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medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture Today (30. April) is the feast day of: 1) Quirinus of Rome, venerated at Neuss (?). Q. is a martyr of the cemetery of Praetextatus on the Appian Way, where his probable epitaph by pope St. Damasus I, making him out to have been a soldier, has been recovered in a very fragmentary state (ICVR, no. 13874). The very legendary Passio of pope St. Alexander, Eventius, and Theodulus (BHL 266; not earlier than the sixth century) makes him a military tribune and the father of St. Balbina, has him decapitated on 30. March, and records his burial in the cemetery of Praetextatus. Q.'s grave there in a large underground opening is recorded in the seventh-century pilgrim itineraries for Rome. Ado, Usuard, and the RM until the its revision of 2001 listed Q. under the Passio's date of 30. March. The RM now assigns Q. the day given in the (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology for a confessor of the same name and the same cemetery. In many German dioceses this was already Q.'s feast day in the later Middle Ages. With the promulgation of the new RM, the archdiocese of Köln designated today as the feast of Q.'s (supposed) translation to Neuss (see below) and kept 30. March as Q.'s local feast day. Around the year 1000 there was a church dedicated to a St. Q. at today's Neuss am Rhein in Nordrhein-Westfalen. Later medieval texts purvey a story that in 1050 pope St. Leo IX gave Q.'s remains to the then abbess of a Benedictine monastery for women at Neuss (supposedly founded in 825 and later known as the Qurinusstift, it transformed itself in the twelfth century into a house of noble canonesses). Henceforth Neuss had a military martyr to go with others in the region (e.g., Gereon at Köln, Cassius and Florentius at Bonn, Victor at Xanten). Q.'s cult spread widely in Germany and the Low Countries, where he was credited with protecting Neuss during the Burgundian siege of 1474/75 and where from the late fifteenth century through the seventeenth he was invoked as one of God's Four Holy Marshals. A German-language page on Q.'s former Stiftskirche at Neuss, the Quirinus-Münster, is here (expandable views): http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quirinus-M%C3%BCnster 2) Mercurialis (d. later 4th cent.). M. is an historically attested bishop of Forlě in Emilia-Romagna (he took part in the Council of Rimini in 359) who medievally became its apostolic-era protobishop. His cult is first attested from the ninth century; in the tenth it has spread to Ravenna and to Pistoia. In the later eleventh century a monk who was not of Forlě wrote the first of his Vitae (BHL 5932), combining praise of a model bishop with narrative elements derived from paintings in M.'s originally extramural late antique basilica. One of the latter has M., assisted by St. Rufillus of nearby Forlimpopoli, slay a dragon that had been infesting the area between their two towns. In 1173-81 Vallombrosans erected at Forlě the monastery church dedicated to M. now known as the basilica di San Mercuriale. A few views of this structure, badly damaged in World War II and since rebuilt: http://www.enit.it/foto-ad/images/big/emi_0014.jpg http://tinyurl.com/yvxku8 In the diocese of Forlě-Bertinoro M. is celebrated liturgically on 26. October. 3) Pomponius (d. 6th cent.). Today's less well known saint of the Regno is recorded for today in Naples' earlier ninth-century Marble Calendar. According to the late ninth- and early tenth-century Neapolitan ecclesiastical chronicler John the Deacon, P. was the city's twenty-first bishop. He is credited with having built Naples' church of Santa Maria Maggiore, known since early modern times as the Pietrasanta. This occupies the site of an ancient temple, pieces of which may still be seen in its seventeenth-century rebuilding by Cosimo Fanzago. In Neapolitan legend, the ruined temple was by night the haunt of demons, the chief of whom (in one version) assumed the form of a giant boar that greatly terrified nearby residents with its sinister grunting. The BVM appeared to P. in a dream vision and instructed him to erect a church on the ruins. This he did, dedicating the building to her, and the demons troubled the area no more. P.'s late antique church is gone. Its much later belltower (tenth-/twelfth-century) survives and is the oldest such structure in the city. A distance view is here: http://www.danpiz.net/napoli/monumenti/grecoromana/4.htm The marbles and even the original brick in the base are spolia. Higher up, in the later portions, this is not so: http://tinyurl.com/c8c86p 4) Erkenwald (d. 693). E. (Earconwald) was the the brother of St. Ćthelburh of Barking Abbey, which latter he founded for her. He also founded the abbey of Chertsey in Surrey and was its abbot from ca. 664 until his death. In 675 or 676 St. Theodore of Canterbury made him bishop of London. St. Bede tells us that bits of wood from the litter in which E. was carried when ill worked miracles. E.'s feast on this day is attested in later Anglo-Saxon calendars. In 1148 he was translated to a shrine east of the high altar of St. Paul's; shortly thereafter, a collection of his miracles appeared. From then until the Reformation he was London's principal patron saint. In the Middle English alliterative poem _Saint Erkenwald_ (late fourteenth-century) E. obtains salvation for a just pagan judge. Here's mediocre reproduction of Wenceslas Hollar's engraving of E.'s shrine in Old St. Paul's: http://tinyurl.com/yugg85 There's a much crisper one here (in ch. III, about a quarter of the way down the page): http://www.gutenberg.org/files/16531/16531-h/16531-h.htm Some expandable views of Chertsey Abbey's early fourteenth-century breviary (Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Lat. liturg. e. 6), with E.'s feasts in April and in May: http://tinyurl.com/22mx2g http://tinyurl.com/2hjcm4 An illustrated, English-language page on Chertsey Abbey: http://www.chobham.info/chertsey.htm Two photographs from an archaeological campaign at Chertsey Abbey in 1865 and one of the abbot's seal start here: http://tinyurl.com/c7v7zs 5) Adjutor of Vernon (d. 1131). According to his Vita (BHL 81) by his younger contemporary, archbishop Hugh III of Rouen, A. was born to a noble family at Vernon in Normandy and was educated at Tiron in the Perche by its St. Bernard (14. April). As a young man A. took part in the First Crusade. He was taken prisoner by Saracens and spent seventeen years in captivity before being released miraculously with the aid of Sts. Mary Magdalene and Bernard of Tiron and then miraculously transported to his homeland, bearing with him the chains with which he had been bound. On his return he became a monk of Tiron. Later, wearing the chains and manacles of his former imprisonment, he became a hermit, tending a chapel he had constructed near Vernon. In Hugh's presence A. closed a dangerous whirlpool in the Seine by having the archbishop utter a blessing and sprinkle holy water at the site and by then throwing into the vortex some part of the aforementioned chains. Today is A.'s _dies natalis_. His cult was immediate and was confirmed by further miracles. While we're here, an illustrated, French language page on, and an expandable view of, the late eleventh- to seventeenth-century église collégiale de Notre-Dame at Vernon (Eure): http://tinyurl.com/62wtrg http://tinyurl.com/5ezbxx 6) Ventura of Spello (d. not long before 1265). V. is a poorly documented saint of today's Spello (PG) in Umbria. An Hospitaller of St. John of Jerusalem, he established at his native Spello a hospital with a church dedicated to the Holy Cross. He was buried in the church, which is now named for him. Miracles were reported at his tomb and in 1346 a miraculous apparition of a second cross over that on Spello's municipal fortress signalled the end of a local armed conflict. V.'s very plain tomb is still in the church of San Ventura, where it forms the lower part of the altar; his remains underwent recognitions in 1625 and again in 1778. V. has yet to grace the pages of the RM. The thirteenth-century fresco (a _Maria lactans_) over the altar in Spello's church of San Ventura: http://tinyurl.com/2rda4k The altar / V.'s tomb: http://tinyurl.com/df85n7 Best, John Dillon (last year's post lightly revised) ********************************************************************** 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