medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (14. October) is the feast day of:
1) Lupulus of Capua (?). This less well known saint of the Regno was
prominently represented among the local saints of the now lost apse
mosaics of the late fifth-/early sixth-century church of St. Priscus at
today's San Prisco (CE), an extramural survivor of (Old) Capua, where
he was also figured in the cupola mosaics together with St. Rufus of
Capua. He appears in mangled entries for today and for tomorrow in the
(pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology. That early eighth-century inheritor
of late antique Campanian festal practices, St. Willibrord's Epternach
calendar, records him for tomorrow (15. October) along with other
Campanian saints. Under the name form Libulus he is listed for tomorrow
by Rabanus Maurus and by Notker, both of whom associate him with
St. Fortunata of Patria (on whom see below). Later medieval calendars
of the diocese of Capua also have L.'s feast on 15. October. Eleventh-
and twelfth-century notices of a church dedicated to him at Grottola in
Campania and of a town called Sanctus Lupulus in northern Puglia testify
to the dissemination of his cult.
Herewith some views of a structure with which L. will presumably have
been familiar, the amphitheatre of Roman-period Capua, now the
Anfiteatro Campano at Santa Maria Capua Vetere (CE):
http://tinyurl.com/2j4q4q
http://www.italiantourism.com/fotoenit/prew_2100000072101.jpg
http://www.italiantourism.com/fotoenit/prew_2100000072095.jpg
http://www.italiantourism.com/fotoenit/prew_2100000072125.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/yn7nhp
Some views of a structure in the same town erected for worship services
by a religion with which early Christianity had to contend, the mithraeum
of Santa Maria Capua Vetere:
http://tinyurl.com/2qc68r
http://www.mithra.it/mitrei/capua.htm
http://tinyurl.com/2dw7tu
2) Fortunata, venerated at Patria (Fortunata of Caesarea; d. ca. 304,
supposedly). This less well known saint of the Regno is known to us
principally from her tenth-century Passio of Campanian origin by one
Aripert (BHL 3081) or, as he was usually called until very recently,
Autpert. This says that F. was a girl of noble birth from Caesarea in
Palestine, where she, together with her brothers Carponius, Evaristus,
and Priscian, was martyred after the usual series of failed execution
attempts. Sailors brought her body and those of her brothers to Patria
(ancient Liternum) on the Campanian coast, where the martyrs were
honored with a cult. We are told by Eusebius that there was a Fortunata
of Caesarea martryred during the Great Persecution under a Roman official
who in Eusebius has the same name as does his analogue in F.'s Passio.
As the latter is a tissue of reworkings of matter from earlier passion
accounts, there is no more reason to suppose that the F. venerated in
Campania was in origin the martyr named by Eusebius than there is that
she was of noble birth or that, when she was exposed to beasts in the
amphitheatre, a lion became tame and licked her feet.
Early medieval martyrologies indicate knowledge of F.'s veneration at
Patria at least as early as the seventh century. In Campania her cult
is known first from late ninth- and tenth-century writings from Naples:
these (including John the Deacon's episcopal chronicle and the
aforementioned BHL 3081) tell us that at some time between 768 and 780
that city's bishop Stephen II effected a translation of her remains and
those of her brothers from her long since abandoned church at Patria to
the monastery of St. Gaudiosus at Naples, where he established in her
honor a church and a convent of nuns. The general similarity of this
story to doubtful Inventio portions of Campanian translation accounts of
about the same date (e.g., those of Sossus from Misenum to Naples or of
Matthew the Apostle from who knows where to Capaccio and thence to
Salerno) raises questions about the true origin of these remains.
That said, it is clear that a Fortunata was venerated at Naples by at
least the middle of the ninth century (a saint of this name occurs under
14. October on that city's Marble Calendar) and it seems reasonable to
suppose that she was the one whose putative relics were translated by
Stephen II. These were rediscovered in the convent church of San
Gaudioso by its abbess in 1561 and shortly thereafter underwent a
formal recognition. Where they are now I don't know; given its location
over the catacombs of San Gaudioso, the early modern church of Santa
Maria della Sanità might be a good guess.
Other remains of F. and her bothers are said in an also tenth-century
translation account from Rheinau (BHL 3083) to have been found in a
Saracen-destroyed Campanian city (so not Naples) in 874 by a German who
had accompanied Louis II on his south Italian campaign of the early 870s
(this is when he lifted the Muslim siege of Salerno) and to have been
transported by him to Reichenau. Reichenau's cult of Fortunata and her
brothers led to a later, localizing version of her Passio, on which see Waltraud
Götz, "Der Fortunata-Kult auf der Reichenau: Überlegungen zur Lokalisierung
der passio und zur Datierung des Offiziumstextes", in Walter Pass and
Alexander Rausch, eds., _Beiträge zur Musik, Musiktheorie und Liturgie der
Abtei Reichenau. Bericht über die Tagung Heiligenkreuz 6.- 8. Dezember 1999_
(Tutzing: Schneider, 2001), pp. 127-139. Reichenau's Office for F. is edited
by Götz in her _Drei Heiligenoffizien in Reichenauer Überlieferung. Texte und
Musik aus dem Nachtragsfaszikel der Handschrift Karlsruhe, BLB Aug. perg.
60_ (Frankfurt: Lang, 2002).
Best,
John Dillon
(last year's posts combined and revised)
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