medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (10. August) is the feast of:
1) Lawrence of Rome (d. 258?). L. is a martyr of the Via Tiburtina. He is entered under this day in the _Depositio martyrum_ of the Chronographer of 354 and is generally held to have been a Roman cleric (usually, a deacon) and a victim of the same persecution in which pope St. Sixtus II met his end. Genuine acta concerning him, if they ever existed, were already unavailable to Sts. Augustine of Hippo and Maximus of Turin.
Whereas L.'s legendary acta found their fullest expression in the _Passio sancti Polychronii_ (BHL 4753; earliest version, late fifth-century?), their basic elements were known to St. Ambrose of Milan and to Prudentius as well to the aforementioned Augustine and Maximus. The familiar part about being tortured on a grill is inconsistent with other information about executions during the Valerianic persecution and for that reason is generally viewed by students of the period as invention; much of the remainder (e.g. the prophetic encounter with Sixtus II just before his martyrdom and the sale of the church's treasure and the distribution of the profits to the poor) has seemed to some to be at least partly the product of imaginative elaboration.
After Peter and Paul, L. had the most important cult of any Roman martyr. An early _memoria_ at his burial location was followed by a basilica erected by the emperor Constantine before the hill containing L.'s grave and by another erected by pope Pelagius II cut into the hill and in part directly over the grave. The site is now occupied by today's basilica di San Lorenzo fuori le Mura (a.k.a. San Lorenzo in Verano). Some views, etc. follow.
A multi-page, illustrated, Italian-language site on this church (use menu at right):
http://www.basilicasanlorenzo.it/
Brief history of the church (English-language):
http://web.tiscali.it/romaonlineguide/Pages/eng/rcristiana/sCH2y5.htm
The Sacred Destinations main page on this church:
http://tinyurl.com/2fmunm8
Exterior view:
http://tinyurl.com/6mwp3e
Exterior view plus details:
http://members.tripod.com/romeartlover/Vasi46sl.html#Today
Exterior and interior views of the basilica shortly after the bombing on 19. July 1943:
http://i30.tinypic.com/2rgnqc4.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/42te89j
An illustrated, Italian-language page on that bombing (with a different view of the damage to the interior of the basilica):
http://digilander.libero.it/historiabis/bombesuroma.htm
Exterior and interior views (multiple):
http://tinyurl.com/6fsahq [may require a RELOAD]
http://tinyurl.com/238x5au
Interior views:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/klio/2403565220/
http://tinyurl.com/bjm7n
Interior and cloister (Marjorie Greene's views):
http://medrelart.shutterfly.com/activityfeed/96
Arch mosaic; L. second from left, after Pelagius II:
http://tinyurl.com/2fonpxy
http://tinyurl.com/3e5v72n
Detail view (Pelagius and L.):
http://tinyurl.com/273mell
L. as depicted in an eighth- or ninth-century fresco in the Pelagian portion of the church:
http://tinyurl.com/43sgatr
http://tinyurl.com/3lkwgdc
The portico preserves considerable remains of a later thirteenth-century fresco cycle depicting scenes from L.'s legendary acta. An Italian-language description of these scenes is in no. 12 here:
http://www.gliscritti.it/blog/entry/313
And a series of expandable views of those scenes begins here (with no. 86):
http://tinyurl.com/3fa4qxr
The stone on which L.'s body is said to have been laid after its removal from the grill is in San Lorenzo fuori le Mura:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Saint_Lawrence_stone.jpg
Whereas the grill itself (and who could doubt this?) is preserved in part in this reliquary Rome's chiesa di San Lorenzo in Lucina:
http://tinyurl.com/68g6q8
Rome's chiesa di San Lorenzo in Panisperna was built over a putative place of L.'s martyrdom. Does anyone have views to share either of its crypt or of the oven under its porch believed by some to be that in/on which L. suffered?
The collegiate church of the BVM at Amaseno (FR) in southern Lazio, a twelfth-century structure with later additions <http://www.amasenoonline.com/smaria.htm>, has a blood relic of L. that is said to liquefy every year on this day:
http://www.nemesi.net/reliq1.jpg
An Italian-language account with a rather different photograph of the relic is here:
http://www.amasenoonline.com/reliquia.htm
That page also has views of, and an excerpt from, the church's foundation document of 1177 (or from a later copy?), whose listing of its relics includes one of L.'s fat. As there are no reports of the liquefaction prior to the seventeenth century (also the date of the present reliquary), the suspicion has been voiced that the present relic may be an early modern substitution. See the following scientific account by Luigi Garlasecchi, the leading investigator today of such blood relics:
http://www.cicap.org/en_artic/at101015.htm
Another proposed explanation (by Marcello Guidotti; Italian-language) is here:
http://www.nemesi.net/reliquie.htm
For those who can't get enough, there's a whole gallery of photographs of the relic here:
http://www.amasenoonline.com/foto/reliquia/index.html
A later twelfth-century (ca. 1175) arm reliquary of L. in the Staatliche Museen in Berlin:
http://www.wga.hu/art/zzdeco/1gold/12c/16g_1100.jpg
A late thirteenth- or early fourteenth-century finger reliquary of L. in the Musée du Louvre in Paris (photo by Genevra Kornbluth):
http://www.kornbluthphoto.com/images/LawrenceRel.jpg
Some visual representations of L. outside of Rome:
a) L. as depicted in the earlier fifth-century mosaics of the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia at Ravenna (photo by Genevra Kornbluth):
http://tinyurl.com/4y2kqxw
b ) L. dispensing alms to the poor and L.'s martyrdom as depicted in the mid-ninth-century Drogo Sacramentary from Metz (Paris, BnF, ms. Latin 9428, fol. 89r):
http://tinyurl.com/3gglmo7
c) L. as depicted in the mid-eleventh-century altar area mosaics of Saint Sophia in Kyiv/Kiev:
http://tinyurl.com/2a2fcc5
d) L. (third from left) as depicted in the later twelfth-century mosaics of the cattedrale di Santa Maria la Nuova at Monreale:
http://tinyurl.com/2ecdu5e
e) L.'s martyrdom (ca. 1194-1230), south porch, left portal, left pillar, cathédrale de Notre-Dame, Chartres:
http://tinyurl.com/5qtnns
f) L. (fourth from left; ca. 1194-1230), south porch, left portal, left jambs, cathédrale de Notre-Dame, Chartres:
http://tinyurl.com/5pkpj8
http://tinyurl.com/3jyys9o
g) L.'s martyrdom as portrayed (ca. 1215-1220) on the lintel of the cattedrale di San Lorenzo in Genoa:
http://tinyurl.com/2ej8gvw
http://tinyurl.com/28p5zbl
h) The earlier thirteenth-century St. Lawrence window in the cathédrale de Saint-Étienne in Bourges:
http://www.medievalart.org.uk/bourges/08_pages/08_key.htm
i) L.'s martyrdom as depicted in an illuminated initial (ca. 1250-1260) in a gradual for the Use of the abbey of Notre-Dame de Fontevrault (Limoges, Bibliothèque municipale, ms. 2, fol. 167r):
http://tinyurl.com/5zhczw
j) L.'s martyrdom as depicted in the late thirteenth-century (ca. 1285-1290) Livre d'images de Madame Marie (Paris, BnF, ms. Nouvelle acquisition française 16251, fol. 77v):
http://tinyurl.com/28xj6tq
k) An expandable view of L.'s martyrdom as depicted in a late thirteenth-century copy of French origin of the _Legenda aurea_ (San Marino, CA, Huntington Library, ms. HM 3027, fol. 97v):
http://tinyurl.com/242yaof
l) L. as depicted in a late thirteenth- or very early fourteenth-century fresco, attributed to Manuel Panselinos, in the Protaton church on Mt. Athos:
http://tinyurl.com/25gmlow
http://tinyurl.com/42frlnp
m) L. (at right; at left, St. Ursula) as depicted by Simone Martini in a predella panel of his St. Catherine polyptych of 1319 now in Pisa's Museo nazionale di San Matteo:
http://tinyurl.com/23f2wdn
The altarpiece as a whole:
http://tinyurl.com/2yo6w7
n) L. as depicted by Giotto di Bondone in an earlier fourteenth-century panel painting (betw. 1320 and 1325) now in the Musée Jacquemart-André, Paris:
http://www.wga.hu/art/g/giotto/z_panel/3polypty/13polypt.jpg
o) L. before Decius and L.'s martyrdom as depicted in an earlier fourteenth-century (ca. 1326-1350) collection of French-language saint's Lives (Paris, BnF, ms. Français 185, fol. 98r):
http://tinyurl.com/22vqup6
p) Sts. Stephen and L. as depicted on the fourteenth-century rood screen, Church of St Andrew, Hempstead (Norfolk):
http://tinyurl.com/6akr7x
q) L. as depicted in a later fourteenth-century vault painting in Birkerød kirke at Birkerød (Rudersdal kommune) in Denmark's Region Hovedstaden:
http://tinyurl.com/4y9qrg2
The larger composition:
http://tinyurl.com/4yoo72n
r) L.'s martyrdom as depicted in a late fourteenth-century (ca. 1385-1390) Franciscan Missal of Milanese origin (Paris, BnF, ms. latin 758, fol. 347r):
http://tinyurl.com/42uxhae
s) L. (at left) in a late fourteenth-century fresco, sometimes attributed to Pari di Spinello, of St. Catherine and other saints on the right wall of the nave in the chiesa di San Domenico in Arezzo:
http://tinyurl.com/424mnjb
L.'s martyrdom as depicted in one of the lower panels of that fresco (photo by Genevra Kornbluth):
http://www.kornbluthphoto.com/images/SanDomenico5.jpg
t) L. (at left) as depicted in an earlier fifteenth-century tracery panel in the south window, St Mary's Church, North Tuddenham (Norfolk):
http://tinyurl.com/2cpo58e
u) L. as depicted in an earlier- to mid-fifteenth-century window in the Church of St Michael, Doddiscombsleigh (Devon; photo by Gordon Plumb):
http://www.flickr.com/photos/22274117@N08/3638966857/
v) Sts. Stephen and L. as portrayed in an earlier fifteenth-century terracotta relief (betw. 1428 and 1435) by Donatello in the old sacristy of Florence's basilica di San Lorenzo:
http://tinyurl.com/25e5ef3
w) Expandable views of Beato Angelico's frescoed scenes (1447-50) from the acta of St. Stephen protomartyr and of L. on three walls of the Cappella Niccolina in the papal palace at the Vatican are here:
http://tinyurl.com/5nky9c
http://tinyurl.com/5tnz5m
http://tinyurl.com/6gxu2g
Views of the chapel as a whole:
http://tinyurl.com/5bb6ar
x) L. as depicted in the vault paintings of saints (mid-fifteenth-century) in Överselö kyrka, Överselö (Södermanlands län):
http://tinyurl.com/5b7x3c
y) L.'s martyrdom and other scenes from his Passio as depicted in a later fifteenth-century (1463) copy of Vincent of Beauvais' _Speculum historiale_ in its French-language version by Jean de Vignay (Paris, BnF, ms. Français 51, fol. 31r):
http://tinyurl.com/2c6wgmx
z) L. as depicted in a later fifteenth-century fresco (1476) by Bartolomeo della Gatta in the chiesa di Badia in Arezzo:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/54074558@N07/5055294354/
aa) L. (at far right) as depicted in a late fifteenth-century panel painting (ca. 1480-1485) by Antoniazzo Romano, now in the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, Rome:
http://www.wga.hu/art/a/antoniaz/nativity.jpg
bb) L. (at left, with St. Apollonia) as depicted on the late fifteenth-century rood screen in St Catherine's, Ludham (Norfolk):
http://tinyurl.com/6evvd7
cc) L. as depicted in the early sixteenth-century (ca. 1500-1520) paintings in the choir of Hald Kirke (Gjerlev kommune) in Midtjylland:
http://tinyurl.com/29xwt3f
dd) L. (just right of center) in the Mauritius-Laurentius-Altar (1515) in the Münster St. Marien und Jakobus, Heilsbronn (Lkr. Ansbach), Bavaria:
http://tinyurl.com/266ywhq
Links to views of some dedications to L. outside Rome will follow in pt. 2.
2) Blane (d. later 6th cent.?). B. (in Old Irish, Bláán; in Latin, Blanus and Blaanus) is, along with St. Cathan, one of the saints of Cenn Garad, today's Kingarth in the Isle of Bute. So construed, he is entered under today in the late eighth-century Martyrology of St. Oengus and in the late eighth- or very early ninth-century Martyrology of Tallaght. The latter calls him a bishop, probably correctly (the Annals of Ulster record from the seventh century two bishops of Cenn Garad).
B.'s legendary Vita (BHL 1366) preserved in the late fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century Aberdeen Breviary (printed in 1507) says that he was born in Bute, that St. Cathan was his mother's brother, that as a boy he spent seven years in Ireland under the tutelage of Sts. Comgall and Kenneth, and that he then returned to Bute. Still according to the Vita, he was warmly received by Cathan, was ordained priest, was consecrated bishop by the neighboring bishops, went on pilgrimage to Rome, and in the north of England restored to life and to full eyesight the recently deceased and formerly blind-in-one-eye son of a local king.
A view of the remains of B.'s later medieval church at Kingarth:
http://tinyurl.com/4xje8gg
In the central and later Middle Ages B. was widely venerated in Scotland. Dunblane is named for him. Herewith two illustrated, English-language pages on that town's mostly thirteenth-century (ex-)cathedral:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunblane_Cathedral
http://tinyurl.com/3vfoxs8
Other views:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/theerstwhilekate/3955037266/
http://tinyurl.com/3mamv5g
http://www.flickr.com/photos/brian1875/5646031066/
http://tinyurl.com/3uyett3
http://tinyurl.com/3jg9wwu
http://tinyurl.com/3pxjnng
http://cluaran.free.fr/chisholm/pic/dunblane_stalls.jpg
Expandable views of some misericords and other interior carved wood start a bit more than halfway down this page:
http://www.greydragon.org/trips/Edzell/index3.html
B.'s Vita in the Aberdeen Breviary begins here:
http://digital.nls.uk/archive/pageturner.cfm?id=74628462
3) Arcangelo of Calatafimi (Bl.; d. 1460). A. is also called, with forms of what is said to have been his family name, A. Placenza and A. Piacentini. As a young man he became a solitary in a cave near his native Calatafimi (TP) in northwestern Sicily. Seeking to avoid visitors attracted by his growing reputation for holiness, he moved to the vicinity of Alcamo in the same general part of the island ('Alcamo' is pronounced as a proparoxytone -- but you knew that!), where he established an hermitage and from there restored an abandoned nearby hospice some three hundred metres outside the city wall before returning to his solitary way of life.
After Martin V had commanded that all hermits in Sicily should join papally approved religious orders A. became an Observant Franciscan at Palermo. Sent back to Alcamo, he converted his former hospice into a house of his order to which gave the name Santa Maria di Gesù ('St. Mary [mother] of Jesus'). Devoted to the cult of the Holy Name of Jesus, A. was a successful preacher and for a time provincial of the Observant Franciscans in Sicily. He died at Alcamo, where his reputedly incorrupt remains are kept in the rebuilt church of the house he had founded there. An expandable view of A. on display in the church will be found in the third row here:
http://tinyurl.com/3zwckdb
A.'s cult was approved papally in 1836. He is celebrated on 27. July by the Franciscans of Sicily and by the ecclesiastical region of Sicily; though sometimes said to be A.'s _dies natalis_, this is suspiciously close to the day of the founding of his convent at Alcamo (26. July). In accordance with a different view of A.'s _dies natalis_, the "new" RM of 2001 commemorates him on 10. August.
Best,
John Dillon
(Matter from last year's post revised and with the additions of Blane and of Arcangelo of Calatafimi)
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