Note 793 — from the Origins To the Renaissance (continued 8)

The French drama written on this subject is lost (it is, however, mentioned in the catalogue of a bookseller of the fifteenth century; see "Les Mystères," by Petit de Julleville, vol. ii. chap, xxiii., "Mystères perdus"); but the precision of details in the miniature is such that I had no difficulty in identifying the particular version of the story followed by the dramatist. It is an apocryphal life of Apollinia, in which is explained how she is the saint to be applied to when suffering toothache. This episode is the one Fouquet has represented. Asked to renounce Christ, she answers: "'Quamdiu vivero in hac fragili vita, lingua mea et os meum non cessabunt pronuntiare laudem et honorem omnipotentis Dei.' Quo audito jussit [imperator] durissimos stipites parari et in igne duros fieri et præacutos ut sic dentes ejus et per tales stipites læderent, radices dentium cum forcipe everentur radicitus. In illa hora oravit S. Apollinia dicens: 'Domine Jesu Christe, precor te ut quicumque diem passionis meæ devote peregerint ... dolorem dentium aut capitis nunquam sentiant passiones.'" The angels thereupon (seated on wooden stairs, in Fouquet's miniature) come down and tell her that her prayer has been granted. "Acta ut videntur apocrypha S. Apolloniæ," in Bollandus, "Acta Sanctorum," Antwerp, vol. ii. p. 280, under the 9th February.

See also the miniatures of a later date (sixteenth century) in the MS. of the Valenciennes Passion, MS. fi. 15,236 in the National Library, and the model made after one of them, exhibited in the Opéra Museum, Paris.