JANUARIUS, ST, or San Gennaro, the patron saint of Naples. According to the legend, he was bishop of Benevento, and flourished towards the close of the 3rd century. On the outbreak of the persecution by Diocletian and Maximian, he was taken to Nola and brought before Timotheus, governor of Campania, on account of his profession of the Christian religion. After various assaults upon his constancy, he was sentenced to be cast into the fiery furnace, through which he passed wholly unharmed. On the following day, along with a number of fellow martyrs, he was exposed to the fury of wild beasts, which, however, laid themselves down in tame submission at his feet. Timotheus, again pronouncing sentence of death, was struck with blindness, but immediately healed by the powerful intercession of the saint, a miracle which converted nearly five thousand men on the spot. The ungrateful judge, only roused to further fury by these occurrences, caused the execution of Januarius by the sword to be forthwith carried out. The body was ultimately removed by the inhabitants of Naples to that city, where the relic became very famous for its miracles, especially in counteracting the more dangerous eruptions of Vesuvius. Whatever the difficulties raised by his Acta, the cult of St Januarius, bishop and martyr, is attested historically at Naples as early as the 5th century (Biblioth. hagiog. latina, No. 6558). Two phials preserved in the cathedral are believed to contain the blood of the martyr. The relic is shown twice a year—in May and September. On these occasions the substance contained in the phial liquefies, and the Neapolitans see in this phenomenon a supernatural manifestation. The “miracle of St Januarius” did not occur before the middle of the 15th century.
A great number of saints of the name of Januarius are mentioned in the martyrologies. The best-known are the Roman martyr (festival, the 10th of July), whose epitaph was written by Pope Damasus (De Rossi, Bullettino, p. 17, 1863), and the martyr of Cordova, who forms along with Faustus and Martialis the group designated by Prudentius (Peristephanon, iv. 20) by the name of tres coronae. The festival of these martyrs is celebrated on the 13th of October.
See Acta sanctorum, September, vi. 761-891; G. Scherillo, Esame di un codice greco pubblicato nel tomo secondo della bibliotheca casinensis (Naples, 1876); G. Taglialatela, Memorie storico-critiche del culto del sangue di S. Gennaro (Naples, 1893), which contains many facts, but little criticism; G. Albini, Sulla mobilità dei liquidi viscosi non omogenei (Società reale di Napoli, Rendiconti, 2nd series, vol. iv., 1890); Acta sanctorum, October, vi. 187-193.
(H. De.)
JANUARY, the first month in the modern calendar, consisting of thirty-one days. The name (Lat. Januarius) is derived from the two-faced Roman god Janus, to whom the month was dedicated. As doorkeeper of heaven, as looking both into the past and the future, and as being essentially the deity who busied himself with the beginnings of all enterprises, he was appropriately made guardian of the fortunes of the new year. The consecration of the month took place by an offering of meal, salt, frankincense and wine, each of which was new. The Anglo-Saxons called January Wulfmonath, in allusion to the fact that hunger then made the wolves bold enough to come into the villages. The principal festivals of the month are: New Year’s Day; Feast of the Circumcision; Epiphany; Twelfth-Day; and Conversion of St Paul (see [Calendar]).
JANUS, in Roman mythology one of the principal Italian deities. The name is generally explained as the masculine form of Diana (Jana), and Janus as originally a god of light and day, who gradually became the god of the beginning and origin of all things. According to some, however, he is simply the god of doorways (januae) and in this connexion is the patron of all entrances and beginnings. According to Mommsen, he was “the spirit of opening,” and the double-head was connected with the gate that opened both ways. Others, attributing to him an Etruscan origin, regard him as the god of the vault of heaven, which the Etruscan arch is supposed to resemble. The rationalists explained him as an old king of Latium, who built a citadel for himself on the Janiculum. It was believed that his worship, which was said to have existed as a local cult before the foundation of Rome, was introduced there by Romulus, and that a temple was dedicated to him by Numa. This temple, in reality only an arch or gateway (Janus geminus) facing east and west, stood at the north-east end of the forum. It was open during war and closed during peace (Livy i. 19); it was shut only four times before the Christian era. A possible explanation is, that it was considered a bad omen to shut the city gates while the citizens were outside fighting for the state; it was necessary that they should have free access to the city, whether they returned victorious or defeated. Similarly, the door of a private house was kept open while the members of the family were away, but when all were at home it was closed to keep out intruders. There was also a temple of Janus near the theatre of Marcellus, in the forum olitorium, erected by Gaius Duilius (Tacitus, Ann. ii. 49), if not earlier.
The beginning of the day (hence his epithet Matutinus), of the month, and of the year (January) was sacred to Janus; on the 9th of January the festival called Agonia was celebrated in his honour. He was invoked before any other god at the beginning of any important undertaking; his priest was the Rex Sacrorum, the representative of the ancient king in his capacity as religious head of the state. All gateways, housedoors and entrances generally, were under his protection; he was the inventor of agriculture (hence Consivius, “he who sows or plants”), of civil laws, of the coining of money and of religious worship. He was worshipped on the Janiculum as the protector of trade and shipping; his head is found on the as, together with the prow of a ship. He is usually represented on the earliest coins with two bearded faces, looking in opposite directions; in the time of Hadrian the number of faces is increased to four. In his capacity as porter or doorkeeper he holds a staff in his right hand, and a key (or keys) in his left; as such he is called Patulcius (opener) and Clusius (closer). His titles Curiatius, Patricius, Quirinus originate in his worship in the gentes, the curiae and the state, and have no reference to any special functions or characteristics. In late times, he is both bearded and unbearded; in place of the staff and keys, the fingers of his right hand show the number 300 (CCC.), those of his left the number of the remaining days of the year (LXV.). According to A. B. Cook (Classical Review, xviii. 367), Janus is only another form of Jupiter, the name under which he was worshipped by the pre-Latin (aboriginal) inhabitants of Rome; after their conquest by the Italians, Janus and Jana took their place as independent divinities by the side of the Italian Jupiter and Juno. He considers it probable that the three-headed Janus was a triple oak-god worshipped in the form of two vertical beams and a cross-bar (such as the tigillum sororium, for which see [Horatii]); hence also the door, consisting of two lintels and side-posts, was sacred to Janus. The three-headed type may have been the original, from which the two-headed and four-headed types were developed. J. G. Frazer (The Early History of the Kingship, pp. 214, 285), who also identifies Janus with Jupiter, is of opinion that Janus was not originally a doorkeeper, but that the door was called after him, not vice versa. Janua may be an adjective, janua foris meaning a door with a symbol of Janus close by the chief entrance, to serve as a protection for the house; then janua alone came to mean a door generally, with or without the symbol of Janus. The double head may have been due to the desire to make the god look both ways for greater protection. By J. Rhys (Hibbert Lectures, 1886, pp. 82, 94) Janus is identified with the three-faced (sometimes three-headed) Celtic god Cernunnus, a chthonian divinity, compared by Rhys with the Teutonic Heimdal, the warder of the gods of the under-world; like Janus, Cernunnus and Heimdal were considered to be the fons et origo of all things.