medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (23. September) is the feast day of:
Sossus (Sossius, Sosius; d. 305, supposedly). Today's less well known
saint from the Regno is the early Christian martyr of Misenum (now
Miseno [NA]) in coastal Campania. Little is known about his early cult.
S. is mentioned by the fifth-century exile in Campania Quodvultdeus of
Carthage, was depicted in the now lost cupola mosaics of the late fifth-
or very early sixth-century church of St. Priscus at (old) Capua, is listed for
today in the early sixth-century calendar of Carthage, appears in a
non-Januarian sixth-century fresco in the catacombs of St. Gaudiosus at
Naples, and is the subject of a verse epigram placed by pope St. Symmachus
(498-514) in his chapel of St. Andrew next to old St. Peter's on the Vatican.
The latter calls S. a _minister_ (a term often designating a deacon) who
attempted to save his bishop's life and who suffered martyrdom along with
him. A text of that epigram together with an Italian translation can be read
about halfway down the page here:
http://www.tuttofrattamaggiore.it/chiese/chiesa_sansosio.htm
In the late sixth- or seventh-century _Acta Bononiensia_ of the St. Januarius
venerated especially at Naples (BHL 4132) and in subsequent versions of this
account, S. was a deacon of Misenum who was already in prison when J.,
who was _not_ his bishop, became involved the tribunals that led to his own
martyrdom, along with that of S. and others, at the Solfatara in the Phlegraean
Fields outside of Pozzuoli. S. was one of the saints of coastal Campania whose
cult came early to England (probably with abbot Hadrian) and travelled thence
with St. Willibrord to the Low Countries, as evidenced by W.'s own calendar,
written between 702 and 706 and now Paris lat. 10837.
According to a translation account (BHL 4116) of Januarius and some of
his companions whose earliest witness is of the ninth century as well as to
the historical martyrologies from Bede onward, S.'s remains were soon
removed from their resting place at the Solfatara to a church at Misenum
where they were venerated. In John the Deacon's account (BHL 4135)
of S.'s early tenth-century translation to Naples S.'s tomb in this now
ruinous church is said to have been recognized only through its still bearing
a few letters of his name. Be that as it may, remains said to have been
those of S. from Misenum were then deposited in a newly built Benedictine
monastery on the Monterone in Naples that had recently acquired the relics
of St. Severinus of Noricum and that shortly became known as the monastery
of saints Severinus and Sossius (in the earliest sources, S.'s name appears as
'Sossus' but by this time the form with palatalizing 'i' was already standard).
From here S.'s cult spread medievally to such other Benedictine monastery
towns as Falvaterra (FR) in southern Lazio and San Sossio Baronia (AV)
in Campania.
In 1806 the monastery was secularized and in 1807 the remains or
putative remains of Severinus and Sossius were formally translated to
Fratta (now Frattamaggiore [NA]), just north of Naples, where they
remain today in the twelfth- or thirteenth-century church of San Sossio,
shown here with its baroque facade and sixteenth-century belltower:
http://tinyurl.com/nsvcp
This building, an Italian national monument sometimes said to go back in
part to the tenth century and since last year a papal basilica, was gutted
by fire in November 1945:
http://tinyurl.com/3bovg9
http://tinyurl.com/2w6wly
and has been restored in the interior to a "romanesque" look:
http://tinyurl.com/3bq33g
http://tinyurl.com/3czkkl
Italian-language accounts of the church are here:
http://www.frattamaggiore.org/sansossio.htm
http://www.tuttofrattamaggiore.it/chiese/chiesa_sansosio.htm
http://www.trionfo.altervista.org/Monumenti/frattasossio.htm
Also in Campania, S. is reported to be among the saints depicted in a
twelfth-century Januarian portrait cycle at the church of St. Agnellus
(S. Aniello) at Quindici (AV). See the Italian-language discussion here:
http://www.agendaonline.it/avellino/articoli/chiesaquindici.htm
He is one of the two saints (the other is Festus) shown in this view
of a remnant of a twelfth-century paschal candelabrum with Januarian
figures now in the Museo Archeologico dei Campi Flegrei at Baia (NA):
http://arte2.tiscali.it/scultura/gallery/200203/22/nova2.html
Here he is as depicted in the fifteenth-century Polyptych of Saints
Severinus and Sossius (whose central figure is Severinus) now in Naples'
Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte:
http://www.prolocofratta.it/sansossio/images/sossio.jpg
Best,
John Dillon
(last year's post revised)
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