medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (15. February) is the feast day of:
1) Faustinus and Jovita (d. early 1st cent., supposedly). These two patron saints of the city of Brescia in Lombardy have a cult that's attested in a garbled entry for tomorrow in the (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology and in a reference in the _Dialogues_ of Gregory the Great (4. 54) to a church at Brescia dedicated to F. In the first half of the eighth century St. Petronax, the second founder of Montecassino, brought from his native Brescia an arm relic of F. and deposited this in his newly built abbey church. F. and J. have a seemingly early ninth-century Passio (BHL 2836; several later versions) that makes them brothers (F. a priest and J. a deacon) who were arrested at Brescia, tortured in various ways at various places, and finally decapitated in Brescia on this day in some year in the principate of Hadrian (117-38). Usuard, who lists them for today, seems not to know their story and, presumably thinking him female, characterizes as J. a virgin.
Also in the early ninth century relics of both saints (referred to jointly) were distributed to other north Italian episcopal cities (Verona, Aquileia). In later medieval Brescia F. and J. were represented as knights; images of them in this role were placed on city gates. But they continued to be thought of as priest and deacon and are so represented in the city's coinage of the later thirteenth century as well as on the tomb of bishop Berardo Maggi (d. 1308) in the Duomo Vecchio.
Here's F. in a thirteenth-century relief first documented from 1254, when it was used in the reconstruction of Brescia's Porta Pile:
http://tinyurl.com/289or2
Sculptures of F. and J. (1349) from the Duomo Vecchio, now in the Museo di Santa Giulia:
http://tinyurl.com/yq8nsz
Some views of the Duomo Vecchio itself:
http://www.bresciainvetrina.it/bresciaarte/duomovecchio.htm
http://tinyurl.com/2ht5yz
Vincenzo Foppa's very late fifteenth-century Madonna and Child between the Saints Faustino and Giovita:
http://www.med.unibs.it/~marchesi/brixia_tour/foppa.html
Two dedications to F. and J. outside of Brescia are:
Their parish church at Rubiera (RE) in Emilia, first recorded from the tenth century as a chapel dedicated to F. The present structure (rebuilt, 1853-1870: distance view: http://tinyurl.com/ywr97s\) seems at least a century later.
Rear view:
http://tinyurl.com/2p4gm3
Its thirteenth-century fresco of the Madonna and Child:
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/1915/pieveaff.jpg
and:
The rebuilt church, dedicated to F. and J., at the Santuario della Madonna delle Grazie at Milan
http://www.milanonascosta.com/zona3/luogo1.html
The present building is from 1519, but it had predecessors going back at least as far as 1190. It is noted for this late twelfth-century fresco of the seated Madonna with Child:
http://www.milanonascosta.com/zona3/luogo2.html
This church is not to be confused with Milan's later fifteenth-century Chiesa e Convento di Santa Maria delle Grazie, the home (in the convent's refectory) of a rather better known fresco by someone from Vinci (FI) in Tuscany.
2) Severus of Interocrium (or of Antrodoco; 4th or 5th cent.?). According to Gregory the Great (_Dial._ 1. 12. 1-3), this less well known saint of the Regno was priest of the church of Mary the Mother of God at Interocrium (or Interocrea), today's Antrodoco (RI) in Lazio.
Gregory tells us that S. (whom we are led to believe lived rather well before G.'s own time) was pruning his vines when a dying sinner's messengers arrived and asked him to hasten to confess the man before he died. Preferring to finish the job at hand (which was near completion), S. sent the messengers ahead, saying that he would follow shortly. He did, but when he caught up with the messengers they informed him that the man was now dead. The anguished S. rushed to the man's bedside, sobbing and blaming himself for allowing him to die unconfessed. Whereupon the man returned to life and said that he had been on his way to Hell when the Lord ordered his return because S. was crying. S. then helped him make his confession and perform penance for seven days, after which the man died in peace.
Gregory's story of S. is recast in the legend of Severus of Orvieto (BHL 7683-7685) but it is not clear whether S. himself was venerated as a saint in the Middle Ages. Baronius entered him in the RM for this date, claiming (incorrectly) that he had already appeared in the Martyrology of Ado. Herewith some views of the originally eleventh- or twelfth-century church of Santa Maria extra moenia outside of Antrodoco, a possible successor to S.'s church:
http://tinyurl.com/aaohq
http://www.provinciarieti.it/foto/antrodoco_s_maria_extramoenia.jpg
That fourteenth-century portal was added in a 1950 restoration; its provenance is unknown. An earlier portal from this church was ransferred to Antrodoco's Santa Maria Assunta when the latter was rebuilt after the earthquake of 1703.
A relief on the church's exterior:
http://tinyurl.com/cjlzl
An illustrated, Italian-language account, also showing the adjacent hexagonal baptistery of San Giovanni Battista (said to be originally ninth-century, with fifteenth- and sixteenth-century frescoes), is here:
http://tinyurl.com/by4fs
Other views of the baptistery and of the interior of the church:
http://www.caiantrodoco.it/foto/cartoline/santa%20maria.jpg
http://www.provinciarieti.it/foto/antrodoco_interno_s_maria.jpg
A color close-up of the Marriage of Catherine of Alexandria seen on the right in the previous view:
http://www.microlanitalia.com/exe/turismoimg.htm?t=4&k1=6&k2=1
3) Decorosus of Capua (d. 689?). In the perhaps not altogether reliable reckoning of the diocese of Capua, this less well known saint of the Regno was its twenty-third bishop. He has a brief, undated Vita (BHL 2117; printed from a Capuan breviary by Michele Monaco in his _Sanctuarium Capuanum_ of 1630) that ascribes to him all sorts of wonderful virtues:
"Beatus igitur Decorosus Capuanae urbis indigena, qui non tantum fuit nomine Decorosus, sed opere et sermone. Fuit quippe caritatis obseruator invictae, cultor fidei, [virtutibus ornatus,] spei sectator, pietatis alumnus, zelator iustitiae, prudentiae norma, temperantiae forma, et verae titulo fortitudinis insignitus: largus pauperibus, hospitibus gratus, orphanorum ac pupillorum et certa protectio viduarum." ("Now the holy Decorosus, a native of Capua, was decorous not only in name but also in deed and in speech. Unconquered in his charity, a cultivator of the faith, a seeker after hope, a fosterer of piety, a zealot for justice, a standard of prudence, and the image of temperance, he was honored with the label of true courage. He was generous to the poor, accommodating to guests, and a reliable protector of orphans and little children and of widows.")
The same Vita associates D. with one miracle in which he places a recently dead baby next to the burial site of bishop St. Rufinus (early fifth-century) at the altar of the Protomartyr Stephen and on the following morning is able to return it alive and well to its formerly grieving mother.
Best,
John Dillon
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