medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
To the recent notice of St. Martinianus the Righteous (at bottom here: <http://tinyurl.com/7994vcq>), add this link to Martinianus as depicted in the late thirteenth-century frescoes (ca. 1295) by Michael Astrapas and Eutychios in the church of the Peribleptos in Ohrid:
http://tinyurl.com/7w4pxj5
13. February is also the feast day of:
Fulcramnus (d. 1006). Fulcramnus (also Fulcrannus and, later, Fulcrandus; in French, Fulcran) was bishop of Lodève (Hérault) for fifty-seven years. What we know of him comes chiefly from documentary sources, from a seemingly eleventh-century Vita et Miracula (BHL 3206s, 3206t) written by someone living at some distance from Lodève, and from various texts -- especially an early fourteenth-century Vita by Bernard Gui (BHL 3027) in his _Speculum sanctorale_ -- drawing upon a now lost Vita secunda written after 1187 by Pierre de Millau at the behest of a bishop of Lodève. This latter adds some hagiographic commonplaces (e.g. a premonitory dream experienced by Fulcramnus' mother prior to his birth) and devotes considerably more attention to matters in Fulcramnus' own diocese: whereas in some cases these can be confirmed by documentary sources (e.g. Fulcramnus' dedication in 975 of Lodève's then cathedral of Saint Genesius [in French, Geniès, Géniès, etc.]), in other cases they cannot and some, including conflicts with the count of Toulouse and with the local viscount and an outburst with lethal consequences against a fellow bishop who had converted to Judaism, are now regarded as unlikely to be authentic. These Vitae portray an ascetically oriented reform-minded prelate who managed his diocese with energy and care, who did what he could to relieve the suffering of his people in time of famine, and who operated miracles both in his life and afterward.
At some point seemingly prior to the writing of his Vita secunda Fulcramnus was accorded an elevatio in his cathedral. That building was replaced in the later thirteenth and early fourteenth-century by Lodève's present cathédrale Saint-Fulcran (some of the predecessor survives in the crypt). Herewith two illustrated, French-language pages on this pile:
http://architecture.relig.free.fr/lodeve.htm
http://tinyurl.com/7jtul7h
followed by some other sets of views:
http://en.structurae.de/structures/data/photos.cfm?id=s0017168
http://en.structurae.de/structures/data/photos.cfm?id=s0017168&min=20
http://www.flickr.com/photos/21252309@N06/sets/72157606672680737/
Fulcramnus' principal relics in the cathedral were profaned in 1573. Some relics believed to be his survived and are now housed in an early nineteenth-century reliquary in the cathedral's chapel dedicated to him:
http://tinyurl.com/6sewu4g
On Fulcramnus, see especially François Dolbeau, "Vie inédite de Saint Fulcran, évèque de Lodève", _Analecta Bollandiana_ 100 (1982), 515-544, and Henri Vidal, _Un évèque de l'An Mil. Saint Fulcran, évèque de Lodève_ (Montpellier: Société archéologique de Montpellier, 1999; its Mémoires, 2ème série, no. 22).
Best,
John Dillon
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