medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (17. August) is the feast day of:
1) Mamas of Caesarea (d. during 270-275, supposedly). The megalomartyr M. (also Mammas, Mames, Mammes, Mamete, Mamant, Mamante, etc., etc.) is a saint of Caesarea in Cappadocia of whom virtually nothing is known. Traditionally thought to have suffered under Aurelian and considered a patron of herdsmen and of others who work with animals, he is venerated widely in Eastern Christianity and regionally or locally in various places in the Latin West.
According to Sozomen, writing in the first half of the fifth century (_Historia ecclesiastica_, 5. 2. 9-14), a martyrial church in Caesarea said by St. Gregory of Nazianzus (_Orationes_, 4. 24-26) to have been built in Caesarea by the pre-apostate Julian and his half brother Gallus (so between 341 and 351) and to have suffered the collapse of its Julianic half had been dedicated to M. Our first certain witness to M.'s cult, St. Basil of Caesarea's _Homilia_ 23 (BHG 1020, 1020a; ca. 370), presents M. as an actual shepherd and shows that he was then celebrated on 2. September. A sermon on M. by Gregory of Nazianzus (_Orationes__, 44; BHG 1021) adds that he milked wild does, a detail that would become -- or perhaps already was -- a fixture in M.'s legend. The latter constructs him as a sort of Christian Orpheus taming and tending wild animals on a mountain near Caesarea; in its developed versions it memorably associates him with a tame lion or lions.
M. has a complicated hagiography. A now lost, very probably fourth-century Greek-language Passio seems to have given rise to two different legendary developments, one of which is represented in Latin translation by an early, fifth-century prose Passio (BHL 5191d; M.'s so-called encyclical Passio). The other development was an also now lost Greek-language Passio that made M. a scion of senatorial nobility at a place called Gangra and that probably early in the sixth century was conflated with elements from the other tradition to form an episodic Bios (BHG 1019). That Bios in turn underlies various reworkings and adaptations in Greek, Syriac, and Armenian. In the ninth century it was known in the Latin West, as it underlies both M.'s metrical Passio by Walafrid Strabo (BHL 5197) and a notice of M. by St. Rabanus Maurus (BHL 5198d); in perhaps the twelfth century it was translated into Latin by Gregory of Langres (BHL 5198).
With the distinguished exception of early medieval Naples, whose earlier ninth-century Marble Calendar
gives 2. September as M.'s feast day, in the Latin West M. has generally been celebrated today, the _dies natalis_ given for him in his Latin Passiones. M.'s feast day both in Orthodox churches and in Eastern-rite churches in communion with Rome is 2. September. That is also the day on which he is currently celebrated in the Roman Rite at his church in Perreuse (Yonne) in Bourgogne. Herewith a few visuals:
The originally ninth(?)-century church of Agios Mamas near Potamia on Naxos:
http://www.travel-to-naxos.com/place.php?place_id=51
http://www.naxos.gr/images/villages/potamia/agios_mamas.JPG
http://www.pbase.com/armaco/image/66947105
http://tinyurl.com/mxbfqh
http://tinyurl.com/nq8na9
http://www.pbase.com/armaco/image/69237795
M. (at right; at left, St. Mercurius) as depicted in a fragmentarily preserved eleventh-century fresco on Crete (formerly in the church of Agia Varvara, Latziana, Kisamos, now in the Byzantine and Post-Byzantine Collection of Chania; view is expandable):
http://www.travel-to-crete.com/page.php?page_id=43
M.with wild animals, as depicted in an eleventh- or twelfth-century manuscript of the _Orations_ of St. Gregory of Nazianzus (Paris, BnF, ms. Coislin 239, fol. 27v):
http://tinyurl.com/2fmfhon
The originally eleventh- and twelfth-century priory church of Saint-Mammès at Saint-Mammès (Seine-et-Marne):
http://en.structurae.de/structures/data/index.cfm?ID=s0037261
http://www.vagabond.me.uk/html/paris_to_bourgogne.html
http://fr.topic-topos.com/eglise-saint-mammes-saint-mammes
M. as depicted in the eleventh- and twelfth-century frescoes of the Elmali (Apple) church at Göreme (Nevşehir province) in Turkey:
http://tinyurl.com/kpspoy
Since the color is off in that detail view, here's a view of the church showing part of the fresco in the arch to the immediate left (viewer's left) of the apse:
http://tinyurl.com/ndgasy
The originally eleventh(?)-/twelfth- to fifteenth-/sixteenth-century chiesa di San Mamete at Mezzovico-Vira in Canton Ticino:
http://tinyurl.com/lntlvu
http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/10076909.jpg
http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/10077091.jpg
An aerial view, an interior view, and some pages of multiple views of the originally late twelfth-century cathédrale Saint-Mammès at Langres (Haute-Marne), consecrated in 1196:
http://tinyurl.com/kselua
http://tinyurl.com/n3uuhk
http://tinyurl.com/lr5e7h
http://www.pbase.com/alastairneil/langres
In 1075 this church received from Constantinople an arm relic said to be that of M.; in 1209 it received a head said in the account of these translations (BHL 5199) to be that of M. from his monastery church in Constantinople. Here's a view of the head:
http://tinyurl.com/ljxpvr
The originally twelfth- to fifteenth-century église Saint-Mammès at Dannemois (Essonne):
http://tinyurl.com/44exnjd
http://tinyurl.com/l7xl4u
The originally thirteenth-century église Saint-Mammès at Montarlot (Seine-et-Marne):
http://fr.topic-topos.com/eglise-saint-mammes-montarlot
The originally thirteenth- or fourteenth-century igreja de São Mamede de Vila Verde in Felgueiras (Oporto), replacing an earlier church of the same dedication:
http://tinyurl.com/3f5ywwl
http://www.transromanica.com/c_poi/1548-2-verde.JPG
A multi-page, Portuguese-language site on this church (click on "GALERIA" for good, expandable exterior and interior views before and after restoration):
http://tinyurl.com/3cf6jj3
M. (at right; at left an exterior view of the church) as depicted in a thirteenth- or fourteenth-century fresco in a church of Agios Nikolaos in Kastania in Greece's Exo Mani (Messenia prefecture):
http://www.zorbas.de/maniguide/scans/kastnik.jpg
M. as depicted (on a lion; to the left of St. George) in a thirteenth- or fourteenth-century fresco in the narthex of the originally twelfth-century church of the Panagia Phorbiotissa at Asinou (Nicosia prefecture) in the Republic of Cyprus:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/7784598@N04/2152224538/sizes/o/
There's a better view in the panorama of the frescoes in the narthex accessible here:
http://cyprus.arounder.com/en/churches/asinou-church
An exterior view of the church:
http://thesalmons.org/lynn/asinou1-30.jpg
M. (at left; at right, St. John the Faster) as depicted in the September calendar portraits in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (betw. ca.1312 and 1321/1322) of the monastery church of the Theotokos at Gračanica in, depending on one's view of the matter, either Serbia's province of Kosovo and Metohija or the Republic of Kosovo:
http://tinyurl.com/2u6sx9b
M. as depicted in earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (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/3qzrnlr
M.'s martyrdom as depicted (at right, St. John the Faster) as depicted in a September calendar scene in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (betw. 1335 and 1350) of the narthex in the church of the Holy Ascension at the Visoki Dečani monastery near 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/2uzkeke
M. as depicted in a fourteenth-century fresco in the church of the Transfiguration in Kato Vianno, a locality of Viannos (Heraklion prefecture) on Crete:
http://tinyurl.com/3lof8sa
M. (at right) as depicted in a late fourteenth-century fresco (ca. 1390-1400) in the originally eleventh-century but much rebuilt chiesa di San Mamete in Valsolda (CO) in Lombardy:
http://tinyurl.com/my2tlg
M. as portrayed on a fourteenth- or fifteenth-century Georgian tondo, formerly in the Gelati Monastery in Kutaisi and now in The State Museum of Fine Arts of Georgia (images in different lighting):
http://www.photomuseum.org.ge/laboratory/01_en.htm
http://tinyurl.com/qed725
M. holding his entrails (in the developed legend, he was mortally wounded there), as portrayed in a fifteenth-century ivory statuette in the cathedral treasury at Langres:
http://tinyurl.com/nwc2ca
M. in prison, exposed to lions, as portrayed in a panel painting by Filippo Lippi and workshop from the Pistoia Santa Trinità Altarpiece (1455-1460) now in The National Gallery, London:
http://tinyurl.com/px8kjr
M. (at left; at right, St. James), as depicted in a panel painting of 1455-1460, begun by Francesco Pesellino and completed by Filippo Lippi and workshop, from the Pistoia Santa Trinità Altarpiece now in The
National Gallery, London:
http://tinyurl.com/o6bvwr
A single view, and a page with two expandable views (facade; interior), of the later fifteenth-century église Saint-Mammès at Turny (Yonne):
http://tinyurl.com/42wv6p9
http://turny.chez.com/
M. on his lion, as depicted in a late fifteenth-century fresco (1494) by Philippos Goul in the church of Timios Stavros tou Agiasmati near Platanistasa (Nicosia prefecture) in the Republic of Cyprus:
http://tinyurl.com/n8o3mb
The originally fifteenth-century church of Agios Mamas at the village of Louvaras in Lemesos (Limassol prefecture) in the Republic of Cyprus (frescoed by Philippos Goul in 1495):
http://tinyurl.com/mu7ssg
http://www.cyprusedirectory.com/cyprusguide/cyprus.aspx?ID=124
M. with his lion before the Roman persecutor Alexander, as depicted in one of the eight tapestries executed by Jean Cousin the elder in ca. 1543 for the cathedral of Langres (this one is now in the Musée du Louvre in Paris):
http://tinyurl.com/nlvrc9
TAN: M. as depicted in a fresco of 1468 by George (Tzortzis) the Cretan in the katholikon of the Docheiariou monastery on Mt. Athos that's slightly too recent for this list but also too nifty to pass up:
http://tinyurl.com/pesmqg
2) Eusebius, pope (d. ca. 309). E. succeeded pope St. Marcellus I, whose period in office is imperfectly known. According to his epitaph by pope St. Damasus I (_Epigrammata Damasiana_, ed. Ferrua, no. 18), our chief source of information for him, E. was willing to readmit penitent Christians who had lapsed during the Great Persecution. An opponent, Heraclius, was not willing to do this. When factional strife, some of it violent, broke out between adherents of the two camps, the de facto emperor Maxentius had both leaders exiled. E. died in Sicily and was
brought back and buried in Rome's cemetery of Callistus. Absent from the _Depositio martyrum_ of the Chronographer of 354, in the slightly later view taken by Damasus he clearly was a martyr.
The Chronographer of 354's list of the bishops of Rome enters E. under today. The same source's _Depositio episcoporum_ enters him under 26. September as do also the (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology, the Carolingian-period historical martyrologies, and the RM prior to 2001. The _Liber Pontificalis_ adds a few details, of which one (the finding of the True Cross during his pontificate) is inaccurate and others (that he was of Greek extraction and the son of a physician) are unverifiable.
Best,
John Dillon
(matter from last year's posts revised)
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