medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (19. February) is the feast day of:
1) Quodvultdeus of Carthage (d. ca. 450). Today's first saint of the Regno was a disciple of St. Augustine who at some point in the 430s became bishop of Carthage. When, after the Vandal seizure of that city in 439, he had declined to renounce Catholicism, he and many of his clergy were ejected and sent abroad in what Victor of Vita says were unseaworthy vessels. Arriving safely at Naples, Q. settled in as an exile in Campania, writing sermons and other works and warning all of the barbarian peril. If he is the author, as people now tend think, of the _Liber promissionum et praedictorum Dei_, he was living in Naples during the papacy of Leo I (440-51). Q.'s date of death and place of burial are unknown.
Most of Q.'s writings were until relatively recently ascribed to Augustine or to Prosper of Aquitaine. Four of these transmitted under Augustine's name are shown here from cod. 13 (fourteenth-century) of the library of the Reale Collegio di Spagna in Bologna:
http://tinyurl.com/3arh2d
2) Barbatus of Benevento (d. 682?). Today's second saint of the Regno is the legendary apostle of the Lombards of the duchy of Benevento, whose warrior class is presented in his ninth-century Vita not as Arian but but rather as pagan. After a brief mention of B.'s miracles, this Vita (BHL 973; later re-workings) focuses on his saving of the city of Benevento, of which he is said to have been bishop, from assault by Constans II (this would have been in 663) and his subsequent suppression of a snake cult favored by Lombard nobles. The date of B.'s death is guesswork based on data from the Vita. Tenth-century frescoes depicting scenes from B.'s episcopacy survive in his former chapel (now part of the pseudo-crypt housing the diocesan museum) in Benevento's cathedral.
In 1015 a now-vanished monastery dedicated to B. was founded at today's Pollutri (CH) in southern Abruzzo. Shown here is one of its original possessions, the church of Santa Lucia at Pollutri's _frazione_ of Civita:
http://www.parsifalcoop.it/images/presenze/s.%20barbato.jpg
In 1124, during a rebuilding of the cathedral, relics said to be B.'s were found under the main altar. Later in the same century, king William I (1154-66) gave B.'s relics along with those of many other saints to the abbey of Montevergine. The diocese of Benevento also claims to have relics of B. Montevergine's set
http://tinyurl.com/359vg8
is kept in the rebuilt abbey church's crypt of St. William (of Vercelli).
3) Proclus of Bisignano (d. ca. 970). Today's third saint of the Regno was a disciple of his fellow Greek-speaking Calabrian, St. Nilus of Rossano. According to the latter's eleventh-century Bios (BHG 1370), N. chose the learned and very holy P. to be the second hegumen of the little monastery he had founded on one of his properties and had dedicated to St. Hadrian. He was buried at monastery and became the object of a public cult both there and in his native Bisignano.
Though P.'s remains were lost when the monastery was sacked by Muslim raiders in 978/79, the monastery itself was later rebuilt and prospered. Its twelfth-century church of Sant'Adriano survives at today's San Demetrio Corone (CS) in Calabria. An illustrated, Italian-language site on that monument is here:
http://www.arbitalia.it/speciali/sant.adriano/mazziotti_indice.htm
and the Italia nell'Arte Medievale's page on it is here:
http://tinyurl.com/f7j7v
4) Conrad of Noto (or of Piacenza; d. 1351). C. (in Italian, Corrado; in modern Sicilian, Currau [a trisyllable]) was young nobleman from northern Italy who in order to facilitate a hunt started a fire that spread and burned several villages. After someone else had been convicted for this offense and sentenced to die, C. confessed and spent much of his own money in reparations. Parting from his family, C. became a wandering hermit who ultimately settled down at Noto in southeastern Sicily. Here he at first lived in the city proper, where for a while he was joined by the Blessed William of Scicli. In the last few years of his life he withdrew to a grotto outside of town. His sanctity was apparent to the Netinese even before his death and an early Vita (in Sicilian, so no BHL number) appeared very shortly afterward.
Inferring from the Vita of 1351 that C. had been a Franciscan tertiary, Sicilian Franciscans claimed him as one of their own. He is so presented in the seemingly later fifteenth-century _Vita di lo beato Corrado_ of Andriotta Rapi, a poem in 410 four-line stanzas that fleshes out the earlier account with details that have since found their way into standard notices of C.
C. was beatified in 1515 with a cult limited to the diocese of Syracuse (extended in 1544, with the title of saint, to all Sicily). In 1625 Urban VIII confirmed C.'s cult for the Franciscans with a Mass and Office. In the seventeenth century C. was identified as a member of the Piacenzan noble family of the Confalonieri (whence he is now often called Corrado Confalonieri). The patron saint of the city of Noto and of the diocese of the same name, C. is celebrated liturgically today in the ecclesiastical region of Sicily and in the dioceses of Benevento (where he trumps Barbatus) and of Piacenza-Bobbio.
In 1990 the remains traditionally identified as C.'s were publicly exhibited during the septicentenary celebration of his birth. An illustrated account is here:
http://www.notobarocca.com/sancorrado/testi_ostensione.htm
Best,
John Dillon
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