 |
 |
medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture Today (7. September) is the feast day of: Festus the deacon and Desiderius the lector (d. ca. 305). According to the usual story (which for these two is really all we have), today's less well known saints of the Regno were leading members of the church of Benevento who together with their bishop Januarius travelled to Pozzuoli during the Great Persecution and who were martyred along with him near the Solfatara in the Phlegraean Fields. Januarius and various companions including F. and D. appear in the (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology for today. By the ninth century their collective feast had been regularized as falling on 19. September (so Ado and Usuard) but in Naples, where 19. September is J.'s big day, the companions had feasts of their own, either singly or in groups according to the towns they are said to have come from. And in this festal economy F. and D. continued to be celebrated today (so the Marble Calendar of Naples) as they also are in the new (2001) RM. Like the other companions, F. and D. appear in the mural portraits of the Neapolitan catacombs. D. has a very nice one in the catacombs of San Gennaro, where he is the left-hand figure in a panel whose other figure represents St. Acutius of Pozzuoli. There's an awful view of it here: http://www.sansossio.it/ and an excellent one at plate IX (facing p. 128) in Umberto M. Fasola, _Le catacombe di S. Gennaro a Capodimonte_ (Roma: Editalia, 1975). This being the seventeenth centenary of the martyrdom of Januarius et soc., it's especially unfortunate that better visuals of the companions seem still not to be available on the Web. Naples' eighth-century bishop Stephen II is credited with having founded that city's monastery of F. and D. (a community of Benedictine nuns) on the height now known as the Monterone, overlooking the coastal strip below. The monastery, first documented from 916, came to be known popularly simply as that of St. Festus. In the sixteenth century period it was joined with the adjacent male foundation of Sts. Marcellinus and Peter and both were given a splendid baroque makeover. Though SS. Marcellino e Festo is still around (it belongs to the university), there's nothing medieval to show from it. You would think that F. and D.'s presumed relics would have lain in the monastery church. But they seem to have still been lying in the catacombs when, early in the ninth century, prince Sico of Benevento made his raid on the outskirts of Naples that netted him the body of Januarius. Benevento soon claimed (in a Translation account, BHL 4140) to have the bodies of its other native sons, F. and D., as well. Though they are said to now repose at monastery of Montevergine near Mercogliano (AV), also in Campania, F. and D. are still honored at Benevento, probably more so here than anywhere else on earth. Best, John Dillon ********************************************************************** To join the list, send the message: join medieval-religion YOUR NAME to: [log in to unmask] To send a message to the list, address it to: [log in to unmask] To leave the list, send the message: leave medieval-religion to: [log in to unmask] In order to report problems or to contact the list's owners, write to: [log in to unmask] For further information, visit our web site: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/medieval-religion.html