The Head-Carriers: Headless Saints from Saint Denis to Saint Nicasius

11 Tuesday Nov 2014

Tags

Béziers, cephalophore, Fourteen Holy Helpers, France, martyr, Montmartre, Paris, Rheims, Rouen, Sacré-Coeur, Saint Aphrodisius, Saint Cuthbert, Saint Denis, Saint Dionysius, Saint Firmin, Saint Nicasius, Saint Oswald, Saint Paul, Saint Valerie

Saint Denis, Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris, France. Photo by Reliquarian.

Saints Without Heads

As we’ve noted before, saints portrayed in Christian art often carry objects that help identify them in art. While some saints carry relatively benign, pedestrian objects — Saint Anthony often carries a white lily, Saint Notburga an ear of corn — others tote more lethal implements including an assortment of knives, swords, arrows, and wooden stakes. Martyrs in particular are frequently shown with deadly devices, generally the instruments of their martyrdom. A curious subset of martyrs, however, are commonly shown carrying their own heads. Known as cephalophores, literally “head-carriers” in Greek, these headless saints all suffered martyrdom by decapitation. Although depicting cephalophores may at first seem straightforward, artists have struggled for centuries with an unusual problem presented by their portrayal: Where does one place the halo on a headless saint?

Things Come to a Head: Secular Examples of Animate, Headless Corpses

John Quidor, The Headless Horseman Pursuing Ichabod Crane, oil on canvas (1858), National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Photo by Reliquarian.

Stories of headless men and their improbable feats are not confined to the Roman Martyrology. Secular examples include Washington Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and the 14th-century Arthurian legend Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, which features a remarkable contest known as a “beheading game.” In the story of Gawain, a giant stranger known as the Green Knight appears before King Arthur’s court on New Year’s Day. The Green Knight challenges the members of the court to strike him with his ax on the condition that he will return the blow in one year and a day. Gawain accepts the challenge, and the Green Knight prepares to receive Gawain’s strike by brushing aside his long locks and laying bare his neck. Gawain then grips the ax, raises it into the air, and lets it fall.

The author of the legend tells us, “The sharp edge of the blade sundered the bones, smote through the neck, and clave it in two, so that the edge of the steel bit on the ground, and the fair head fell to the earth . . . .”[1] The Green Knight, however, “neither faltered nor fell,” but instead, with his hand out-stretched, caught the head, lifted it up, and mounted his steed “as if naught ailed him, and he were not headless.”[2] Then the “grim corpse,” bleeding freely, held up the severed head and turned its face toward the gathered knights. Its eyelids lifted open, and the head spoke, warning Sir Gawain to keep his promise.[3]

Head Cases: Headless Saints and Their Post-Mortem Wanderings

Like the Green Knight and the Headless Horseman, whose severed head rested on the horseman’s saddle before he hurled it, dodgeball-like, at the hapless Ichabod Crane, the bodies of cephalophores remained animated even after the detachment of their heads. They even performed with a remarkable degree of agency, often selecting the sites of their own burials.

Saint Denis, Patron Saint of Paris

Saint Denis, Basilique Sacré-Coeur, Paris, France. The Basilique Sacré-Coeur (Basilica of the Sacred Heart), located in Montmartre, is traditionally associated with Saint Denis’s beheading. Photo by Reliquarian.

In The Golden Legend’s account of the death of Saint Denis, the saint collected his severed head and walked an appreciable distance with it after his beheading. According to the story, after Saint Denis, also known as Saint Dionysius, had been beheaded by a sword, his body “[i]nstantly . . . stood up, took his head in its arms, and, with an angel and a heavenly light leading the way, marched two miles, from the place called Montmartre, the hill of martyrs, to the place where, by his own choice and by God’s providence, he rests in peace.”[4] The abbey church of Saint-Denis was later erected on the spot where Saint Denis was buried.[5] One of the Fourteen Holy Helpers, Saint Denis is often invoked for relief from headaches.

Saint Aphrodisius of Béziers

Another cephalophore, Saint Aphrodisius (or Saint Aphrodise) of Béziers, similarly retrieved and traveled with his severed head before settling on a final resting place. Saint Aphrodisius, the first Bishop of Béziers, was decapitated on the site of the Roman circus at Béziers, and his head was unceremoniously tossed into a well. Miraculously, the saint’s head was ejected from the well and rolled back to saint’s body. The headless corpse then picked up the head and walked with it through the city to the site of the hermit cave where the saint had lived during his lifetime.[6] The Basilica of Saint Aphrodisius of Béziers (Basilique Saint-Aphrodise de Béziers) was later erected on the spot where Saint Aphrodisius was buried.

Saint Nicasius of Rheims

Joos van Cleve, Saints George and Nicasius with donors (detail of Saint Nicasius), oil on panel (c. 1515), Alte Pinakothek, Munich, Germany. Here, Saint Nicasius is depicted with just the top of his head missing. Photo by Reliquarian.

Saint Nicasius of Rheims, is commonly portrayed with either his entire head or just a portion of head missing. According to Butler’s Lives of the Saints, Saint Nicasius was a 5th-century Bishop of Rheims who was killed by a marauding army of Gauls. Standing in the doorway of his church, Saint Nicasius was massacred with his deacon, Saint Florentius, and his lector, Saint Jucundus, by his side. The Gauls apparently cut his head off, although, as noted, he is often shown missing just the top of his head.

Other Cephalophores

Other cephalophores frequently represented with their severed heads include Saint Just, Saint Ginés de la Jara, Saint Firmin, Saint Minias, the siblings Saints Felix and Regula, Saint Exuperantius, Saint Valerie, Saints Maxien, Lucien, and Julian, Saint Chéron, and Saint Osyth. Although Saint Paul of Tarsus was martyred by beheading, he is more frequently depicted with a book of letters, signifying the letters he wrote to the earliest Christian communities, or a sword, the instrument of his martyrdom. The Golden Legend notes that at his execution, “[a]s soon as his head bounded from his body, it intoned, in Hebrew and in a clear voice, ‘Jesus Christ.’”[7] Meanwhile, although not a cephalophore, Saint Cuthbert of Lindisfarne can easily be mistaken for one. Saint Cuthbert commonly carries a severed head, although it is not his own. It belongs to Saint Oswald, whose head was buried with Saint Cuthbert at Durham Cathedral.

Saint Firmin Holding His Head, limestone and paint (c. 1225-75), Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Photo by Reliquarian.

The Secret to Getting A Head

In his essay in Disembodied Heads in Medieval and Early Modern Culture, Scott Montgomery argues that stories describing the “post-mortem ambulation” of cephalophoric saints may have served a pragmatic purpose in certain communities. He observes, “Cephalophores do not merely respond to their decapitation, but more actively direct the location of their resting place and subsequent veneration, establishing the locus sanctus of their cult. Not surprisingly, it seems that the trope is commonly inserted into the saint’s tale by those claiming to possess [the saint’s] relics.”[8] Montgomery observes that texts and images of cephalophory were frequently produced where the relics were kept, suggesting that such tales were effective at “establishing relic claims at the very location where the tale was inserted into the saint’s vita.”[9]

Double Halo!

Whatever the origin of the trope, artists entrusted to render the personalities of cephalophoric saints faced an uncommon challenge. Saints in art were generally depicted with a halo or nimbus behind their heads, indicating their great dignity and sanctity.[10] While many artists continued to follow this convention for cephalophores, the unusual placement of a cephalophore’s head, which artists often deposited in the headless saint’s hands, could visually diminish the effect of the golden, glowing halo. Consequently, artists sometimes sought other ways to communicate the sanctity of cephalophores.

Saint Nicasius, Rouen Cathedral, Rouen, France. Saint Nicasius is holding his bishop’s mitre and is missing the top of his head. Photo by Reliquarian.

One approach involved placing the cephalophore’s halo around the saint’s neck, where the head had been. Saint Denis is depicted this way on the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, as is Saint Nicasius above the north portal of Rheims Cathedral. Another approach involved rendering a cephalophore with two halos: one above the saint’s decollated head and one around the saint’s neck, which was sometimes shown spurting blood. Saint Denis is depicted this way in a manuscript illuminated by the Master of Sir John Fastolf and on the coat of arms of the city of Krefeld, Germany.

Léon Bonnat’s famous Le martyre de Saint-Denis at the Pantheon in Paris depicts a variation of the double halo concept. In Bonnat’s painting, the headless bodies of Saint Denis’s companions, Saints Eleutherius and Rusticus, are strewn to Saint Denis’s left and right while a bloody ax rests on steps in the foreground. To the upper right of the painting, an angel swoops from the sky bearing a palm frond and crown of martyrdom. Meanwhile, at the center of the painting, Saint Denis’s headless body is shown scooping up its head like a fumbled football. The disembodied head is surrounded by a distinct halo, but the space above Saint Denis’s neck, where his head would have been, is also aglow. Not quite a halo, nimbus, aureole, or other traditional marker of saintliness, the glow appears as a riot of sparks reminiscent of a holiday sparkler.

The Martrydrom of Saint Nicasius, stained glass (early 13th century), Basilique Cathédrale Saint-Gervais-et-Saint-Protais de Soissons, Soisson, France. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Heady Times: Cephalophores Unbound

Cephalophory is, perhaps, one of the most dramatic examples of a saint’s triumph over death. As Montgomery explains, “much of the potency of the trope is fed by the phenomenon . . . that the martyr is only dispatched by beheading after enduring a series of horrific tortures.”[11] Saint Denis, for example, was stretched on an iron grill over a blazing fire; thrown to hungry, wild beasts; stuffed into an oven; and nailed to a cross before he was finally beheaded. Decapitation, then, was frequently resorted to as a means of “martyr-dispatching” because it was so effective and so definitive.[12] Accordingly, “the act of post-decapatory ambulation (and occasionally locution) is underscored as all-the-more miraculous. Cephalophores dramatically enact their imitatio Christi and imitatio sancti in ‘surviving’ bodily death, essentially following the model of St. Paul in professing faith after decollation.”[13]

[1] 1 Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: A Middle-English Arthurian Romance Retold in Modern Prose 15-16 (Jessie Laidlay Weston trans., 1900).

[2] Id. at 16.

[3] Id.

[4] Jacobus de Voragine, 2 The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints 240 (William Granger Ryan trans., 1993).

[5] 4 Butler’s Lives of the Saints 67-68 (Herbert J. Thurston, S.J. & Donald Attwater eds., 2d ed. 1956). Butler’s Lives of the Saints explains that the cultus of Saint Dionysius or Saint Denis was very strong in the Middle Ages and that by the 6th century he was already recognized as “the saint of Paris par excellence.” Id. at 68.

[6] See, e.g., Scott B. Montgomery, Securing the Sacred Head: Cephalophory and Relic Claims, in Disembodied Heads in Medieval and Early Modern Culture 92-93 (Catrien Santing et. al, eds., 2013).

[7] Jacobus de Voragine, 1 The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints 353-54 (William Granger Ryan trans., 1993).

[8] Montgomery, supra note 6, at 85.

[9] Id. at 85-86.

[10] George Ferguson, Signs and Symbols in Christian Art 149 (1954).

[11] Montgomery, supra note 6, at 86.

[12] Id.

[13] Id.

Saint Charles Borromeo: A Tale from the Crypt of Milan Cathedral

16 Wednesday Oct 2013

Posted by Reliquarian in Music History, Tomb / Sarcophagus

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

cathedral, crypt, Italy, martyr, Milan, Milan Cathedral, Palestrina, relic, Saint Bartholomew, Saint Blaise, Saint Charles Borromeo, Saint Denis, sarcophagus, tomb

Sarcophagus of Saint Charles Borromeo, Milan Cathedral, Milan, Italy. The sign to the right reads, “Reliquie di San Carlo Borromeo, Cardinale Arcivescovo di Milano.”

A Poem Wrought in Marble

In 1867, Mark Twain spent several months touring Europe and the Holy Land aboard the steamship Quaker City. He recorded his observations of the trip, which he later published as his first book, The Innocents Abroad, one of the great travelogues of the English language and one of the bestselling travel books of all time. Among his impressions are those of Milan Cathedral (Duomo di Milano), the majestic seat of the Archbishop of Milan and currently the fifth largest cathedral in the world. Milan Cathedral simply mesmerized him. “What a wonder it is! So grand, so solemn, so vast! And yet so delicate, so airy, so graceful! A very world of solid weight, and yet it seems in the soft moonlight only a fairy delusion of frostwork that might vanish with a breath! . . . It was a vision!—a miracle!—an anthem sung in stone, a poem wrought in marble!”[1]

Twain was awed by Milan Cathedral’s spires,[2] its luminous windows,[3] its sculptures,[4] and its sheer mass. He called the cathedral “the princeliest creation that ever brain of man conceived”[5] and could imagine no greater church building in the world.[6] “They say that the Cathedral of Milan is second only to St. Peter’s at Rome,” he remarked. “I cannot understand how it can be second to anything made by human hands.”[7]

Altar of San Giovanni Buono, Milan Cathedral

Nevertheless, despite his obvious and unbounded enthusiasm for the cathedral, Twain managed to devote nearly half his chapter on the cathedral to a subject unrelated to the aesthetic merits of the building—namely, saints and holy relics. In particular, he dwelt on the earthly remains of Saint Charles (Carlo) Borromeo, a former Archbishop of Milan, who was displayed in the cathedral’s crypt in a “coffin of rock crystal as clear as the atmosphere.”[8] “To us it seemed that so a good a man . . . deserved rest and peace in a grave sacred from the intrusion of prying eyes,” he rued, “but peradventure our wisdom was at fault in this regard.”[9]

Twain on Saints and Relics

Twain did not have a particularly positive opinion of saints or relics. In The Innocents Abroad, for example, he criticizes “coarse” depictions of saints as suffering martyrs[10] and he decries the veneration of relics as “Jesuit humbuggery.”[11] In his book The Reverend Mark Twain, Joe B. Fulton explains that Twain questioned not only the “theological concept of a saint,” but also the “aesthetic practices of martyrology.”[12] Twain found “visual depictions of the saints unintentionally grotesque, using his own ‘grotesque realism’ to undermine their reverential seriousness.”[13] In Italy, for example, Twain complained of the “huge, coarse frescoes of suffering martyrs” he found painted on the facades of roadside inns.[14] Twain, who rejected the “ideology inherent in the martyrological form,”[15] wryly noted that “[i]t could not have diminished their suffering any to be so uncouthly represented.”[16] Twain was similarly disturbed by the statue of Saint Bartholomew at Milan Cathedral (pictured below), which depicts the martyr with his skin flayed. “It was a hideous thing,” he wrote, “and yet there was a fascination about it somewhere. I am very sorry I saw it, because I shall always see it now. I shall dream of it sometimes.”

St Bartholomew - Milan Cathedral Still, Twain complained “less about the idea of sainthood than about relics and the depictions of them.”[17] To Twain, the veneration of relics was an irrational, antiquated practice, a holdover of the “peculiar devotional spirit of the olden time.”[18] As Fulton observes, “[r]elics of the saints trigger comedy rather than reverence” for Twain, and relics are a frequent target of his irreverent humor in The Innocents Abroad.[19] While recounting his visit to Genoa, for example, he paused to ruminate on the multiplicity of relics he had encountered. “But isn’t this relic matter a little overdone?” he begins skeptically.[20] “We find a piece of the true cross in every old church we go into, and some of the nails that held it together. I would not like to be positive, but I think we have seen as much as a keg of these nails. Then there is the crown of thorns; they have part of one in Sainte Chapelle, in Paris, and part of one also in Notre Dame. As for the bones of St. Denis, I feel certain we have seen enough of them to duplicate him if necessary.”[21] (Saint Denis, pictured below from Rheims Cathedral, is commonly depicted carrying his decapitated head in his arms.)

St Denis - Rheims Cathedral

Twain is not the only one to have expressed exasperation at the multitude of saintly relics displayed throughout Europe. A French anti-clerical cartoon from the early 1900s, for example, “reconstructed” Saint Blaise—complete with five heads, six arms, and six legs—from “authentic” bones displayed in various cities.[22] Twain’s avowed skepticism of relics, however, did not preclude a certain fascination with the sainted figures who supplied them. Later in his career, in fact, Twain would actually engage in hagiography, although he arguably never really altered his view of saints, sainthood, or Catholicism generally.[23]

Twain’s Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, published in 1896, is a fictionalized account of Saint Joan of Arc’s life as retold in the (fictional) memoir of her page, Louis de Conte. The book’s seriousness and the “air of absolute reverence” with which Twain portrays Joan of Arc represent such a stark break from his previous work that he initially published it anonymously.[24] Years later, however, Twain fully acknowledged his authorship and embraced the book as his greatest work. “I like the Joan of Arc best of all my books and it is the best,” he declared.[25] “[I]t furnished me seven times the pleasure afforded me by any of the others; 12 years of preparation & 2 years of writing. The others needed no preparation, & got none.”[26] Twain valued Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc even more highly than Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.[27]

Good Saint Charles Borromeo

Twain manifested an interest in the life of another saint, Saint Charles Borromeo, in his much earlier The Innocents Abroad. Twain described Saint Charles with reverence and admiration, characterizing him as “a good man, a warmhearted, unselfish man,” even though he bristled at the way the saint’s corpse had been placed on public display.[28] Inviting readers to descend with him into the crypt, under the grand altar of Milan Cathedral, he prepared them to “receive an impressive sermon from lips that have been silent and hands that have been gestureless for three hundred years.”[29]

St Borromeo - Crypt3 “The priest stopped in a small dungeon and held up his candle,” Twain begins. He and his companions now stood in Saint Charles’s tomb. Recognized as one of the great 16^thcentury reformers of the Catholic Church, during a period known as the Counter Reformation, Saint Charles was responsible for, among other things, establishing seminaries to educate priests and ministering with great compassion to victims of the plague.[30] He was born an aristocrat and could easily have taken advantage of the ease and luxury his station afforded. Instead, he showed little interest in worldly goods and devoted his life to serving others.

Saint Charles was born on 2 October 1538 at Arona Castle on Lake Maggiore. His father, Count Gilbert Borromeo, was a “man of talent and sanctity,” and his mother, Margaret, was a member of the Medici family, one of the most power and influential families of the Renaissance.[31] He received the tonsure at the age of twelve and after his uncle’s election to the papacy in 1559, he served in various offices in Rome. He was ordained a priest in 1563 and was subsequently appointed Archbishop of Milan in 1564.

Spires of Milan Cathedral, as seen from roof

After arriving in Milan, he immediately set to work reforming the diocese. According to Butler’s Lives of the Saints, “[w]hen St Charles came first to reside at Milan he sold plate and other effects to the value of thirty thousand crowns, and applied the whole sum for the relief of distressed families.”[32] Meanwhile, despite earning a considerable income from various sources, he chose to live modestly. Francis Panigarola, Bishop of Asti, recounted how he once found Saint Charles on a very cold night studying “in a single tattered cassock.”[33] He said, “I entreated him, if he would not perish with cold, to put on some better garment. He answered me smiling, ‘What if I have no other? I am obliged to wear a cardinal’s robes in the day; but this cassock is my own and I have no other, either for winter or summer.’”[34]

St Carlo Borromeo Tended by an Angel, by Francesco Caccianiga, oil on copper (early 18th century) (courtesy Wikimedia Commons)

To curb the gross abuses he discovered in his diocese, Saint Charles established strict regulations governing the clergy, who he found “lazy, ignorant and debauched” upon his arrival.[35] He also established seminaries to “remedy the disorders engendered by the decay of medieval life.”[36] His broader reforms, however, were not always well received, and they created many enemies.

On 26 October 1569, a priest by the name of Jerome Donati Farina was sent to murder him while he attended evening prayers. As Saint Charles kneeled before the altar and a choir performed a motet by Orlando di Lasso—“It is time therefore that I return to Him that sent me,” they sang—Farina fired an arquebus, striking Saint Charles in the back.[37] Believing himself mortally wounded, Saint Charles “commended himself to God.”[38] However, as the Lives of the Saints explains, “it was found that the bullet had only struck his clothes in the back, raising a bruise, and fallen harmlessly to the floor.”[39] A painting titled Farina’s Assassination Attempt by Gian Battista della Rovere (Fiammenghino) located in the south transept of Milan Cathedral depicts the event.[40]

Reliquary (St Borromeo) - Krakow Saint Charles died many years later in Milan on 4 November 1584 at the age of forty-six. He had celebrated his last mass at Arona, his birthplace, several days earlier, and arriving in Milan, he immediately took to bed and asked for the last rights. After receiving the final sacrament, he whispered Ecce venio (“Behold, I come”), and expired. He was canonized by Pope Paul V in 1610.[41] (The reliquary, pictured left, contains a relic of Saint Charles. It is located at the Archdiocesan Museum in Krakow, Poland.)

The Vanities of Earth

Twain was clearly familiar with Saint Charles’s story, and he alludes to several of the saint’s virtues, particularly his generosity and his compassion, in The Innocents Abroad.[42] Twain writes, “His heart, his hand, and his purse were always open,” and he imagines the saint’s “benign countenance moving calmly among the haggard faces of Milan in the days when the plague swept the city.”[43] In the presence of Saint Charles’s corpse, however, Twain’s thoughts turn to death and the impermanence of earthly things.

Relics of Saint Charles Borromeo, Milan Cathedral

The body, he states, was “robed in costly habiliments covered with gold embroidery and starred with scintillating gems.”[44] Meanwhile, Saint Charles’s “decaying head was black with age, the dry skin was drawn tight to the bones, the eyes were gone, there was a hole in the temple and another in the cheek, and the skinny lips were parted as in a ghastly smile!” After describing other treasures arrayed about the body, Twain declares, “How poor and cheap and trivial these gewgaws seemed in the presence of the solemnity, the grandeur, the awful majesty of Death!”[45] Saint Charles’s “sermon,” delivered by silent lips and still hands, was this: “You that worship the vanities of earth—you that long for worldly honor, worldly wealth, worldly fame—behold their worth!”[46]

In the end, the body of Saint Charles—the relics of Saint Charles—had greater power over Twain than perhaps he realized.

Post Script: Charles Borromeo and Palestrina, the “Savior of Church Music”

View of the Roman Forum. Palestrina’s music has been called the “soundtrack” of Rome. He composed over 100 masses and 250 motets here during his lifetime.

One of the issues taken up by the Council of Trent, the 16^th century Ecumenical Council convened to debate and implement extensive reforms in the Catholic Church, was the future of sacred music. By the mid-16^th century, liturgical music had grown so elaborate and unintelligible in its complexity that the Council considered banning polyphonic music from the liturgy altogether. According to popular legend, Cardinal Borromeo, then a member of the Council, commissioned Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina to compose a Mass to convince the Council otherwise.[47] The result was the extraordinary Missa Papae Marcelli (Mass for Pope Marcellus). Palestrina’s Mass demonstrated that polyphonic music could be simultaneously beautiful, pure, and textually clear, and it changed the minds of those on the Council, which ultimately abandoned the movement to ban sacred music from the liturgy.

In reality, Palestrina likely composed the Missa Papae Marcelli years earlier, probably in 1555, eight years before the Council of Trent sought a resolution on the fate of sacred music. Nevertheless, regardless of whether the Missa Papae Marcelli was commissioned for the purpose, Palestrina’s music, and the Missa Papae Marcelli in particular, were undoubtedly highly influential in saving polyphony. As Will Durant has noted, “by its fidelity to the words, its avoidance of secular motives, and the subordination of musical art to religious intent” Palestrina’s music “played a part in leading the committee to sanction polyphonic music.”[48]

Milan Cathedral, as seen from roof

For a fantastic overview of Palestrina and his music, see the BBC’s extraordinary series Sacred Music, series 1, episode 2, on “Palestrina and the Popes.” Presented by Simon Russell Beale with music performed by Harry Christophers and The Sixteen, the episode originally aired on 28 February 2008.

[1]Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad 124 (Signet Classic 1980) (1869).

[2]Id. (“Away above, on the lofty roof, rank on rank of carved and fretted spires spring high in the air, and through their rich tracery one sees the sky beyond.”).

[3]Id. at 125 (“We loitered about gazing aloft at the monster windows all aglow with brilliantly colored scenes in the lives of the Saviour and his followers. Some of these pictures are mosaics, and so artistically are their thousand particles of tinted glass or stone put together that the work has all the smoothness and finish of a painting.”).

[4]Id. at 124 (noting that the bas-relief carvings on the cathedral’s doors were “so ingeniously carved out of the marble that they seem like living creatures—and the figures are so numerous and the design so complex that one might study it a week without exhausting its interest”).

[5]Id.

[6]Id. at 130.

[7]Id.

[8]Id. at 129.

[9] Id. at 128.

[10] See id. at 149. During his journey through Italy, Twain observed, “Here and there, on the fronts of roadside inns, we found huge, coarse frescoes of suffering martyrs like those in the shrines. Id. at 149.

[11] Id. at 43.

[12] Joe B. Fulton, The Reverend Mark Twain: Theological Burlesque, Form, and Content 106 (2006).

[13] Id. at 105.

[14] Twain, supra note 1, at 149.

[15] Fulton, supra note 12, at 106.

[16] Twain, supra note 1, at 149. Twain concludes dismissively, “We were in the heart and home of priestcraft—of a happy, cheerful, contented ignorance, superstition, degradation, poverty, indolence, and everlasting unaspiring worthlessness.” Id.

[17] Fulton, supra note 12, at 105 (internal citations omitted).

[18] Twain, supra note 1, at 179. Twain described the veneration of relics as a belief in “the protecting virtues of inanimate objects made holy by contact with holy things.” Id.

[19] Fulton, supra note 12, at 105.

[20] Twain, supra note 1, at 119.

[21] Id. at 119–20. Later, while exploring Milan Cathedral, Twain is shown, among other relics, “two of St. Paul’s fingers and one of St. Peter’s,” a “bone of Judas Iscariot (it was black),” “part of the crown of thorns (they have a whole one at Notre Dame),” and a “picture of the Virgin and Child painted by the veritable hand of St. Luke,” the second he had seen. Id. at 129.

[22] See, e.g., Europski Dom Dubrovnik, Saint Blaise: Veneration Without Boundaries 21 (2012) (featuring an illustration titled “Les Reliques Authentiques”).

[23] Fulton, supra note 12, at 107–08. Twain published Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, a novel about Joan of Arc, in 1896. Fulton argues that since “Twain’s attitudes toward Catholicism remained negative before, during, and after the writing of the work, one must find some other, more reasonable, explanation to make sense of it. Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc marks no sea change in Twain’s attitudes toward the Roman Catholic Church, or indeed toward religion generally.” Id. at 108.

[24] See 17 The Cambridge History of English and American Literature 29 (A.W. Ward et al. eds., 1907–1921) (2000) (“Recognizing that the book was quite out of his customary vein, Mark Twain published it first anonymously . . . .”).

[25] Id. at 29.

[26] Id.

[27] Fulton, supra note 12, at 108 (explaining that Twain ranked Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc above Adventures of Huckleberry Finn).

[28] Twain, supra note 1, at 127.

[29] Id.

[30]4 Butler’s Lives of the Saints 255–62 (Herbert J. Thurston, S.J. & Donald Attwater eds., 2d ed. 1956). Butler’s Lives of the Saints declares that “with Pope St Pius V, St Philip Neri and St Ignatius Loyola, he is one of the four outstanding public men of the so-called Counter-reformation.” Id. at 255.

[31] Id. at 255.

[32] Id. at 257.

[33]Id.

[34] Id.

[35] Id. at 258.

[36] Id.

[37] Id. at 259.

[38] Id. at 259–60.

[39] Id. at 260.

[40] See Ernesto Brivio, The Life and Miracles of St. Carlo Borromeo: A Pictorial Itinerary in Milan Cathedral (2006), fig. 11.

[41]Butler’s Lives of the Saints, supra note 30, at 261–62.

[42] Twain, supra note 1, at 127.

[43] Id.

[44] Id. at 128.

[45] Id.

[46] Id.

[47] Will Durant, 6 The Story of Civilization: The Reformation (1957). Importantly, another major reason for the movement to ban sacred music was the realization that some composers drew inspiration for their compositions from common, often bawdy, popular songs of the day. In addition to rejecting the unintelligibility of polyphonic compositions, which regularly resorted to overlapping melodies and multiple, interwoven lines of text, the Council sought to “exclude from churches all such music as . . . introduces anything of the impure or lascivious, in order that the house of God may truly be seen to be . . . the house of prayer.” Id.

[48] Id.

Saint Florian: Saint of Fire and Flood

27 Saturday Jul 2013

Posted by Reliquarian in General

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

Austria, bucket, burning building, church, fire, firefighter, Florian cross, Hall in Tirol, Krakow, Maltese cross, Maria Alm, martyr, millstone, Poland, relic, Saint Florian, Salzburg

St. Florian (detail), Altarpiece, Strasbourg Cathedral

Images of a knight serenely dousing a burning building with a bucket of water have mystified generations of travelers journeying through Europe.[1] The knight can be found atop pillars in city squares, emblazoned on buildings, and perched beside church altars. Depictions of the knight, identifiable as Saint Florian, are particularly common in central Europe, where he continues to be honored and venerated to this day. I have even encountered his statue in a Salzburg hotel calmly quenching a fire with a telltale bucket and have wondered at his likeness on a fire extinguisher in the sleepy town of Maria Alm, Austria. Why does Saint Florian carry a bucket? What is the meaning of the burning building at his feet? And why is he so popular in central Europe?

Who Was Saint Florian?

St. Florian Fountain, Salzburg, Austria

Saint Florian was a Roman army officer who held an administrative post in Noricum, a Roman province that included what is now Austria.[2] In 304, during the Christian persecutions of the emperor Diocletian, Saint Florian publicly revealed he was a Christian and was subsequently tortured and killed for his faith.[3] According to the Passion of Saint Florian, Florian encountered soldiers with whom he had previously served as he approached Lorch (Lauriacum). When he asked where they were going, they responded, “Have you not heard the emperor’s commands which reached the praeses, in accordance with which he orders all men to offer libations to the gods, and that those who refuse should be put to death by various means?”[4] Florian answered, “Brother and fellow soldiers, what else do you need seeing that I am a Christian? Go and tell the praeses that I am a Christian and am here.”[5]

The soldiers were skeptical of Florian’s surprising confession, but they dutifully arrested him and brought him before the governor, Aquilinus, who first encouraged and then ordered Florian to offer sacrifice to the gods to prove he was not a Christian. When Florian refused, the governor ordered him beaten with clubs. Florian replied, “Be as angry and do as much harm as you can, since you possess power over my body which has been given to you for now. If you want to know why I do not fear your tortures, light a fire, and I will climb upon it.”[6]

According to various sources, Florian was beaten with clubs, was “twice scourged, half-flayed alive and finally thrown into the river Enns with a stone around his neck.”[7] Because he was martyred by drowning, Saint Florian is often invoked as a protector against drowning or against danger from water, including flooding. He is also frequently portrayed in art with a millstone around his neck or in close proximity.

Patron Saint of Firefighters

Saint Florian is also recognized as the patron saint of firefighters, although the reason for his association with firefighting is unclear. Some commentators have tried to link the origin of the tradition to his martyrdom, although Saint Florian was not recognized as a protector against fire until much later. Florian’s association with firefighting likely derives from a legend that arose in the Middle Ages, a legend that also explains why he is commonly portrayed with a bucket and a burning building.

St. Florian, Waldauf Chapel, Hall in Tyrol

Explanations tracing Saint Florian’s patronage of firefighters to his martyrdom seem improbable, particularly since they involve some manipulation of the historical sources. A number of online sources claim that Saint Florian’s executioners initially intended to burn him at the stake, but Saint Florian told them, “If you do, I will climb to heaven on the flames.”[8] At this, they grew uneasy, and they decided to beat him instead before ultimately drowning him in the Enns.[9] While this version of the story may sound compelling, it is not entirely consistent with earlier versions of Saint Florian’s “acts.”

As noted in the Passion of Saint Florian, above, Florian did tell Aquilinus, “light a fire, and I will climb upon it,” but he made no reference to rising to heaven either on its smoke or flames as some online sources suggest. These sources tend to misquote the Passion and unintentionally shift the focus of Florian’s words from his faith in Christ to his faith in his own apotheosis. Florian invoked the image of a pyre to affirm his Christian beliefs and to demonstrate his willingness to suffer torture for it, not as gasconade. The Acta Sanctorum similarly places Florian’s statement in this context.[10] In it, Saint Florian had already been beaten “for a long time,” when he turned to Aquilinus and said, “You have power over my body, but not over my soul. So do whatever harm you can, since no way will I submit to your commands. In order that you may learn that I do not fear your tortures, order a strong fire to be lit, and, in the name of my God, I will walk upon it without harm.”[11]

Modern commentators appear to be reaching for a link between Saint Florian’s martyrdom and his status as a protector against fire. However, because Saint Florian did not become identified with firefighting until centuries after his death, during the late Middle Ages, it is unlikely the circumstances of his death precipitated the tie to firefighting.[12]

Bucket Brigade

St. Florian - Salzburg (detail) Most representations of Saint Florian depict him dressed as a Roman soldier or a medieval knight holding either a banner or sword in one hand, a bucket or pitcher in the other, with a burning building, city, or church at his feet. Alternatively, as mentioned above, he may be shown with a millstone, the instrument of his death. According to a catalogue published by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Saint Florian first appeared with a bucket and a burning building in the late 15^th century.[13] According to legend, Saint Florian managed to save a burning house – sometimes it is as an entire city – with a single bucket of water.[14] Florian’s reputation as a protector against fire earned him great devotion in medieval society, which lived in constant fear of fire and the threat of urban conflagration.

Representations of Florian as a firefighting saint quickly gained popularity, particularly in Austria and southern Germany. In the region even today, Saint Florian has become so synonymous with firefighting that his image is readily used to identify fire stations and departments. The exteriors of firehouses frequently feature an image of Saint Florian on a wall or a statue of Saint Florian tucked into a niche. The name “Florian” even serves as a universal radio call sign for Feuerwehr (fire department) vehicles and stations.

The Florian Cross

Beyond Austria and Germany, Saint Florian’s influence on firefighting may be less conspicuous, but it is still discernible. Many fire departments incorporate what has come to become known as a “Florian cross” or “cross of Saint Florian” into their badges, patches, and other organizational emblems. The cross features four triangular arms, of equal length, that are rounded at each terminus and that taper toward the center. (An example is depicted at left, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.) Often confused with the Maltese cross, which has no curved lines, the origin of the Florian cross’s design remains obscure.[15] Many commentators have argued that the Maltese cross, which the Knights of Saint John famously wore to identify members of their order, became a symbol of firefighters because firefighters, like the earlier knights, were willing to lay down their lives to protect others.[16] While this explanation may sound plausible, it ignores the fact the Florian cross is simply not a Maltese cross.[17]

Alternatively, the Florian cross may have evolved from a Maltese cross over time. (An example of a Maltese cross is depicted at left, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.) Many cross variations share similar features, and it is possible the Maltese cross gradually developed into a Florian cross over the course of several centuries. A comparison of the two symbols – one featuring relatively thin, angular arms, the other comprised of broad, curved arms – suggests, however, that such a radical metamorphosis is unlikely to have occurred. Another explanation is that the Florian cross is sui generis – though possibly inspired by the Maltese cross.

The various representations of Saint Florian I’ve examined, mostly from the medieval period, offer no clues to the cross’s origin. Occasionally, Saint Florian is portrayed holding a banner emblazoned with a cross, but the cross it features is invariably a simple Latin cross. In at least early representations of Saint Florian, the saint does not appear to wear or carry the symbol that has come to bear his name. On the other hand, many protective medals and medallions featuring Saint Florian are shaped in variations of the Florian cross, with broad, curved arms enclosing an image of the saint. Could the shape of early Saint Florian medallions have inspired the outline of the Florian cross? Perhaps it’s a question of the chicken or the egg, and ultimately, I do not know how the Florian cross came to be. My guess is the design derives from the late 19^th century, since that appears to be when fire departments began to incorporate a cross into their emblems.[18]

The Relics of Saint Florian and the Royal Road

In addition to serving as the patron saint of firefighters, Saint Florian is also the patron saint of various localities, including Linz, Austria; the state of Oberösterreich (Upper Austria), Austria; and Poland.

According to legend, after Florian was drowned in the Enns, his body was recovered by a devout woman named Valeria and was buried. His body was eventually transferred to the Augustinian Abbey of Saint Florian, near Linz.

St. Florian Church In 1184, Pope Lucius III sent relics of Saint Florian to Duke Kasimir the Just of Poland. Kasimir had the relics sent to Krakow, one of Poland’s oldest and most important cities. According to tradition, the horses carrying the relics stopped in Kleparz, a medieval suburb of the Cracow, before reaching the city gate and refused to continue any further. Their obstinacy was interpreted as a sign, and the church of Saint Florian (pictured above) was erected on the spot to house the relics.[19]

After the capital was moved from Krakow to Warsaw, the church of Saint Florian became the receiving point for the bodies of deceased royalty, who continued to be buried at Krakow’s Wawel Cathedral. Royal funeral processions followed what became known as the Royal Road or Royal Route, a course replete with references to Saint Florian. The route originated at the church of Saint Florian, passed through the 14^th century Florian Gate with its polychrome figure of Florian extinguishing a gilded fire, and continued along Floriańska Street before reaching the Main Market Square. From there, the route wound through the Old Town, past the Church of Saints Peter and Paul, to Wawel Hill and its looming cathedral.

The Royal Road with the tower of the Florian Gate at left

May I Propose a Toast . . .

Shortly after returning from a trip to southern Austria, I stumbled upon this passage from the correspondence of John Lothrop Motley, a 19^th century American historian. Written almost 179 years earlier, I was struck by how, in some ways, very little has changed since Motley’s own travels through the region. On the other hand, I was surprised to learn of Saint Florian’s apparent standing as the patron saint of innkeepers and brewers. Motley writes:

Maria Alm, Austria

“Among other Catholic images which are strewed all along the roadside, one in particular puzzled me for a long time—the figure of a saint in armour with a sword in the right hand and a bucket of water in the left, which he is emptying on a burning house. I have found that it is St. Florian, the patron saint of burning houses and firemen, and also, according to the popular legends, of innkeepers and brewers, to whom he always sends a sufficient quantity of water to temper their wine and other potations, and who in gratitude, as I have observed, have always his figure over their doorways.”[20]

While Saint Florian may also serve as a patron saint of brewers, it is as the patron saint of firefighters that he is frequently identified today. In fact, in 1999, the date of International Firefighters Day was fixed as May 4th, the feast day of Saint Florian. Fittingly, both Saint Florian and the heroic firefighters he is often invoked to protect, may now be celebrated and remembered on the very same day.

Florian Street, Krakow, Poland

[1] See, e.g., 1 The Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley 38 (George William Curtis ed., 1889)

[2] See, e.g., 2 Butler’s Lives of the Saints 230-31 (Herbert J. Thurston, S.J. & Donald Attwater eds., 2d ed. 1956).

[3] Id. at 230.

[4] Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Passiones Vitaeque Sanctorum Aevi Merovingici et Antiquiorum Aliquot 65-71 (Bruno Krusch ed., 1896), available in translation at http://www.ucc.ie/milmart/BHL3054.html.

[5] Id.

[6] Id.

[7] Butler’s Lives of the Saints, supra note 2, at 230.

[8] See, “Saint Florian: The Patron Saint of the Fire Service,” The Public Safety Net, available at http://www.publicsafety.net/st_florian.htm; see also, “Saint Florian,” Saint Florian Roman Catholic Church, available at http://www.stflorianparish.org/en/history/saint-florian/; “Saint Florian History,” Brookline Firefighters Association, available at http://www.brooklinefirefighters.org/index.cfm?zone=/unionactive/view_page.cfm&page=St20Florian.

[9] See, e.g., The Public Safety Net, supra note 8; Saint Florian Roman Catholic Church, supra note 8; Brookline Firefighters Association, supra note 8.

[10] See 1 Mai 463-466, in Acta Sanctorum Quotquot Toto Orbe Coluntur (1863), available in translation at http://www.ucc.ie/milmart/BHL3058.html.

[11] Id.

[12] See Metropolitan Museum of Art, Medieval Art from Private Collections: A Special Exhibition at the Cloisters 61 (1968) (“At the end of the Middle Ages he came to be regarded as a protector against fire.”).

[13] Id. (“The earliest representations of him with a bucket and a burning house are of the late fifteenth century.”).

[14] See, e.g., George Ferguson, Signs and Symbols in Christian Art 71 (1959).

[15] See Donald V. Engebretson, “The Firefighter’s Cross,” Northwoods Seelsorder Blog, Mar. 8, 2008, available at http://nwseelsorger.blogspot.de/2008/03/firefighters-cross.html.

[16] See, e.g., “History of the Maltese Cross,” New York City Fire Dept., available at http://www.nyc.gov/html/fdny/html/history/maltese_cross.shtml (arguing that the Knights of Saint John were “our first firefighters” because they regularly put out fires ignited by weapons during the Crusades).

[17] Some fire departments, however, do incorporate a Maltese cross, rather than a Florian cross, into their emblems. See, for example, the Canadian Fire Service.

[18] See, e.g., Mica Calfee, “The ‘Maltese Cross’ and the Fire Service,” available at http://www.fireserviceinfo.com/maltesecross.html (citing a 1882 newspaper article describing a local NY fire department’s decision to adopt a new “Maltese cross” badge design); “Origins of the Fire Service Badge,” Hampshire (UK) Fire and Rescue Service, available at http://www.hantsfire.gov.uk/theservice/organisation/history/servicebadgesorigin.htm (“Quite when the star was first used in this country for the badge of a firefighter is not easy to establish. The earliest example found is the brass eight pointed star adopted for use by the National Fire Brigades Association in 1887.”) The 1887 National Fire Brigade Association badge appears to be an actual Maltese cross. Over time, it evolved into something quite different, although the original eight points of the Maltese cross are still discernible. Could the Florian cross have developed similarly over time?

[19] See, e.g., Teresa Czerniewicz-Umer, Eyewitness Travel: Cracow 138 (2010)

[20] The Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley, supra note 1.