medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Yesterday (18. August) was the feast day of:
1) Agapitus of Praeneste (?). A saint of this name is entered under today in the (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology -- where he is identified as being of Praeneste, the Roman-period predecessor of today's Palestrina (RM) in Lazio --, in the Gelasian and the Gregorian sacramentaries, and in the Marble Calendar of Naples. His earliest possible mention appears to be in a late antique dedicatory inscription to an _Agap sancte_ erected by an otherwise unknown bishop Jucundus (_Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum_, 14. 3415) and found about a mile away from Palestrina. As the area in which it was found is known from other inscriptions to have been a late antique Christian cemetery for Praeneste, the practice since the nineteenth century has been to expand _Agap_ into _Agapite_. By the ninth century a legend had grown up making A. a youthful martyr under Aurelian (270-75): a brief version is in the martyrology of St. Ado of Vienne and longer ones inform his Passio (BHL 125-127).
A dilapidated basilica at Praeneste dedicated to A. was restored by pope St. Leo III (795-816). Whereas ruins in the locale where the aforementioned inscription was found have been interpreted as those of this structure, it seems more likely that Leo's church was the predecessor of Palestrina's present cathedral, consecrated by Paschal II in 1117 and dedicated to A. The latter utilizes remains of an ancient Roman hall thought to have been connected with the massive temple complex of Fortuna Primigenia now visible just up the hill (this complex had been largely buried until it was revealed by bombing in World War II). The cathedral has been rebuilt many times. Its unlovely facade, pitted and scarred by the removal in 1957 of an early nineteenth-century external loggia, has at least the merit of revealing some of the building's medieval stonework:
http://tinyurl.com/lo42e2
http://tinyurl.com/nmepuh
http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/13678664.jpg
And here's a view of an engaged tufa column and travertine capital once part of the cathedral's late antique predecessor:
http://tinyurl.com/z2o8v
A closer view of that capital:
http://www.lenovemuse.it/galleria_file/FOROCAP.jpg
Similar capitals have been found in Palestrina's Republican Forum (second-century BCE):
http://tinyurl.com/orhgfx
Relics said to be those of A. have been translated to many places, perhaps most notably the Benedictine abbey of Kremsmünster in Oberösterreich, founded in 777 by duke Tassilo III of Bavaria. A. is still honored there today, as he is also at today's Sant'Agapito (IS) in Molise, where in the ninth century prince Grimoald III of Benevento founded the now vanished monastery of Sant'Agapito in Valle.
A.'s martyrdom as depicted 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 51, fol. 38v):
http://tinyurl.com/y8jgs3m
2) Holy Martyrs of Utica (?). These martyrs of Roman Africa were buried not far from Utica at a place at least later called Massa candida, where in St. Augustine's time they had a memorial basilica. They were many: Augustine (_Enarrationes in psalmos_, 49. 9) says that they numbered more than the 153 fishes he ascribes to the catch of John 21:6. It is not clear whether the place was called Massa candida prior to their martyrdom: the name could mean "Shining Farm" or "Shining Harvest" or "Shining Mass", all of which could have been assigned afterwards (at _Sermones_, 306. 2 Augustine explains _massa_ here in the sense of "great number" and _candida_ as referring to the brilliance of the martyrs' cause). Such phrases as Augustine's _massa Uticensis_ ("the Utican mass"; _Sermones_, 311. 10) or the martyrs' entry in the early sixth-century Calendar of Carthage as _sanctorum Massae candidae_ do not even imply a toponym.
Augustine's contemporary Prudentius offers a sensationalistic account (_Peristephanon_, 13. 76-87) of three hundred martyrs who, faced with the choice of offering sacrifice to divinities of the Roman state or death, chose the latter and leapt voluntarily into a pit of quicklime prepared to receive their bodies. In a literal interpretation of the phrase _Massa candida_, Prudentius relates that the action of the quicklime caused these saints' bodies to fuse into a gleaming white mass. Because this passage occurs in a poem on the martyrdom of St. Cyprian of Carthage, some have concluded incautiously that, like Cyprian, the Martyrs of Utica perished in the Valerianic persecution. But their presence in that poem without any precise chronological indication may serve rather to exemplify the great sufferings of the church of Carthage during the entire period of the early persecutions.
Both the Calendar of Carthage and the (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology enter under today the feast of the Saints of (the) Massa candida. St. Ado of Vienne entered it under 24. August, where it remained in the historical martyrologies, in many calendars, and in the RM until the latter's revision of 2001.
3) Florus and Laurus (?). Absent from the early martyrologies, the brothers F. and L. are saints of the Byzantine commonwealth whose cult is attested medievally from Calabria to northern Russia. Their legendary Passio in numerous longer and shorter versions (BHG 660-662z, 663-664i) makes them stonemasons of the city of Byzantium who, having been engaged under Hadrian (117-138) to build a temple at Ulpiana in Illyria (the predecessor of today's Lipljan in Kosovo), do so but then incite a crowd of poor Christians to destroy the idols therein. Arrested, they refuse to sacrifice to pagan gods and are first severely beaten and then buried alive in a well. Much later their bodies are recovered by other local Christians and a cult is inaugurated. Thus far the Passio.
In the later Middle Ages relics believed to be those of F. and L. were preserved at Constantinople in the monastery church of Christ Pantocrator (founded in the earlier twelfth century). In Calabria, a now vanished church dedicated to them at today's Oppido Mamertina (RC) is recorded from ca. 1044 and another, also medieval, once existed at today's San Floro (CZ). In the Croatian part of Istria, the rebuilt crkva Sv. Flora in Pomer (Pula) is thought to be originally thirteenth-century. Here's a view of its apse frescoes undergoing restoration:
http://www.hrphotocontest.com/index.php?menu=7&img=120014
Another view of the apse frescoes:
http://istra.lzmk.hr/userfiles/image/slike_istra/IE_1177.jpg
In northern Russia, where F. and L. have been associated legendarily with horses, they appear to have been popular saints in the Republic of Novgorod. A church dedicated to them in Moscow gave its name to that city's late fifteenth-century Florov Gate, a predecessor of the Savior's Gate in the Kremlin.
F. and L. were dropped from the RM in its revision of 2001. They are still honored in San Floro (CZ) and their feast on 18. August is widespread in Eastern-rite calendars. Herewith a few visuals:
a) L. as depicted in the earlier thirteenth-century frescoes (1230s) in the nave of the church of the Ascension in the Mileševa monastery near Prijepolje (Zlatibor dist.) in Serbia:
http://tinyurl.com/38gt975
http://tinyurl.com/3247j46
b) F. and L. as depicted (upper register, center and right) in an August calendar scene 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/28zaf7u
c) F. and L. as depicted in the late fourteenth-century frescoes (later 1380s?) in the nave of the church of the Holy Ascension at the Ravanica monastery near Ćuprija in central Serbia:
F.:
http://tinyurl.com/ya7t8fj
L.:
http://tinyurl.com/39p3nan
d) F. and L. as depicted in a late fourteenth-century Novgorod School icon now in the State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg:
http://www.icon-art.info/masterpiece.php?lng=en&mst_id=799
e) F. and L. as depicted in a late fifteenth-century Novgorod School icon now in the State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow:
http://www.icon-art.info/masterpiece.php?lng=en&mst_id=501
f) F. and L. as depicted in the early sixteenth-century frescoes (1502) by the painter Dionisy and his sons in the Virgin Nativity cathedral of the St. Ferapont Belozero (Ferapontov Belozersky) Monastery at Ferapontovo in Russia's Vologda oblast:
http://www.dionisy.com/eng/museum/120/193/index.shtml
4) Helen, empress (d. 329). The mother of Constantine the Great, H. (Flavia Iulia Helena) probably hailed from Drepanum in Bithynia. She is said to have been initially of low social standing. After the battle of the Milvian Bridge (312), Constantine gave her a large swath of property south of Rome along the Via Labicana that included both the Christian catacomb _ad duas lauros_ and a nearby cemetery used by Maxentius' horse guards. Neatly wiping out this place of memory for his despised opponents, he erected on the latter site a basilica dedicated to Sts. Marcellinus and Peter and attached to it a great mausoleum that ultimately came to be used for H.
In 324, after Constantine's defeat of the other remaining Augustus, Licinius, H. received the title of Augusta. It is not known when she converted to Christianity, or when she was baptized, or by whom. In 327 H. made a trip to the Holy Land whose religious aspects are covered in some detail by Eusebius. E.'s silence about the discovery of the True Cross, first attributed to H. in the 380s, permits the conclusion that she had nothing to do with the appearance of this potent relic whose existence is not reported prior to the 340s. H.'s date of death is inferred from her disappearance from Roman coinage after 328/29.
The mausoleum in which H. was laid to rest was once a grandiose structure. Well described by Ross Holloway at pp. 86-93 of his _Constantine & Rome_ (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), it has long been a ruin. Various views of it are here (in the third view, note the presence of empty ceramic vessels used to lighten the fabric of the dome):
http://www.asvilladesanctis.it/
http://romeartlover.tripod.com/Vasi50bg.jpg
http://romeartlover.tripod.com/Vasi50bh.jpg
expandable:
http://tinyurl.com/h5rt5
The large porphyry tomb in which H.'s remains were deposited in this structure is now in the Vatican Museums:
http://www.billpetro.com/trips/EuroTour-Rome_2/pages/IMGP0045.html
http://romeartlover.tripod.com/Vasi50bi.jpg
Its battle scenes constitute a major reason for the view (not universally accepted) that the mausoleum was originally intended for Constantine himself.
The cathedral of Trier has what it declares to be H.'s head:
http://tinyurl.com/4xg76sx
Some portrayals of H. and some dedications to her:
a) Bronze coins bearing H.'s portrait:
Cententionalis from the mint of Trier, 326:
http://tinyurl.com/56mdfp
Cententionalis from the mint of Thessalonica, 326-28:
http://tinyurl.com/5mcajz
b) H.'s fourth-century statue in Rome's Musei Capitolini:
http://tinyurl.com/5be8lr
http://tinyurl.com/6bdnt4
c) H. finding the True Cross as depicted in a North Italian manuscript of ca. 825 (Vercelli, Biblioteca capitolare, ms. CLXV):
http://tinyurl.com/n6qkl3
d) H.'s originally ninth-century church at Verona, rebuilt in the twelfth:
http://tinyurl.com/j4wee [expandable views at bottom of the page]
http://members.virtualtourist.com/m/p/m/364da6/
e) H. (at right; at left, St. Constantine the Great) as depicted in the earlier eleventh-century mosaics (restored between 1953 and 1962) in the katholikon of the monastery of Hosios Loukas near Distomo in Phokis:
http://tinyurl.com/yaswdu7
f) H. (at right of center) as portrayed on the earlier eleventh-century (ca. 1045) portable altar of Countess Gertrude
now in the Cleveland Museum of Art (photograph by Genevra Kornbluth):
http://www.kornbluthphoto.com/images/GertrudeAltar3.jpg
g) H. is portrayed in the three roundels of the opened right wing of the mid-twelfth-century Stavelot Triptych (betw. 1156 and 1158) in the Pierpont Morgan Library and Museum, New York. See the zoomable image here:
http://www.themorgan.org/collections/collections.asp?id=217
h) H. as portrayed in a twelfth-century fresco in Milan's basilica di San Lorenzo Maggiore:
http://tinyurl.com/rxpw4b
http://tinyurl.com/p2hwtq
i) The originally late twelfth-century abbey church of Sant'Elena at Serra San Quirico (AN) in the Marche:
http://tinyurl.com/fcbgt
j) H.'s thirteenth-century altar in Rome's Santa Maria in Aracoeli, bearing representations of Augustus and of the Virgin and Child appearing to him in the legend of the Ara Coeli and an inscription seemingly identifying this as the very altar that Augustus set up in consequence of that vision (photo by Marjorie Greene):
http://medrelart.shutterfly.com/activityfeed/4#12
For even better black-and-white views, see Paul F. Burke, "Augustus and Christianity in Myth and Legend," _New England Classical Journal_ 32 (2005), 213-220, available here:
www.caneweb.org/necj/pdf/Burke.pdf
Remains believed to be H.'s (said to have come from her porphyry sarcophagus) were deposited in this church's predecessor, Santa Maria in Capitolio, in the twelfth century.
k) H.'s originally thirteenth-/fourteenth-century church at Wheathampstead (Herts):
http://www.iananddot.org/chphoto/wheathampstead.htm
l) H. (at right; at left, St. Constantine the Great) as depicted ca. 1300 in 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/yz75gte
detail (H.):
http://tinyurl.com/yjfv5vk
m) H. finding the True Cross as depicted by Piero della Francesca (mid-fifteenth century) in the choir of the basilica di San Francesco in Arezzo:
http://tinyurl.com/5h8nk5
detail (H.):
http://tinyurl.com/m6c7um
n) H. in a fifteenth-century fresco in the church of Sv. Jelena in Oprtalj (Centralna Istra) in Croatia:
http://heartofistria.org/typo3temp/pics/acfab38e77.jpg
o) The originally fifteenth-/sixteenth-century chiesa di Sant'Elena in Venice, a replacement for an older church housing H.'s putative body transported from Constantinople in 1211:
http://tinyurl.com/23fel3x
http://tinyurl.com/293c8l3
p) H. (at left) as depicted in a fresco of 1502 by the painter Dionisy and his sons in the Virgin Nativity cathedral of the St. Ferapont Belozero (Ferapontov Belozersky) Monastery at Ferapontovo in Russia's Vologda oblast:
http://www.dionisy.com/eng/museum/114/248/index.shtml
q) H.'s early sixteenth-century window in Aosta's cattedrale di Santa Maria Assunta e San Giovanni Battista:
http://tinyurl.com/l6wxo
In Eastern-rite churches H. is celebrated together with her son Constantine on 21. May.
5) Macarius of Pelecete (d. 840?). A native of Constantinople, M. (also Macarius the Wonder-Worker) entered religion at the monastery of Pelecete in Bithynia; after his election as abbot there he was ordained priest by the patriarch St. Tarasius (784-806). A victim of Byzantine second iconoclasm under the emperor Leo V, he was exiled to the island of Aphousia in the Sea of Marmara. Released after Leo's assassination in 820, M. was not allowed to return to Pelecete. He founded a new monastery, probably on the east coast of the Bosporus, but suffered persecution again under the emperor Theophilus (829-42). He died on Aphousia in a second exile, during which time he remained in epistolary contact with various disciples. One of the latter, Sabas, wrote M.'s Bios (BHG 1003); this concentrates on the really important things (the many miracles attesting to M.'s sanctity) at the expense of mundane biographical detail.
Today is M.'s _dies natalis_. In Orthodox churches he is commemorated on 1. April.
A view of the remains of the monastery of St. John at Pelecete in today's Mudanya (Bursa province) in Turkey:
http://www.thais.it/architettura/Bizantina/highres/Foto_194.htm
Aphousia, now a popular holiday destination, is today's Avşa in Turkey's Balıkesir province. Its location is marked in red on this map:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Avsha_Marmara_map.jpg
And here's an aerial view:
http://tr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resim:Avsa_island_aerial_view.jpg
6) Leonard of La Cava (Bl.; d. 1255). This less well known holy person of the Regno succeeded Bl. Balsam in 1232 as abbot of the monastery of the Most Holy Trinity at today's Cava de' Tirreni (SA) in coastal Campania. His efforts at diplomacy in the conflict between Frederick II and the papacy enriched his abbey with donations from both camps. In 1249 L. received for safekeeping the diocesan treasury of Benevento when that papal enclave within the kingdom was under threat of sack by German troops. A successful abbot for thirty-two years, he had an immediately posthumous cult. The latter was confirmed papally, along with those of other Blesseds of La Cava, in 1928.
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
|
