medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Yesterday (14. October) was also the feast day of:
Fortunata, venerated at Patria (Fortunata of Caesarea; d. ca. 304,
supposedly). This less well known saint from the Regno is known to us
principally from her tenth-century Passio of Campanian origin by one
Aripert (BHL 3081) or, as he was usually called until very recently,
Autpert, and by a recently discovered eleventh-century elaboration
thereof written at Reichenau. These tell us that F. was a girl of noble
birth from Caesarea in Palestine, where she, together with her brothers
Carponius, Evaristus, and Priscian, was martyred after the usual series
of failed execution attempts. Sailors brought her body and those of her
brothers to Patria (ancient Liternum) on the Campanian coast, where they
were honored with a cult. We are told by Eusebius that there was an F.
of Caesarea martryred during the Great Persecution under a Roman
official who has the same name in Eusebius and does his analogue of F.'s
Passio, but as the latter is a tissue of reworkings of matter from
earlier passion accounts, there is no more reason to suppose that the F.
venerated at Campania was the martyr named by Eusebius than there is
that she was of noble birth or that, when she was being exposed _ad
bestias_ in the amphitheatre a lion became tame and licked her feet (a
descendant of Statius' _leo mansuetus_ probably transmitted via Gregory
the Great's notice of the recently celebrated Cerbonius of Populonia).
Early medieval martyrologies indicate knowledge of F.'s veneration at
Patria at least as early as the seventh century. In Campania her cult
is known first from late ninth- and tenth-century writings from Naples:
these (including John the Deacon's episcopal chronicle and the
aforementioned BHL 3081) tell us that at some time between 768 and 780
that city's bishop Stephen II effected a translation of her remains and
those of her brothers from her long since abandoned church at Patria to
the monastery of St. Gaudiosus at Naples, where he established in her
honor a church and a convent of nuns. The general similarity of this
story to doubtful Inventio portions of Campanian translation accounts of
about the same date (e.g., that of Sossus from Misenum to Naples or of
Matthew the Apostle from who knows where to Capaccio and thence to
Salerno) raises questions about the true origin of these remains.
That said, it is clear that a Fortunata was venerated at Naples by at
least the middle of the ninth century (a saint of this name occurs under
14. October on that city's Marble Calendar) and it seems reasonable to
suppose that she may have been the same whose putative relics were
translated by Stephen II. These were rediscovered in the convent church
of San Gaudioso by its abbess in 1561 and shortly thereafter underwent a
formal recognition. Where they are now I don't know; given its location
over the catacombs of San Gaudioso, the early modern church of Santa
Maria della Sanità might be a good guess.
Other remains of F. and her bothers are said in an also tenth-century
translation account from Reichenau (BHL 3083) to have been found in a
Saracen-destroyed Campanian city (so not Naples) in 874 by a German who
had accompanied Louis II on his south Italian campaign of the early 870s
(this is when he lifted the Muslim siege of Salerno) and to have been
transported by him to that monastery. Reichenau's cult of Fortunata and
her brothers has generated several monuments of note, none of which I
could quickly find reproduced on the free Web.
F. is not the only object of veneration to have been translated from
this part of the Campanian coast. Casandrino (NA) has a wooden statue
of a female saint said to have been found in the vicinity of the Lago di
Patria in the latter half of the fifteenth century; subsequently
declared to be a representation of the BVM, it has a place of honor in
Casandrino's Santuario dell'Assunta. See the illustrated
Italian-language account here:
http://utenti.lycos.it/CASANDRINO/festa.htm
Better views of the exterior of the church and of the statue are here:
http://www.casandrino.net/santuario.jpg
http://www.casandrino.net/mariassassunta.htm
Best,
John Dillon
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