medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Interesting saint.
The 16th century "Chiese di Sant'Euplio Martire" in Catania (built between
1598 and 1609) was destroyed by American bombers on July 8, 1943. There is a
picture of the interior of the church here:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/60/Chiesa_di_Santo_Eu
plio_-_Interni.jpg/220px-Chiesa_di_Santo_Euplio_-_Interni.jpg
Today there is Roman funerary monument in the old church yard:
http://www.siciliano.it/go-foto.cfm?id=525&provincia=ct
Bill Schipper
-----Original Message-----
From: medieval-religion - Scholarly discussions of medieval religious
culture [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of John Dillon
Sent: August 12, 2016 5:34 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [M-R] FEAST - A Saint for the Day (August 12): St. Euplus
medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Euplus (d. 304; in Latin also Euplius, in Greek Euplos and Eupolos, in
Siculo-Calabrian dialects Opolo, in modern Italian Euplio) was a martyr of
Catania during the Great Persecution. He has acta both in Greek and in
Latin (BHG 629-30e; BHL2728-30d), all forms of which seem ultimately to
derive from a common source in which excerpts from transcripts of two
official hearings dealing with him have been fitted into a brief narrative
frame, presumably for liturgical reading. The basic data are that Euplus,
who was in a crowd of suspected Christians awaiting processing by a
magistrate, shouted aloud that he was a Christian and that he wanted to die.
He was also holding in one hand a book containing the Gospels (proscribed by
one of Diocletian's edicts). Brought before the magistrate, he read from
the Gospels and added that what he was holding was a copy of the law of his
god.
Euplus was then bound over for trial and was sent to jail for the interim.
Appearing again before the magistrate on the following 12. August and asked
if he still possessed the Gospels, Euplus responded affirmatively,
suggesting that the manner of his present possession was through his having
memorized them. Sentenced to beating until he should sacrifice to the gods
of the state, Euplus underwent considerable torment before dying of his
injuries. Developed versions of the story make Euplus a deacon and
elaborate his torture.
Euplus' cult, attested in Sicily in the sixth century and at Rome beginning
in the seventh, has been widespread in southern Europe from the early Middle
Ages onward. Since some indeterminate time before 1284, when he is first
recorded as its patron, his supposed relics have reposed at Trevico (AV) in
Campania; when these remains were examined scientifically in 2005 they
turned out to have come from three different people: a young man, a woman,
and a boy. The late thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century East Roman
grand logothete Constantine Akropolites in his Encomium of St. Theodosia of
Constantinople (BHG 1774; after 1301/02) treats Euplus as a major healing
saint, naming him in this capacity at the end of a short list that otherwise
consists of only the Theotokos, St. Demetrius, and St. Nicholas of Myra.
Euplus is entered under today (12. August) in, among others, the
(pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology, the Marble Calendar of Naples, and the
historical martyrologies of St. Ado of Vienne and Usuard of St. Germain.
Today is his feast day in the ecclesiastical region of Sicily (obligatory in
the diocese of Catania, optional elsewhere) and his day of commemoration in
the Roman Martyrology. In the Synaxary of Constantinople and in the
calendars of modern Byzantine-rite churches he is commemorated on 11.
August.
Some period-pertinent images of St. Euplus:
a) as depicted an earlier eleventh-century fresco in the monastery church of
St. Leontius at Vodoča (Strumica municipality) in today's Former Yugoslav
Republic of Macedonia:
http://www.mpc.org.mk/_images/MPC/SE/Vodoca/TIM31822.jpg
b) as depicted in the recently restored late eleventh-century mosaics in the
katholikon of the Daphni monastery in Chaidari (Attika regional authority):
http://tinyurl.com/zrg98uv
c) as depicted in the late twelfth-century frescoes (1191) in the church of
St. George at Kurbinovo (Resen municipality) in the Former Yugoslav Republic
of Macedonia:
http://tinyurl.com/joclbe6
d) as depicted in the early thirteenth-century frescoes (1208; carefully
restored in 1569) in the church of the Theotokos in the Studenica monastery
near Kraljevo (Raška dist.) in Serbia:
http://tinyurl.com/28q78ng
e) as depicted in the mid-thirteenth-century frescoes (1259) in the church
of Sts. Nicholas and Panteleimon at Boyana near the Bulgarian capital of
Sofia:
http://galenf.com/Bulgaria/36/bu_0016a.jpg
f) as depicted (at left; at right, St. John the Calybite) in the thirteenth-
or early fourteenth-century frescoes of the church of the Evangelisteria in
Geraki (Laconia prefecture) on the Peloponnese:
http://tinyurl.com/yhps7ae
g) as depicted in the late thirteenth- or early fourteenth-century frescoes
(ca. 1290-1305), attributed to Manuel Panselinos, in the Protaton church on
Mt. Athos:
http://days.pravoslavie.ru/jpg/im4435.jpg
h) as depicted (at center in the panel at upper right; martyrdom) in an
earlier fourteenth-century pictorial menologion from Thessaloniki (betw.
1322 and 1340; Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Gr. th. f. 1, fol. 51r):
http://image.ox.ac.uk/images/bodleian/msgrthf1/51r.jpg
i) as depicted in an earlier fourteenth-century fresco (1330s) on a
partition between the altar area and the diaconicon in the church of the
Holy Apostles in the Patriarchate of Peć at 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/ybkgx72
j) as depicted in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (betw. 1335 and
1350) in the nave 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/23u2ene
k) as depicted (at left) in the mid-fourteenth-century frescoes of the
monastery church of St. Michael the Archangel at Lesnovo in the Former
Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia:
http://tinyurl.com/gtbw6jq
Best,
John Dillon
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