medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (25. August) is the feast day of:
Patricia, venerated at Naples (7th century, supposedly). Today's less
well-known saint of the Regno is the eponymous founder of a major
Neapolitan convent and the supposed source of a blood relic that
liquefies every year on this day as well as on every Tuesday during the
year.
According to her legendary Acta (BHL 6483-6491, including separate
miracle accounts), P. was a high-born young lady of Constantinople who
desired nothing more than to remain a holy virgin, praying and
performing works of charity. When the emperor Constans II insisted that
she marry one of his favorites, she used a pilgrimage to Rome as an
excuse to flee. Taking with her some eunuchs and some female virgins as
attendants but avoiding all the perils that make the similarly motivated
story of St. Arthellais of Benevento so interesting, she boarded a ship
that was subsequently blown off course and that landed instead in the
port of Naples. Here she visited various holy places and then went on
to Rome, where she completed her pilgrimage and took the habit.
Depending on the text one reads, she either 1) then returned to
Constantinople (the emperor having died in the meantime) to liquidate
her inheritance and then set set off on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land,
with her ship being blown off course and landing at Naples or, less
interestingly, 2) set off on a return voyage to Naples. In either case,
she fell ill and died on route. A prodigy revealed that the Greek
monastery of Sts. Nicander and Daria in the heart of Naples would be her
burial site; the monks obligingly moved on to another monastery and P.'s
virgins, under the leadership of one Aglais or Aglay, founded a
Greek-rite monastery dedicated to her and instituted her cult.
According to the version by Leo the priest (BHL 6484, 6485), about a
century later a foreigner got to P.'s remains and removed one of her
teeth as a sacred relic for a church that he wished to erect in her
honor in his own land. An effusion of blood proceeded from where the
tooth had been. This was collected and placed in two containers of
glass, which latter became potent relics in their own right.
In the later eleventh century, it is said, the monastery became
Benedictine. In the later Middle Ages it was patronized by upper-class
Neapolitans and in the early modern period P.'s cult really took off (in
1549 her body was rediscovered at the monastery; in either 1510 or 1645
her blood was first observed to bubble). She has been a patron of
Naples since 1625. When the convent of Santa Patrizia was confiscated
by the state in 1864, the sisters, bringing both P. and her blood with
them, moved into Naples' formerly male convent of San Gregorio Armeno
(another Benedictine house with a legendary history pointing to a
Greek-rite origin). P. is still there today. Her blood, which is
supposed to promote childbirth, is a local favorite among San Gregorio
Armeno's exceptionally extensive collection of such relics.
The monastery of Santa Patrizia was one of the last places on earth to
use Beneventan script other than for teaching purposes. Here's a
decorated page from an earlier sixteenth-century book of altar prayers
formerly belonging to this house and written in Beneventan:
http://www.nb.no/baser/schoyen/5/5.1/ms1981.jpg
Best,
John Dillon
(and a happy feast of St. Louis IX to all!)
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