Four Crowned Martyrs

The legend of the martyr Quattuor Coronati ( Four Crowned ) builds on two different legends that originated at the beginning of the 4th century in Roman antiquity. A legend tells of four or five martyrs, who worked in a Roman quarry in Dalmatia and refused a statue of Asclepius to hew stone. These four crowned are the patron saint of stonemasons and sculptors. Another legend, which was interwoven with that of the masons later, reports of four Roman soldiers who refused to worship the statue of Asklepios and also therefore suffered martyrdom.

The members of both groups were martyrs tortured and executed in the time of Emperor Diocletian. Despite careful studies have so far not succeeded in explaining the contradictions of these legends eventually.

Legends

It is reported by two legends with a total of eight or nine martyrs, whose relics brought to Rome and are buried together with the four anonymous soldiers in the crypt of the Church of SS Quattro Coronati in Rome.

Four winning from Pannonia

The Roman province of Pannonia - more - came and worked in the time of Emperor Diocletian in quarries to beat the Asklepios pagan Roman stone in the year 302, four (or five ) stonemasons who allegedly refused from Dalmatia. Thereafter, they were scourged and drowned in lead coffins in the Sava. The Christian Nicodemus hid the bodies of Sempronianus, Claudius, Nicostrato and Castorius, which were then placed in the catacombs on the Via Labicana to Rome. There they were worshiped. From the fifth companion named Simplicius is assumed according to the latest research, that it was a fantasy figure of the Judge-Rapporteur, because there is nowhere else reported it. Since in this historical account numerous details are described in detail, but is assumed that the martyrs from Rome came, which were used as a punishment in the quarries. This view has also been reinforced by the fact that there was no such cult in Pannonia, but at first only in Rome. As a memorial celebration of November 8 when called in a Roman directory from the year 354.

Four Roman soldiers

When four Roman military officers in the army service ( Cornicularii ) in 304 refused to worship the statue of Aesculapius, they were scourged, thrown to the wild dogs and eventually executed at the Baths of Trajan in Rome. Originally nameless, were the only four in the 7th century, the name Victorinus, Serverus, Carpophorus and Serveranius.

The day of remembrance for the executed soldiers was initially August 8 and later, the November 8.

Interpretations

By mixing the two legends, both in terms of time, the traders and the sites of the events themselves contradictions, which could not be clarified arise. This led to different interpretations. For example, it is assumed that the memory of the five martyrs had suffered through a laid to Rome legend or that the proximity of the church of Santi Quattro Coronati have contributed to the Roman military barracks for myth-making, or that the Pannonian sculptors priest of a pagan god, Mithras, were. It is believed ( four soldiers ) also a typo for Quattuor Cornicularii because Coronati are " the decorated with the Märtyerkrone ".

Santi Quattro Coronati

Apse of Santi Quattro Coronati with a pictorial representation of the Martyrdom of the Four Crowned

The Basilica Santi Quattro Coronati ( Four Crowned Basilica ) is part of a complex of a monastery, which is mentioned in writing in 499. The basilica is located on the hill Celio (Latin Caelius ) between the Coliseum and the Lateran in Rome.

The building has undergone many changes over the centuries. Baroque, the church was remodeled in the late 16th and early 17th century. The produced wooden coffered ceiling shows the Four Crowned as wood relief. The decorative paintings of the apse with frescoes depict scenes of martyrdom. Under Antonio Munoz the high altar was redesigned with four busts of saints and restored the crypt with the tombs of the martyrs.

Cult of saints

Holy cults do not depict historically accurate biographies, so the question is to what extent this cult spread to other countries, which population groups or professions have adopted him of importance.

It remains to be shown that this cult of saints was celebrated from the year 350 in Rome, and that a church building of this cult was built on the Mons Caelius in Rome in the 5th century. In the following centuries after both groups were next to each other martyrs venerated, because the faithful and naive piety of the time took out contradictions without critical distance.

The members of the building works, that stonemasons and stone sculptor, said the Pannonian masons to their patron saints, because crafts chose the Saints to their patrons, who had practiced their profession. Later, the guilds and the guilds moved to and published the Four Crowned on coats of arms, capitals, consoles secular and church buildings; on frescoes, altarpieces and panel painting, as well as on copper engravings. This often led to confusion between the Pannonian masons with the Roman soldiers. In the Steinmetz orders of Torgau and Rochlitz is the " honor of the Four Crowned Martyrs " written down.

The cult, which spread from Rome in Italy, has been immortalized in plastic sculptures at the Colonna degli Scultori the Doge's Palace in Venice and at the church Pietro in Ciel d' Oro in Pavia with the four crowned. In Austria, the Four Crowned depicted in the seal of the Fabric of St. Stephen's Cathedral and in Germany Cologne Cathedral architect Konrad Kuene van created the halls Four Saints sculptures in sandstone. The characters of the four saints are angle, scale, compass and straightedge. Representations in Switzerland are on a craft loading in Basel from 1592. France this cult was shown only on martyrs calendars. Up to Belgium and the Netherlands, the cult penetrated, a Baukorporation example, in Antwerp, named after the Four Crowned in 1423.

In the 17th century was the decline and decay of the guilds and the demise of the building works being the patronage of the Four Crowned shaft after it was taken over by other Bauhandwerken how. Bricklayers and roofers from the

They are the patrons of the stone sculptors, masons, and to the cattle.

Hindsight

The Masonic founded in 1951 the Forschungsloge " Quatuor Coronati " based in Bayreuth, available under comparatively naming in other countries. Some stonemason guilds celebrate the anniversary of the Four Crowned as the patron saint festival, such as the stonemason guild in Berlin, or stonemasons they explain to their patron saint.