medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (5. May) was also once and may yet be the feast day of:
T(h)euteria and Tusca (?). T. and T. (in Italian also Teoteria and Tosca) are the saints of a chapel in Verona attached to that city's pieve dei Santissimi Apostoli. Their first surviving mention comes a now lost psalter once belonging to the latter church that is said to have recorded the consecration of the chapel to them by bishop Anno either in 750 or 751. The chapel itself is apparently several centuries older but whether T. and T. were its original late antique titulars is unknown. In 1160, perhaps as a result of modifications then being made to the church, remains said to be theirs were discovered within. These were then deposited by bishop Ognibene in a new tomb and the church was re-consecrated.
T. and T. enjoyed an active cult
for the remainder of the Middle Ages, with Teuteria celebrated today and Tusca on 10. July. Their feasts were combined on today's date at some point after Henschenius' seventeenth-century account of their cult for the _Acta Sanctorum_.
In 1576 Verona's bishop Agostino Valier published a brief, legendary account of T. and T. based upon an inscription reportedly found at their tomb. This makes Teuteria an English noblewoman and Christian convert who, being pursued sexually by a king Oswald, fled to Verona, where she found shelter with Tusca, sister of bishop Proculus, and where the two of them lived out their lives together as holy virgins. In 1914 the remains identified as those of T. and T., who may have undergone another translation in the church in 1427 when according to Valier their tomb was raised by a bishop of Suelli (a Sardinian see), were examined scientifically. One of the skeletons was male, the other
female. T. and T. have yet to grace the RM. I have not been able to determine whether they are still celebrated liturgically in Verona.
Herewith Italian-language accounts of Verona's chiesa delle Sante Teuteria e Tosca (whose oldest parts appear to be of the fifth or sixth century and which was expanded in 1368 from its then Greek-cross plan into the present almost square one) and of the twelfth-century pieve dei Santissimi Apostoli (replacing a predecessor already in existence in the eighth century) to which it is annexed:
http://tinyurl.com/d7flathttp://tinyurl.com/ctc352Views of the chiesa della Sante Teuteria e Tosca:
Exterior:
http://www.veronissima.com/immagini/tesori-teuteria-tosca.jpgInterior, with T. and
T.'s elevated tomb:
http://tinyurl.com/dkwxexhttp://tinyurl.com/c2stcshttp://tinyurl.com/dk5d5nBest,
John Dillon
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