medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Sylvester I, pope (d. 335). Sylvester (more accurately, Silvester; the "y" is an artifact of medieval Latin) is recorded as having been bishop of Rome starting in early 314. He attended neither the Synod of Arles (314) nor the Council of Nicaea (325), sending instead representatives to these major assemblies. Little else is known about him as pope, though since he occupied the see of Peter for most of the reign of Constantine I one can suppose that he will have had some hand in the design of the major Roman churches endowed by that emperor. Sylvester was buried in the cemetery of Priscilla on the Via Salaria. According to the _Liber pontificalis he founded a _titulus Silvestri_ at the Baths of Trajan; this church will have been ancestral to today's San Martino ai Monti, whose full titulature is Santi Silvestro e Martino ai Monti. Sylvester was buried in the cemetery of Priscilla on the Via Salaria. In 762 his remains were removed to the later much rebuilt church elsewhere in the city that now is known as San Silvestro in Capite; in 1601, when the present structure was being consecrated, these (along with the remains of two other popes) were re-interred under the high altar.
Sylvester's being such a blank historically may have had a lot to do with the ease with which legends about his relationship with Constantine took hold from the fifth century onward. In their standard form, Sylvester had fled from persecution by the pagan emperor Constantine and was in hiding on Mount Soracte (in Italian, Soratte; the limestone massif that dominates the Tiber valley north of Rome) when Constantine sought his aid in curing the leprosy with which he had become afflicted. Sylvester descended from the mountain and healed the emperor, who in gratitude converted to Christianity, was baptized by Sylvester in the Lateran Baptistery, and then richly endowed the Roman church. In the early Middle Ages this supposed endowment came to include a grant of supreme temporal power in the western territories of the empire, the so-called Donation of Constantine. The developed legend includes such other defender-of-the-faith episodes as Sylvester's resuscitation of a bull that rabbis had caused to die by whispering "Jehovah" in its ear (Sylvester restored it to life by whispering "Jesus" to it) and his slaying of a noxious, diabolical great serpent (commonly referred to as a dragon) to whom pagans in Rome were sacrificing in its underground lair.
Some medieval images of pope St. Sylvester I:
a) S. (lower register at left, followed pope St. Clement I and by Christ) as depicted in a later eighth-century fresco (betw. 757 and 767) in the nave of Rome's chiesa di Santa Maria Antiqua:
http://tinyurl.com/q9gwgs7
A larger view, showing pope St. Leo I at S.'s right:
http://www.rai.tv/dl/img/2012/10/1349112791697Roma-SantaMariaAntiqua.jpg
The identifying inscriptions are in Greek; that for S. reads O AGIOS SELBESTRIOS.
a) S. (at right; at left, St. Spyridon the Wonderworker) as depicted in the earlier eleventh-century mosaics (restored between 1953 and 1962) in the katholikon of the monastery of Hosios Loukas near Distomo in Phokis (grayscale; the images are in the building's seemingly less often photographed diakonikon):
https://phaidra.univie.ac.at/detail_object/o:191570
b) S. (at far right; after popes St. Leo I and Gregory I) as depicted in an eleventh-century fresco in the diakonikon of the cathedral of Hagia Sophia (now Sv. Sofija) in Ohrid:
http://tinyurl.com/m8u6m4a
c) S. baptizing Constantine as depicted in the upper roundel of the opened left wing of the mid-twelfth-century Stavelot Triptych, a reliquary in the possession of the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York:
http://histclo.com/imagef/date/2013/07/stave01s.jpg
The object as a whole (opened):
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5e/Stavelot.Triptych.jpg
d) S. (at far right, after pope St. Gregory I and St. Augustine of Hippo) as depicted in a probably later twelfth-century mosaic in the basilica cattedrale della Trasfigurazione in Cefalù:
http://tinyurl.com/k7fypq8
e) S. (at left, with Sts. Thomas of Canterbury and Lawrence of Rome) as depicted in the late twelfth-century apse mosaics of the basilica cattedrale di Santa Maria Nuova in Monreale:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3164/2575093180_0101779142_b.jpg
f) S. (third register from the top) baptizing Constantine and other scenes from S.'s legend as depicted in the late twelfth- or early thirteenth-century apse frescoes of the chiesa di San Silvestro in Tivoli:
http://tinyurl.com/ndw25bg
http://www.atlantedellarteitaliana.it/immagine/00008/4719OP8325.jpg
http://static.panoramio.com/photos/large/44678525.jpg [Baptism of Constantine / S. and the bull]
http://static.panoramio.com/photos/large/44678168.jpg [S. and the bull]
https://www.flickr.com/photos/renzodionigi/3475853978/ [S. and the dragon; color "enhanced"]
g) S. as depicted in an early thirteenth-century January menaion seemingly from Cyprus (Paris, BnF, ms. Grec 1561, fol. 7v):
http://tinyurl.com/24gjd7z
http://i27.servimg.com/u/f27/09/04/27/32/saint_10.jpg
h) S. as depicted (many times) in the earlier thirteenth-century St. Sylvester window (ca. 1210-1225) in Bay 8 of the basilique cathédrale Notre-Dame, Chartres:
http://www.medievalart.org.uk/chartres/08_pages/Chartres_Bay08_key.htm
i) Scenes from S.'s legend as depicted in the earlier thirteenth-century frescoes (1246) of the papal chapel dedicated to him in Rome's basilica dei Santi Quattro Coronati:
http://tinyurl.com/olekcwb
http://www.giovannirinaldi.it/page/rome/santiquattro/
j) S. as depicted with Constantine in two panels (C3, C4) of a mid-thirteenth-century ambulatory window (Bay 108) of the cathédrale Saint-Julien, Le Mans:
http://www.medievalart.org.uk/LeMans/108_pages/LeMans_Bay108_PanelC3.htm
http://www.medievalart.org.uk/LeMans/108_pages/LeMans_Bay108_PanelC4.htm
The entire window:
http://www.medievalart.org.uk/LeMans/108_pages/LeMans_Bay108_Key.htm
k) S. (over the arch) as depicted in the later thirteenth-century frescoes (ca. 1263-1270) in the prothesis of the monastery church of the Holy Trinity at Sopoćani (Raška dist.) in Serbia:
http://tinyurl.com/nodp2wf
l) S. (at left; St. Servatius at right) as depicted in the late thirteenth-century (ca. 1285-1290) Livre d'images de Madame Marie (Paris, BnF, ms. Nouvelle acquisition française 16251, fol. 87r):
http://tinyurl.com/yfmvotg
m) S. and the dragon as depicted in a late thirteenth-century copy of French origin of the _Legenda aurea_ (San Marino, CA, Huntington Library, ms. HM 3027, fol. 13v; image greatly expandable):
http://digitalassets.lib.berkeley.edu/ds/huntington/images//000974A.jpg
n) S. as depicted in the late thirteenth-century frescoes (ca. 1295) by the painters Eutychios and Michael Atrapas in the church of the Peribleptos (now Sv. Kliment Ohridski) in Ohrid:
http://tinyurl.com/3svyxgc
o) S. (at right; at left, St. Gregory of Nyssa) as depicted in the early fourteenth-century frescoes (ca. 1310) of the altar area in the church of the Aphendiko (or of the Hodegetria) in the Brontochion monastery at Mystras:
http://tinyurl.com/3dlmbh8
p) Sylvester (at left; at right, St. Methodius of Constantinople) as depicted in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (betw. 1313 and 1318; conservation work in 1968) by the painters Michael Astrapas and Eutychios in the church of St. George at Staro Nagoričane in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia:
http://tinyurl.com/lxh2s6s
p) S. as depicted in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (betw. ca. 1313 and 1320) by Michael Astrapas and Eutychios in the King's Church (dedicated to Sts. Joachim and Anne) in the Studenica monastery near Kraljevo (Raška dist.) in Serbia:
http://tinyurl.com/ye2jcxq
http://tinyurl.com/66h8oku
q) S. as depicted in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (1330s) of the altar area of the church of the Hodegetria 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/ybw86hf
r) S. (at left; next to him, St. Alexander of Alexandria) as depicted, in a representation of the First Ecumenical Council, in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (betw. 1335 and 1350) in the narthex 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/y96krb3
s) S. and the dragon as depicted in an earlier fourteenth-century fresco (1340) in Maso di Bianco's scenes from S.'s legend in the Cappella Bardi di Vernio in Florence's basilica di Santa Croce:
http://latin.bestmoodle.net/media/silvdragon.jpg
t) S. (at right; at left his immediate predecessor, pope St. Miltiades) in an earlier fourteenth-century copy (1348), from the workshop of Richard and Jeanne de Montbaston, of the _Legenda aurea_ in its French-language version by Jean de Vignay (Paris, BnF, ms. Français 241, fol. 58r):
http://tinyurl.com/ybmv2u9
u) S. as portrayed by a later fourteenth-century head reliquary (1367) in the Permanent Ecclesiastical Art Exhibition in Zadar:
http://tinyurl.com/nb88qpy
v) S. as depicted in four earlier fifteenth-century panel paintings (scenes from his legend) by Battista da Vicenza (active betw. 1404 and 1438), now in the Musei Civici in Vicenza:
http://www.museicivicivicenza.it/file/foto2g-10486.jpg
http://www.museicivicivicenza.it/file/foto2g-10487.jpg
http://www.museicivicivicenza.it/file/foto2g-10488.jpg
http://www.museicivicivicenza.it/file/foto2g-10489.jpg
w) S. (central register, second from right) as depicted by Carlo Crivelli in his later fifteenth-century Altarpiece of Massa Fermana (1468) in the chiesa dei Santi Lorenzo e Silvestro in Massa Fermana (FM) in the Marche:
http://tinyurl.com/o9euuqy
x) S. and scenes from his legend as depicted by Andre de Litio in a later fifteenth-century panel painting (variously dated to ca. 1470 and to 1480) in the chiesa di San Silvestro in Mutignano (TE) in Abruzzo:
Central panel:
http://tinyurl.com/kyf3qgl
Central panel (detail):
http://tinyurl.com/lgdc4oc
Other views here:
http://tinyurl.com/kgpe48f
y) S. as depicted in a later fifteenth-century (1476) Missal for the Use of Salzburg (Universitätsbibliothek Salzburg, MS. M III 12, fol. 160v):
http://www.ubs.sbg.ac.at/sosa/handschriften/MIII12%28160vb%29.jpg
z) S. displaying the Tablets of the Law to the disease-stricken Constantine as depicted in a later fifteenth-century copy of the _Chronique dite de Baudouin d'Avesnes_ (Paris, BnF, ms. Français 279, fol. 219v):
http://tinyurl.com/y9vycb9
aa) S. (at far left, holding the Tablets of the Law) as depicted in the later fifteenth-century apse frescoes (variously attributed to Leonardo da Bressanone or to his follower Simone da Tesido) of the chiesa/chiesetta di San Giorgio / St. Georgskirche in Tesido/Taisten (BZ) in the South Tirol:
http://tinyurl.com/3xdxayk
bb) S. enthroned and with the dragon at his feet as depicted in an early sixteenth-century fresco (ca. 1511), attributed to Dionisio Cappelli, in the chiesa di San Silvestro in Colle di Arquata, a _frazione_ of Arquata del Tronto (AP) in the Marche:
http://tinyurl.com/os7hwqx
cc) S. (in the lower photograph, at right above the arch; at left, pope St. Gregory I) as depicted in the earlier sixteenth-century frescoes (1445 or 1446) by Theofanis Strelitzas-Bathas (a.k.a. Theophanes the Cretan) in the katholikon of the Stavronikita monastery on Mt. Athos:
http://tinyurl.com/o2hv27j
Detail view (S.):
http://tinyurl.com/n4s3fhc
A happy Sylvester to all,
John Dillon
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