Same woodcuts, different saints – towards a methodology for establishing minor saints

 

One of the several challenges when researching the cult of saints is to assess the relative importance and popularity of any given saint. There are various parameters for assessing whether a saint had a large cult, and in those cases there is often source material that allows us to flesh out some of details concerning the saint’s popularity. For instance, miracle collections teach us where some of the pilgrims came from, which in turn makes it possible to map the extent of the cult, albeit incompletely. Church dedications outside of the cult centre provide similar nodes when tracing the cult, and so do the spread of manuscripts containing legends or liturgy for the saint in question. Calendar entries are likewise important sources, especially when later hands add further information, to the names that indicate which saint is to be celebrated on that particular day.

            In the case of saints that are less well attested in the source material, the questions of importance and popularity become more complicated. Granted, most saints are not universally important. However, some saints might appear more important than they were due to the state of the surviving source material – both for that saint and for other saints venerated in the same church province – and some saints might have been important for certain social echelons rather than for the populace as a whole. Despite these uncertainties, it is relatively easy to ascertain that saints with a widespread cult and a strong cult centre were both important and popular within a particular geographical area or within a particular time frame.      

            The minor saints, however, are even more complicated. These are saints that might be ubiquitous in calendars and might be attested throughout the Middle Ages, but where there was no particular cult centre where their relics were housed and from where their cult was promoted. Or if they did have a such a cult centre, the institution in question did not attempt, or perhaps did not mange, to disseminate their cult abroad. In some cases, these are old saints which are found in later medieval sources because they were introduced into the martyrologies that were copied and expanded from Late Antiquity and into the Carolingian period. In other cases, they are local saints that emerged later and were incorporated into the liturgical year of a diocese or a church province, and were then copied into later calendars or breviaries without much regard for the saint or their legend. Such saints might have been minor, but that does not mean that we can unequivocally say that they were unimportant. Especially local cults with little imprint on the surviving source material might have been far more important to the non-ecclesiastical populace than the patron saint of the diocese – especially of the smaller cult was venerated in smaller villages or parishes outside the episcopal see. Moreover, popularity often comes and goes in waves, there are surges and ebbs, and sometimes there never comes a second surge. Consequently, we need to employ very careful parameters assessing whether a minor saint was, indeed, minor.

 

In the present blogpost, I provide you with one case where the surviving source material allows me to designate three saints’ cults as neither important nor popular, at least not at the time and in the place of the source in question. This source is a vernacular collection of saints’ legends, printed in Lübeck by Lucas Brandis around 1478. Such collections were common in fifteenth-century Germany, and were ultimately modelled on the liturgically organised collection Legenda Aurea by Jacobus Voragine, compiled sometime in the 1260s. Unlike Legenda Aurea, however, which was put together in order to provide preachers with material for their sermons, collections such as Lucas Brandis’ Passionael were printed and sold to merchants and other literate social groups whose livelihood – such as artisans – allowed them to accumulate more money.

Lucas Brandis’ Passionael allowed ordinary citizens to read and listen to the stories of saints, some of whom they knew well while others were no doubt new to them. It is important to note that when Brandis put together his collection, he had to reflect on his audiences and their tastes. In some cases, saints would be included practically out of necessity, since they were expected in such collections – for instance the biblical saints. Moreover, Brandis must have been aware of the cult of saints in Lübeck: which were venerated in the city’s various churches, and which were popular. As for the saints he included in collection, some of them were likely gathered from similar collections elsewhere in Germany, whether in the vernacular or in Latin, which he then had translated into Low German.

The chapters were typically introduced with a woodcut vignette that depicted the saint or saints who were the protagonists of the chapter, or an episode from the legend. In many cases, the woodcuts were made specifically for the saint in question and demonstrate familiarity with their iconography, or reliance on the text which is introduced. In other cases, however, the saint or saints were less well known, and their legend was sufficiently generic to be summarised in the same way as other saints whose legends, or whose basic iconographical features or elements, were similar. For saints like these, woodcuts could often be reused. Such reuse constitutes fairly solid evidence that the saint or saints introduced in this generic way was to all intents and purposes a minor saint.

In Brandis’ Passionael, there are several woodcuts that are used in this way, but for the present blogpost I will focus on three of them, simply because they are placed at the top of consecutive chapters, meaning that the reader leafing through the book will encounter these images uninterrupted by others. We should imagine that Brandis made this decision consciously and was aware of the effect it would have on the reader and on their impression of the saint. That he nonetheless went through with this organisation of the woodcuts suggests that the saints were, indeed, neither popular nor important in Lübeck around 1478. 

Lucas Brandis, Passionael

München, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek 2 Inc.s.a. 780, f.324v  

The first example comes from folio 324v, which contains the opening of the chapter on Nazarius and Celsus, two saints allegedly exhumed by Ambrose of Milan and venerated there throughout the Middle Ages. Their legend was included in Legenda Aurea, and can also be found in several calendars used in Scandinavia. I have written about their legend here. The legend tells of a pair of male saints who were martyred together. The woodcut summarises the climax of the martyrdom, with both saints placed in a hilly or craggy landscape, shown mid-execution as the head of the one lies on the ground facing the executioner who is preparing to strike the head of the other. It is a dramatic and graphic scene, and it is one that can summarise the fate of several other male martyr-pairs, of which there are quite many in the Latin medieval cult of saints. 

Lucas Brandis, Passionael

München, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek 2 Inc.s.a. 780, f.325v

The second example is found on folio 325v, introducing the chapter on Simplicius and Faustinus, two brothers whose martyrdom is typically dated to the Diocletian persecution. They were beheaded and their bodies thrown into the Tiber. The legend also includes their sister Beatrice, but she was not beheaded, and she is not always named in the calendar entries for their feast-day, July 29. In Scandinavia, and presumably also in Lübeck, their cult would probably have been overshadowed by that of Saint Olaf of Norway whose feast was on the same day.

Lucas Brandis, Passionael

München, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek 2 Inc.s.a. 780, f.326r

The third example is found on folio 326r, the page opposite that of the previous vignette, which introduces the chapter on Abdon and Sennen (here written “Sennes”, which is not uncommon). These martyrs were killed during the Decian persecution, and I have written about them here. They were Persians who were brought to Córdoba, from whence they were brought to Rome and killed following the discovery that they were evangelising. Their feast-day was on July 30, and it is likely that they, too, were eclipsed by the feast of Saint Olaf on the preceding day. 

 

The woodcut used for these vignettes are also employed elsewhere in Brandis’ Passionael, but I have not seen them in such an uninterrupted sequence as this one. To use the same woodcut for all of them was a deliberate decision, as there were elements enough in all of these legends to provide something different for the engraver. That no such effort was taken is a fairly good indication that these saints were included because they were expected – as part of the regular liturgical cycle – but that they were also known to be practically unimportant to Brandis’ intended audiences. Consequently, in this one instance we can be fairly certain that these were minor saints, at least for the time and place in question. Often, this is as much certainty as we can hope for when researching the cult of saints. 

On minor saints and priorities

 

Every now and again I return to the Swedish medieval calendars that I used to work on in the spring of 2021, and I am reminded of how utterly fascinating it is to put one’s research skills to the test in order to sort out a question of identity, and to sift through available materials in order to advance one step forward. The plethora of names contrasts frustratingly well with the dearth of solid details, and each puzzle provided by the often fragmentary survivals of the calendars is a reminder of a now-lost historical context from which these puzzles emerged, either as veneration of historical persons – however altered by generations of cult activity – or as a scribal error or confusion.

While I have already reflected on the tantalizing opportunities of knowledge and speculation offered by these minor saints (here), today’s work has highlighted to me that much of our current dearth of information is the result of modern-day research priorities. Since research necessarily must be funded, those organizations that provide that funding need to be convinced that a proposed project is worth both the while and, above all, the money. Moreover, since the funding bodies in questions are rarely familiar with the gaps in knowledge or where we need to spend more effort in order to get one, albeit one important, step further, the acquisition of research money requires convincing arguments. Such arguments are typically made using well-known topics or figures, or even buzzwords that are in vogue at any given moment.

Arguing for the funding required to track minutiae in a vast body of surviving medieval manuscript materials that pertain to the cult of saints, however, is difficult to do, because by their very nature such minutiae are not well known, and neither do they have a notable impact on later historical events. Yet these minor saints can still teach us a great deal about the mechanics of cult-making, distribution and dissemination, about the tenacity of stories or the placeholders or echoes of those stories, i.e., the hard-to-identify names, about specific historical moments when the hand of a scribe unwittingly created the starting-point for a non-existent saint through conflation or confusion. In short, knowing more about these minor saints might allow us to understand the cult of saints as a phenomenon in much greater detail.

These reflections are partly the result of the time and effort spent looking for details about saints such as Victor Maurus, Primus and Felicianus, and the elusive Januarius whom I have not yet managed to identify. Some of these are well known in some places (such as Victor Maurus in the Milanese tradition, thanks to Ambrose and his cult-making efforts). Some are widely, if not well, known thanks to their inclusion in canon-making texts such as Legenda Aurea (such as Primus and Felicianus). And others remain difficult to identify (such as Januarius, whichever Januarius he might be). Since relatively little scholarship has been expended on these saints, what available information there is must often be treated with caution, especially because it can be difficult to assess where a specific identification comes from, or what is the basis of a specific claim. The effort with which details about these and other such saints are found and assessed is a constant reminder of how the small things suffer in the shadow of bigger, more shiny ones, and that academia is still very much steered by the attraction to shiny things.  

Detail from Sveriges Riksarkiv Fr 25548

Entries for May 8, May 10, and May 12; these saints are, respectively:

Victor Martyr (Victor Maurus), Gordianus and Epimachus, and Nereus and Achilles

Detail from Sveriges Riksarkiv Fr 25603

Entries for the first halves of May and June

A fondness for small things – minor saints and the value of impossible questions

 
As I mentioned in my previous blogpost, I am currently working as a member of a research project which, among other things, involves identifying which saints have been celebrated in medieval calendars. While this might sound straightforward and fairly simple, it is very often anything but. Certainly, a lot of saints are easily identifiable because they were widely venerated, because they were famous, because they came into being late enough for us to have a good understanding of their cult, or because they have names that are not easily confused with the names of other saints. But there are also others: Saints whose cults began in obscure circumstances, or who never attained great popularity, or whose names are shared by a wide number of saints – some of whom perhaps more famous – and whose identities can therefore be difficult to ascertain, especially in the modern world where material has been lost to the Protestant Reformation, or where cults of doubtful authenticity have either been removed from catalogues by church councils, or relegated to the status of curiosities. Luckily, there are plenty of resources for scholars who try to make sense of obscure saints, but even these resources might sometimes not be sufficient (as I learned the hard way earlier today).          
           
For all my frustrations about the time spent chasing down details that can carry the definitive proof in an identification, and for all my teeth-grinding annoyance about the number of saints called Maximus or Felix, my exposure to the minutiae of medieval liturgical calendars have reminded me that I do actually have a deep fondness for these minor saints, and that I find them utterly fascinating. In part, I believe this fondness stems from a kind of sympathy with neglected materials – things that have been either discarded or overlooked because they would only yield limited results research-wise, or because researchers sometimes are drawn to more shiny things. I know from my own experience that it can be much more tempting to engage with a breadth of material that keeps you occupied for years on end, especially when a saint’s cult has had a tangible impact on historical events and inspired, or been the centrepiece of, tomes of writing, impressive architectural projects, or art of an outstanding and impressive quality.   

Yet despite the limited amount of knowledge that can be ascertained about the cults of minor saints, they do offer some valuable methodological challenges, and for this reason, my fondness for small things becomes entwined with some of the most fundamental aspects of being a historian. For instance, how do we use these minor saints to understand the general history of the cult of saints? How do these half-forgotten, confusing, obscure holy figures teach us something about the way that the cult of saints was disseminated in the early history of a newly-Christianised region? What does it tell us that some names are shared by calendars followed in Italy, Spain, Ireland, Norway, Poland, yet appear to be equally unknown in all these places? It is because of these questions, as well as others, that the minor saints can be important tools in assembling a better understanding of the historical development of medieval religion.  

Some of these questions might appear easy enough at first. For instance, the popularity of saints often tends to wax and wane over longer periods, and a failure to regain lost popularity might be explained by a lack of miracles, the appearance of a new cult that eclipses an older cult, or the absence of written material sometimes needed to keep the momentum of trust going when dealing with a saint whose role as intercessor and advocate appears to have become less efficacious in later years. That such ebbs and tides are typical of the cult of saints is well established, as exemplified by bouts of textual production, the main aim of which is to reignite the popularity of an old but seemingly dormant saint. After all, such reignition, or perhaps rediscovery, became a topos of hagiographical writing in its own right already in the fourth century. The idea that saints could be recovered from oblivion – perhaps of their own volition or in response to their own hints – is the very starting point of the cult of Gervasius and Protasius in Milan (for more on this cult, see this blogpost). We know from one of Ambrose of Milan’s letters to his sister, Marcellina, that the archbishop actively started digging in the ground in search for saints when he needed relics for the consecration of his new church. The basis for this was some vague stories he had heard, and which he decided to put to the test, and the result was the unearthing of two skeletons who were named after the protagonists of one such vague, half-forgotten story.       

In other words, we know something of the broader mechanics of how popularity ebbs and surges in the cult of saints. Yet the finer mechanics might bring us closer to questions about specific historical moments, or transitions of cult material from one region to the next, or remind us that the less-celebrated names of a calendar once commanded great devotion and received the attention of hosts of faithful flocking to a cult site in hope or in thanksgiving. And while much about the histories of these minor saints and their cults remain obscure to us, we are reminded that we cannot remain content with the broader understanding. Yes, we do know the circumstances by which the cult of Gervasius and Protasius underwent a resurgence at the turn of the fourth century. And yes, we do know, for instance, why Saint Sebastian’s association with plague caused a great boost for his cult in the course of the fourteenth century. But there are other cults whose endurance remain puzzling.        

For instance, we have the case of Abdon and Sennen (see this blogpost). These two saints are of particular curiosity to me, since their feast day, July 30, is the day after the feast of Saint Olaf of Norway, on whom I have worked a lot since starting my PhD back in 2014. In the calendars of medieval Norway, Abdon and Sennen were included, and a commemoration of them was most likely performed following the grander liturgical celebrations of Norway’s patron saint, which, in the case of the metropolitan see, was one of the liturgical high points of the year. We do not know whether the legend of Abdon and Sennen was known to the Norwegian clergy, or whether their feast was simply a collateral detail when the cult of saints was introduced to Norway and materials from England and Germany served as the basic start-up kit for the Norwegian churches. And to cast a wider perspective: We do now know exactly why it was that these two saints of uncertain historicity came to occupy such a secure place in the collective memory of Latin Christendom that their names continued to be celebrated – however perfunctorily – more than a thousand years after their supposed existence, and in geographies more or less completely unknown to those who first put their names into writing.   

Abdon and Sennen, here represented by a woodcut used for several saints throughout the book

Das Leuend der Hÿlghen, Steffen Arndes, Lübeck, 1492

Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek, RARA M 15, f.91r

Minor saints, such as Abdon and Sennen, and also such as Gervasius and Protasius, or Felix and Adauctus, or Maximus the abbot whose identity I still have not ascertained, are important figures when researching the cult of saints, because they pose impossible but productive questions. They provide insights into the mechanics of canon formation, about the balance between endurance and oblivion, about the strength of memory despite a very meagre foundation. They also force us to speculate about the reception of such seemingly empty names in newly Christianised regions, and their continuity centuries thence. It is perhaps especially useful to be exposed to the place of these minor saints in the religious life of Latin Christendom when otherwise spending most research time delving into the better known, larger cults. We are reminded that the cult of saints was a framework of many pieces great and small, and that the small pieces could have functions that we do not yet quite understand, and that they could prove important to our understanding of the structure as a whole.    

Sanctity in Milan, part 5 - Nabor and Felix

Victor Nabor Felix pii
Mediolani martyres
- Ambrosius, Hymn 10


Today, December 7, is the feast-day of Ambrose (d.397), bishop of Milan. At this time, Milan was one of the most important cities in the western part of the Roman Empire, along with Trier and Ravenna, while Rome was predominantly important as the symbolic heart of the empire, and as a bishopric. This was also a period where the bishops had become increasingly important political figures, as the old aristocracy had in many cases left the city for their villas and manors, and as the emperor was often preoccupied with military threats from the Sasanians in the East and the Germanic and Slavic tribes along the northern border. This situation would continue into the fifth century. Aside from the problems coming from outside of the empire, the stability within the empire was also shaken by the rivalries between Catholic and Arian factions. Such rivalries also bled into the political sphere, since both camps could count important political figures among their members. In an important imperial city as Milan, this was particularly destabilising because both factions were more numerous there than elsewhere, and because there was still a considerable pagan faction. Ambrose was actively involved in these controversies, and much of his writing and much of his work as bishop must be understood in light of this religio-political context. And it is the backdrop of the present blogpost.

Despite its opening paragraph, this blogpost is not primarily about Ambrose but about two saints that were important to him, namely Nabor and Felix. According to their legend, they were soldiers serving in the Roman army at the beginning of the fourth century, while Maximian was co-augustus of the western part of the empire, and while Diocletian was the main augustus. As Christians, Nabor and Felix were among the victims of the Diocletian persecution, and they were martyred in Milan, the traditional year of their death being set to 304. Nabor and Felix were then venerated as saints in Milan, and by the time Ambrose had accepted the position as bishop, the two soldier-saints were an established part of the tapestry of Catholic religion in the city. Accordingly, Ambrose actively supported and expanded their cult, and he even wrote a hymn in their honour, the opening part of which serves as this blogpost's epigraph. This hymn is the foundation for what I want to talk about here.

The hymn in honour of Nabor and Felix begins with a greeting to the saints, which also provides the main biographical details provided by their story. The first verse runs accordingly:

Victor Nabor Felix pii
Mediolani martyres,
solo hospites, Mauri genus
terrisque nostris aduenae

Victory, pious Nabor and Felix,
martyrs of Milan,
lonely guests of the land of the Mauritanian people
and you came to us

(The translation is open to other renditions; "Victor" might be a third saint excluded in later renditions of the legend.)

Nabor and Felix 

Avignon - BM - ms. 0136, f.254v, Roman missal, c.1370, Bologna 

(Courtesy of enluminures.culture.fr)

The biographical information provided in the beginning serves, as I have argued elsewhere, to demonstrate to the saints that the singer of the hymn is familiar with the saints and therefore worthy of receiving their help. What I want to emphasise in this biographical information is the fact that Ambrose addresses Nabor and Felix as being from the land of the Mauretanian people. This means the Roman province of Mauretania, and not the modern country. (I use "Mauretanian people rather than the outdated and problematic "Moor".) This trait of soldier-saints originating in Africa is a common feature of several saints' legends, most famously that of Saint Mauritius and the Theban legion, who have provided patron saints for countless religious houses, villages and cities throughout the Alps.

Ambrose states that Nabor and Felix were guests in the land of the Milanese, thus emphasising their origin in a different part of the world from the foothills of the Alps. Yet they are also Milanese martyrs, and by their death in that very city, it is in that city they reside as saints and it is there that they perform their patronage. They are foreigners becoming Milanese, they are Mauritanian and Milanese at one and the same time.

There are two main points I want to make here. First of all, we see in the legend of Nabor and Felix yet another example of the multicultural world of Late Antiquity, where people from all over the Roman Empire moved and were moved throughout its breadth and width. This multicultural world is accessible through a variety of sources, and the cult of saints is a particularly good one. Secondly, Ambrose was a participant in this multicultural world, and to him there was no contradiction in coming as a stranger from the Mauritanian people and becoming a saint for the Milanese. They were Christian martyrs who had a special bond with the city of Milan, and accordingly he was their venerator, and so were the Catholics of Milan.

To Ambrose, Nabor and Felix were important parts of the Catholic civic identity that he sought to strengthen throughout his tenure as bishop, in part as a bulwark against Arianism. As a part of this construction of a Milanese Catholic civic identity, Ambrose composed hymns and established the liturgical standard known as the Ambrosian liturgy, and he also promoted the cults of other saints. And it should be mentioned that although Nabor and Felix were undoubtedly Milanese, they were not natives to the city, and so Ambrose sought to establish cults of native saints as well. This quest would eventually result in the suspiciously fortuitous discovery of the skeletons of SS Gervasius and Protasius, which I have written about here. Ambrose's biographer, Paulinus, also records the finding of another pair of saints, Nazarius and Celsus, about whom I have written here. This shows that despite venerating the two Mauretanian Milanese, he also sought to provide the city with saints who were born in it - possibly as a way to emphasise the Catholic nature of Milan as a counter-argument to the Arian faction.   

Chambéry - BM - ms. 0004, f.535v, Franciscan breviary, Milan, c.1430 

(Courtesy of enluminures.culture.fr)

Nabor and Felix, likely drawn from an illuminator's generic model rather than the legend

Chambéry - BM - ms. 0004, f.535v, Franciscan breviary, Milan, c.1430 

(Courtesy of enluminures.culture.fr)

Nabor and Felix remained important to Milan, and their importance spread elsewhere too. Frederick Barbarossa brought their relics back to Köln when he had sacked Milan, while a monastery in Bologna was named after the two Mauretanian Milanese, a monastery in which the jurist Gratian was a monk. So in addition to their importance in Milan, Nabor and Felix also were important in other parts of Christendom, but that is a story to which I might return some other day.



For similar blogposts, see:

Gervasius and Protasius

Nazarius and Celsus

Thomas of Canterbury in Chiaravalle

Bartholomew in Il Duomo

Sanctity in Milan, part 4 - The Flayed Bartholomew

This series of blogposts is inspired by a work-trip to Milan which the Centre for Medieval Literature arranged this September, and aims to present some of the many stories and cultural expressions connected to the cult of saints in and/or related to the city's history.

This post is a rather short one, presenting the famous sculpture of the flayed Saint Bartholomew, which is situated by the transept of the cathedral of Milan. The statue, finished in 1562, was made by Marco d'Agrate, a fact which he proudly displays in the legend on the stone underneath Bartholomew's feet. The text reads: Non me Praxiteles, sed Marc'finxit Agrat, "Not Praxiteles, but Marco d'Agrate made me". By this comparison to one of the greatest and most famous sculptors of the classical era Marco placed his own worth at the very summit of the artistic expression then in vogue in Late-Renaissance Italy. (Photographs taken by me.)

The gruesome and gruesomely realistic depiction of the flayed saint is not only intended to convey one of the most famous details from the story of Saint Bartholomew, it also serves to highlight Marco d'Agrate's intimate anatomical knowledge and his ability to render stone into the semblance of living flesh, where tendons and muscles are as well-crafted as the hairs of his dangling head-skin, worn in a manner not unlike the traditional depictions of Herakles draped in the skin of the Nemean lion.

The story of Bartholomew's martyrdom inspired a wide range of depictions of the saint throughout the medieval and early modern periods, and as a consequence his iconographic attribute is the knife by which he was flayed. It is also for this reason he is seen as the patron saint of tanners and all other trades related to the treatment of hide. According to the traditional, and rather apochryphal, legend, Bartholomew met his death in India where he was preaching the word of God. In Legenda Aurea the episode itself is briefly recounted as follows:

[T]he king tore the purple robe he was wearing, and ordered the apostle to be beaten with Clubs and flayed alive. Christians then took his body and gave it honorable burial. King Astyages and the temple priests were seized by demons and died.
- Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend, translated by William Granger Ryan, Princeton University Press, 2012: 498



The manner of Bartholomew's death was given a similar, but less horrific rendition in Michelangelo's Last Judgement, in which the saint has been given the features of the playwright, poet and infamous pornographer Pietro Aretino.

Bartholomew Aretino
From Wikimedia

For similar blogposts, see:


Sanctity in Milan, part 1

Sanctity in Milan, part 2

Sanctity in Milan, part 3

On the late-medieval iconographic development of Saint Sebastian

Sancity in Milan, part 3 - Thomas Becket in Chiaravalle

A few weeks ago I started a series of blogposts concentrating on the cult of saints in, about and from Milan (the two previous posts can be found here and here). The occasion for this was a long weekend work trip arranged by the Centre for Medieval Literature where I work, and in future blogposts I will talk more about my experiences in Milan and related topics.

In this blogpost, however, I will present a maybe somewhat unexpected example of Milanese veneration of saints, namely a depiction of the death of Thomas Becket, found in a seventeenth-century fresco in a Cistercian monastery.

The martyrdom of Thomas Becket

The day after our arrival, on the suggestion of a friend and colleague who went with us, I and a few others took a little excursion to the Cistercian monastery of Chiaravalle, situated a few kilometers outside Milan. The monastery was founded in the twelfth century by Bernard of Clairvaux after he had been sent to Milan on a diplomatic mission. Disgusted with the pomp and riches of the Milanese clergy, Bernard founded the Chiaravalle monastery whose name is an Italian rendition of Clairvaux.

Chirarvalle is situated in a beautiful meadowland outside the city, and true to the Cistercian tradition it was placed in what was then wilderness. When the grounds were being prepared and the first livestock was introduced, the Cistercians were plagued by mosquitoes from the nearby marshlands as they carried disease with them. Eventually, however, they managed to get rid of the insects by draining the marshes and the land could be properly cultivated. A legend arose that Bernard had excommunicated the mosquitoes, which ensured that they stayed away from the monastery. In recent years, however, the ban must have been lifted or simply ignored, because I was bitten by several mosquitoes during our visit.

The interior of the abbey church is beautifully decorated with sumptuous frescoes, quite unlike what you usually expect in a Cistercian house, known as they are for the lack of ornament. The frescoes, however, are from the Early Modern Period and display the sentiments of the Counter Reformation rather than Bernard of Clairvaux's rather Spartan approach to art. This is not to say that Chiaravalle was only decorated after the Counter Reformation. In the fourteenth century an artist known to us as"Il Primo Maestro di Chiaravalle", and who was inspired by Giotto, decorated the interior of the dome with a series of saints. These were, however, not easily visible to the ministrant monks down below and although impressive they might perhaps be seen more as art addressing the saints than the monks. These frescoes were supplemented by other works placed lower down, attributed to "Il Secondo Maestro di Chiaravalle".

The first cycle of frescoes on the ground level, however, were painted by Bartolomeo Roverio, also known as "Il Genovesino" and two brothers called "Fiammenghini", the Flemings, because their father was from Antwerp. Their names were Giovanni Battista and Giovanni Mauro della Rovere. These frescoes portray the history of the Cistercian order with important martyrdoms displayed in the left transept, which is where we find the rendition of Thomas Becket's martyrdom.

The martyrdom of Thomas Becket (dressed in Cistercian clothing and given a blonde beard)
Painted by the Rovere brothers, I Fiammenghini, in 1615

The story of Thomas Becket should be well-known to most of my readers, and additional information can be found in blogposts here and here. Becket is an interesting figure and a saint with a very wide dissemination in the European cult of saints. What is most curious here, however, is that he is included in a cycle of Cistercian saints, for Becket himself was archbishop of Canterbury, a Benedictine house. Nonetheless, it is small wonder that he has been appropriated by the Cistercians in this way, because during his exile in France Becket resided with Cistercian communities and partook in their life and rituals which was very much at odds with the expected lifestyle of an archbishop. One of the most famous features in the claim for Thomas Becket's sanctity was that he had been found wearing a hairshirt under his archiepiscopal paraments, a sign of his austere secret lifestyle which was very much in tune with the form of self-mortification espoused by the Cistercians. Consequently, we find Becket here in Chiaravalle, depicted in a Cistercian-white garment and equipped with blonde beard perhaps to signify that he comes from the North.

For similar blogposts, see these.

A brief introduction to the cult of Thomas Becket

A song for Thomas Becket

Saint Louis IX rendered in the Mannerist style

Saint Edmund of East Anglia in Legenda Aurea

Two frescoes of Saint Sebastian

A fresco of Edward the Confessor

Sanctity in Milan, part 2 - Nazarius and Celsus

In my previous blogpost I gave a brief account of the legend of the Gervasius and Protasius whose bodies were allegedly discovered by Ambrose of Milan in 386. In this blogpost I want to continue the series of blogposts on Milanese saints by talking about another pair of martyrs found by Ambrose: Nazarius and Celsus.

Nazarius and Celsus with the generic palm of martyrdom

Chambéry - BM - ms. 0004 , f.546, Franciscan breviary, c.1430

Courtesy of enluminures.culture.fr

 

The bodies of Nazarius and Celsus were found by Ambrose in 395, nine years after the discovery of Gervasius and Protasius, but unlike his first discovery, Ambrose does not mention these two saints in his writings. The story of how these saints were found comes down to us from Paulinus who was Ambrose’s biographer and who claims to have been present at the inventio of these two saints. According to Paulinus, a body of a martyr was found in a sepulchre in a garden outside Milan. There was no way of telling when the martyr had been killed, but the head had been cut off and its blood still seeped out of the body which was as intact as if it had been recently prepared for the burial. These signs of a very recent death were taken to mean that the body belonged to a holy man, because although they did not know the date of its death – an important emphasis – Ambrose and Paulinus were certain that this was not a man recently killed. Considering that Christianity had been legal in the Roman Empire for more than eighty years at the time of this discovery, we can understand why a man who bore a hallmark of martyrdom – decapitation – could not have been martyred recently as there had been no persecution in decades in Milan.

After the discovery, the body of the alleged saint was carried to the Basilica of the Apostles, and then Ambrose, Paulinus and a retinue of clerics went back to the garden to pray. There they meet the keepers of the garden who tell them that there is a treasure buried there, and the treasure in question turns out to be another sainted body, that of Saint Celsus. The newly-found body was also taken to the Basilica of the Apostles and there they interred the two martyrs with the due rites. During this ceremony, a person possessed by a demon interrupted Ambrose’s sermon, but the demon turned silent when it was verbally chastised by Ambrose.

The story of the inventio of Nazarius and Celsus is the earliest source we have for the two saints, and although we might cast a sceptical eye towards the circumstances of these finds, the fact that Paulinus was an eyewitness means that we can be certain that two bodies were interred by Ambrose and that they were venerated as saints.


                               
                                       Nazarius and Celsus (with Victor and Innocent)
                        Avignon - BM - ms. 0136, f.257, Roman missal, c.1370, Bologna
                                                   Courtesy of enluminures.culture.fr

The story of Nazarius and Celsus, however, developed as a Milanese tradition over the years. At some later point there was composed a legend which purported to give an account of their lives and passio, but this is of no historical value to the actual historical account of these saints, whose historicity is as dubious as that of Gervasius and Protasius. However, the legend is interesting for its own sake, and I will here give a short version based on the story as it is transmitted by Jacobus de Voragine in Legenda Aurea. According to Jacobus, one tradition claims that Ambrose learned about these two saints from an account of the story of Gervasius and Protasius, which in turn was found in a book buried together with the saints. There is also another tradition, Jacobus tells us, that claims that “a certain philosopher who was devoted to Nazarius wrote his passion, and that Ceratius, who buried the saints’ bodies, placed the writing at their head” (Jacobus de Voragine 2012: 405). This latter tradition probably draws on the legend of Gervasius and Protasius, and it is interesting to see how the legends of these to saint-pairs are brought together and become intertwined, almost to the point where the legend make up part of a Milanese mythology. For instance, in his account of Gervasius and Protasius, Jacobus de Voragine refers to the tradition where Nazarius and Celsus are thought to be contemporaries of Gervasius and Protasius. This places Nazarius and Celsus at the time of Nero, for it is established already at Ambrose’s time that Gervasius and Protasius suffered under him. In Legenda Aurea, we are told that Gervasius and Protasius stayed with Nazarius while he was “building an oratory near Embrun” (p. 326). The three men and Celsus who is Nazarius’ apprentice are arrested for being Christian and brought before Nero. The young Celsus was crying and a soldier hit him. This enraged Nazarius who criticised him, and then the soldiers beat the man and threw him in jail, but later when he was thrown into the sea to die he was miraculously rescued and later came to Milan.

In the chapter dedicated to Nazarius and Celsus, Jacobus de Voragine tells us that Nazarius was African by birth, son of a noble Jew and the Roman Christian noblewoman Perpetua “who had been baptized by Saint Peter the Apostle” (p. 405). After evaluating the different religions of his parents, Nazarius chose the faith of his mother and was then baptised by Linus, Peter’s follower and the second pope. Jacobus alerts us to some inconsistencies in the tradition, because the legend calls Linus pope at a time before Peter’s death. This suggests that the temporal setting of this legend is a much, much later addition.

Since Nazarius had become a Christian, his parents feared for his life and sent him out of Rome “with seven mules laden with his possessions” (p. 405). As a good Christian, Nazarius distributed his wealth along his journey. Eventually he came to Milan “where he learned that Saints Gervasius and Protasius were detained in prison. It became known that he was visiting these martyrs and exhorting them to perseverance, and he was denounced to the prefect” (p. 405). When he was confronted with his actions, he stood firm in his faith in Christ and was “beaten with cudgels and driven out of the city”. He then led an itinerant life which brought him to Gaul where he was asked to baptise a young boy called Celsus and to take him with him on his travelling. When the prefect of Gaul was told about this baptism he had the two arrested and tortured, but the prefect’s wife – presumably in imitation of the wife of Pilate – told her husband that these two were innocent and persuaded him to release them. Unlike Pilate, the perfect of Gaul listened to his wife and after their release Nazarius and Celsus went to Trier where he converted many people and built a church. The governor in Trier found out about this and reported the two Christians to Nero, and they were then arrested and sent to Rome.

   

Nazarius and Celsus walking on the sea

Clermont-Ferrand - BM - ms. 0069, f.486, Roman breviary, c.1482

Courtesy of enluminures.culture.fr

While Nazarius and Celsus languished in prison Nero was busy deciding how best to torture his prisoners. Suddenly, a pack of wild beasts which had been captured for the circus burst into his garden and killed and wounded many people. Nero was himself wounded and thought there might be a connection between this and the arrest of Nazarius. Consequently, he had Nazarius and Celsus brought before him, and when the emperor saw a shining lustre on Nazarius face he thought that the saint was a wizard of some sort. Nazarius was then brought to the temple and asked to sacrifice to the idols, and Nazarius asked everyone else to go outside of the temple while he remained there praying. As he prayed the pagan idols crumbled to dust, and Nero ordered him to be taken to the sea and thrown into the water , a topos perhaps most famous from the legend of Saint Clement. Jacobus describes the scene accordingly:

Nazarius and Celsus were therefore put into a ship, carried out to sea and thrown overboard. At once a violent storm broke out around the ship, while a perfect calm surrounded the two saints. The ship’s crew feared for their lives and repented the wrongs they had done the saints; and behold, nazarius and Celsus came walking over the water and boarded the ship. The crew professed the Christian faith, Nazarius prayed, the sea fell calm, and the whole company landed at a place not far from the city of Genoa.
- Jacobus de Voragine, Legenda Aurea, translated by William Granger-Ryan, Princeton University Press, 2012: 406

From Genoa Nazarius made his way to Milan “where he had left Gervasius and Protasius” and when the prefect learned about this he ordered Nazarius to go into exile. Celsus was placed in the custody of a Milanese matron. Nazarius then went to Rome and reunited with his father who had then become a Christian. In Rome he got into trouble with the pagan priests and came once more back to Milan where and Celsus were brought before the judged. They were then taken outside the Porta Romana and brought to a place called Tres Muri where they were beheaded. On the following night they appeared in a dream to Ceratius and adviced him to bury them under his house – a motif probably taken from the story of Gervasius and Protasius.

Jacobus then recounts some of the miracles and quotes Ambrose in his account of the inventio. In his book on Ambrose, F. Homes Dudden claims that Ambrose never referred to these saints in his own writing (Dudden 1935: 319), and it is likely that Jacobus’ quote is from the Pseudo-Ambrosian tradition. This tradition is relatively extensive as many works have been ascribed to Ambrosius which were composed much later. Good examples of this are a letter which describes the inventio of Gervasius and Protasius and a sermon for their dies natalis.

Nazarius and Celsus

Detail from the Averoldi Polyptych by Titian, 1520-22, comissioned by Altobello Averoldi

Courtesy of Wikimedia

The story of Nazarius and Celsus is an interesting legend for many reasons, perhaps especially in the way it is woven into the already established legend of Gervasius and Protasius, and how it thus creates a collegium of Milanese saints. Although these Milanese legends became widely distributed throughout the Middle Ages, it is interesting to note that in the Dialogues of Gregory the Great, which is a compilation of legends of saints mainly from Italy, neither of these four saints are mentioned. Nonetheless, as evidenced by their inclusion in Legenda Aurea and references in several European liturgical documents, their cult remained strong also outside Milan.

Nazarius on a horse

Fresco, 1480, San Nazzaro and Celso Abbey, Novara, Italy, attributed to Giovanni Antonio Merli

Courtesy of Wikimedia

Bibliography


Dudden, F. Homes, The Life and Times of St. Ambrose, Clarendon Press, 1935
Gregory the Great, Dialogues, translated by Odo John Zimmermann, The Catholic University of America Press, 1983

Jacobus de Voragine, Legenda Aurea, translated by William Granger-Ryan, Princeton University Press, 2012

Sanctity in Milan, part 1 - Gervasius and Protasius

 

In September, the Centre at which I’m working, the Centre of Medieval Literature in Odense and York is going on a work trip to Milan. In preparation for this, I’m familiarising myself with the cult of saints in the city, and in what I hope to be a long series of blogposts I will delve into the subject. First up are the protomartyrs of the city, Gervasius and Protasius.

Gervasius and Protasius

MS Egerton 3763, Prayerbook of Archbishop Arnulph of Milan, between 998 and 1018

Courtesy of British Library

Gervasius and Protasius first emerge into recorded history in 386 when their beheaded bodies were found by Ambrose, bishop of Milan. Nothing is known about their history, and their historicity remains a dubious matter. According to the legend, they showed themselves to Ambrose while he was praying in the Church of Felix and Nabor, which was raised over the relics of two martyrs from the Diocletian persecution of the early fourth century. In Legenda Aurea, Jacobus de Voragine records the event as follows:

Ambrose was at prayer in the church of Saints Nabor and Felix, and was neither wide awake nor sound asleep when two handsome youths, dressed in white tunics and mantles and shod with short boots, appeared to him and prayed with him. Ambrose prayed that if this apparition was an illusion it would not occur again, but if it was a true one it would be repeated. At cockcrow the two youths again appeared in the same way, praying with him; but on the third night, fully awake though his body was worn out with vigils, he was astonished when they appeared to him with a third person, who looked like Paul the apostle in the painting Ambrose had seen.
- Jacobus de Voragine, Legenda Aurea (translated by William Granger-Ryan), 2012: 327

Ambrose inspired by Saint Paul

Paris - Bibl. Mazarine - ms. 0562, f.001, collection of Ambrosian writings, 16th century

Courtesy of enluminures.cultures.fr

Paul, for indeed it is him, then goes on to explain to Ambrose who these men are and where he can find their bodies, namely in a coffin twelve feet under the earth. In this coffin, Ambrose would also find a book containing the history of these martyrs. After discussing the matter with some other local bishops, Ambrose decided to dig for the relics and indeed found them where Saint Paul had said they would be, a feat which earned him the patronage of archaeologists (shared with Damasus and, I believe at least in Spain, with Helena).

The legend of Gervasius and Protasius tells us that the saints were the twin sons of Saint Vitalis and his wife Valeria. Since they were children of Christians, and since they lodged with Saint Nazarius, they were soon persecuted by the pagan authorities and brought before Nero. The twins were then later taken to Milan, and here they received the enmity of the pagan priests.

At the time when Gervasius and Protasius came to Milan, a military leader called Count Astasius also came there on his campaign against the Germanic tribe of the Marcomanni. Astasius was then told that the gods would be deaf to his prayers unless he forced Gervasius and Protasius to offer sacrifice to them, and Astasius had the twins brought forth to perform the rites. True to the topos of such saint-stories, the two men refused to offer sacrifice and blasphemed the pagan idols as being deaf and dumb. Gervasius then said that Astasius would only receive victory from God and the count responded by having him beaten with leaded whips until he died. Then Protasius was summoned, and he mocked the count for all the fuss he made about the two Christians. For this, Astasius had him hung on the rack but Protasius kept mocking him and was eventually beheaded. The bodies of the twins were then collected by a Christian called Philip, who buried the stone coffin secretly in his house and who wrote the book which he placed at their relics.

Gervasius and Protasius with the instruments of their passion

Mans (Le) - BM - ms. 0254, f.044v, Missal, Use of Le Means, between 1495 and 1503

Courtesy of enluminures.cultures.fr

The relics of the two martyrs were placed in the Church of Felix and Nabor by Ambrose, and these two saints became the centre of the Milanese cult of saints. The cult of Gervasius and Protasius is fascinating, particularly because of its inception. Ambrose lived in a time when Milan had been an important imperial city since the third century, and when the imperial power was weakening and local episcopal power was on the rise. It was also a time when aristocratic Christians, especially Christian matrons, expanded their own prestige by collecting relics of saints and constructing private mausoleums in their gardens. These features were common to the Western Roman Empire, and we see them also in the papacy of Damasus I (366-84). It is therefore possible that Ambrose either invented the legend of Gervasius and Protasius or exploited a local oral tradition in his establishment of their cult. For example, it is interesting to note that the martyrdom of these saints are set two the first Christian persecution, i.e. about 250 years earlier than the deaths of Felix and Nabor who were then replaced by a new – but older – saintly couple. Thus, Gervasius and Protasius not only become protomartyrs of Milan, but provide the bishop with saints of greater antiquity and prestige than the saints hitherto venerated in Milan by its local nobility.

Gervasius and Protasius with the palms of martyrdom

Chambéry - BM - ms. 0004, f.502, Franciscan breviary, c.1430

Courtesy of enluminures.cultures.fr

Bibliography

Brown, Peter, The Cult of the Saints, University of Chicaco Press, 2015

Farmer, David, The Oxford Dictionary of Saints, Oxford University Press, 2004

Jacobus de Voragine, Legenda Aurea, translated by William Granger-Ryan, Princeton, 2012

Sághy, Marianne, "Pope Damasus and the Beginnings of Roman Hagiography", printed in Gecser, Ottó; Laszlovszky, Józef; Nagy, Balázs; Sebók, Marcell; Szende, Katalin (eds.), Promoting the Saints – cults and their contexts from Late Antiquity until the Early Modern Period, Central European University Press, 2011