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Today, August 22, is the feast of:
Augusta of Serravalle (?) The cult of this poorly documented saint is attested since 1234 at Serravalle, Italy. Her putative relics were discovered in 1450 during the rebuilding of Serravalle's little church dedicated to her. Our sole detailed source for Augusta's life and passion (for she is said to be a martyr) is her early modern Acta penned by Minuccio Minucci (1551-1604), a native of Serravalle who became secretary to Clement VIII and finally archbishop of Zadar (Zara; 1596-1604). This legendary account makes her the daughter of a pagan Germanic chieftain ruling from a palace on a height in the vicinity of Serravalle; when he discovers that she has converted to Christianity, she refuses to apostasize and he has her decapitated. Some years later, her body is found on that very height and, Serravalle now being Christian, a church is erected there in her honor. At the time of the Acta's telling that early structure has left no visible remains. Minuccio's aition provides a cachet of antiquity for the saint of the historically attested church that was rebuilt in the early 1450s and that occupies a site near the top of a hill at Serravalle above the east bank of the Meschio. Augusta's cult was confirmed in 1754. She was dropped from the RM in its revision of 2001. At Serravalle her feast is observed today, her traditional dies natalis. See March 27
Gunifort of Pavia (?) Of dubious historicity, legend tells that Gunifort was a native of the British Isles, martyred at Pavia.
Hippolytus of Porto. A non-historic saint, he is actually a duplication of St. Hippolytus of Rome. The situation seems to have risen from honest confusion; the Roman Martyrology tells that this Hippolytus was a bishop of Porto martyred by drowning, but this has been disproven. The cult was suppressed in 1969.
Timothy, Hippolytus and Symphorian, martyrs (second to fourth centuries): These three martyrs are totally unconnected with one another. Timothy was a martyr under Diocletian and was buried on the Ostian Way at Rome. Hippolytus was a bishop of Porto and greatly renowned for his learning. Symphorian was martyred in Autun because he did not honour a statue of Cybele. (Apparently sometimes their commemoration was performed jointly.)
Symphorian / Symphorianus of Autun (d. c250? 180?) was one of the most honored saints in early Gaul and France. He is a martyr of Autun with a legendary Passio presumed originally to have been written shortly after the erection of his martyrial basilica there in about 450. This has him suffer under emperor Aurelian, who as emperor issued no persecutorial edicts but who had a command in Gaul in 257, when the Valerianic persecution was under way. As the Passio's opening words are Sub Aureliano principe ("Under emperor Aurelian"), that explanation concedes it to be not entirely accurate on this point. An alternative hypothesis is that the emperor in question was Marcus Aurelius, who did indeed persecute. In Usuard, whose elogium of Symphorian follows the Passio, the emperor is Aurelius. According to this, he was born in c165 in Autun to a senatorial family, where he was secretly raised as a Christian by his mother. Autun, however, had a very prominent cult of the goddess Cybele, and Symphorian attracted attention by refusing to honor the goddess' image when it was carried through town on her feast day. The fifteen-year-old Symphorian, when asked, proclaimed himself a Christian. The governor tried to convince the youth to change his mind, having him flogged and imprisoned for a short time, and even offering him an army commission. Upon refusal, Symphorian was taken out and beheaded. Perhaps the most memorable aspect of the Passio is Symphorian's mother atop the city wall encouraging him, as he is led out to be executed, to be faithful to the end.
Oddly, he is invoked for assistance by sufferers from syphilis.
His cult spread in late antiquity to other places in Gaul, e.g. Tours (where his cult was already established in Gregory of Tours' day), Bourges (where in the sixth century there was a basilica dedicated to him), and in Burgundy (the very early eighth-century Missale Gothicum, of Burgundian origin, has a Mass for him). The monastery serving his church at Autun lasted until the French Revolution; its church survived until 1806. Some relics said to be of Symphorian are kept in the église St-Symphorien at Nuits-Saint-Georges (Côte-d'Or) in Bourgogne. Others are kept in an originally twelfth-century chasse in the église St-Symphorien at Saint-Symphorien (now part of the city of Mons) in Belgium. In his Martyrology Usuard entered Timothy of Rome (no. 2, below) before Symphorian. In later medieval liturgical books the two are sometimes paired, e.g. in the breviary for the Use of Paris of ca. 1414. Symphorian's cult was reduced to "local calendar" status in 1969.
Here's Symphorian as depicted in an earlier twelfth-century Vitae sanctorum (Dijon, Bibliothèque municipale, ms. 641, fol. 10v):
http://www.enluminures.culture.fr/Wave/savimage/enlumine/irht6/IRHT_094796-p.jpg
Alexander and Epimachus (d. c250) were martyrs of Alexandria, apparently flogged to death. Interestingly, Dionysius of Alexandria tells that their bodies were destroyed by quicklime.
Maurus of Rheims and companions (d. c260 or c300) These were supposedly a priest and 49 others, martyred at Rheims; both date and location are uncertain.
Agathonicus, Zoticus, and companions (4th century?) Agathonicus was a patrician, martyred near Byzantium in the reign of Maximian Herculeus. His cult became associated with that of Zoticus, a philosopher, and some of Zoticus' disciples who were martyred at about the same time. A basilica in Constantinople was dedicated to them.
Timothy / Timotheus of Rome /of Antioch (303?) is a Roman martyr of the Via Ostiensis recorded for this day in the Depositio Marturym of the Chronographer of 354, the early sixth-century Calendar of Carthage, the (ps-)HM, and the Gelasian and Gregorian sacramentaries. The Fasti Vindobonenses priores and Fasti Vindobonenses posteriores (both probably compiled after the middle of the sixth century and giving dates of death for some martyrs) have him dying on May 23, 306 or on August 23, 303, respectively. Assuming that these years are close to accurate, 303 is the more likely. Seventh-century itineraries for pilgrims to Rome record his resting place near San Paolo fuori le Mura.
The Acta of pope St. Sylvester have a brief account of a Roman martyr (priest) Timothy who had come from Antioch during the Great Persecution, who after lengthy imprisonment and severe torture had been decapitated, and whose body Sylvester recovered in the pontificate of St. Miltiades/Melchiades (311-314). This account informed Usuard's elogium of today's Timothy and served as the basis for two relatively quite late Passiones of him. A shrine was dedicated to him near S. Paul outside-the-walls at an early date, so apparently his martyrdom was recognized at an early age, which didn't keep him from reduction to the local calendar. His feast was dropped from the RM in 1969.
In his martyrology Usuard entered Timothy of Rome before Symphorian. An expandable view of Timothy's martyrdom and of Symphorian's as depicted in the upper and lower portions, respectively, of the same column in a late thirteenth-century copy of French origin of the Legenda aurea (San Marino, CA, Huntington Library, ms. HM 3027, fol. 108r): http://tinyurl.com/2csect5
In later medieval liturgical books the two are sometimes paired, e.g. in the breviary for the Use of Paris of c1414 in which this illumination occurs (Châteauroux, Bibliothèque municipale, ms. 2, fol. 294r): http://tinyurl.com/6lx2wh
Sigfrid, abbot of Wearmouth (690): Saintly but sickly. Bede writes in his Historia abbatum of Wearmouth and Jarrow: "He was a man well skilled in the knowledge of Holy Scripture, of admirable behaviour and perfect continence, but one in whom vigour of mind was somewhat depressed by bodily weakness and whose innocence of heart went along with a distressing and incurable infection of the lungs." Sigfrid was coadjutor abbot at Wearmouth for Benedict Biscop when Biscop was off to Rome on one of his many trips. In about 686, when Biscop was away on his final trip to Rome a pestilence struck St. Peter's in Wearmouth, carrying off among many others Benedict's co-abbot there, St. Eosterwine. On the recommendation of Jarrow's abbot St. Ceolfrith the deacon Sigfrid, who was learned in Scripture, was elected to succeed Eosterwine. When the elderly Benedict returned he confirmed this election, appointing Sigfrid to run the monastery at Wearmouth while he, Benedict, retired into contemplation and prayer. Young Sigfrid soon became fatally ill. He and the also dying Benedict resigned their offices in favor of Ceolfrith who while retaining Jarrow succeed as abbot at Wearmouth. Today is Sigfrid's dies natalis. After Benedict's death Sigfrid's body and that of Eosterwine were laid together with his in the same grave. In 716 St. Acca of Hexham, a former student of Sigfrid's, transferred the latter's remains and Eosterwine's to a single reliquary. Sigfrid has yet to grace the pages of the RM.
Arnulf (before 850) was a hermit who gave his name to the town of Eynesbury (Cambridgeshire). He seems to have been forgotten by c. 1000.
This is curious: the personal name attested in the place-name Eynesbury does not equate to Arnulf < arin + wulf. The earliest known form is Eanulfesbyrig (c.1000) and which indicates Eanulf (OG Einulf) < aun + wulf
Andreas of Fiesole / Andrew the Scot (d. late 9th century, supposedly) His Vita is a Latin translation from the Italian of someone called Filippo Villani. If the latter is the Florentine chronicler so named, then the original will have been of the later fourteenth or very early fifteenth century. If he is not, then a sixteenth-century date is also possible. The Vita is most believable at its end, where it records the invention (with appropriate miracles) in 1285 of Andrew's tomb in the monastic church of San Martino a Mensola at today's Fiesole in Tuscany and the institution there of a cult in Andrew's honor. The rest of it is an aitiology of the community in question in which Andrew, an Irish disciple and colleague of St. Donatus of Fiesole, goes on pilgrimage o Rome with his teacher Donatus, then they stopped at Fiesole on their return. Donatus was made bishop, and named Andrew deacon. Andrew is supposed to have rebuilt on the site an ancient basilica dedicated to St. Martin and founded an adjoining monastery to which, along with a few comrades, he retires, gaining a reputation for holiness. Previously, Andrew had cured a girl who was paralytic; now he performs other miracles which Villani leaves unspecified. In his final illness, Andrew wishes to see his sister Brigid, whom he had left in Ireland. She is miraculously transported to his bedside; he dies peacefully in her company and in that of his fellow monks.
A silver bust of Andrew presented to San Martino a Mensola in 1380, the five hundredth anniversary of his supposed floruit, is said to have had inscribed upon it basic information about him dovetailing with this account. The latter's credibility is not helped by Andrew’s apparent absence from the Vita of Donatus of Fiesole.
Sigfrid of Sweden (d. c1045) is honoured as the "apostle of Sweden." He was a monk at Glastonbury who in the first third of the eleventh century went to Scandinavia as a missionary - first to Norway, then to Sweden. He was the first bishop of Skara, which he founded, then of Vaxsjo. He is the patron saint of Sweden.
Philip / Filippo Benizi (d. 1285) We know about the Servite prior general Filippo chiefly from a probably later fourteenth-century Vita et Translatio (BHL 6822, 6822a; Filippo's so-called Legenda vulgata) that is thought to have been based, with significant differences in dating, upon his now-lost Vita announced at the end of the earlier thirteenth-century Servite Legenda de origine Ordinis as we now have it. He came from a noble family of Florence's Oltrarno, entered the relatively new order in 1254, was ordained priest four years later, and was elected prior general in 1267. After Innocent V, executing a decision of the Second Lateran Council, had suppressed the not yet papally approved Servites, Filippo convinced John XXI to authorize them as a mendicant order. He died at the Servite convent of San Marco in Todi and was buried there.
Seemingly a genuinely holy and modest person who devoted himself strenuously to the propagation of his order and to the care of souls, He was known for his skill at mediation - he even got the Guelfs and Ghibellines to stop fighting each other for a time. Filippo was remembered within thirty years of his death not only for his virtues but also for a gift of prophecy and for lifetime miracles. His cult was probably immediate or nearly so. In 1317 his remains were translated to Todi's likewise Servite church of Santa Maria delle Grazie. Filippo was canonized in 1671, the first Servite to be so honored.
An English-language translation of Filippo's Legenda vulgata begins on p. 263 here: http://tinyurl.com/27vr3ww
Filippo (at left, praying; at right, St. Pellegrino Laziosi) as depicted by Filippo Lippi in a panel painting of the Presentation of Jesus in The Temple (c1460-1465), in the chiesa di Santo Sprito in Prato: http://tinyurl.com/2fwhb3m
Filippo's display reliquary in Todi's Santa Maria delle Grazie (a.k.a. Santuario di San Filippo Benizi):
http://www.flickr.com/photos/healinglight/3495527768/ , http://www.flickr.com/photos/healinglight/3495529494/
Jacobus Bianconi of Mevania (blessed) (d. 1301) was born in c1220 in Mevania (now Bevagna near Spoleto, Italy). In 1236 he became a Dominican and founded the first Dominican convent in his home city, which he then led as prior until his death.
Timothy of Monticchio (in Italian, Timoteo) (Blessed) (d. 1504) The Franciscan mystic and visionary Timothy was born in the Abruzzese town of Monticchio. He is presumed to have studied and to have made his profession at his order's nearby convent of San Giuliano. Ordained priest, he was sent to the convent of San Bernardino at Campli, where he served for many years as novice master, where he spent much time in prayer and fasting, and where he is said to have been visited in visions by the BVM and by St. Francis of Assisi. At least two books copied for his use in teaching survive at the Biblioteca Nazionale in Naples (St. Bonaventure's Legenda maior of St. Francis and Summa confessorum). Timothy finished his life as a contemplative at his order's convent of Sant'Angelo d'Ocre at Ocre. His cult was immediate. Beatification came in 1870. He now reposes in the convent church's cappella di San Michele Arcangelo.
Happy reading,
Terri Morgan
--
Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit; Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad. - Anon
