medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
John and Paul are martyrs of the Caelian Hill in Rome, where a paleochristian church built over the remains of a house reputed to have been theirs was succeeded in the early twelfth century by what after considerable rebuilding is now the basilica dei Santi Giovanni e Paolo. They have a legendary Passio that exists both as part of that of St. Gallicanus and as an independent narrative (BHL 3236-2237b and 3238-3242e, respectively). This makes them first household officials of Constantine's daughter Constantina, then military officers under Gallicanus, and finally private citizens living in retirement who are martyred under the emperor Julian (for Western saints, at least, this last is a good indication that the account is fictional) and then, in an attempt to keep the deed secret, are buried in their house.
Excavation under the the present basilica in the twentieth century revealed 1) fragments of an inscription, similar to those put up by pope St. Damasus, that almost certainly honored John and Paul and 2) a chamber, dated to the fourth century, frescoed with scenes of martyrdom and containing a trench divided into two parts. The presumption is that this area functioned as a confessio and that the trench had served as, or at least was shown as, the martyrs' original burial site.
John and Paul are named in the Roman and the Ambrosian Canons of the Mass. Absent from the _Depositio martyrum_ of the Chronographer of 354, they are entered under today in the (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology and in the early medieval Roman sacramentaries. Today is their day of commemoration in the Roman Martyrology.
Some period-pertinent images of Sts. John and Paul:
a) as depicted (fifth and sixth from left) in the heavily restored later sixth-century mosaics (ca. 561) in the nave of Ravenna's basilica di Sant'Apollinare Nuovo:
http://tinyurl.com/q32nf75
b) as depicted (at left, Paul; at right, John) in late eighth-century frescoes discovered in 1905 in the oratory beneath Rome's basilica di Santa Maria in Via Lata and now displayed in the Museo Nazionale Romano - Crypta Balbi:
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-1Ws30mpcFvg/UqdphUD8ckI/AAAAAAAAJdI/8cWy6wUSqck/s1600/SS.Giovanni+e+Paolo.jpg
c) as depicted (martyrdom) in a twelfth-century fresco attributed to Alberto Sotio, formerly in the chiesa dei Santi Giovanni e Paolo in Spoleto and now displayed in the Museo nazionale del Ducato di Spoleto in the Rocca Albornoziana in that city:
http://tinyurl.com/z6pygsl
Detail view (greatly expandable):
https://www.flickr.com/photos/hen-magonza/9134644744/
d) as depicted (martyrdom) in a later thirteenth-century French-language legendary (Paris, BnF, ms. Nouvelle acquisition française 23686, fol. 144r):
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8446925z/f291.item.zoom
e) as depicted (martyrdom) in a late thirteenth-century _Legenda aurea_ of French origin (San Marino, CA, Huntington Library, ms. HM 3027, fol. 65r):
http://digitalassets.lib.berkeley.edu/ds/huntington/images//000878A.jpg
f) as depicted (martyrdom) in the late thirteenth-century Livre d'images de Madame Marie (ca. 1285-1290; Paris, BnF, ms. Nouvelle acquisition française 16251, fol. 80v):
http://tinyurl.com/25nt5vd
g) as depicted (with Constantina [a.k.a. St. Constantia of Rome]) in a mid-fourteenth-century copy, from the workshop of Richard and Jeanne de Montbaston, of the _Legenda aurea_ in its French-language version by Jean de Vignay (1348; Paris, BnF, ms. Français 241, fol. 144v):
http://tinyurl.com/24h3jvx
h) as depicted (martyrdom) in the later fourteenth-century Breviary of Charles V (ca. 1364-1370; Paris, BnF, ms. Latin 1052, fol. 401v):
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b84525491/f812.item.r=ms%20Latin%201052.zoom
i) as depicted in a later fourteenth-century Roman missal of north Italian origin (ca. 1370; Avignon, Bibliothèque-Mediathèque Municipale Ceccano, ms. 136, fol. 248r):
http://www.enluminures.culture.fr/Wave/savimage/enlumine/irht2/IRHT_055325-p.jpg
j) as depicted (martyrdom) in an early fifteenth-century copy of the _Legenda aurea_ in its French-language version by Jean de Vignay followed by the _Festes nouvelles_ attributed to Jean Golein (ca. 1401-1425; Paris, BnF, ms. Français 242, fol. 125r):
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8426005j/f265.item.zoom
k) as depicted in the early fifteenth-century Châteauroux Breviary (ca. 1414; Châteauroux, Bibliothèque municipale, ms. 2, fol. 206r):
http://www.enluminures.culture.fr/Wave/savimage/enlumine/irht2/IRHT_054051-p.jpg
l) as depicted in the earlier fifteenth-century Breviary of Marie de Savoie (ca. 1430; Chambéry, Bibliothèque municipale, ms. 4, fol. 519r):
http://www.enluminures.culture.fr/Wave/savimage/enlumine/irht1/IRHT_035644-p.jpg
m) as depicted (left margin at bottom) in a hand-colored woodcut in the Beloit College copy of Hartmann Schedel's late fifteenth-century _Weltchronik_ (_Nuremberg Chronicle_; 1493) at fol. CXXXIIv:
https://www.beloit.edu/nuremberg/book/6th_age/left_page/36%20(Folio%20CXXXIIv).pdf
n) as depicted (center and right; at left, St. Theodore of Amasea) by Giannantonio Licinio of Lodi, from cartoons by Girolamo Mocetto, in early sixteenth-century panels (ca. 1515; restored betw. 1978 and 1982) in the Great Window of the basilica dei Santi Giovanni e Paolo (San Zanipolo) in Venice:
http://tinyurl.com/hy79egj
o) as depicted by the Master of Messkirch in an earlier sixteenth-century panel painting (ca. 1535-1540; from a side altar in the St. Martinskirche in Messkirch, Baden-Württemberg) in the Kunsthalle Würth in Schwäbisch Hall:
http://tinyurl.com/ho4kx4e
Best,
John Dillon
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