 |
 |
medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture Today (24. October) is the feast day of: 1) Felix and companions (d. 303, supposedly). This is the commemoration that prior to its removal from the RM in the latter's revision of 2001 was known as that of Felix, an African bishop (medievally: a bishop); Adauctus and Januarius, presbyters; and Fortunatus and Septimius, lectors. These less well known saints of the Regno, not to be confused with the Roman Felix and Adauctus of 30. August (though of course that Felix, thanks to a translation in 1673, is now also a saint of the Regno), are the principal patrons of Venosa (PZ) in Basilicata (where, however, the town fathers now prefer their co-patron St. Roch / San Rocco, 16. August being much more congenial for a festival than 24. October) and co-patrons of the diocese of Melfi - Rapolla - Venosa. Venosa's medieval cathedral, pulled down in 1470, was dedicated to F. F. and companions are the subjects of a set of legendary Passiones (BHL 2893s-2895d) that make F. a bishop of the African town of T(h)ibiuca (variously spelled, incl. Tubzac and Tubzoc) who at the outset there of the Great Persecution refused to surrender his church's Christian books and who was sent on to Carthage. There, in the earliest accounts, the fifty-six-year-old bishop was tried, convicted and, on 15. July (in some texts, thanks to a confusion already alluded to, on 30. August), duly executed. By the ninth century, when F. appears in the martyrologies of Ado (under 30. August) and of Usuard (under today) he had acquired his companions and all are said to have been tortured in Africa and in Sicily before they are put to death. Later Passiones have all put to death in southern Italy, either at Nola (where they also had a cult) or at Venosa (in whose Passiones the companions are named Januarius, Fortunatianus, and Septiminus). 2) Proclus of Constantinople (d. 446). P. was a highly placed churchman, a gifted orator, and a committed controversialist. Of the surviving writings that are certainly his, the best known is Homily 1, the first of five homilies advancing the doctrine of Mary as Theotokos. Delivered, probably in 430, in the presence of the patriarch Nestorius, who vigorously opposed the use of this epithet, it was appended to the Acts of the Council of Ephesus in 431, which condemned Nestorius and embraced both the epithet and the christological understanding advanced by P. When he composed this elaborate sermon P., who had already twice sought election as archbishop of Constantinople, was officially bishop of Cyzicus, a post to which he had been named in 426 but was unable to take up due to opposition there. In 434, on his fourth try, he was elected archbishop of Constantinople. As archbishop, P. continued to produce magnificent sermons. Additionally, and especially in his _Tome to the Armenians_ (435), he advanced orthodox christology against the views of the not-yet-condemned Theodore of Mopsuestia (d. 428/29). P. is traditionally credited with the liturgical introduction of the Trisagion (the associated miracle story is worth looking up). In 438 he officiated at the translation of the body of the exiled St. John Chrysostom from Comana in Pontus to Constantinople and its interment in that city's church of the Holy Apostles. Later Byzantine tradition made P. one of Chrysostom's disciples; contemporary evidence suggests otherwise. Eastern Orthodox churches celebrate him on 20. November. In Orthodox art P. is usually represented as a bearded, elderly man. Here he is (less elderly than in other depictions) in the early fourteenth-century frescoes in the altar area of the monastery church of the Theotokos at Gračanica in, depending on one's view of the matter, Serbia's province of Kosovo and Metohija or the Republic of Kosovo: http://tinyurl.com/ygmu7k An important study of P., with texts and English-language translations of Homilies 1 through 5, is Nicholas Constas, _Proclus of Constantinople and the Cult of the Virgin in Late Antiquity_ (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2003). 3) Ebregisil of Köln (d. before 594). This saint's geographic specification is not supererogatory: there is also an E. of Meaux. Today's E. (also Evergislus, Eberigisil), Köln's first known bishop with a Frankish name, is thought to be the bishop of that city whom St. Gregory of Tours says was called by Childebert II in 590 to re-establish order in the monastery of the Holy Cross at Poitiers. The later ninth-century list of Köln's bishops places him in the later sixth century. By the later eleventh century E. had become a legendary figure closely associated with yesterday's St. Severinus of Köln. He has a series of Passiones (BHL 2368, etc.) in which he is a Severinus' disciple and successor, is in his old age cured of a serious affliction of the head at the tombs of St. Gereon and companions, goes to today's Tongeren/Tongres in Belgium to suppress heresy, is there killed on this day by a robber who shoots him with an arrow, with his body later being brought back to Köln by bishop St. Bruno I (d. 965) and placed in Köln's church of St. Cecilia. Relics believed to be E.'s now rest in the nearby church of St. Peter (the former parish church of the monastic St. Cecilia's). 4) Maglorius (d. 605?). M. (in French, Magloire) is a legendary bishop of Dol with an originally late ninth- or early tenth-century Vita that exists in several versions with eleventh-century witnesses (BHL 5139-5143). This has him born in south Wales and makes him a disciple of St. Samson of Dol who becomes abbot on an island thought to be Sark and, later, archbishop (sic) of Dol. Relics believed to be his were according to the Vita's author translated in about the middle of the ninth century to a monastery at today's Léhon (Côtes d'Armor) in Brittany. Another Translation account (BHL 5147; twelfth-century) documents their removal, with those of other saints, to Paris in the early tenth century. Modern scholarship thinks it likely that M.'s episcopacy is an invention of Dol, the diocese in which Léhon is situated. In 1108 monks of the former community at Léhon returned there and rebuilt the monastery. In 1281 this became a priory of the Parisian abbey of Saint-Magloire where M.'s putative relics were housed. This priory church has gone through several rebuildings. Here's a view from ca. 1860: http://pagesperso-orange.fr/lehon-22/litholeh.jpg Some recent views: http://tinyurl.com/5g8z7n http://tinyurl.com/5eg523 http://le7juin.com/album/abbatiale/slides/DSC_0088.JPG More views here, starting about a quarter of the way down the page (near the bottom are some views of the thirteenth-century refectory): http://tinyurl.com/5j68gn That page has a view of the nineteenth-century case holding the putative relics of M. and of other saints that were once in Paris. Two more views: http://pagesperso-orange.fr/lehon-22/beaumanoir5.jpg http://tinyurl.com/6pjdmo The museum in the former priory (later an abbey) houses a fourteenth-century statue of M.: http://pagesperso-orange.fr/lehon-22/saintmagloire.jpg Best, John Dillon (Proclus of Constantinople lightly revised from last year's post) ********************************************************************** To join the list, send the message: join medieval-religion YOUR NAME to: [log in to unmask] To send a message to the list, address it to: [log in to unmask] To leave the list, send the message: leave medieval-religion to: [log in to unmask] In order to report problems or to contact the list's owners, write to: [log in to unmask] For further information, visit our web site: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/medieval-religion.html