medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Arbogast (d. later 6th cent.?) is a poorly documented early medieval bishop of Strasbourg / Straßburg who is credited with building that city's first cathedral and with founding the extramural monastery there that was later named for him. That he actually was a builder was shown by a tile bearing the inscription ARBOASTIS EPS FICET [sic] found near the cathedral in the eighteenth century and destroyed in 1870 (fragments of others have since been unearthed). His date is fixed, to the extent it can be, by the Frankish conquest of the still pagan Alemanni in 536 and by the latter's effective Christianization during the next two generations.
Arbogast's legendary Vita (BHL 656) attributed to Strasbourg's tenth-century bishop Udo IV makes him a noble from Aquitaine who became an hermit in the forest of Haguenau and whose subsequent ecclesiastical prominence was aided by the respect he had garnered from a king Dagobert, whose only son, killed in a hunting accident, he restored to life. Falling back on another hagiographic topos, both the legendary twelfth-century _Vita sancti Florentii_ (Florentius of Strasbourg, Arbogast's supposed immediate successor) and the thirteenth-century chronicler Richer of Sens give Arbogast an insular origin. Those who remember from (e.g.) Raby's _The Oxford Book of Medieval Latin Verse_ St. Auspicius of Toul's later fifth-century poem to Arbogast count of Trier or who are aware, however dimly, of either a) Arbogast the fifth-century bishop of Chartres (perh. identical with the count of Trier) or b) Arbogastes the late fourth-century Roman generalissimo of Frankish origin (d. 394 after losing the battle of the Frigidus) may be inclined to agree with Arbogast's own Vita by supposing him a member of the Frankish nobility of late antique Gaul.
Arbogast is the patron saint of the diocese of Strasbourg and of several towns in Switzerland that once were part of it. Since at least the late Middle Ages his feast there has fallen on 21. July; now it is sometimes varied locally to the Sunday closest to 21. July. In late fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century Mainz he was celebrated on 20. July. Today (21. July) is also his day of commemoration in the Roman Martyrology.
Some period-pertinent images of St. Arbogast:
a) as depicted (at bottom right in the window at center; at bottom left, St. Florentius of Strasbourg) in a panel of a thirteenth-century window (Bay 0, panel 1) in the église St.-Jean-Bapstiste in Niederhaslach (Bas-Rhin):
http://tinyurl.com/hl35xpc
Detail view (Arbogast at right):
http://therosewindow.com/pilot/Niederhaslach/w0-1.htm
b) as depicted in a panel of a later thirteenth-century window (Bay 205, panel a2; ca. 1265) in the cathédrale Notre-Dame in Strasbourg:
http://therosewindow.com/pilot/Strasbourg/w205-a2-whole.htm
c) as depicted (entering Strasbourg as bishop) in an early fifteenth-century copy of the _Elsässische Legenda aurea_ (1419; Heidelberg, Universitätsbibliothek, Cod. Pal. germ. 144, fol. 401v):
http://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/cpg144/0826
Best,
John Dillon
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