medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (18. October) is the feast day of:
Proculus, Eutyches, and Acutius (d. 305, supposedly). Today's less well
known saints of the Regno are said to have been a deacon and two laymen
of ancient Puteoli, today's Pozzuoli (NA) in Campania. They are among
the canonical comrades in martyrdom of St. Januarius but, in
constradistinction to their counterparts Soss(i)us of Miseno and Festus
and Desiderius of Benevento, there is no early indication of their
having had a separate cult. In the developed Januarian story all the
martyrs are caught up in the Great Persecution and are sentenced to
exposure to wild beasts in the amphitheatre of Pozzuoli. This sentence
is however not carried out and they are instead decapitated at the Forum
Vulcani, at or near the Solfatara in the Phlegraean Fields. In a
synopsis relayed by Bede (followed by Ado and by Usuard), people of
Puteoli bring their remains (much later, evidently) to a basilica of St.
Stephen. Their feast day commemorates this translation.
Later translation accounts (BHL 4137, 4133) have Naples' eighth-century
bishop Stephen II translating the remains of Eutyches and Acutius to
that city and the Lombards making off with those of Proculus and taking
them to Benevento. A supposedly ninth-century translation account has
the relics of all three removed to Reichenau. In the later eighteenth
century, when these accounts had come to light and relics said to be
theirs were found at Reichenau, Pozzuoli received half of the remains of
each saint that were then at Naples (including those of P., who had
somehow managed to find his way here from Benevento) and the other half
were reinterred under the main altar of Naples' cathedral (where in a
few years they were joined by the putative relics of Naples' St.
Agrippinus). An inspection of the Campanian relics in 1964 resulted in
a declaration that these were lacking the bones belonging to the set at
Reichenau.
Quite inadequate reproductions of the splendidly colorful depictions of
P., E., and A. in the catacombs of San Gennaro at Naples are here:
http://www.sansossio.it/
Excellent ones will be found in Umberto M. Fasola, _Le catacombe di S.
Gennaro a Capodimonte_ (Roma: Editalia, 1975).
Some views of the amphitheatre at Pozzuoli are here:
http://www.igica.it/raccolta_differenziata/index.php?we_objectID=80
http://tinyurl.com/ymzdaw
http://www.ulixes.it/images/Camp_Flavio_copia.jpg
More views (all expandable), and some of the Solfatara as well, are here:
http://www.geocities.com/kpkilburn/pozzuolicumasolfatara.htm
Best,
John Dillon
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