the sea in a sack also containing a dog and an asp. Thus far Eusebius. 

Urbicius, bishop of Clermont (about 312) was a Senator, and was elected to be bishop of Clermont, whereupon he separated from his wife and bade her live in a convent. But after a while the woman yearned to be back with her husband, and she came to him saying, "Why dost thou shut the door against me?  Why dost thou not receive me, thine own wife? Listen to the words of S. Paul, 'Defraud ye not one the other, except it be with consent for a time, that ye may give yourselves to fasting and prayer, and then come together again.' I am thine own wife, and now I return to thee." …Now a daughter was born to him after his reunion with his wife, who entered into the religious estate, and all three lie buried together, says S. Gregory, in the crypt of Cantobenum.

John (d432) was bishop of the Parthenopean city from 413 to 432. He is credited with the translation of the relics of St. Januarius from their resting place at the Solfatara near Pozzuoli to the catacombs now known as those of San Gennaro. In fourteenth-century legend, John received from the serving woman Eusebia the ampules of Januarius' blood that she had collected from the sands at his place of martyrdom just after his execution. Modern versions of the story recognizing the chronological difficulty (Januarius is believed to be a martyr of the Great Persecution) have John receive the blood from Eusebia's heirs.  The early ninth-century Marble Calendar of Naples gives today as the feast of his laying to rest.

Burgundofara / Fara / Fare (d. c655/7) was the daughter of a Frankish courtier. She felt a religious vocation, and when her father insisted that she marry she became mortally ill. Fortunately, a holy man happened along and convinced her father to let her become a nun, upon which she was miraculously healed. She soon convinced her father to found the double monastery originally called Evoriacum, now known as Faremoutiers, for her. She ruled as first abbess, encouraging a very ascetic life, directing souls, and training a surprising number of English princesses and female saints. Her tomb was a significant miracle-working shrine for many centuries.

Liutbirg (d. c880) was a famous recluse. She had herself enclosed in c830 by the monastery of Wendhausen in Saxony. In her cell, Liutbirg instructed neighborhood girls in music, embroidery, etc. She was a famous spiritual advisor.

Richard of Chichester (d1253) Richard was a native of Worcestershire. He studied at Oxford and Paris, and there he lodged in the same room with two other poor scholars, and fed on bread and porridge (potagium); and so poor were they that the three had only one respectable coat between them, and could only go alternately to the lectures in the coat, whilst the others sat at home without. He became the chancellor of Oxford after he returned to England from seven years of studying canon law at the University of Bologna. One of his former tutors, (St.) Edmund of Abingdon (who had become archbishop of Canterbury), became his dear friend and was impressed by Richard's job performance, and made him diocesan chancellor. In the words of the Dominican Ralph Bocking, Richard's confessor and biographer: "Each leaned upon the other - the saint upon the saint: the master upon the disciple, the disciple upon the master: the father on the son, and the son on the father." Richard was a strict vegetarian, but would serve meat to his visitors; when he saw poultry or young animals being conveyed to his kitchen he was wont to say: "Poor little creatures, if you were reasoning beings and could speak, how you would curse us! For we are the cause of your death, and what have you done to deserve it?" The next archbishop arranged the election of Richard as bishop of Chichester - which enraged King Henry III, who refused to allow Richard to assume his office. In the 2 years before Henry acquiesced, Richard lived in a priest's house and did visitations of the diocese on foot. Richard was a reformer and model bishop. Richard died in Dover while preaching the crusade. Miracles were reported shortly after his death. A commission of inquiry was established in 1256 and in 1262 Urban IV canonized him. He has two thirteenth-century Vitae, of which the second, by the Dominican hagiographer Ralph Bocking, is full of anecdotes about his solicitude for the poor and the sick.
  Farmer adds the note that it was Richard who composed the famous prayer: "Thanks be to thee, my Lord Jesus Christ for all the benefits thou hast given me, for all the pains and insults which thou hast borne for me. O most merciful redeemer, friend and brother, may I know thee more clearly, love thee more dearly, and follow thee more nearly, day by day."
   A black-and-white reproduction of a wall painting of Richard, provided to Wikimedia by the Chichester Museum: http://tinyurl.com/yoahsf

Gandulf (d. 1260) Gandulf was a native of Binasco (near Milan). He became a Franciscan at a young age, and a very ascetic Franciscan too. He was sent to preach in Sicily, winning great praise for eloquence, which inspired him to become a hermit in a less accessible part of the island. He still went out to preach among the locals occasionally. He was credited with a special relationship with birds… Once while he was preaching at Polizzi, the sparrows chattered so loudly that the congregation could not hear the sermon. Gandulf appealed to the birds to be quiet and they kept silent until the end of the service. On that occasion he told the people to whom he was preaching that he would die soon. And immediately after leaving the audience he became ill and died on Holy Saturday. Afterward, when his body had been enshrined, a number of swallows flew into the church and sung the Te Deum in alternating choirs. Gandulf was buried in bare earth. A cult sprang up almost immediately; in 1320 his remains underwent a formal elevation and were reinterred in a more honorable location. Jasmine flowers sprang up spontaneously both at his former gravesite and in the wine with which his bones had been cleansed (i.e., where it had been discarded?). The citizens of Polizzi asked the bishop of Cefalu' to declare him their town's patron and to grant them two new liturgical feasts, one on the anniversary of his death and the other on that of the elevation of his remains. In 1482 his remains were laid in a marble tomb said to be the work of the distinguished sculptor Domenico Gagini. The upper portion of this remains in the church's Cappella di San Gandolfo: http://tinyurl.com/nvgjr , whereas Gandulf himself is in the same chapel in a silver sarcophagus fashioned in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries: http://www.polizzigenerosa.it/italiano/arte/chiese/chiesamadre/urna.htm

Alexandrina di Letto (blessed) (d. 1458)  became a Poor Clare in 1400, when she was 15. After 23 years, she founded a convent at Foligno, where she initiated a Franciscan reforming movement. This became the motherhouse for the reform order.


Happy reading,
Terri Morgan

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