Quatuor coronati

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The four crowned martyrs at the Orsanmichele church in Florence

The veneration of the Quatuor coronati (literally "the four crowned"), also the [holy] four crowned martyrs , is linked to the saints' lives from the beginning of the 4th century. Lore tells of four or even five martyrs who worked in a Roman quarry in Dalmatia and suffered martyrdom for refusing to carve a statue of the god Asclepius out of stone. These four saints, who symbolically won the martyr's crown, are invoked as patron saints of stonemasons and stone sculptors . November 8th is mentioned as a day of remembrance in a martyrology from the year 354.

Another tradition, which was later interwoven with that of the stonemasons, tells of four Roman soldiers who did not want to venerate the statue of Asclepius and therefore suffered martyrdom as well. The martyrdom of both groups is said to have occurred during the time of the Diocletian persecution of Christians . The relics came to SS. Quattro Coronati in Rome, which was dedicated to its patronage .

Different lines of transmission

In 302 four or five stonecutters from Dalmatia, the Roman province of Pannonia , who worked in quarries during the time of Emperor Diocletian, refused to carve the pagan Asclepius of the Romans out of stone. Thereupon they were scourged and drowned in lead coffins in the Save . The Christian Nicodemus hid the relics of Sempronianus, Claudius, Nicostratus and Castorius, which were then brought to Rome in the catacombs on the Via Labicana and venerated.

When four Roman military officials in the army (Cornicularii) refused to venerate the statue of Aesculapius in 304, they were scourged, thrown against the wild dogs and finally executed at the Therme des Trajan in Rome. Originally nameless, the four were only given the names Victorinus, Serverus, Carpophorus and Serveranius in the 7th century. The feast day of these martyrs was first August 8th and then November 8th.

By mixing the two lives, both with regard to the times, the characters and the places of the event, different interpretations emerged. For example, it is believed that the memory of the five martyrs originated from a legend moved to Rome, or that the proximity of the Church of Santi Quattro Coronati to the Roman barracks contributed to the formation of the Viten, or that the Pannonian stone carvers were priests of a pagan god, des Mithras . A spelling mistake is also suspected - corniculari ("soldiers") instead of coronati ("those adorned with the martyr's crown").

Adoration

  • Entrance to the San Silvestro Chapel of the SS. Quattro Coronati Basilica in Rome with the four crowned martyrs

  • Apse of the Santi Quattro Coronati with representation of martyrdom

Italy

The Basilica Santi Quattro Coronati ( Basilica of the Four Crowned) is part of a building complex of a monastery that is mentioned in writing in 499. The basilica is located on the Celio hill (lat. Caelius ) between the Colosseum and the Lateran in Rome.

The building has undergone many changes over the centuries: towards the end of the 16th and beginning of the 17th centuries it was redesigned in the Baroque style. The resulting wooden coffered ceiling shows the four crowned martyrs as a wooden relief . The Ausmalungen the apse with frescoes depict scenes of their martyrdom. Under Antonio Munoz, the high altar was redesigned with busts of the four saints and the crypt with the sarcophagi of the martyrs was restored.

Painting by Mario Minniti (c. 1620) on the martyrdom of the four crowned in the Pietro dal Carmine in Syracuse

There is evidence that the crowned martyrs were venerated in Rome from the year 350 and that a church on Mons Caelius in Rome was built and consecrated to them in the 5th century.

Quatuor Coronati, guild flag (1650) in the Kaiserl. Quarry

The members of the Bauhütte , the stone masons and stone sculptors, declared the Pannonian stone masons to be their patron saints . Later, depictions of the four crowned martyrs appeared on coats of arms, capitals , consoles on secular and church buildings; also on frescoes, altarpieces and in panel painting as well as on copper engravings . The honor of the four crowned martyrs is recorded in the stonemason ordinances of Torgau and Rochlitz .

In the course of the expansion of the veneration of these martyrs in Italy, sculptures were created on the Colonna degli Scultori at the Doge's Palace in Venice and on the Church of Pietro in Ciel d'Oro in Pavia .

Central Europe

In Austria the four crowned martyrs can be seen in the seal of the Dombauhütte of St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna and in Germany the Cologne cathedral builder Konrad Kuene van der Hallen created four saints in sandstone with the iconographic attributes are angles , scales, compasses and straight lines . Representations in Switzerland can be found on a craft shop in Basel from 1592. In France, the memorial day of the martyrs appeared in regional calendars of saints. In Antwerp in 1423, a building corporation submitted to the patronage of the four crowned martyrs. Some stonemasons 'guilds celebrate the day of remembrance of the four winners as a patronage festival, such as the stonemasons' guild in Berlin, or stonemasons declare them to be their patron saints.

Freemasons

The English Freemasons initiated the Quatuor Coronati Lodge No. 2076 , which was consecrated as a research lodge on January 12, 1886 . There are now lodges under a similar name in several countries as research communities related to Freemasonry, for example the Quator Coronati lodge in Moscow (or Четверо Коронованных, translated into Russian ) No. 8 in Moscow and, since 1951, the Quatuor Coronati No. 808 research lodge in Germany based in Bayreuth. The latter publishes the “Quatuor Coronati Yearbook for Freemason Research”.

literature

Web links

Commons : Quatuor Coronati  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Kelsch: Quattuor Coronati , p. 6/7
  2. ↑ a b Kelsch: Quattuor Coronati , p. 8
  3. ^ Kelsch: Quattuor Coronati. P. 13
  4. ^ Kelsch: Quattuor Coronati , p. 11
  5. ^ The History of QC Lodge. In: quatuorcoronati.com. Retrieved January 17, 2019 .
  6. ↑ Исследовательская ложа “Четверо Коронованных”. Retrieved January 22, 2019 (Russian).
  7. ^ Quatuor Coronati eV Freemason Research Lodge. Retrieved January 17, 2019 .