medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
A Tuscan by birth, John was an elderly senior deacon at Rome when he became its bishop in 523. On the recommendation of Dionysius Exiguus, he adopted the Alexandrian method of computing the date of Easter. St. Severinus Boethius dedicated three of his theological tractates to John. According to the _Liber Pontificalis_, John restored the church of Sts. Felix and Adauctus. In 526, at the behest of king Theodoric, John undertook a mission to Constantinople to persuade the emperor Justin I to cease his persecution of Theodoric's fellow Arians in the East. Though he was received with honor and though he obtained most of what was sought, he did not persuade Justin to gratify Theodoric's chief desire, that Arians forcibly converted to Catholicism be allowed to revert to their previous belief.
On John's return to Ravenna Theodoric expressed his displeasure at this failure by withdrawing his official favor and protection and by ordering John to remain at Ravenna rather than permitting him to return to Rome. Worn out from his travels and stressed by by the uncertainty of what might happen next, John died soon after. His body, already reported to work miracles, was quickly brought back to Rome and was interred in Old St. Peter's on 27. May. The latter was John's feast day in the general Roman Calendar prior to the latter's revision of 1969 when he was moved to today in place of the extruded St. Venantius of Camerino. He is considered a martyr.
Some period-pertinent images of pope St. John I:
a) as depicted (at center, imprisoned) in an earlier fourteenth-century fresco (ca. 1314-1324) in Rimini's chiesa di Santa Maria in Porto Fuori:
Grayscale view:
http://catalogo.fondazionezeri.unibo.it/foto/40000/28000/27854.jpg
Detail view (in color; John at right):
http://i.ebayimg.com/00/s/MTUzNlgxMTQ2/z/aYYAAOSwHaBWloV9/$_57.JPG
b) as depicted in a later fourteenth-century Office lectionary produced in northern Italy (1377; Bourges, Bibliothèque patrimoniale et d'étude des Quatre-Piliers, ms. 19, fol. 165v):
http://www.enluminures.culture.fr/Wave/savimage/enlumine/irht8/IRHT_146514-p.jpg
c) as depicted (left margin at center; with the tiara; martydom; at his right, St. Severinus Boethius) in a pen-and-ink drawing in a later fourteenth- or earlier fifteenth-century abridgement of Godfrey of Viterbo's _Pantheon_ (Paris, BnF, ms. Latin 4935, fol. 47v):
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8455934w/f104.item.r=.zoom
d) as depicted (receiving homage from Justin I) in a mid-fifteenth-century copy of Giovanni Colonna's _Mare historiarum_ (betw. 1447 and 1455; Paris, BnF, ms. Latin 4915, fol. 291r):
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b6000905v/f651.item.zoom
e) as depicted (right margin, third from top) in a woodcut in the Beloit College copy of Hartmann Schedel's late fifteenth-century _Weltchronik_ (_Nuremberg Chronicle_; 1493) at fol. CXLIIv:
https://www.beloit.edu/nuremberg/book/6th_age/left_page/5_folio_CXLIIv.pdf
Best,
John Dillon
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