medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
19. January is also the feast day of:
Archelais, Thecla, and Susanna (d. ca. 304, supposedly). These less well known saints of the Regno have been venerated in Salerno ever since their bodies were translated thither from Nola seemingly at some time in the earlier tenth century. Their existence had been revealed in visions to a nun of Salerno's monastery of St. George and they were then re-interred in that monastery's church (in whose baroque successor relics said to be theirs still repose today).
According to their legendary Passio (BHL 660; surviving in twelve lections for their medieval office at Salerno), A., T., and S. were dedicated virgins in the _provincia Romanorum_ (variously interpreted as greater Rome or as the Romagna) who during the persecution of Diocletian and Maximian fled to Salerno and who there were arrested and brought before a magistrate named Leontius. A., who was their leader, had a confrontation with Leontius after which she was exposed to lions; as some will already have surmised, the latter did not harm her. A. was then imprisoned, was comforted by an angel, impressed her guards, and was subjected to immersion in boiling pitch and to being torn with iron combs. When those measures failed to kill her, she was sent with her two companions to Nola where all three were executed by decapitation. Thus far their Passio.
In the manuscript texts of these saints' Passio and of a fragmentarily preserved notice of their translation from Nola to Salerno (BHL 661) A.'s name is given as Archelays. But she is Archelaa to the Bollandists, who, knowing how those texts read, nonetheless adopted the name form used by the later sixteenth-century translator of the Passio into Italian, Paolo Reggio (d. 1596; bp. of Vico Equense), and, also after Reggio, by Filippo Ferrari in his earlier seventeenth-century _Catalogus sanctorum Italiae_.
In the liturgical calendar of the archdiocese of Salerno - Campagna - Acerno, the virgin martyrs A., T., and S. are celebrated on 19. January with a memorial in Salerno's chiesa di San Giorgio. In the _Acta Sanctorum_ they appear under 18. January. A., T., and S. have yet to grace the pages of the RM. Somewhat belatedly, this is their first appearance in this list's 'saints of the day'.
Best,
John Dillon
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