medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
As some will have observed, for the past few days I've been sending out posts a day ahead of schedule. This began on 23. August, when by accident I instead posted an already worked up notice of St. Bartholomew the Apostle (24. August). Herewith a notice for a saint of 23. August, Lupus of Novae (also Lupus of Svishtov).
The martyr Lupus (in Greek, Loupos and Louppos) is first heard from in Theophylact Simocatta, _Historia_, 7. 2. 17, where in late summer 594 the East Roman commander Peter (brother of the emperor Maurice) is said to have observed, at the request of the local citizenry, his feast at the garrison town of Novae. Since the immediate context in Theophylact is Peter's campaign along the lower Danube frontier, it seems probable that the town in question was the Novae in Moesia Inferior (today's Svishtov on the Bulgarian side of the Danube) and not the large Roman castrum at a place called Novae south of the Danube in Moesia Superior at what is now the locality of Čezava in northern Serbia. The editors of the Roman Martyrology as last revised (2001 and 2004) have opted for the alternative in Serbia, calling the the place Novi rather than Novae (though the latter is the standard form of use among historians and archeologists of the Roman empire's Danube provinces) and oddly placing it Moesia Inferior. Although neither the place of Lupus' suffering nor its year are known, it seems likely that the former was in or near Novae and that the latter was during the Great Persecution, when martyrs are recorded for the Roman fortress town of Durostorum (now Silistra) further down the Danube. The Synaxary of Constantinople records under today (23. August) a Lupus who is presumed to be the same saint. This is Lupus' day of commemoration in the Roman Martyrology and in modern churches using the Byzantine Rite.
Lupus has a legendary construction in the _Passio altera_ of St. Demetrius of Thessalonica (BHG 497) as a servant who after the latter's martyrdom took both his military master's blood-soaked neckscarf and his royal ring. With these relics he is said to have operated miracles until he in turn was arrested and executed under the emperor Maximian (Galerius).
Some period-pertinent images of St. Lupus of Novae:
a) as depicted (at right; at left and center, the martyrdom of St. Demetrius) in an October calendar scene in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (betw. ca. 1312 and 1321/1322) in the monastery church of the Theotokos at Gračanica in, depending on one's view of the matter, either Serbia's province of Kosovo and Metohija or the Republic of Kosovo:
http://tinyurl.com/383dspm
Detail (Lupus):
http://tinyurl.com/ztyrcso
b) 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. 52v):
http://image.ox.ac.uk/images/bodleian/msgrthf1/52v.jpg
c) as depicted in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (ca. 1330) in the church of the Holy Savior (Sv. Spas) at Kuceviste in today's Čučer-Sandevo in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia:
http://tinyurl.com/zsjktcd
d) 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/3y9wowj
e) as depicted (detail of a full-length portrait) in the earlier sixteenth-century frescoes (1545 and 1546) by Theofanis Strelitzas-Bathas (a.k.a. Theophanes the Cretan) in the catholicon of the Stavronikita monastery on Mt. Athos:
http://www.pravoslavie.ru/sas/image/100856/85668.b.jpg?0.6645478308462354
Best,
John Dillon
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