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medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture According to his Bioi (BHG 868-869h; versions in Georgian and Syriac, BHO 498, 499; for the versions in Latin, see below), John the Calybite was born to a wealthy senatorial family in Constantinople. At the age of twelve he was inspired by an Acoemete monk to join that recently founded community in its monastery at some considerable remove from the city. The Acoemetae were particularly devoted to the Gospels and required each monk to have his own copy. John asked his parents to obtain a copy for him; not being aware of his intent, they provided him with a very costly manuscript whose binding was ornamented with gold and with precious stones. After John had been with the Acoemetae for six years he received permission to return to Constantinople, where, dressed in rags, he took up life as a beggar near his parents' palace. The parents did not recognize John as their son. But his father, who was more tolerant of the beggar than was John's mother, allowed a servitor to erect a hut for him next to the palace door (whence his Greek appellation Kalybites, i.e. hut-dweller). John lived there for another three years before dying, revealing himself (and confirming this by showing his mother the golden Gospels) only when he was at death's door. The parents experienced a religious conversion, turned their palace into a hospice, and erected a church in John's memory where the hut had been. Thus far John's Bioi, whose association of him with the Acoemetae in their early years places him in the first half of the fifth century. Whether John's actual existence was ever more substantial than that of the seemingly quite legendary St. Alexius / Alexis of Rome is an open question. Their stories are quite similar and both may be no more than pious fictions. A church in Constantinople dedicated to John the Calybite is mentioned by chroniclers of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. In the early thirteenth century Anthony of Novgorod reported that John's body reposed in the church of the Pammakaristos. A head of John the Calybite venerated at Besançon until its disappearance in 1794 is sometimes said to have arrived there shortly after Constantinople fell to the Latins in 1204 (does anyone know when its presence at Besançon is actually first recorded?). The relics said to be John's in the early modern church dedicated to him on Rome's Tiber Island were discovered there only during its construction. Whereas that church's predecessor (first attested from 1016) was dedicated to a St. John, proof that he too was John the Calybite is lacking. In about 870 the papal secretary Anastasius Bibliothecarius translated John's pre-metaphrastic Bios (BHG 868) into Latin (BHL 4358); this text exists as well in a revised version, also of Roman origin (BHL 4358b). After the mid-eleventh century someone probably belonging to or connected with the Amalfitan community in Constantinople translated John's metaphrastic Bios (BHG 869) into Latin; this version was published by Paolo Chiesa in 1995 but has yet to be entered in the Bollandists' online database _Bibliotheca Hagiographica Latina manuscripta_. Although John is said not to appear in western medieval calendars, he was surely venerated at today's Caloveto (CS) in Calabria's Sila Greca: the town takes its name from that of a local rupestrian monastery dedicated to him that is thought to have been founded in the eighth or ninth century and that was certainly in operation in the late tenth century when St. Bartholomew of Grottaferrata entered religion there. Some views of what's left of the monastery's subterranean central portion are here (there were also numerous cells excavated in the sandy soil above): http://laboratoriocamenzind.blogspot.com/2015_08_01_archive.html A couple of views of the entrance: http://tinyurl.com/4wfdrcp http://www.silagreca.de/bilder/caloveto.jpg Some period-pertinent images of John the Calybite: a) as depicted in the late tenth- or very early eleventh-century so-called Menologion of Basil II (Città del Vaticano, BAV, cod. Vat. gr. 1613, p. 322; image reduced): http://tinyurl.com/guzzz3u b) as depicted in the earlier eleventh-century "imperial" menologion for January in the Walters Art Gallery and Museum, Baltimore (ms. W. 521, fol. 96r): http://thedigitalwalters.org/Data/WaltersManuscripts/W521/data/W.521/sap/W521_000195_sap.jpg c) 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: http://days.pravoslavie.ru/Images/ih3159.jpg d) as depicted (at right; at left, his fellow holy fool St. Alexius / Alexis of Rome) in a twelfth-century fresco in the church of Agios Nikolaos tis Stegis at Kakopetria (Nikosia prefecture) in the Republic of Cyprus: http://tinyurl.com/65punyd http://tinyurl.com/6jngeur At far right here (better light): http://tinyurl.com/gudo6tf On John as an holy fool, see Sergey A. Ivanov, _Holy Fools in Byzantium and Beyond_ (Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 86-90. e) as depicted in a thirteenth-century fresco in the rupestrian church of St. Michael the Archangel at Radožda (Struga municipality) in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:St_Joan_Kalivit.jpg f) as depicted (at left; at right, St. Alexius) in the earlier thirteenth-century frescoes (1230s) of the Mileševa monastery near Prijepolje (Zlatibor dist.) in southern Serbia: http://www.srpskoblago.org/Archives/Mileseva/Details/s1-w2e2/large/l2-1.jpg Detail view (John the Calybite): http://tinyurl.com/6tavfpg g) as depicted in the mid-thirteenth-century frescoes (1259) in the church of Sts. Nicholas and Panteleimon at Boyana near the Bulgarian capital of Sofia: http://galenf.com/Bulgaria/36/bu_0001x.jpg h) as depicted (at right; at left, St. Euplus) in the thirteenth- or early fourteenth-century frescoes of the church of the Evangelisteria in Geraki (Laconia regional unit) on the Peloponnese: http://tinyurl.com/yhps7ae i) as depicted in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (betw. 1313 and 1318; conservation work in 1968) by Michael Astrapas and Eutychios in the church of St. George at Staro Nagoričane in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia: http://tinyurl.com/7j27reo j) as depicted in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (betw. 1335 and 1350) in the parecclesion of St. Demetrius in 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/ybvqt5f k) as depicted (at left; at right, St. Alexius) in the early sixteenth-century frescoes (1502) by Dionisy and sons in the Virgin Nativity cathedral of the St. Ferapont Belozero (Ferapontov Belozersky) monastery at Ferapontovo in Russia's Vologda oblast: http://www.dionisy.com/eng/museum/123/136/index.shtml l) as depicted (at right; at left, St. Paul of Thebes) in the earlier sixteenth-century frescoes (1545 and 1546) by Theofanis Strelitzas-Bathas (a.k.a. Theophanes the Cretan) in the katholikon of the Stavronikita monastery on Mt. Athos: http://tinyurl.com/gl5g9t5 Detail view (John the Calybite): http://tinyurl.com/z8rm6e6 Best, John Dillon ********************************************************************** To join the list, send the message: subscribe 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: unsubscribe 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/medieval-religion