medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Herewith a link to an earlier 'Saints of the day' for 21. May (including St. Restituta of Corsica; The Martyrs of Alexandria killed under Constantius; St. Paternus of Vannes; St. Mantius of Evora; Bl. Ezzo, Matilda, and Richeza; St. Godric of Finchale; St. Hemming):
http://tinyurl.com/82tvkgc
Today (21. May) is also the feast day of:
1) Constantine and Helen (d. 337 and 329, respectively). Orthodox and other Eastern-rite churches commemorate on this day the emperor Constantine I and his mother the empress Helen. The RM, whose calendrical listings these notices ordinarily follow (purely for reasons of convenience), commemorates Helen on 18. August. If you can't wait that long last year's notice of her is no. 3 here: <http://tinyurl.com/6su9xyc>. On the other hand Constantine, who is surely too well known to the learned of this list to require an account here, has yet to be commemorated in the RM. Herewith a few links to images of him as a saint:
Constantine (at right, holding a model of Constantinople; at left, Justinian I holding a model of Hagia Sophia) as depicted in a mosaic, variously dated from the ninth century to ca. 1000, in Istanbul's Hagia Sophia:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kmckinlay/936477295/lightbox/
Detail views:
http://tinyurl.com/86c3s5o
http://tinyurl.com/6zfhu6
Constantine (at left; at right, St. Helen) as depicted in the earlier eleventh-century mosaics (restored betw. 1953 and 1962) in the katholikon of the monastery of Hosios Loukas near Distomo in Phokis:
http://tinyurl.com/yaswdu7
Constantine (second from left, after St. Sigismund) as portrayed on the earlier eleventh-century altar of countess Gertrude of Braunschweig (ca. 1045) now in the Cleveland Museum of Art (photograph courtesy of Genevra Kornbluth):
http://www.kornbluthphoto.com/images/GertrudeAltar3.jpg
Constantine (at right; at left, St. Helen) as depicted in the eleventh-century frescoes of the Yılanlı Kilise ('Snake Church or 'Church of the Serpent') at Göreme in Turkey's Nevşehir province:
http://www.pbase.com/dosseman/image/41540419
Constantine (at left; at right, St. Helen) as depicted in the late twelfth-century frescoes (ca. 1191) in the church of St. George at Kurbinovo (Resen municipality) in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia:
http://tinyurl.com/7xt24ok
Constantine (at left; at right, St. Helen) as depicted in a fresco of ca. 1300 in the nave of the church of the Holy Apostles in the Patriarchate of Peć at Peć in, depending upon one's view of the matter, either Serbia's province of Kosovo and Metohija or the Republic of Kosovo:
http://tinyurl.com/yz75gte
Detail view (Constantine):
http://tinyurl.com/7zbsqbh
2) Peter Parentius (d. 1199). We know about this sainted podestà of Orvieto from his contemporary Vita by a canon of his cathedral (BHL 6763) and from the Miracula appended to it (BHL 6764). A native of Rome, where his father had been senator and later a judge, Peter (in Italian, Pietro Parenzo) was appointed in 1199 by Innocent III to administer the civil government of Orvieto, a city then troubled by 'Patarene' heretics. Peter's rule was strict. In response, civil dissidents whom the Vita stigmatizes as heretics took him prisoner and, when he had refused to withdraw the measures he had imposed, beat him and stabbed him to death on this day.
Peter's cult at Orvieto, where he was considered a martyr for the true faith, was immediate and lasting. It was confirmed papally, at the level of Saint, in 1879. Peter has yet to grace the pages of the RM. Since the thirteenth century today has been his feast day in Orvieto.
Peter in his finery as podestà as depicted (at right; at left, St. Faustinus of Orvieto) by Luca Signorelli in his early sixteenth-century (ca. 1503) Pietà in the cappella di San Brizio in Orvieto's cathedral:
http://www.wga.hu/art/s/signorel/brizio/5/lamentat.jpg
Best,
John Dillon
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