medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (16. September) is the feast day of the following less well known
saints of Regno:
1. Priscus of Nocera (3d/4th cent.). P. is an early bishop
(legendarily, the first bishop) of Nuceria Alfaterna, the Campanian town
whose medieval successor was Nocera (later Nocera de' Pagani) and whose
modern successors are Nocera Superiore (SA) and Nocera Inferiore (SA).
Paulinus of Nola (_Carm._ 18. 515-18.) tells us that P., though bishop
of another city, was also venerated at Nola. P.'s entry, for today, in
the (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology places his death at Nuceria in
Campania. Otherwise we know virtually nothing about him. His Acta
(BHL 6931) are so late and unreliable that Papebroch elected not to have
them printed in the _Acta Sanctorum_.
P. will have been buried in the necropolis of Nuceria. Much later, a
Benedictine abbey arose on the site and in the 1380s its originally
tenth-century(?) church of St. Mark became Nocera's cathedral. In the
last century P.'s presumed remains were found behind his altar here; in
1964 these were subjected to scientific evaluation and were pronounced
to be those of an elderly man who had lived in the third or fourth century.
After various earthquake-induced restorations there isn't much medieval
left in Nocera's cathedral (located in Nocera Superiore). Nearby,
though, is the early Christian church of Santa Maria Maggiore, whose
baptistery incorporating ancient spolia is absolutely stunning.
Illustrated, Italian-language introductions to this monument are here:
http://utenti.lycos.it/cammino/battistero.htm
http://web.tiscali.it/archemail/1snuce.htm
2. Romulus of Abellinum (d. early 6th cent.), venerated at Atripalda
(AV) in Campania. Abellinum was the Roman predecessor of today's
provincial capital of Avellino, which kept the name when it changed
location in the early Middle Ages. Outside late antique Abellinum was a
necropolis, some of whose Christian burials were honored in a hypogeum
called "the martyrs' grotto" (_specus martyrum_; the veneration of
saints at this locale is first attested to from the year 357). A
fourth-century basilican church was built on the site and around this
there grew the settlement that became medieval and modern Atripalda
(first attested to in 1086). Located in the grotto, now incorporated in
the crypt under Atripalda's collegiate church of St. Hippolystus (S.
Ippolisto), are the graves of Sabinus, bishop of Abellinum, and of his
associate, the deacon Romulus, who outlived him. We know nothing about
either other than what their late antique funerary inscriptions tell us.
These allow a rough dating of both men by noting that Sabinus followed a
bishop Timotheus (documented as being still in office in 499). Both
inscriptions (Sabinus: _CIL_ X. 1194; Romulus: _ibid._, X. 1195) include
verse epitaphs in elegiac distichs. Sabinus' funerary inscription gives
his _dies natalis_ (9. February). But we have no such information for
R., who is now commemorated on the anniversary of a translation in 1612.
Atripalda's twelfth-century Chiesa di Sant'Ippolisto was rebuilt in
Renaissance neoclassical style in the years 1585 and following. The
crypt was radically altered in 1629. Though at this time it lost most
of its medieval decor (about which we know something from an early
thirteenth-century description), some medieval frescoing and some
sculptural fragments survive here. Bits of medieval sculpture also
exist elsewhere in the church. Two column fragments can be seen in the
chapel shown here (the Cappella del Tesoro):
http://tinyurl.com/daocr
Best,
John Dillon
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