medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
We know about the Gallo-Roman Eucherius (d. ca. 449; in modern French, Eucher) from his own writings and from those of his friend St. John Cassian. A well educated native of Lyon who had become senator and who had fathered two sons who became bishops in other cities, he retired with spousal consent in about 422 to Lérins, where he entered religion at the monastery and where he later became an hermit on the Île Sainte-Marguerite. In about 435 he became bishop of Lyon. Previously Eucherius had written eloquently on aspects of withdrawal from the world. Now he engaged in pastoral activity and in pastoral writing of which his hagiographic production forms a part (sermons on local martyrs and perhaps the original version of the _Passio Acaunensium martyrum_ [i.e. of St. Maurice and other martyrs of the Theban Legion] ascribed to him).
Before he withdrew to Lérins Eucherius had announced his intention to live eremitically in a cave on a property of his in the southern Luberon called Mons Martis and overlooking the Durance. That place has been identified with today's Beaumont-de-Pertuis (Vaucluse), whose chapel of Notre-Dame is situated at what appears to have been the town's original location (Villa Vetus; Ville Vieille). Here's a view of the chapel with a modern statue of Eucherius in the foreground:
http://tinyurl.com/5altbv
In the same town one may with difficulty visit a cave named for Eucherius and, adjacent to it, a small chapel (attested from the fourteenth century; rebuilt in 1648) thought to have belonged to a priory (attested from 1118) dedicated to Eucherius. Two illustrated, French-language pages dealing with the site:
http://tinyurl.com/ygydq5e
http://chapelles.provence.free.fr/steucher.html
Another exterior view of the cliffside chapel:
http://tinyurl.com/yel5dh5
Another distance view of the cliff:
http://tinyurl.com/yzot8za
Today (16. November) is Eucherius' feast day in Lyon and his day of commemoration in the Roman Martyrology.
Some period-pertinent images of St. Eucherius of Lyon:
a) as depicted (with his wife and two sons) in a French-language _Vie e passion_ in a thirteenth-century copy of a collection of saint's lives in Francoprovençal translation (Paris, BnF, ms. Français 818, fol. 298v):
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b10507337z/f613.item.r=Fran%C3%A7ais%20818.zoom
b) as depicted (at left; at right, St. Maurice) 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. 254v):
http://tinyurl.com/256rxx5
c) 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. CLXVr:
https://www.beloit.edu/nuremberg/book/6th_age/right_page/68%20(Folio%20CLXVr).pdf
Best,
John Dillon
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