medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (2. September) is the feast day of:
Nonnosus (d. ca. 565). Gregory the Great (_Dial_. 1. 7) tells us at
third hand that N. was prior of a monastery located at the top of Mount
Soracte near Rome who bore with equanimity the harshness of his abbot
and whose gentle nature often softened through humility said abbot's
wrath. He also tells us that N. was a thaumaturge. When the brothers
needed space on the mountain for a vegetable garden, N. by his prayers
displaced from the chosen site a rock so large that fifty teams of oxen
could not move it. One another occasion, when N. dropped a glass lamp
that he had been washing, causing it to shatter, he (fearful of abbatial
ire) placed all the fragments before the altar and withdrew in prayer;
returning, he found the lamp to be whole again. On yet another occasion,
when the monastery had run out of oil, he had the brothers collect what
little oil could be pressed from the at this time not very rich or numerous
fruit of monastery's olive trees and place that in a small vessel before the
altar: everyone withdrew, N. prayed, called the brothers back and instructed
them to pour a tiny bit of the oil into each of many vessels, all of which on
the next day were found to be full.
And that's what is known about Nonnosus, the mid-sixth-century prior on
Mount Soracte, whose virtues and doings are highlighted in the MR for
today and who has often been referred to as an abbot, though there is
nothing in Gregory to confirm this. Gregory observes that the miracles
of the rock and of the lamp have parallels operated by earlier Fathers,
Gregory (the Thaumaturge) and Donatus (perhaps D. of Arezzo, if the
later ascription to him of a parallel miracle is not merely inferred
from the present passage). He does not add (because it is so obvious?)
that the miracle of the oil is paralleled in its manner of multiplication by
Jesus' miracle of the loaves and the fishes.
N. entered the roster of the saints not from Italy but rather from the
German-speaking world, where he appears in the later twelfth-century
_Magnum Legendarium Austriacum_ and in various later sources listing
him for this day. By way of contrast, the _Catalogus Sanctorum_ (ca.
1375) of the Italian Petrus de Natalibus lists N. under saints whose
feast day is not known. He is especially venerated at Freising, where
he is a patron saint and where a twelfth-century Invention of his
relics was grounded in a tale of a translation, about a century
earlier, from the monastery to which the friend of N. who informed
Gregory's informant is said to have belonged. A more plausible origin
for this transalpine cult came to light in 1987 with the discovery in
the Pfarrkirche St. Tiburtius in Molzbichl (Kärnten) in Austria of a
late antique inscription identifying the burial site of a deacon
Nonnosus who had died at an extremely advanced age on 2. September
533. This development in turn clarified an eleventh-century (ca. 1055)
addition to the festal calendar of the monastery of St. Emmeram in
Regensburg listing under this day a feast of Nonnosus, deacon and
confessor. Together these data permit the view that the details of
Gregory's Nonnosus (whose day of death is unknown) were at some time
grafted on to the cult of his Vita-less synonym from Carinthia (whose
_dies natalis_ is today).
The inscription at Molzbichl is shown here:
http://tinyurl.com/go9cu
A closer but only partial view is here:
http://www.spittal-drau.at/carantana/
For further information see Karl Amon, Karl Heinz Frankl, and Peter G.
Tropper, eds., _Der heilige Nonnosus von Molzbichl_ (Klagenfurt: Verlag
des Kärntner Landesarchivs, 2001; = _Das Kärntner Landesarchiv_, no.
27).
This view of N.'s tomb in the cathedral of Freising:
http://www.heiligenlexikon.de/Fotos/Nonnosus-Grab.jpg
shows a space underneath through which devotees seeking assistance have
crawled since the late Middle Ages in a ritual called the _reptatio per
cryptam_.
The monastery on top of Mount Soracte has been dedicated to pope St.
Sylvester since at least the early eighth century. These views of the
site (showing a medieval church that's still in use) may provide some
visual context for aspects of Gregory's narration:
http://www.romecity.it/Montesoratte02.htm
http://www.romecity.it/Montesoratte03.htm
http://www.romecity.it/Montesoratte04.htm
http://tinyurl.com/kne5t
Elsewhere on the mountain hikers can view a formation called the Sasso
di San Nonnoso ('St. Nonnosus' Rock'):
http://www.prolocosantoreste.com/NuoviFile/sasso-s.nonnoso.jpg
If you wish to believe it, this could be the very rock that once
impeded the creation of the brothers' vegetable garden.
Best,
John Dillon
(last year's post lightly revised)
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