medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
14 May is also the feast day of St. Constantius (San Costanzo), patron saint of Capri. According to regional tradition represented by a) two hagiographical sermons written probably in the early 11th century and preserved incomplete in a manuscript of Neapolitan provenance dated by subscription to the year 1174 and b) an extract by the early 17th-century hagiographer Filippo Ferrari from a manuscript said to have been at Benevento, Constantius was a bishop of Constantinople who successfully combatted heresy in Constantinople and either died there, with his corpse later being brought to Capri, or else arrived at Capri by chance when already at death's door. From these dubious indications a late 8th-century date has been inferred for him. His celebration is presumably a local observance only.
Constantius is celebrated for having protected Capri from a Saracen raid in 991. More impressive, though, is his vindication of a pregnant young woman whose lover had reneged on a promise to marry her: she prayed to the saint in his church for retribution and when the former lover, who was unaware of this, attempted to enter the church he was instantly struck by lightning and so burned up that not an ash remained of his miserable body (_Qui cum templi limen attingeret pede, igneo protinus fulmine tactus, ita concrematus est, ut nec cinis eius ex miserabili corpore remaneret_.).
The surviving accounts of Constantius are edited by Adolf Hofmeister, "Aus Capri und Amalfi: Der Sermo de virtute und der Sermo de transito s. Constantii und der Sarazenenzug von 991," _Muenchener Museum fuer Philologie des Mittelalters und der Renaissance_ 4 (1924; reprint, Nendeln: Kraus Reprint, 1972), 233-72. The ms. containing the two sermons also preserves an interesting sermon on the discovery of St. Cataldus (see saints of the day, 10. May), on whom more shortly.
Best,
John Dillon
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