medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture

Today (27. August) is also the _dies natalis_ of:

Arontius (Orontius; d. before the 5th cent.).  Today's less well known
saint from the Regno (less well known, at least, than Rufus of Capua,
whose fame has reached even unto Sarum) is recorded for today in the
(pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology as one of a group of four martyrs at
Potenza in today's Basilicata (Felix, Arontius, Sabinianus, Honoratus).
 All four were among the dozen saints of southern Italy translated to
Benevento by duke Arechis II in 760 and there interred magnificently in
his newly built church of Holy Wisdom (Santa Sophia), shown here (exterior):
http://www.napolitudine.com/html/francobolli/Benevento/ChiesaSSofia.htm
and here (interior):
http://tinyurl.com/88nyz

These saints were called the "Twelve Brothers" and a Passio was soon
written for them (BHL 2297; shorter version, BHL 2298; Donatus, Felix,
and companions) in which they literally _are_ brothers.  Hailing, it is
said, from Hadrumetum in Roman Africa, they were tried in Carthage
(seemingly during the persecution of Diocletian) before an official named
Valerianus, imprisoned, and released by an angel.  They then fled to
Italy and were there hunted down and executed in small groups at
different places at the command of the selfsame Valerianus (whose
obsession in this matter makes him something of a forerunner of Hugo's
inspector Javert).  A pertinent literary text is Alfanus of Salerno's
_carmen 13_, a late eleventh-century metrical version of these saints'
Passion and translation to Benevento (BHL 2299; 1000 dactylic hexameters).

Arontius enjoyed a widespread cult of his own in Apulia and Lucania (the
latter including parts of today's Campania and Calabria as well as most
of Basilicata) that is documented from the eleventh and twelfth century
onward.  At Lecce (LE), his cult is first recorded in a charter of the
future king Tancred from the year 1181; under the name Orontius
(Italian: Oronzo), current since at least the early fifteenth century,
he is now the city's patron saint.  But in about 1480, when Francesco II
del Balzo, duke of Andria, count of Montescaglioso, etc., etc. offered
to Lecce the body of Sancto Orontio, whose whereabouts the duke claimed
to know, the city was slow to respond.  This is the same Francesco II
del Balzo who was so instrumental in the rediscovery of the long hidden
body of Richard of Andria [9. June] and in later vouching for that
saint's canonization when earlier records had inconveniently gone
missing.  Perhaps the city fathers of Lecce were a bit suspicious.

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, O. (as we may now abbreviate
him) and two other local saints, Justus and Fortunatus, received a new
Vita said to have been based in part on a medieval document, not earlier
than the twelfth century, that has since disappeared.  (Was Francesco II
del Balzo's shade still operating on O.'s behalf?).  This new Vita makes
O. a native of Lecce who greeted the missionary Justus when the latter
had been sent to Italy in the 60s by the apostle Paul, who spent time
with Justus in Rome and then travelled to Corinth, where Paul made him
Lecce's first bishop, and who finally suffered martyrdom at Lecce during
the Neronian persecution.  Neither the early Bollandists nor modern
historians have looked kindly on this story, but local persistence led
in the seventeenth century to official confirmation of the cult of
Justus, Orontius, and Fortunatus by the Sacred Congregation of the
Rites.  In this revised persona O. is celebrated liturgically on 26.
August; he has major patronal festivities at Turi (BA), Ostuni (BR),
Campi Salentini (LE), and of course Lecce itself, where his statue gazes
down on one from atop a Roman column (formerly at the harbor of
Brindisi) in the piazza that bears his name:
http://www.conservatoriolecce.it/Foto1.htm

Lecce's well known monuments are post-medieval (mostly Baroque) and
thus out of scope for this list.  Instead, here's a maths puzzle
involving that city's procession of Sant'Oronzo:
http://www.matematicamente.it/giochi/processione_di_santo_oronzo.html

So also with O.'s monuments at Ostuni.  But the latter include a
seventeenth-century tempietto over a sacred spring whose waters O. is
said (in his early modern acta, of course) to have caused to flow.  In
view of this list's ongoing interest in holy wells, Christian and
otherwise, here's a page with a brief discussion of O.'s folklore at
Ostuni followed by various views, one being that of the tempietto in
question (s.v. Sacro Fonte):
http://www.rassegnaitalia.com/santoronzo.htm

Best,
John Dillon
(last year's post, revised)

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