medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
We seem to have missed 4. October. Herewith a revised version of last year's effort (with one new saint):
4. October is the feast day of:
1) Hierotheus of Athens (d. 1st cent., supposedly). H. (in Greek, Hierotheos; also H. the Thesmothete) is the name given by pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite to the author of numerous divinely inspired writings that ps.-D. claims to have read and from which he appears to quote. H. is unattested outside of the pseudo-Dionysian tradition and the prevailing scholarly opinion today is that he and his writings are in all probability a fiction on the part of ps.-D. According to ps.-D., H. was a senior member of the Areopagus and had been baptized by St. Paul. H.'s brief notice in the Synaxary of Constantinople adds that he died peacefully.
In at least the later Middle Ages H. was often thought of -- as in some churches he still is -- as having been the first bishop of Athens and as having been succeeded in that role by St. Dionysius the Areopagite. He is celebrated on this day (4. October) in Orthodox and other Eastern-rite churches. Also under 4. October, H. was commemorated in the RM prior to its revision of 2001 (when he ceased to grace its pages).
H. (at center; betw. Sts. Dionysius the Areopagite and Michael of Synnada [M. the Confessor]) as depicted in the later thirteenth-century frescoes (ca. 1295) by the court painters Michael Astrapas and Eutychius in the church of the Peribleptos (now Sv. Climent Novi) in Ohrid:
http://tinyurl.com/6ck3m8x
H. 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/3ks32pm
H. (at right; after Sts. Nicephorus of Constantinople and Meletius of Antioch) as depicted in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (betw. 1313 and 1318; conservation
work in 1968) by the court painters Michael Astrapas and Eutychius in the church of St. George in Staro Nagoričane in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia:
http://tinyurl.com/3c3xh3y
http://tinyurl.com/3d5bmop
H. as depicted in an earlier sixteenth-century fresco (1545-1546) by Theofanis Strelitzas-Bathas (a.k.a. Theophanes the Cretan) in the katholikon of the Stavronikita monastery on Mt. Athos:
http://tinyurl.com/44c5vc3
2) Petronius of Bologna (d. ca. 445). Bologna's principal patron saint, P. is thought to have been elected bishop of Bologna in about 432. That the first two surviving writers to mention him (St. Eucherius of Lyon; Gennadius of Marseille) were both associated with the monastery of Lérins suggests that he may have studied there. P., whose relics were the subject of an Inventio in Bologna's Santo Stefano complex in 1141, has an artistically written and rather legendary twelfth-century prosimetric Vita (BHL 6641), a later medieval Office, and several also legendary late medieval Italian-language Vite. His huge, originally late fourteenth- to seventeenth-century church in Bologna is not that city's cathedral. An illustrated, English-language page on this pile:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Petronio_Basilica
The pertinent page at Italia nell'Arte Medievale:
http://tinyurl.com/48ngmg
Other views of Bologna's basilica di San Petronio:
Exterior (some showing the main portal before the huge portrait of P. was added to it):
http://tinyurl.com/y99p76n
http://tinyurl.com/y8crjyc
http://tinyurl.com/yc9gmkx
http://tinyurl.com/ycvbcuf
http://tinyurl.com/y9c2qp5
http://travel.webshots.com/photo/2125766100084374364UJEmbN
http://tinyurl.com/ybfboc6
(An electrifying TAN: the statue in that last view honors Galvani.)
Main portal (the Porta Magna):
http://www.wga.hu/art/q/quercia/bologna/40portal.jpg
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sarahahaha/3943634227/sizes/l/
P., at right, as portrayed by Jacopo della Quercia in the earlier fifteenth-century sculptures of the lunette:
http://flickr.com/photos/copetan/2247040046/sizes/l/
Interior views:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e2/Bologna054.jpg
http://www.flickr.com/photos/pmpm/3431884937/sizes/o/
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/31/Bologna055.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cf/Bologna050.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/ybpcyff
http://tinyurl.com/yb5j6y5
The capella dei Re Magi (a.k.a. capella Bolognini) is now perhaps best known for its fresco of the Last Judgment, executed in ca. 1415 by Giovanni da Modena (Giovanni di Pietro Faloppi):
http://tinyurl.com/y8qdgoo
Detail (Mohammed at right):
http://neveryetmelted.com/wp-images/LastJudgementMohammed.jpg
http://www.artnet.com/Magazine/FEATURES/moore/moore10-2-3.asp
Returning to this view:
http://tinyurl.com/y8qdgoo
the frescoes at right belong to a cycle by the same artist depicting scenes from P.'s legend. Here's another view, with the chapel at left:
http://tinyurl.com/ydogd58
Access to this chapel is now severely restricted (I believe that the official version is "closed for restoration"; the likelihood of damage by a person or persons whose passions have been inflamed by the depiction of Mohammed in Hell furnishes another possible reason).
A donor (Michael de' Marescoti) offering a chapel to P. as portrayed in an earlier fourteenth-century relief now in Bologna's Museo civico medievale:
http://tinyurl.com/39suf6m
P.'s fourteenth-century tomb in the chiesa del Santo Sepolcro in Bologna's Santo Stefano complex:
http://tinyurl.com/ybmf7z6
http://tinyurl.com/yevwsy5
http://tinyurl.com/yae44uh
http://tinyurl.com/ycabzj9
http://tinyurl.com/yajhszj
http://tinyurl.com/ybjppr4
The head of the skeleton believed to be that of P. was translated into San Petronio in 1390; the remainder stayed in Santo Sepolcro until 2000. Herewith some views of Jacopo del Roseto's reliquary of 1380 for J.'s head:
http://www.iagi.info/Araldicaforum/19_Bologna2009.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/2ae3arf
http://www.iagi.info/Araldicaforum/20_Bologna2009.jpg
http://www.iagi.info/Araldicaforum/21_Bologna2009.jpg
http://www.iagi.info/Araldicaforum/22_Bologna2009.jpg
P. as portrayed by Pierpaolo dalle Masegne in a bust of ca. 1390 forming part of a group figuring Justice and Bologna's patron saints created for the niches of Bologna's Loggia della Mercanzia and now in that city's Museo civico medievale:
http://tinyurl.com/39bkjyz
P. surrounded by scenes from the Passio of St. Stephen in a fifteenth-century fresco now in the Martyrium of the Santo Stefano complex in Bologna:
http://tinyurl.com/yee4bs8
P. (at left) as depicted by Francesco del Cossa in his Mercanzia Altarpiece (1474) now in the Pinacoteca di Bologna :
http://tinyurl.com/2urodsl
Michelangelo's statue of P. (1494-95) on the tomb of St. Dominic in Bologna's basilica di San Domenico:
http://tinyurl.com/39bzgdb
http://tinyurl.com/yekqzje
A useful, fairly recent book on P. and his cult, with scholarly articles and with texts of the twelfth-century Vita and of P.'s later medieval Office, is Enzo Lodi, ed., _San Petronio. Patrono della città e diocesi di Bologna_ (Bologna: Edizioni Renografica, 2000; xiii, 298pp.).
3) Quintinus, venerated at Meaux (d. 6th cent.?). According to his rather late Passio (BHL 6998; oldest witness is of the twelfth century), Q. (in French, Quentin) was a noble in the service of a count or duke named Guntram. When he repeatedly spurned the adulterous advances of G.'s wife, she had him killed in the territory of Tours. Q. had a cult medievally at Tours, at Meaux, and at Paris.
4) Aurea of Paris (d. 666). We know about A. (in French, Aure) from Jonas of Bobbio's Vita of St. Columban (BHL 1898) and from St. Audoenus' Vita of St. Eligius of Noyon (BHL 2474). In 663 Eligius placed her in charge of a women's monastery that he had founded at Paris. A. is said to have died of a pestilence that nearly put paid to her house. A. is one of Paris' patron saints; several commemorative sermons on her survive (BHL 814-816).
The upper cover of the Évangéliaire dit de sainte Aure, a ninth-century Gospels venerated medievally as a relic of A. (Paris, BnF, site Arsenal, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, Rés. Ms. 1171) :
http://tinyurl.com/yc3fon2
The cover itself is later; its ivory plaque has been dated to the tenth century.
A. as depicted in an early fifteenth-century breviary for the Use of Paris (Châteauroux, Bibliothèque municipale, ms. 2, fol. 362r):
http://tinyurl.com/yaolees
5) Thomas of Celano (Bl.; d. ca. 1260). Today's fairly well known holy person of the Regno was born around 1190 in the Marsican town for which he is named. A relatively early follower of St. Francis of Assisi, he was commissioned by Gregory IX in 1228 to write a life of the saint, which he did; in the 1240s he then wrote a second using anecdotes and other material either previously omitted or not yet supplied at the time of the first writing. Known for convenience as the _Vita prima_ and the _Vita secunda_ of Francis, these were supplanted within his order by St. Bonaventure's _Legenda maior_ (1263) but survived a subsequent Franciscan directive that they be destroyed.
T.'s other uncontested writings include a treatise on the miracles of St. Francis and the sequence _Sanctitatis nova signa_. Controversially attributed to T. is the prose _Legenda sanctae Clarae virginis_ (1255-56) written for the canonization of St. Clare; possibly her contemporary _Legenda versificata_ is by him as well. It was once customary to assign to T. the famous sequence _Dies irae_, but the latter's textual history and relatively early style of versification are against this.
In his last years T. was chaplain to the convent of Poor Clares at today's Valdevarri, a locality of Sante Marie (AQ) in Abruzzo. He was buried there but in the sixteenth century his remains were removed to the Franciscan church of San Francesco in Tagliacozzo (AQ), where they are today. Herewith an illustrated, Italian-language account of this originally thirteenth-century structure (rebuilt in the fifteenth century and later modified):
http://tinyurl.com/24tpjz
Other views of this church:
http://www.freevax.it/ITINERARI/Simbruini/DSC02624.JPG
http://www.flickr.com/photos/53366513@N00/56800268/sizes/l/
http://tinyurl.com/ye9uh9w
http://www.flickr.com/photos/53366513@N00/3024818503/sizes/l/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lowbatt/3939138652/sizes/l/
http://tinyurl.com/ybnp9vc
A not very good view of T.'s effigy reliquary is here:
http://tinyurl.com/y85gago
T. has yet to grace the pages of the RM. 4. October is his day of remembrance among the Franciscans; at Celano he is celebrated on the second Sunday of this month.
6) Francis of Assisi (d. 1266). The doctissimi of this list require no introduction to the founder of the Order of Brothers Minor. His _dies natalis_ is 3. October. Herewith links to the Sacred Destinations main page and gallery page on the basilica di San Francesco in Assisi:
http://tinyurl.com/y8jjxfz
http://tinyurl.com/ya8ox32
Another illustrated, English-language account of the basilica:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basilica_of_San_Francesco_d%27Assisi
Matthew Paris' depiction of F. (shown with the stigmata) seeing a seraph in a vision:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Benediktin.jpg
Best,
John Dillon
(last year's post revised and with the addition of Hierotheus of Athens)
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