medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (23. September) is the feast day of:
Sossus (Sossius, Sosius; d. 305, supposedly). Today's less well known
saint from the Regno is the early Christian martyr of Misenum (now
Miseno [NA]). S. had a cult of his own that preceded his attraction
into the Januarius legend as one of J.'s companions. But we know very
little about it. He is mentioned by the fifth-century exile in
Campania, Quodvultdeus of Carthage, was depicted in the now lost cupola
mosaics of the late fifth- or very early sixth-century church of St.
Priscus at (Old) Capua, is listed for today in the early sixth-century
Calendar of Carthage, appears in a non-Januarian sixth-century fresco in
the catacombs of St. Gaudiosus at Naples, and is the subject of a verse
epigram erected by pope St. Symmachus (498-514) in his chapel of St.
Andrew next to old St. Peter's on the Vatican. The latter, whose text
is available together with an Italian translation about halfway down the
page here:
http://www.tuttofrattamaggiore.it/chiese/chiesa_sansosio.htm
, calls S. a _minister_ who attempted to save his bishop's life and who
suffered martyrdom along with him. In the late-sixth or seventh-century
_Acta Bononiensia_ of saint Januarius (BHL 4132) and in subsequent
versions of this account, S. was a deacon of Misenum who was already in
prison when J., who was _not_ his bishop, became involved the tribunals
that led to his own martyrdom, along with that of S. and others, at the
Solfatara in the Phlegraean Fields outside of Pozzuoli. S. was one of
the saints of coastal Campania whose cult came early to England
(probably with abbot Hadrian) and travelled thence with St. Willibrord
to the Low Countries, as evidenced by W.'s own calendar, written between
702 and 706 and now Paris lat. 10837.
At some unknown time (but probably fairly early) S.'s remains were
transported, it is thought, from their resting place at the Solfatara
to a church at Misenum where they were venerated. Evidence for this is
comparatively late and also suspect: John the Deacon's account (BHL
4135) of S.'s early tenth-century translation to Naples, in which the
church at Misenum is said to have been a ruin and S.'s tomb to have been
recognized only through its still bearing a few letters of his name. In
any event, the remains said to have been those of S. from Misenum were
deposited in a newly built Benedictine monastery on the Monterone in
Naples that had recently acquired the remains of Severinus of Noricum
and that shortly became known as the monastery of saints Severinus and
Sossius (in the earliest sources, S.'s name appears as 'Sossus' but by
this time the form with palatalizing 'i' was already standard). From
here S.'s cult spread medievally to such other Benedictine monastery
towns as Falvaterra (FR) in southern Lazio and San Sossio Baronia (AV)
in Campania.
In 1806 the monastery was secularized and in 1807 the remains or
putative remains of Severinus and Sossius were formally translated to
Fratta (now Frattamaggiore [NA]), just north of Naples, where they
remain today in the thirteenth-century church of San Sossio, shown here
with its baroque facade and sixteenth-century belltower:
http://tinyurl.com/nsvcp
This building, an Italian national monument said to go back in part to
the ninth century, was gutted by fire in 1945 and has been restored in
the interior to a "romanesque" look. Italian-language accounts of the
church are here:
http://www.frattamaggiore.org/sansossio.htm
http://www.tuttofrattamaggiore.it/chiese/chiesa_sansosio.htm
S. is said to be among the saints depicted in a twelfth-century
Januarian portrait cycle at the church of St. Agnellus (S. Aniello) at
Quindici (AV). See the Italian-language discussion here:
http://www.agendaonline.it/avellino/articoli/chiesaquindici.htm
And he is one of the two saints (the other is Festus) shown in this view
of a remnant of a twelfth-century paschal candelabrum with Januarian
figures now in the Museo Archeologico dei Campi Flegrei at Baia (NA):
http://arte2.tiscali.it/scultura/gallery/200203/22/nova2.html
Here he is as depicted in the fifteenth-century Polyptych of Saints
Severinus and Sossius (whose central figure is Severinus) now in Naples'
Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte:
http://www.prolocofratta.it/sansossio/images/sossio.jpg
Best,
John Dillon
(last year's post, revised)
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