medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (29. July) is the feast day of:
1) Martha of Bethany (d. 1st cent.). M., the sister of Mary of Bethany and of Lazarus of Bethany, appears three times in the Gospels, at Luke 10:38-42, John 11:1-44, and John 12:1-3. In a later medieval legend popular in the Latin West, e.g. in her late twelfth- or early thirteenth-century Vita by pseudo-Marcilia (BHL 5545-5546), she accompanied Mary Magdalen (considered the same person as Mary of Bethany) and Lazarus to Provence and was active there as a missionary before dying at, and being buried at, Tarascon, the town she had freed from a man-eating monster (in modern French, la Tarasque). Here's an English-language translation of M.'s Vita in the _Legenda aurea_:
http://www.catholic-forum.com/saints/golden239.htm
M.'s supposed relics are in the originally eleventh- and twelfth-century but much rebuilt collégiale Sainte-Marthe at Tarascon (Bouches-du-Rhône). Herewith two rather sketchy French-language accounts of this church:
http://tinyurl.com/2egarzr
http://tinyurl.com/3cpw8wl
Exterior views:
http://tinyurl.com/5jvorg
http://tinyurl.com/68ru3g
http://tinyurl.com/2arj6a8
http://tinyurl.com/4ylywfr
http://www.photos-provence.fr/dpt13/tarascon-5.jpg
Interior views:
http://paroisse-de-tarascon.over-blog.com/album-333407.html
http://www.flickr.com/photos/bruno_1802/4814200545/
M.'s sarcophagus in the crypt:
http://tinyurl.com/lonzjc
A slightly earlier dedication to M. is the originally eleventh-century (ex-)colegiata de Santa Marta in Santa Marta de Tera, a locality of Camarzana de Tera (Zamora), Castilla y León. Herewith an illustrated, Spanish-language account (two pages) and another page of views:
http://www.arquivoltas.com/23-Zamora/02-Tera1.htm
http://www.arquivoltas.com/23-Zamora/02-Tera2.htm
http://tinyurl.com/3dcnhp8
Five expandable views of a later fifteenth-century (1472-1474) silver gilt hand reliquary of M. from the suppressed convent of Santa Marta in Venice, now in Paris in the Musée du Louvre, are in the third row here (photographs by Genevra Kornbluth):
http://www.kornbluthphoto.com/Saints2.html
A French-language description of this object:
http://tinyurl.com/3kfdxb7
Some portrayals of M.:
a) M. as portrayed in a twelfth-century statute (prob. 1140s; perh. late 1160s or 1170s) from the now destroyed tomb of St. Lazarus in the église (later, cathédrale) Saint-Lazare at Autun:
http://tinyurl.com/3kfgbx4
b) Mary (Magdalen) and M., representing the contemplative and the active life (early fifteenth-century):
http://saints.bestlatin.net/gallery/marymartha_dutchms.htm
c) Domestic M. with penitents (Swabia, late fifteenth-century):
http://tinyurl.com/6pvps7
d) Domestic _and_ contemplative M. (Isabella Breviary; 1497):
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Saint_martha.jpg
Two fifteenth-century depictions of M. with the Tarasque:
e) Breviary for the Use of Paris (ca. 1414; Châteauroux, Bibliothèque municipale, ms. 2, fol. 254v):
http://tinyurl.com/676rwc
f) Missal for the Use of Aix-en-Provence (1424; Aix-en-Provence, Bibliothèque municipale, ms. 11, p. 668):
http://tinyurl.com/64bfmx
g) M. (treading on the Tarasque) and Mary Magdalen, among the early sixteenth-century paintings of protectors of travelers, chapelle Notre-Dame de Benva, Lorgues (Var):
http://lorgues.free.fr/benva/ste-madeleine2.jpg
Detail (M.):
http://lorgues.free.fr/col-chapelles/benva-ste-marthe.jpg
Two illustrated, French-language sites on this chapel:
http://lorgues.free.fr/benva1.html
http://www.culture.gouv.fr/culture/medieval/francais/e-gale.htm
2) Mary of Bethany and Lazarus of Bethany (d. 1st cent.). Martha (see above) is the only one of the three siblings of Bethany now present in the general Roman Calendar. But her sister Mary and her brother Lazarus too are commemorated in the RM under 29. July, albeit in a separate elogium. M., long supposed in the church of Rome to be identical with Mary Magdalene, had been celebrated in the West through the latter's feast on 22. July (in Orthodox churches, Martha and Mary, the latter distinguished from Mary Magdalene, are celebrated on 4. June). L. previously enjoyed a Roman Calendar feast of his own on 17. December.
In Orthodox churches L. is celebrated on 17. October, commemorating his late ninth-century translation by the emperor Leo VI from Kition/Larnaka on Cyprus to Constantinople and the deposition of his relics in a newly built church there (according to Greek legend, the Bethany trio had been put to sea in a leaking boat by hostile Jews but by divine providence arrived safely at Cyprus, where L. was made bishop of Kition and where all three died peacefully). Herewith some views of L.'s church (Ayios Lazaros) at Larnaka in Cyprus, built in the ninth century and restored in the seventeenth:
Exterior:
http://tinyurl.com/249fakm
http://tinyurl.com/m38xkw
http://tinyurl.com/m4xz54
Interior:
http://tinyurl.com/nh4cbz
http://tinyurl.com/6gw5m9
L.'s former tomb in the crypt:
http://tinyurl.com/kuy4uw
http://tinyurl.com/nux99e
The Sacred Destinations page on this church:
http://tinyurl.com/ntyr5w
L. (at left, with Sts. Gregory of Nazianzus and St. John Chrysostom) portrayed as a bishop in a poorly preserved later twelfth-century fresco (ca. 1160-1180) in the church of the Holy Apostles at Pera Chorio (Nicosia prefecture) in the Republic of Cyprus:
http://tinyurl.com/39uslup
In the Latin West, from at least the eleventh century onward the presence in the crypt of St.-Victor at Marseille of the tomb of a fifth-century bishop of Aix-en-Provence also named Lazarus conduced to the belief that our L.'s remains reposed or had reposed there. In the twelfth century (probably in the 1140s but sometimes dated to the late 1160s or the 1170s) relics claimed to be L.'s and said to have been translated from Marseille were placed in a shrine in a church dedicated to him at Autun (Saône-et-Loire) in Burgundy that later became that city's cathedral. Herewith some illustrated sites on that well known monument:
http://www.sacred-destinations.com/france/autun-cathedral
http://www.romanes.com/Autun/
http://tinyurl.com/68j8rm
The adjacent Musée Rolin preserves some twelfth-century statues that once adorned L.'s tomb at Autun. Herewith, from that group, Mary of Bethany:
http://tinyurl.com/3hlhw92
Another dedication to L. in Burgundy is his originally late eleventh- and twelfth-century church at Avallon (Yonne). Some illustrated pages on it:
http://tinyurl.com/68twd2
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89glise_Saint-Lazare_d%27Avallon
http://tinyurl.com/5kbp6n
From at least the thirteenth century onward there existed a legend (BHL 4802, etc.) to the effect that the Bethany trio (with Mary identified, as was customary in the Latin West, with Mary Magdalen) had arrived by boat in Provence and had evangelized in the region, that L. had been made bishop of Marseille, and that he had been martyred there under Domitian. Here are the three of them (Mary at left) as depicted in a mid-fourteenth-century (1348) copy of the _Legenda aurea_ in its French-language version by Jean de Vignay (Paris, BnF, ms. Français 241, fol. 163r):
http://tinyurl.com/26fj3w5
Here they are arriving at Marseille (with others) as depicted by Giotto and assistants from the earlier (first quarter) fourteenth-century Mary Magdalen cycle in the Cappella della Maddalena, Basilica Inferiore, Assisi:
http://tinyurl.com/mlusyf
And here they are again (upper register; below, Mary Magdalen evangelizing in Provence) in a later fifteenth-century copy (1463) of Vincent of Beauvais' _Speculum historiale_ in its French-language version by Jean de Vignay (Paris, BnF, ms. Français 50, fol. 341r):
http://tinyurl.com/267ayxo
Marseille too has claimed to possess L.'s relics. Here's a view of its set as shown in a nineteenth-century display reliquary in that city's cathedral:
http://tinyurl.com/l7zhou
A few images of the Raising of Lazarus:
a) At lower right on a later sixth-century historiated ivory plaque used as the upper cover of Paris, BnF, ms. Latin 9384:
http://tinyurl.com/23j9cbq
b) At upper left in a later ninth-century (betw. 879 and 882) copy of St. Gregory the Thaumaturge's prose paraphrase of _Ecclesiastes_ (Paris, BnF, ms. Grec 510, fol. 196v):
http://tinyurl.com/2cjh8ea
c) An eleventh-century fresco in church of Agios Nikolaos tis Stegis at Kakopetria (Limassol prefecture) in the Republic of Cyprus:
http://tinyurl.com/257u5gh
d) A twelfth-century capital in the cloister of the collegiata di San Pietro e Sant'Orso / collégiale des saints Pierre et Ours in Aosta:
http://tinyurl.com/ygbhu24
e) A late twelfth-century (ca. 1190) capital in the cloister of the monastery of San Juan de la Peña at Santa Cruz de la Serós (Huesca):
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2534/3885123504_94a134638c_b.jpg
f) A panel in the early thirteenth-century (ca. 1205-1215) Mary Magdalen window in the cathedral of Chartres (photo by Gordon Plumb):
http://tinyurl.com/2et2fb9
g) A manuscript illumination in an earlier thirteenth-century (first quarter) Psalterium Parisiense (Paris, BnF, ms. Nouvelle acquisition latine 1392, fol. 6v):
http://tinyurl.com/26n9w46
h) A later thirteenth-century fresco (betw. 1260 and 1263) in the nave of the church of the Holy Apostles in the Patriarchate of Peć at Peć in, depending on one's view of the matter, either the Republic of Kosovo or Serbia's province of Kosovo and Metohija:
http://tinyurl.com/3y22gwq
Detail:
http://tinyurl.com/3ywbskj
i) An earlier fourteenth-century fresco (1330s) in the nave of the church of the Hodegetria in the Patriarchate of Peć at Peć in, depending on one's view of the matter, either the Republic of Kosovo or Serbia's province of Kosovo and Metohija:
http://tinyurl.com/34frl84
j) A manuscript illumination, by Giovanni di Benedetto and associates, in a late fourteenth-century (ca. 1385-1390) Franciscan Book of Hours (Paris, BnF, ms. Latin 757, fol. 318v):
http://tinyurl.com/2doygl5
k) A manuscript illumination in a mid-fifteenth-century (1456) Armenian-language Gospels (Paris, BnF, ms. Arménien 18, fol. 15r):
http://tinyurl.com/39pl6ms
l) A manuscript illumination in a late fifteenth-century Syriac Gospels from Armenia (Paris, BnF, ms. Syriaque 344, fol. 3r):
http://tinyurl.com/3yxt88y
3) Flora and Lucilla (d. 2d cent., supposedly). According to their legendary Passio (BHL 5017, etc.), the Christian Roman virgins Flora and Lucilla were taken prisoner in a raid by the barbarian king Eugegius and brought to his homeland, where, captivated by their beauty, he attempted to seduce them. But their firm and persistent refusals so impressed him that he granted these ladies high rank and himself converted to Christianity. After the passage of twenty years the Lord urged F. and L. in a dream to return to Rome in order to undergo martyrdom. Accompanied by E., they did return and all three were martyred along with various others named and unnamed.
This legend, whose earliest surviving versions were recognized by Lanzoni as fairly faithful reproductions of matter in the Passio of Sts. Luceia and Auceia (BHL 4980), appears to have originated at the Benedictine monastery of Flora and Lucilla near (later, in) Arezzo, founded from Montecassino in the very early tenth century. The cult itself does not seem to be much older; during the central Middle Ages it was diffused principally in southern Tuscany and nearby Umbria by the Aretine monastery, which had substantial holdings in the region. Later it spread more widely in Europe.
In 1196 the commune of Arezzo compelled the monastery to relocate to within the city proper, where it has occupied the same site since 1209. Subsequent re-building of its church, involving such famous Quattro- and Cinquecento names as Giuliano da Maiano and Giorgio Vasari, has effaced most of the medieval structure. But there remains this crucifix, dated to 1319 and attributed to Segna di Bonaventura:
http://tinyurl.com/nfyx6
Reliquary busts of F. and L. may be seen here (in a baroque grandma's attic of a chapel):
http://tinyurl.com/o8xzr
Literary monuments dealing with F. and L. include two sermons by Peter Damian (nos. 34-35; _Patrologia Latina_, vol. 144, cols. 687-93) and the seemingly early twelfth-century _Augmentatio passionis Florae et Lucillae_, an impressive prosimetrum edited by Edoardo D'Angelo in his "Il dossier delle sante Flora e Lucilla e la 'Augmentatio passionis' (BHL 5021c)," _Hagiographica_ 8 (2001), 121-64.
Prior to its revision of 2001, when it dropped the lot of them, the RM commemorated under today F., L., Eugegius (whose name it normalized to Eugenius) and other companions named and unnamed. F. and L. are still celebrated today as the patron saints of Santa Fiora (GR) in southern Tuscany. Herewith an illustrated, Italian-language page on Santa Fiora's originally twelfth-/fifteenth-century pieve delle Sante Flora e Lucilla (most views are of polychrome reliefs from the workshop of Andrea della Robbia):
http://tinyurl.com/m9sk7v
4) Simplicius, Faustinus, Viatrix, and Rufus (?). S., F., V. (who used to be known as Beatrix), and R. are Roman martyrs of the cemetery of Generosa on the Via Portuensis. S., F., and V. are entered under today in the (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology.
In 683, according to the _Liber Pontificalis_, pope Leo II translated the remains of S., F., and V. (as B.) to an oratory near the church of Santa Bibiana. When that oratory was destroyed a sarcophagus bearing an inscription naming the martyrs S. and F. and saying that they had been buried in the cemetery of Generosa was transferred to Santa Maria Maggiore where it still was in the early 1960s. In 1868 the cemetery of Generosa was discovered and partly excavated. Inscriptions in the remains of its basilica attested to the commemoration there of S., F., Viatrix (as the fragment of her Damasan _titulus_ proved her name to have been spelled in the mid-fourth century), and R. (who in consequence of this discovery has now been included in the commemoration).
5) Olaf of Norway (d. 1030). Olaf II Haraldsson became king of Norway in 1015, reconquered areas that had been under the control of Danes and Swedes, and effected, partly by force, the conversion to Christianity of his then still largely pagan country. A rebellion forced him from his throne in 1028; he died two years later trying to regain it. O. was buried at what much later became Trondheim. His son Magnus promoted his veneration as a saint and built a chapel at his grave. In 1075 that chapel was replaced by a cathedral (now the cathedral of Nidaros). The later twelfth-century archbishop of Nidaros, St. Eystein (also spelled Øystein; latinized as Augustinus) wrote the Passio preserved in O.'s Office (BHL 6322, 6324). A paper on it by Eyolf Østrem is here:
http://hem.passagen.se/obrecht/leeds99.htm
Some O.-related visuals from Norway:
a) O. as portrayed on a silver penny struck for him on a rectangular block of metal (ca. 1023-1028):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Olav_der_Heilige07.jpg
b) O. portrayed as a youth in a thirteenth-century statue (ca. 1240-1250) from Lunner Kirke, Lunner (Oppland), on exhibit at the University of Oslo's Kulturhistorisk museum:
http://tinyurl.com/3mcwl92
c) O.'s mid-thirteenth-century statue at Tyldal kirke in Hedmark (Østerdalen):
http://home.broadpark.no/~jantaule/helgener/stolav.jpg
d) The Sacred Destinations page on Trondheim's much rebuilt cathedral of Nidaros:
http://tinyurl.com/3x354jg
e) O.'s spring in the cathedral:
http://www.trondheim.com/content.ap?thisId=1117611476
f) An expandable view of the cathedral's early fourteenth-century St Olav altar frontal and an English-language account of this object occur on the lower half of this page:
http://www.trondheim.com/content/1117700449/The-Saint-King
g) O. (at left) as portrayed on an altar frontal of ca. 1300 from Kvæfjord kirke (Troms), now in the University of Oslo's Kulturhistorisk museum:
http://tinyurl.com/3pfk2oc
h) O. as portrayed on a late fourteenth-century (ca. 1375-1400) pastoral staff from Norway, now in London in the Victoria and Albert Museum:
http://tinyurl.com/3rsl7d2
Some O.-related visuals from outside of Norway:
a) O. (at right; at left, St. Erik of Sweden) as portrayed in a restored late medieval sculpture in the church of Överselö in Strängnäs township (Södermanlands län):
http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bild:Overselo_Olof02.jpg
Detail view (O. only):
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Overselo_Olof04.jpg
An earlier state of this object (note the missing axe blade):
http://web.stallarholmen.com/hembygd/bild.asp?id=81
b) O. as portrayed in the mid-fifteenth-century vault paintings in Överselö kyrka in Strängnäs kommun (Södermanlands län):
http://tinyurl.com/2tl5qx
c) O. as portrayed in the later fifteenth-century vault paintings (ca. 1460-1480) in Tuse kirke, Holbæk kommune, Sjælland:
http://tinyurl.com/3fhe6sz
d) O. as portrayed in the early sixteenth-century vault paintings (1503-1505; uncovered and restored, 1896-1899) in Skivholme kirke, Skanderborg kommune, Midtjylland:
http://tinyurl.com/3sfavdy
e) O. as portrayed on the fifteenth-century rood screen at St Michael, Barton Turf (Norfolk):
http://tinyurl.com/5vaj5w
f) An English-language page on, and some views of, the originally mostly fifteenth-century St Olave's church in Chester (restored, 1859):
http://tinyurl.com/ks27ee
http://tinyurl.com/nu5znz
http://www.flickr.com/photos/clivester/3356470592/sizes/l/
g) An English-language page on, and some views of, the originally late medieval St. Olav's church in Tallinn:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Olaf%27s_Church,_Tallinn
http://pilt.delfi.ee/en/show_original/7634059/
http://tinyurl.com/3cse5hm
http://tinyurl.com/3g5sxpo
http://tinyurl.com/23pccaz
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Oleviste_kirik_2006.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/3mahmrw
http://tinyurl.com/3btyzv8
http://tinyurl.com/4xzrauc
http://tinyurl.com/44432rp
Many views of the church are here (follow the sequence of thumbnails near the bottom):
http://fotoalbum.ee/photos/katikrt/61605311/
6) Urban II, pope (Bl.; d. 1099). Eudes (Odo) de Châtillon, a scion of a seigneurial family in Champagne, was educated for the church under the mentorship of an uncle who was archbishop of Reims. After service as a canon (later, archdeacon) of Reims he became a monk of Cluny and rose to be prior there. In that capacity he journeyed to Rome in 1079. In the following year, having joined the papal court, E. was made cardinal bishop of Ostia by St. Gregory VII. In 1084-85 he was Gregory's legate in Germany and presided over a synod that anathematized Henry IV's antipope Clement III.
In March of 1088 E. was elected pope at Terracina, succeeding Bl. Victor III. Though he took the name Urbanus he was unable to enter the Eternal City, then controlled by Clement, until November of that year when he took up residence on the Tiber Island; by December 1089 Clement was again fully in charge in Rome and U., who had been shoring up his position with his anti-imperial Norman allies in the south, spent the next several years organizing a north Italian resistance to Henry. He returned to Rome in 1093; only in 1094, having bribed his way into control of the Lateran palace, was he able to occupy the throne of Peter. Despite these difficulties the pragmatic U. was a successful exponent of the Reform papacy. He also strengthened the finances and the organization of the papal court and, in 1095, he launched the First Crusade. U. was beatified in 1881.
U. with cardinals and U. addressing bishops (at the the synod of Clermont?) as depicted by the Fauvel Master in an earlier fourteenth-century copy (1337) of the _History_ of William of Tyre (Paris, BnF, ms. Français 22495, fol. 15r):
http://tinyurl.com/2cpj9tz
Best,
John Dillon
(last year's post revised)
**********************************************************************
To join the list, send the message: join medieval-religion YOUR NAME
to: [log in to unmask]
To send a message to the list, address it to:
[log in to unmask]
To leave the list, send the message: leave medieval-religion
to: [log in to unmask]
In order to report problems or to contact the list's owners, write to:
[log in to unmask]
For further information, visit our web site:
http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/medieval-religion.html
|
