medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture

Today (15. October) was once the feast day of:

Fortunata of Patria (Fortunata of Caesarea; d. ca. 304, supposedly). 
This less well known saint of 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.  The legend so transmitted adapts Eusebius of
Caesarea's account of the martyrdom, during the Great Persecution, of F.
of Caesarea and adds to it reworkings of matter from other passion
accounts.  _Pace_ the early modern compilers of the RM, there is no more
reason to suppose that the F. venerated in Campania was really the
martyr named by Eusebius than there is to believe that she was of noble
birth or that, when she was being exposed _ad bestias_ in an
amphitheatre, a lion became tame and licked her feet.  The
(pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology lists F. of Patria both for 12. October
and for today (some witnesses only); the latter is also her feast day in
the martyrologies of Rabanus Maurus and of Notker.  The new (2001) RM
dispenses with F. altogether.  Patria is now Torre di Patria, a
_frazione_ of today's Castel Volturno (CE), whose patron is St.
Castrensis (he of the San Castrese peach).      

In Campania F.'s 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 Soss(i)us
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.  Perhaps they've come
into the safekeeping of the Landesregierung at Stuttgart and are even
now being prepared for auction. 

F.'s remains are not the only objects of veneration to have been
reportedly 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 and
altered to include a Christ Child, 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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