medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (21. July) is the feast day of:
1) Praxedes (?). P. (also Praxedis, Praxidis) is the saint of a Roman church that is first attested from the fifth century as the _titulus Praxedis_. A systematizing and very legendary late antique or early medieval Passio (BHL 6988, etc.; offshoots focusing on P. herself are at BHL 6920ff.) makes her a virgin daughter of St. Pudens and the sister of the likewise virginal St. Pudentiana (both 19. May; the saints of another titular church whose successor is today's Santa Pudenziana). According to this tale, P. assisted imprisoned Christians, gave burial to martyrs' remains during a great persecution under an emperor Antoninus, and, worn-out by her labors, obtained the grace of dying very shortly afterward on 21. July of an undetermined year. P. was venerated medievally as a martyr.
Though the seventh-century itineraries for pilgrims to Rome place the remains of P. and her sister in the cemetery of Priscilla on the Via Salaria, the absence of earlier indications of their existence has been thought telling. They are first recorded liturgically from the eighth century. In the early ninth century pope St. Paschal I (817-24; a great devotee of the relics of Roman martyrs) erected on the site of an earlier church dedicated to P. today's since largely redecorated chiesa di Santa Prassede. An English-language account of this church is here:
http://tinyurl.com/ys627s
An Italian-language ones is here (you'll have to sacroll down a bit):
http://tinyurl.com/ynupmx
Two views of the entrance (on a side street near Santa Maria Maggiore):
http://www.romeartlover.it/Vas127af.jpg
http://www.romeartlover.it/Vas127ag.jpg
A ground plan:
http://tinyurl.com/26at29
Various views (expandable):
http://tinyurl.com/25bkbn
Marjorie Greene's views on the medrelart site (in the second row, the second and third images from left are of the crypt housing putative remains of P. and of her sister Pudentiana):
http://medrelart.shutterfly.com/activityfeed/374
The cosmatesque decor in the crypt is early thirteenth-century.
Two views of the apse mosaics (the figures to Christ's right represent Paschal I, P., and St. Paul):
http://www.classicalmosaics.com/images/prassede1.jpg
http://www.classicalmosaics.com/images/prassede2.jpg
Transcriptions of the dedication inscription in the apse do not always make it clear that this is verse. Here's a text:
EMICAT AVLA PIAE VARIIS DECORATA METALLIS
PRAXEDIS DNO SVPER AETHRA PLACENTIS HONORE
PONTIFICIS SVMMI STVDIO PASCHALIS ALUMNI
SEDIS APOSTOLICAE PASSIM QVI CORPORA CONDENS
PLVRIMA SCORVM SVBTER HAEC MOENIA PONIT
FRETVS VT HIS LIMEN MEREATVR ADIRE POLORVM
Inside Santa Prassede's ninth-century Cappella di San Zenone, above the door, is this mosaic depicting (from left to right) Paschal I's mother Theodora (identified by the inscription TEODO[RA] EPISCOPA) and three saints identified as Agnes, Pudentiana, and P.:
http://tinyurl.com/57ungp
The saints of the also ninth-century mosaic on the wall above are Agnes, Pudentiana, and P. (the identifying inscriptions of the first two are somewhat visible in this shot):
http://tinyurl.com/5ayuee
Whereas most of this chapel's decor is of the ninth century, the altar mosaic is thirteenth-century. Here P. (part of her inscription is still barely visible) and Pudentiana flank a seated Madonna and Child:
http://tinyurl.com/6mc2gg
Here's a leaf from a South Italian manuscript of ca. 1100 (Schøyen Collection, MS 2785) showing the opening of a Vita of P. similar to BHL 6920:
http://www.schoyencollection.com/natregscr_files/ms2785.jpg
Time to practice your Beneventan? The first few words following the caption are: VIRGO venerabilis praxedis in urbe roma
An expandable view of P. and Pudentiana burying deceased martyrs as depicted in a late thirteenth-century copy of French origin of Jacopo da Varazze's _Legenda aurea_ (San Marino, CA, Huntington Library, ms. HM 3027, fol. 78r):
http://tinyurl.com/3c2jdbt
P. as depicted in an early fifteenth-century (ca. 1414) breviary for the Use of Paris (Châteauroux, Bibliothèque municipale, ms. 2, fol. 236v):
http://tinyurl.com/3uvctgw
2) Victor of Marseille (?). V. is the legendary principal patron of Marseille, whose originally late fifth-century church dedicated to him later served a monastery often -- though unpersuasively in light of archaeological evidence -- said to have been founded by St. John Cassian (d. ca. 434). V. has a late antique Passio, the so-called Gesta symbolica (BHL 8568z), that makes him a soldier martyred for Christ and tortured in various ways. Whereas this text is almost certainly intended to be interpreted metaphorically (even V.'s name could be a posthumous appellation of a saint whose name in life had been lost), it was taken literally by the author of V.'s sixth-century or later Passio panegyrica (BHL 8570). Throughout the Middle Ages V. was viewed as soldier-saint whose martyrdom involved a violent death. Here's an early fifteenth-century instance (ca. 1414) of V. as a knight from a breviary for the Use of Paris:
http://tinyurl.com/lue2xm
(Châteauroux, Bibliothèque municipale, ms. 2, fol. 237r)
The abbey that grew up next to V.'s church in the early Middle Ages was destroyed by Muslims in the late ninth or tenth century and was rebuilt starting in the eleventh century, with its church dedicated in 1040. Its famous twelfth-century Parisian homonym was initially one of its dependencies. Pope Urban V (1362-70) expanded the abbey and fortified it. Herewith a plan of the church and some views of that building:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Plan-Saint-Victor.JPG
http://tinyurl.com/lk65ar
http://tinyurl.com/nqj43e
http://tinyurl.com/mg4ol2
http://tinyurl.com/lgvurs
http://tinyurl.com/nkf55l
http://mkdata.dk/pctutor/software/images/victor04.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/maogyg
http://tinyurl.com/m8nxco
http://www.pbase.com/mardoli/image/105923047
http://tinyurl.com/ns8krf
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/141/324486542_bd1135e911_o.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/mxdqm6
http://tinyurl.com/la6t2l
V.'s putative relics, flanked by others', in the abbey church:
http://tinyurl.com/nwqpb4
http://tinyurl.com/ntpybx
The approach to the originally late fifth-century crypt, built into a late antique necropolis:
http://tinyurl.com/mvbvl5
http://tinyurl.com/64ekux
An upward view:
http://tinyurl.com/5f8elb
Views of the crypt and of some of its contents:
http://tinyurl.com/lw9b5b
http://www.bibleetnombres.online.fr/album/XP.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/lqjgkj
http://tinyurl.com/lr8cps
http://tinyurl.com/mvp5v7
The crypt's chapelle Saint-Lazare:
http://tinyurl.com/lgbm9a
http://tinyurl.com/5bsw4q
http://tinyurl.com/kkfr7w
Eleventh-century tomb of abbot Isarnus:
http://tinyurl.com/6y9u5n
http://tinyurl.com/krge39
This Wikipedia page has late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century illustrations of the abbey's then more extensive medieval remains:
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbaye_de_Saint-Victor_de_Marseille
3) Simeon Salos and John the Hermit (d. 6th cent.?). S., whose byname means Fool, is attested by a brief account in Evagrius Scholasticus’s late sixth-century _Historia ecclesiastica_ and by a lengthy Bios written in the mid-seventh century by Leontius, bishop of Neapolis (now Limassol) on Cyprus. The latter is our source for J., S.'s companion for some thirty years. Both sources agree that S. was a holy man of Emesa in Syria who had bizarre eating habits, who appeared to be quite mad, and who through his erratic and sometimes scandalous behaviors revealed hidden truth. Both sources have him predict an earthquake, though the one in Evagrius seems to have occurred in 551 while in Leontius the prediction itself does not occur until the reign of Maurice (582-602). So much for the historical S., who seems in some respects to have been a Christian successor of the ancient Greek Cynics (Diogenes of Sinope et al.).
Leontius' Bios, which calls S. a "Fool for Christ's Sake" and which is the first of what rather later became a tradition of Lives of Christian holy fools, is translated into English by Derek Krueger in his _Symeon the Holy Fool: Leontius’_ Life _and the Late Antique City_ (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1996). The book is available in its entirety here:
http://tinyurl.com/6r6pxa
4) Arbogast (d. 6th cent.?). A. is a poorly documented early medieval bishop of Strasbourg/Straßburg who is credited with building that city's first cathedral and with founding the extramural monastery there that was later named for him. That he actually was a builder was shown by a tile bearing the inscription ARBOASTIS EPS FICET [sic] found near the cathedral in the eighteenth century and destroyed in 1870 (fragments of others have since been unearthed). His date is fixed, to the extent it can be, by the Frankish conquest of the still pagan Alemanni in 536 and by the latter's effective Christianization during the next two generations.
A.'s legendary Vita (BHL 656) attributed to Strasbourg's tenth-century bishop Udo IV makes him a noble from Aquitaine who became a hermit in the forest of Haguenau and whose subsequent ecclesiastical prominence was aided by the respect he had garnered from a king Dagobert, whose only son, killed in a hunting accident, he restored to life. Falling back on another hagiographic topos, both the legendary twelfth-century _Vita sancti Florentii_ (F. of Strasbourg, A.'s supposed immediate successor) and the thirteenth-century chronicler Richer of Sens give A. an insular origin.
A. is the patron saint of Strasbourg and of several towns in Switzerland that once belonged to its diocese. Herewith two views -- one better for color, the other for detail -- of his window in Strasbourg's cathedral of Notre-Dame (Nave, north, top, window 5, section A, 3; CVMA: Beyer, N III):
http://www.heiligenlexikon.de/Fotos/Arbogast_von_Strassburg.jpg
http://ica.princeton.edu/images/metcalf/strasbourg/R309F6.jpg
The University of Heidelberg's early fifteenth-century copy of the Elsässische Legenda Aurea (Universitätsbibliothek, Cod. Pal. germ. 144) offers illustrated versions of this fourteenth-century text's few Lives of Strasbourg's own saints. One of these is of Arbogast. Here he is, entering Strasbourg as bishop (fol. 401v):
http://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/cpg144/0826
Two sets of expandable views of the originally eleventh- or twelfth-century abbatiale Saint-Arbogast in Surbourg (Bas-Rhin):
http://tinyurl.com/3bl3yd5
http://tinyurl.com/3ujhve7
The abbey claimed foundation by A.
Best,
John Dillon
(a post from 2009 lightly revised)
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