medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
The late medieval feast of the martyrs Felix, Simplicius, Faustinus, and Beatrice had its origin in two adjacent entries in the (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology for martyrs of the Via Portuensis commemorated on 29. July: a Felix in the cemetery _ad insalatos_ and the group Simplicius, Faustus, and Beatrice in the cemetery of Generosa.
The Felix of that feast is (anti)pope St. Felix II. Considered a martyr, he was held to be one of the two saints of this name, both martyred popes, who were venerated in a church of the _Felices duo_ situated on the Via Aurelia and noted in at least two of the seventh-century guidebooks for pilgrims to Rome. His Vita in the _Liber Pontificalis_ has him buried there, claims that the church in question was one that he had built, and gives him a _dies natalis_ of 11. November. But the Vita in the _Liber Pontificalis_ of his contemporary, pope Liberius, gives him (F.) a _dies natalis_ of 29. July and in so doing clearly associates him with his homonym of the Via Portuensis. It was that association that survived in late medieval calendars, where the two commemorations noted in the previous paragraph had now been merged into one.
In 683, according to the _Liber Pontificalis_, pope Leo II translated the remains of Simplicius, Faustinus, and Beatrice to an oratory near the church of Santa Bibiana; when that oratory was destroyed a sarcophagus bearing an inscription naming the martyrs Simplicius and Faustinus and saying that they had been buried in the cemetery of Generosa was transferred to Santa Maria Maggiore where it still was in the early 1960s. In 1868 the cemetery of Generosa on the Via Portuensis was discovered and partly excavated. Inscriptions in the remains of its basilica attested to the commemoration there of Simplicius, Faustinus, and Viatrix (as the fragment of her Damasan _titulus_ proved her name to have been spelled in the mid-fourth century).
I'm not sure when Felix II's commemoration in the RM was separated from that of the others. They are quite distinct in the 1956 revision of the 1914 _editio typica_ of the RM. At that point it was already well known that Beatrice was really Viatrix, but she stayed under the then conventional name form until the RM's revision of 2001. At that time another martyr of the basilica in the cemetery of Generosa was added. Formerly identified from a fragmentary inscription as Rufinianus, he is now (presumably with better knowledge of the inscription) called Rufus. So at this point the group's commemoration is of the martyrs Simplicius, Faustinus, Viatrix, and Rufus.
Best again,
John Dillon
(who also remembers that 29. July used be the RM's day of commemoration for Flora and Lucilla and companions, who without the companions were the titulars of a once-major monastery at Arezzo with a cult that was widespread in Tuscany and in the Tuscia portion of Lazio and that, despite their removal from the "new" RM, is still active at Santa Fiora [GR]) in southern Tuscany.
On Wednesday, July 30, 2008, at 9:55 am, John Briggs wrote:
> John Dillon wrote:
> >
> > Yesterday (29. July) was the feast day of:
> >
> > 3) Felix II, (anti)pope (d. 365).
> >
> > Here's F., shown with the Roman martyrs Simplicius and Viatrix
> > (a.k.a. Beatrice) -- also celebrated today --,
>
> Felix, Simplicius, Faustinus and Beatrice
>
> In the York Calendar, a Feast of three lections.
>
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