medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (5. August) is also the feast day of:
2) Emigdius (d. 304, supposedly). E. (also Migdius, Emygdius, Emindius, etc.; in Italian, Emidio) is the reputed evangelist of Ascoli Piceno (AP) in the Marche. There are two versions of his legendary Passio. The briefer of these (BHL 2537), called Recensio 2 because it was the later to be discovered, is dated to the eleventh century; the longer one (Recensio 1; already printed in the _Acta Sanctorum_; BHL 2535), is generally dated to the thirteenth or perhaps early fourteenth century. These make E. a healer who in Rome overturns a cult statue of Asclepius (to use, as do both versions of the Passio, the standard form of his name in medieval Latin) and whose divinely granted healing powers supersede vain belief in the efficacy of this pagan deity. Consecrated bishop by the pope and sent to Ascoli to spread the faith, E. is in time apprehended there with several companions and suffers martyrdom by decapitation.
In both versions of the Passio E. is a cephalophore. In the earlier version he walks a fifth of a Roman mile carrying his head in his hooded cloak; in the later version this distance is increased to a third of a Roman mile.
E.'s cult is attested to from the late ninth century onward in eastern Sabina and in Picene territory. It is thought to have been diffused by the imperial abbey of Farfa, where the author of Recensio 2 may have resided; the author of the later version, Recensio 1, seems to have been a cleric of Ascoli Piceno. E. and his companions repose in an ancient sarcophagus in the crypt of his cathedral at that city; the inscription on its cover (_Cum sociis aliis Emindius hic requiescit_) has been dated to the eleventh or twelfth century.
The cathedral of Sant'Emidio at Ascoli Piceno
http://tinyurl.com/2bs5vm7
has been rebuilt so often that there is little medieval left to see in its fabric other than transept and the domed presbytery with its three apses (the latter are said to go back to the eighth century). A nearby inscription dates its two side towers to the twelfth century. Some sections of the originally eleventh-century crypt still have their original columns and sometimes even their medieval capitals:
http://tinyurl.com/9bczx
http://www.flickr.com/photos/gengish/3357058154/
E.'s tomb (a fourth-century sarcophagus) in the crypt:
http://tinyurl.com/244zzdf
Its setting, though, is not entirely medieval:
http://tinyurl.com/24js876
An illustrated, Italian-language page on Ascoli Piceno's originally twelfth-century baptistery:
http://tinyurl.com/2u8wzgx
The cathedral's cappella del Sacramento houses the altarpiece (1473) by Carlo Crivelli shown and discussed here (the bishop at the Virgin's immediate left is E.):
http://tinyurl.com/33o6rdu
http://arengario.net/momenti/momenti51.html
A view of Carlo Crivelli's Annunciation with Sant'Emidio (1486), in the National Gallery, London:
http://cgfa.sunsite.dk/c/p-crivell2.htm
A fuzzier reproduction, but perhaps making visible more details, is here (image expandable):
http://www.bramarte.it/400/img/cri1.jpg
Further south, E.'s cult is widespread in Molise. Some views of the originally thirteenth-century chiesa di Sant'Emidio in Agnone (IS) in Molise with its fourteenth-century ornamental portal:
http://tinyurl.com/298lpct
http://www.francovalente.it/?p=4573
http://tinyurl.com/2exl8m7
http://tinyurl.com/2fp7g72
http://www.flickr.com/photos/troise/2950566635/in/photostream/
In the same Italian region, E. is the patron saint of Cerro al Volturno (IS) and a co-patron of Roccavivara (CB).
3) Memmius (d. earlier 4th cent.?). M. (also Memius, Mimius; in Fench: Menge, Meinge, Memmie, Memie) is the fairly legendary protobishop of the Châlons that until 1998 was Châlons-sur-Marne and that since then has been Châlons-en-Champagne (Marne). Entered under today in the (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology, he comes first in his city's traditional catalogue of bishops, which latter has been thought credible by no less a figure than Duchesne. A calculation backward from the fifth-century dates of the first attested bishops of that catalogue gives him a _floruit_ ending probably in the earlier fourth century.
In the sixth century St. Gregory of Tours reports (_In gloria confessorum_, 65) having often been at M.'s tomb, where M,, his city's special saint, credited with the lifetime miracle of reviving a dead man, augmented his reputation as a thaumaturge by operating post-mortem miracles as well (releasing poor people from fetters; curing one of Gregory's servants of a fever).
M.'s originally perhaps seventh-century legendary Vita in many versions (BHL 5907-5910a, 5911b, 5912) presents him as a Roman of noble birth whom St. Peter consecrated bishop and sent out to evangelize Châlons. His companions in this legendary effort are his sister St. Poma, his deacon St. Donatianus (the second bishop), and his subdeacon St. Domitianus. En route, Domitianus dies and M. miraculously restores him to life; once at Châlons, M. is at first refused admittance but after a year restores to life a recently drowned boy of noble birth. The latter miracle assures M.'s acceptance at Châlons, where he performs further miracles, converts the entire city, dies on this day after a pontificate of eighty years, and is buried in a village belonging to Châlons where healing miracles continue to occur at his tomb.
The church housing M.'s tomb was in the village that now is Saint-Memmie (Marne); inventions of M.'s remains there are recorded from 677 and again from the ninth century (BHL 5911, 5911c). M.'s relics are still at Saint-Memmie, housed in this modern effigy reliquary in the town's later nineteenth-century church dedicated to him, the chapelle Saint-Memmie:
http://tinyurl.com/3vhg2zu
http://tinyurl.com/3un7r8j
M. (at center; at left, St. Donatianus) restoring Domitianus to life as depicted in an earlier fourteenth-century copy (ca. 1335) of Vincent of Beauvais' _Speculum historiale_ in its French-language translation by Jean de Vignay (Paris, BnF, ms. Arsenal 5080, fol. 76v):
http://tinyurl.com/3n4dd2r
Two exterior views of the originally twelfth- to sixteenth-century église Saint-Menge at Trémont-sur-Saulx (Meuse):
http://tinyurl.com/3rnk9kf
http://tinyurl.com/3r9j2ts
The Base Mérimée fiche on this church:
http://tinyurl.com/3jdsc73
Some exterior views of the originally twelfth- to sixteenth-century église Saint-Memmie at Courtisols (Marne):
http://www.courtisols.fr/?srubrique=patrimoine
http://tinyurl.com/43zfgsy
http://image.loomji.fr/mo/18000/eglise-saint-memmie.jpg
A French-language page with hotlinks to views of architectural details of this church:
http://paroisse-sourcesdelavesle.cef.fr/lieu/stmemmie.htm
Two exterior views and one interior view of the originally earlier thirteenth-century église Saint-Menge at Lourps in Longueville (Seine-et-Marne):
http://tinyurl.com/3zrpayy
http://tinyurl.com/3wc2ek2
http://tinyurl.com/3jcvo9j
An exterior view and a page of views of the originally earlier sixteenth-century église Saint-Menge at Vinets (Aube):
http://tinyurl.com/3ztom3z
http://aubetdh.free.fr/vinets/eglise/images/vignettes.html
An illustrated, French-language page on the originally mid-sixteenth-century église Saint-Memmie at Vitry-en-Perthois (Marne), a replacement for predecessors of the same dedication going back to at least the earlier twelfth century:
http://tinyurl.com/3kxclk9
4) Cassian of Autun (d. mid-4th cent.?). According to St. Gregory of Tours (_In gloria confessorum_, 74), C. succeeded St. Reticius (d. earlier 4th cent.) as bishop of Autun and was succeeded as bishop by Hegemonius. Gregory, who saw C.'s tomb in a cemetery at Autun, reports (_In gloria confessorum_, 73) that it had been heavily scratched, almost to the point of perforation in places, by people who, being ill, sought some of this object's wonder-working dust. The latter, according to Gregory, had an immediately powerful effect on those who purified themselves with it. In a statement that seems to have had consequences for C.'s subsequent hagiography, Gregory adds that some say that bishop Simplicius of Autun (d. earlier 5th cent.) was buried in the same cemetery.
By the tenth century C. had received a legendary Vita (versions: BHL 1630-1632). According to the text of BHL 1630 printed in the _Acta Sanctorum_, C. was the offspring of a wealthy noble family in Alexandria in Egypt, was raised in the church there by a bishop Zonis, worked courageously for the church during the persecution of the emperor Julian, and when the latter had been succeeded by Jovian (late June 363-early February 364) was made bishop of an Egyptian town named Orta, where he performed admirably in all respects. Later, after Zonis had been martyred at the outbreak of a new persecution, C. was divinely instructed to proceed to Gaul and to preach the Lord's word there. Arriving at Marseille, he proceeded to Autun, where within a few years he succeeded bishop St. Simplicius, ruled for twenty years, and was buried in the same cemetery as his predecessor.
Thus far C.'s Vita, which concludes with an account of a miraculous conversation at C.'s tomb between St. Germanus of Auxerre and the dead C. By the tenth century too the Vita had received an expansion in quantitative Latin hexameters (BHL 1633; printed in MGH Antiquitates, PLAC, 4. 1). This account, now only partly preserved, appears to have been in much better shape when it was seen by the Bollandist Conrad Janning (d. 1723); its mostly lost second book probably dealt at length with postmortem miracles attributed to C. It seems to have been written at the abbey of Saint-Quentin, whither C.'s putative remains had been translated in 840 and where some five years later they received a place of honor in the abbey's crypt, _non sine miraculis_ (described in a Translation account, BHL 1634). This Vita metrica is preserved in a manuscript from Saint-Germain-des-Prés (Paris, BnF, ms. latin 12958), whose interest in it will have centered on C.'s post-mortem colloquy with St. Ge
rmanus. The latter has an expansion of its own in BHL 1635a.
A French-language account, with expandable views, of the originally mid-fifteenth-century église Saint-Cassien de Savigny-lès-Beaune (Côte-d'Or), dedicated to today's C.:
http://tinyurl.com/2bnr4u9
Other views:
http://tinyurl.com/26jakmr
http://tinyurl.com/2e733mn
5) Paris of Teano (d. 4th cent., supposedly). Today's less well known saint from the Regno is the legendary first bishop of Teano (CE) in nothern Campania, once the ancient Teanum Sidicinum and an important crossroads town on the Via Latina. P.'s Vita (BHL 6466) is a melange of familiar topoi featuring an evangelist of foreign origin (Athenian), a giant serpent fed rich meals in a pagan sacred well, a bear and a lion who become tame when each in turn is set upon our intrepid saint, and pope St. Sylvester I hiding from Constantinian persecution on Mount Soracte.
P.'s cult seems to be at least early medieval in origin. His church, the recently restored San Paride ad Fontem, is an eleventh- or early twelfth-century structure that replaced a paleochristian church. Situated outside the medieval city and built over an ancient cistern (the sacred well of the legend, no doubt), this is believed to have been Teano's first cathedral. It retains an early episcopal throne. Whereas P. was said to have been buried here, his putative relics are in Teano's cathedral of San Clemente, a seventeenth-century replacement for an earlier cathedral built about the same time as the present San Paride in Fontem.
Always essentially a local saint, P. seems to have been venerated from at least the early modern period onward in other locales in northern Campania. At present he is co-patron of the diocese of Teano-Calvi, sharing that distinction with the equally shadowy Castus of Calvi (one of Campania's several episcopal saints of that name).
Here's a view of San Paride in Fontem dating from before the restoration of 1988-2004:
http://tinyurl.com/2fz2v2
Some more recent exterior views of the same church:
http://www.prolocoteano.it/Monumenti/San_Paride.htm
A set of recent views (2008-2010):
http://tinyurl.com/2bp2y8p
T.'s putative remains now repose in an altar in a rococo chapel in Teano's cattedrale di Sant'Anna e Maria:
http://tinyurl.com/4xswh5v
A medieval survival in the cathedral is this cosmatesque ambo:
http://www.prolocoteano.it/Monumenti/Ambone.htm
The ambo's present parapet (a replacement for the orginal, which had been badly damaged by fire in 1608) is composed of panels taken from a fourteenth-century funerary monument decorated with images of P. and of other bishops of Teano.
6) Oswald of Northumbria (d. 642). Most of what we know about O. comes from St. Bede the Venerable's _Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum_. The second son of a Christian king of Northumbria who had lost his throne to pagan opponents, O. spent seventeen years in exile in Scotland and Ireland before returning upon the death of a brother and securing his kingdom against Welsh invaders at the battle of Heavenfield in the early 630s. Both St Adomnán in his Vita of St. Columba and Bede present O. as a divinely assisted Christian victor over a pagan host (Adomnán has St. Columba appear to him in a vision and promise him victory; Bede has him erect a great wooden cross on the eve of battle). Memorably generous to the poor, O. was instrumental in establishing the Christian religion in Northumbria.
O. was killed in battle against an old enemy, the pagan king Penda of Mercia, who had the fallen king's head, arms, and hands shown publicly on stakes. These relics were later recovered by O.'s brother and successor Oswiu, who donated the head to Lindisfarne. Miracles were attributed to O. and a cult arose. One of O.'s hands was said to be undecayed; in the late eighth century it was still displayed in a silver reliquary in the palace church at Bamburgh.
O.'s relics later were dispersed still further. In the early tenth century some wound up at St Peter's Priory in Gloucester, which soon became St Oswald's Priory instead. A page on that site is here:
http://tinyurl.com/55o9uh
Both Durham Cathedral and that of Hildesheim have heads said to be those of O. (O. the Polycephalous, perhaps?). Here's a view of his late twelfth-century head reliquary at Hildesheim:
http://tinyurl.com/6a5bqw
For more on O.'s posthumous journeys, see:
http://britannia.com/church/shrines/oswald.html
The eleventh-century Fleming Drogo of Saint-Winnoc penned three sermons on O. (BHL 6362-6234), treating him not only as a Christian hero but also explicitly as a martyr. As a saint of Durham, O. has an impressive Vita in three books by Reginald of Durham (BHL 6365). In the 1220s the poet Henry of Avranches produced a Vita of O. in hexameters (BHL 6365d).
O. at Heavenfield as depicted in an earlier fourteenth-century collection of French-language saint's Lives (Paris, BnF, ms. Français 183, fol. 78v):
http://tinyurl.com/37ptc2s
St Cuthbert holding O.'s head as depicted in the St Cuthbert window in York Minster (fifteenth-century; window sVII in the CVMA notation; photograph by Gordon Plumb):
http://www.flickr.com/photos/22274117@N08/4516209022/
Best,
John Dillon
(last year's post revised and with the addition of Memmius)
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