medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Quirinus (in Croatian and other South Slavic languages: Kvirin; d. 308) was a bishop of Siscia (today's Sisak in Croatia; in Hungarian, Sziszek) martyred under Galerius late in the Great Persecution. St. Jerome, writing in his continuation of Eusebius' _Chronicon_, says that Quirinus was thrown off a bridge over a river -- presumably the Arabona, today's Rába or Raab -- with a handmill tied to his neck, that for a long time he swam on the surface, speaking with the onlookers and urging them not to be frightened by his fate, that he then prayed that he might sink, and that his prayer was granted immediately.
A well known poetic fashioning of the same is Prudentius, _Peristephanon_ 7, where, however, the object weighing Quirinus down is no longer a hand mill (_manualis mola_) but instead a huge millstone (_suspensum laqueo gerens / ingentis lapidem molae_; vv. 25-26). An early version of Quirinus' legendary Acta, circulating in Rome at the time of his translation to the Eternal City (see below), probably underlies not only these accounts but also the information given in his entry under today in the (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology.
About the same time that Prudentius quit public life in order to devote himself full-time to Christian poetry remains of Quirinus were installed in the martyrs' mausoleum (the so-called Platonia) adjacent to the fourth-century catacomb church later dedicated to St. Sebastian (San Sebastiano fuori le Mura; San Sebastiano ad Catacumbas). That church has been rebuilt several times. Its early modern facade includes an arcade carried on paired columns said to have come from the old basilica (also known, because Peter and Paul were said to have been laid to rest here, as the Basilica Apostolorum):
http://tinyurl.com/quzcvn
Late nineteenth-century archaeological investigation underneath this church failed to discover resting places for either Peter or Paul but did reveal, in 1892, Quirinus' resting place, complete with a partly preserved painted verse inscription that one may read in editions of pope St. Damasus' _Carmina_. In Ihm's ed. it's no. 76a in the pseudo-Damasiana; in Ferrua's edition (the current standard edition of reference) it's no. 27; in the edition of unknown origin quoted from here it's no. 85:
http://www.forumromanum.org/literature/damasus.html
Quirinus has been venerated principally in places formerly part of the ancient Roman diocese of Pannonia (a forerunner of the kingdom of Hungary) or of the adjacent late antique Italian region of Venetia and Istria. Since the later twelfth-century, thanks to a translation of presumed relics, he has also been venerated at Correggio (RE) in Emilia-Romagna. Today is the day of his feast (a solemnity) in Croatia, with notable celebrations in Zagreb and in Krk, and in Correggio and his day of commemoration in the Roman Martyrology.
Some period-pertinent images of St. Quirinus of Siscia (Sv. Kvirin Sisački):
as depicted (pinnacle at far left; the bishop saint at far right is Gaudentius) in the mid-fourteenth-century altarpiece of St. Lucy (ca. 1350; sometimes attributed to Paolo Veneziano and dated to betw. 1333 and 1345) in the museum of ecclesiastical art in the crkva Sv. Kvirina in Krk, part of that city's cathedral complex:
http://www.history.grad-krk.hr/uploads/15/DSC_5273.jpg
as portrayed in a fifteenth-century statue, thought to be of Venetian manufacture, in the museum of ecclesiastical art in the crkva Sv. Kvirina in Krk:
http://www.history.grad-krk.hr/uploads/31/DSC_5270.jpg
as depicted (at far right, holding a model of Correggio) by the painter Correggio in an early sixteenth-century fresco transferred to canvas (1507[?]-1511) in the Galleria Estense in Modena:
http://www.comunecorreggio.info/cultura/linco/L0001/IMMAGINI/corr1.JPG
Best,
John Dillon
**********************************************************************
To join the list, send the message: subscribe medieval-religion YOUR NAME
to: [log in to unmask]
To send a message to the list, address it to:
[log in to unmask]
To leave the list, send the message: unsubscribe medieval-religion
to: [log in to unmask]
In order to report problems or to contact the list's owners, write to:
[log in to unmask]
For further information, visit our web site:
http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/medieval-religion
|