medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture

Today (5. November) is the feast day of:

1) Galaction and Episteme (d. 250 or 251, supposedly). Like the recently celebrated Zenobius and Zenobia of Aegae in Cilicia, Galaction (also Galation) and E. (also Episteme) are absent from the early martyrologies, are not known to have received an early cult, and are the subjects of a legendary Passio that exists in premetaphrastic and metaphrastic versions (BHG 665, 666) and upon which synaxary notices of their joint commemoration today seem to depend.

According to this tale, Galaction was the son of a couple in Emesa (today's Homs in Syria) who had been childless until a monk whom they had been sheltering during a persecution persuaded the wife to convert to Christianity, whereupon she straight away became pregnant. When this news was conveyed to the husband, he too became a Christian. When Galaction, who had been bought up as a devout Christian, was of marriageable age his father wished him to marry the pagan Episteme. Galaction at first demurred but later agreed once Episteme, perceiving the nature of his reservation, accepted baptism. The two then agreed to live chastely and apart. They separated and became hermits (in at least one version, in Sinai). In the Decian persecution Galaction was arrested; his faithful Episteme learned of this in a vision and joined him in confinement. Together they were tried, tortured, and executed.

Thus far the Passio of Galaction and Episteme, whose affinity to Greek romances is signaled by the names of Galaction's parents, Clitophon and Leucippe (the title characters of a widely read ancient Greek romance). Galaction and Episteme entered the RM under cardinal Baronio and left it in the revision of 2001. Orthodox and other eastern-rite churches celebrate them today.

Galaction as depicted in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (betw. ca. 1312 and 1321) in the inner narthex 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/ax9e2mk

Galaction and Episteme as depicted in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (betw. 1313 and 1318; conservation work in 1968) by Michael Astrapas and Eutychios in the church of St. George at Staro Nagoričane in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia:
Galaction: http://tinyurl.com/7dunuhk
Episteme: http://tinyurl.com/83ykgo4

Galaction (at left) and a male Epistemos as depicted in roundels in the same earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (betw. 1313 and 1318; conservation work in 1968) by Michael Astrapas and Eutychios in the church of St. George at Staro Nagoričane in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia:
http://tinyurl.com/7jxqzzg
Another example of gender-bending in the same frescoes in this church goes the other way, with the male Chrysanthus of Chrysanthus and Daria named and portrayed (at left, followed by Daria) as a female Chrysanthe:
http://tinyurl.com/7ek2kva 
In both instances one may suspect that misunderstood or missing abbreviation signs in a list of images to be painted have contributed to the appearance here of these heterodox names and portraits. 

The martyrdom of Galaction and Episteme as depicted in a November calendar scene in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (betw. 1335 and 1350) of the narthex of the church of the Holy Ascension at the Visoki Dečani monastery near 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/23kvldr

A small monastery in Sinai in the vicinity of St. Catherine's is named after Episteme; its present buildings appear to be fairly recent. The mountain on which this monastery sits is variously called that of Episteme or that of Galaction. Does anyone on the list know whether either of those designations or the monastery itself already existed in the Middle Ages?


2) Trophimena (?). Condemned to death for refusing to sacrifice at pagan altars, Trofimena fled her Sicilian parents but died at sea; her body, laid to rest in a sarcophagus of some sort, was guided by an angel to today's Minori (SA) on Campania's Amalfi Coast, where it was discovered on the shore by a woman doing her wash. Miracles indicated that this was something special. Ecclesiastical authorities were called, examination of the sarcophagus led to the discovery of an inscription on it giving in brief the story of this virgin martyr, a decision was made to bring her to the town, but her heavy yet rapidly moving sarcophagus, drawn by or perhaps drawing two white heifers that had been yoked to it for this task, came to a complete stop at the spot where later her church was built over it.

Thus far the details of our source document for the legend of this less well known saint of the Regno, the _Historia inventionis ac translationis sanctae
Trophimenae_ (BHL 8316-8318), which goes on to recount various early translations through Trophimena's return from Benevento to Minori in 839 (she
had been in Amalfi when prince Sicard of Benevento seized that town in 838 and removed her to his capital; his successor Radelchis I returned half of her
putative remains via Salerno early in his reign). Usually thought to be of the early tenth century but sometimes dated to the late eleventh or early twelfth,
this account has been praised for its narrative structure and stylistic elegance. Although some are less taken with the verses said to have been carved on
the sarcophagus (in the text called a _sepulcrum_), these too have their moments, esp. the final lines:

Membra dedit Reginniculis, animamque Tonanti.
Hinc Christi inter odoriferas depascitur aulas.

('Her body she gave to the people of Minori and her soul to God.
Henceforth she is nourished in Christ's sweet-smelling halls.')

Trophimena has been Minori's patron ever since. The city's ex-cathedral (from 987 to 1818 Minori had a diocese of its own) is dedicated to her and houses part of her putative remains. Half of what is believed to have been her corpse (divided longitudinally, apparently) was retained at Benevento when she was returned from there in 839. In the early modern period Trophimena was equated with the Febronia venerated at Patti (ME) in northern Sicily and some of the remains at Minori were transported to that cathedral town to satisfy its desire for relics of its own similarly legendary saint.

Trophimena's originally eleventh- and twelfth-century "romanesque" church at Minori was rebuilt in baroque style during the later eighteenth century. In the print from 1703 fuzzily shown at top center here <http://tinyurl.com/c5kbn42> the older structure (laid out along the space occupied by the current
building's transepts) is marked as no. 1. Two aerial photographs in color showing the present transepts are here (use the belltower to find the church):
http://www.hotelolimpico.it/-Minori.htm

A notable medieval survival in Minori is the twelfth-century belltower of the now-demolished church of the Annunziata. In this distance view, it's the small tower to the right of center and partway up the slope:
http://tinyurl.com/2f6so73
A closer view:
http://www.proloco.minori.sa.it/Annunziata_Campanile.jpg
Its detailed inlay work may be better seen in these views:
http://tinyurl.com/yh5lck8
http://tinyurl.com/chqut9z
There's a similar structure, lacking the detailed inlay, at Ravello's Villa Rufolo:
http://tinyurl.com/2fkkryx

The early medieval Amalfitan community in Salerno was centered on a street named the _vicus Trophimenae_. Trophimena's little church there, rebuilt in the twelfth century and again in the seventeenth, has recently been restored. Its parish, relocated in 1853 to the fourteenth(?)-century chiesa
dell'Annunziata (itself rebuilt in eighteenth century), continues to bear witness to her as Santa Trofimena nella Santissima Annunziata.

For more on Trophimena, on her legend, and on her churches, see:
Arlotta, Giuseppe, 'Da Trofimena di Minori a Febronia di Patti: un culto dell'età moderna,' in Réginald Grégoire, ed., _Febronia e Trofimena: Agiografia latina nel Mediterraneo altomedievale. Atti della Giornata di Studio, Patti, 18 luglio 1998_ (Cava de' Tirreni: Avagliano, 2000), pp. 71-138.
Avallone, Riccardo, 'La 'Historia S. Trophimenae' e il 'Chronicon Salernitanum' ', _Critica letteraria_ 18 (1990), 757-74.
Memoli Apicella, Dorotea, _Culti di origine greca a Salerno_ (Salerno: Laveglia, 2001).
Oldoni, Massimo, 'Agiografia longobarda tra secolo IX e X: la leggenda di Trofimena,' _Studi medievali_, 3a serie, 12 (1971), 583-636.


3) Mark of Aeca (?). This less well known saint of the Regno is a very shadowy early bishop of Aeca (also Aecae), the Roman-period predecessor of the originally early tenth-century Troia (FG) in northern Apulia, whence he is also known as Mark of Troia. He first comes to light in the (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology, where under 5. November one reads _in Ecas Marci episcopi._ Mark is already a figure of legend in the later eighth-century, synthesizing Passio of Sts. Donatus, Felix, and companions (the Beneventan 'Twelve Brothers'; BHL 2297), which ascribes to him the recovery of the bodies of Donatus and Felix, supposedly martyred under Maximian, and their burial in his city. The similarly legendary and synthesizing eleventh- or twelfth-century Passio of St. Castrensis (BHL 1644, 1645) includes him in its roster of African bishops who survive Vandal persecution to become saints of different locales in southern Italy.

At different times in the central Middle Ages Mark (commemorated either on 5. November or on 7. October [the latter is also the feast day of pope St. Mark]) was considered an early bishop of, respectively, Frigento, Benevento, and Naples in Campania and, in Abruzzo, a bishop of the Marsi (today's diocese of Avezzano). He is thought by some to be the original of Peter the Deacon's purported St. Mark of Atina in what is now southern Lazio (whose church dedicated an M. was in Peter's telling dedicated on 5. October). Mark's own undated Vita (BHL 5301) is preserved only in an early sixteenth copy taken from that great hagiographic repertory of Vitae and Passiones of south Italian local saints, the since mutilated thirteenth-century _sanctorale_ of the chapter library of what is now Bovino (FG) in northern Apulia. This transforms him into a bishop of Lucera and gives him a _dies natalis_ of 7. October. Until recently, that was Mark's principal feast day in Bovino.

Bovino claims to possess Mark's relics; guesses as to when and under what circumstances they arrived there vary considerably. In the late twelfth century a church dedicated to Mark and housing his putative remains was built adjoining the town's cathedral of the BVM. Dedicated on 18. May 1197 and given an external entrance of its own but also accessible by means of a stairway from within the cathedral's transept, it is now also known as the cappellone ('big chapel') di San Marco. Here's a view of the cathedral's originally earlier thirteenth-century facade (1231; restored after the earthquake of 1930):
http://tinyurl.com/bfry8no 
In this aerial view the chiesa / cappellone di San Marco is partly visible behind the cathedral's right transept:
http://images.placesonline.com/photos/40928_i_tetti_di_bovino_bovino.jpg
Two views of the chiesa / cappellone's exterior portal, with bishop Mark figured in the center of the portal lunette:
http://tinyurl.com/2c3sb74
http://www.prolocobovino.it/AgendaInTasca/images/P1010002.JPG
Mark's putative relics repose inside under a baroque altar; they underwent a formal recognition in 1998. For display purposes the church of Bovino uses a splendid, late eighteenth-century reliquary bust:
http://www.prolocobovino.it/AgendaInTasca/images/PICT0060.JPG
Bovino's diocesan museum houses a fifteenth-century arm reliquary of Mark, shown here on a poster for the museum's relatively recent re-opening:
http://tinyurl.com/2dg83af
While we're here, views of two eighth- or ninth-century reliefs re-used in Bovino's late twelfth- / earlier thirteenth-century cathedral (cross and doves; Daniel with lions):
http://tinyurl.com/2fdvsuu
http://tinyurl.com/27gfe8n


4) Domninus of Caesarea (d. 307). We about Domninus from Eusebius' _De martyribus Palaestinae_, 7. A young, learned physician, he was a prominent victim of the Great Persecution at its outset. After several years of hard labor in the mines of Palestine he was executed by being burned alive. Domninus is entered under today in the (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology. Prior to its revision of 2001 the RM commemorated him together with other martyrs of Palestine: Sts. Theotimus (no. 5, below), Philotheus (no. 5, below), Sylvanus (commemorated on 4. May), and companions.


5) Theotimus, Philotheus, and Timotheus (d. ca. 307?). Theotimus, Philotheus, and Timotheus are martyrs whose feast today is recorded in Byzantine synaxaries. Reasons for the former association of the first two, who are not named in Eusebius' _De martyribus Palaestinae_, with Domninus of Caesarea are not clear. J.-M. Sauget (s.v. 'Donnino, Teotimo, Filoteo, Silvano' in the _Bibliotheca Sanctorum_, vol.4, cols. 812-13) thought that these may have been the three unnamed martyrs whose sentence to death by pugilism is recorded at _De martyribus Palaestinae_, 7. But Timotheus could be the Timotheus of Gaza whom the same Roman governor is said in _De martyribus Palaestinae_, 3 to have ordered to be tortured and then slowly burned to death.


6) Fibicius (d. early 6th cent.). Fibicius is a very poorly documented bishop of Trier whose cult is first recorded, under today's date, in an eleventh-century calendar from St. Simeon at Trier. He is first said to have been the city's bishop in the originally late eleventh- or early twelfth-century _Gesta Treverorum_; this treats him as the immediate successor of Maximianus and the immediate predecessor of Abrunculus (d. ca. 526). Some identify him with the otherwise unrecorded bishop of Trier named Felicius who ordained St. Goar priest according to the latter's mid-eighth-century Vita by a monk of Prüm (BHL 3565). From at least the thirteenth century onward the abbey of St. Maximinus of Trier asserted that Fibicius had been its abbot before his elevation to the episcopate.


7) Bertilla of Chelles (d. ca. 705). B. (also Bertilla, Bertilia; in French: Bertile, Bertille) was the first abbess of Chelles, a house founded founded by her friend queen St. Bathild. According to her Vita (BHL 1287; earliest witness is of the tenth century), she was a native of the territory of Soissons, had at the time of her appointment been prioress of the abbey of Jouarre, served as abbess for forty-six years, sent nuns under her charge to help with the foundation of monasteries by Saxon kings in Britain, and exemplified numerous monastic virtues.

Some views, etc. of the abbaye Notre-Dame at Jouarre (Seine-et-Marne):
http://tinyurl.com/6m5mby
http://www.marne-et-morin.com/musees_expos/jouarre.html
http://tinyurl.com/5r38tr

The abbey at Chelles (Seine-et-Marne) is no more. Bertilla's putative relics and those of St. Bathild are in Chelles' originally twelfth- or thirteenth-century église Saint-André, once the abbey's parish church for the adjoining town:
http://tinyurl.com/2dqod8v
http://tinyurl.com/5g3r4c
http://tinyurl.com/26qbrmn
A very brief, French-language account with several interior views:
http://fr.topic-topos.com/eglise-saint-andre-chelles
Views of Bertilla's reliquaries in this church:
http://www.cathochelles.fr/site/images/images/saints/DSC_7.jpg
http://www.cathochelles.fr/site/images/images/saints/DSC_11.jpg

Saint-André was once the abbey's parish church for the adjoining town. Also associated with the abbey are Chelles' adjacent churches of Saint-Georges (at left) and Sainte-Croix, seen here before and after restoration:
http://tinyurl.com/yl78jwp
http://archiguide.free.fr/PH/FRA/IDF/ChellesEglisesBa.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/56zaws

The Museé Alfred Bonno at Chelles possesses several objects from a packet of clothing associated with the bodily relics of Bertilla and of Bathild, most notably a front of a tunic embroidered so as to depict various jewels:
http://www.heiligenlexikon.de/Fotos/Bathilde-Kleid.jpg
http://www.encyclopedie-universelle.com/images/Image926.gif
http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/thealater/11118010/16607/16607_original.jpg
More views here (photographs courtesy of Genevra Kornbluth):
http://www.kornbluthphoto.com/TunicBalthild.html
A fibula and a shoe both said to have come from the same packet of clothing are shown on this page:
http://www.baladeenpaysbriard.com/article-6837070.html


8) Gerald of Béziers (d. 1123). Gerald (in French, Guiraud) was a canon regular who was prior at today's Cassan (Hérault) and who rebuilt the abbey church there (consecrated in 1115). He became bishop of Béziers in 1122 and died on 5. November of the following year.

Most of the medieval buildings of the abbaye de Notre-Dame at Cassan were replaced in the later eighteenth century with a new monastic structure that is now the château. But the originally twelfth-century church survived, albeit with modifications (esp. to the chevet); when the monastery became a château the church was retained as its chapel. Here with some views, starting a facade view of the complex with the church at the far left:
http://tinyurl.com/3xbkcep
http://www.flickr.com/photos/22129269@N03/2154529340/
http://www.pescofi.com/IMG/jpg/abbaye_vueduciel_agr-2.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/32l8urq
http://tinyurl.com/267ut65
http://tinyurl.com/2c24g5c
http://tinyurl.com/29sdja4
http://tinyurl.com/3ynll4c
http://tinyurl.com/2w579p5
http://www.flickr.com/photos/annieinbeziers/3071219774/lightbox/

Best,
John Dillon

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