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Feb. 27th, 2010 10:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stitchwhichBaldomerus (d. c. 660) Baldomerus (Galmier, Baudemir, or even Waldimer) was a blacksmith (or locksmith) of Lyons. He was very pious and in the habit of giving everything he had away to the poor. A local abbot offered to take Baldomerus into his monastery of St. Justus; at the monastery, he would tame the wild birds of the air, saying to them 'Take your refreshment and always bless the Lord of Heaven'. He is the patron saint of locksmiths.
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Besas, Eunus (Cronion), and Julian (d. 259) are martyrs of the anti-Christian riots in Alexandria in the year preceding the Decian persecution. According to Eusebius or, more precisely, to an account by Dionysius of Alexandria from which Eusebius quotes, Julian was an old man of Alexandria, crippled so badly with gout that two friends had to carry him to court when he was charged with practicing Christianity. One of the friends (Eunus/Cronion) was condemned along with Julian (the other decided that a pinch of incense never hurt anyone). Eunus and Julian were bound to camels and whipped through the city, after which they were killed by having quicklime poured over them. Besas was a soldier who tried to shield them from the abusive mob, which the mob took so badly that they seized him and killed him on the street by decapitation.
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Luke of Messina (d. 1149) was a monk at what was at the time the leading Greek-rite house in Roger II's domains, Bartholomew of Simeri's Nea Hodegetria outside of Rossano in Calabria. At some time before Bartolomew's death in 1130 Roger asked him to direct the monastery he had been building since 1122. Bartolomew, who was getting on in years, declined but proposed Luke instead. Roger seems to have accepted, for shortly before 1130 Luke crossed the Strait of Messina with a dozen other monks and the material items (vessels, service books, etc.) required for establishing a functioning monastery. They found no monks to greet them at the still unfinished complex but settled in and began work at what under Luke's direction and Roger's command would, from 1131 on, be the mother house ('mandra') of many Greek monasteries in Sicily and of a number in Calabria as well. There was already a small church here, vowed by Roger I in gratitude for his conquest of Messina and dedicated to the Holy Savior. It became the island's leading exponent of Greek-language religious culture.
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Besas, Eunus (Cronion), and Julian (d. 259) are martyrs of the anti-Christian riots in Alexandria in the year preceding the Decian persecution. According to Eusebius or, more precisely, to an account by Dionysius of Alexandria from which Eusebius quotes, Julian was an old man of Alexandria, crippled so badly with gout that two friends had to carry him to court when he was charged with practicing Christianity. One of the friends (Eunus/Cronion) was condemned along with Julian (the other decided that a pinch of incense never hurt anyone). Eunus and Julian were bound to camels and whipped through the city, after which they were killed by having quicklime poured over them. Besas was a soldier who tried to shield them from the abusive mob, which the mob took so badly that they seized him and killed him on the street by decapitation.
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Luke of Messina (d. 1149) was a monk at what was at the time the leading Greek-rite house in Roger II's domains, Bartholomew of Simeri's Nea Hodegetria outside of Rossano in Calabria. At some time before Bartolomew's death in 1130 Roger asked him to direct the monastery he had been building since 1122. Bartolomew, who was getting on in years, declined but proposed Luke instead. Roger seems to have accepted, for shortly before 1130 Luke crossed the Strait of Messina with a dozen other monks and the material items (vessels, service books, etc.) required for establishing a functioning monastery. They found no monks to greet them at the still unfinished complex but settled in and began work at what under Luke's direction and Roger's command would, from 1131 on, be the mother house ('mandra') of many Greek monasteries in Sicily and of a number in Calabria as well. There was already a small church here, vowed by Roger I in gratitude for his conquest of Messina and dedicated to the Holy Savior. It became the island's leading exponent of Greek-language religious culture.
