Today, September 11, is the feast of:
Protus and Hyacinth (d. 257, supposedly) are Roman martyrs of the cemetery of Bassilla on the Via Salaria vetus, recorded for today in the Depositio martyrum of the Chronographer of 354. They are among the very few saints identified by name in pope St. Damasus I's inscription for the cemetery as a whole (Epigrammata Damasiana). No acta exist, but Damasus says they were brothers and an early martyrology calls them "teachers of the Christian Law." Pope St. Symmachus removed most of their relics to his newly built church of St. Andrew on the Vatican, where they were placed in the confessio. When Hyacinth's early resting place, identified by a grave slab noting today as his day of laying to rest, was discovered in the cemetery in 1845, it contained ashes and fragments of charred bone wrapped in cloths of costly material. These are now thought to be relics deliberately left at the site by Symmachus. Nearby was found part of an inscription marking Protus' resting place, whose precise location remains unknown.
Depicted in the sixth-century mosaics of Sant'Apollinare Nuovo at Ravenna, they are fixtures in the seventh-century itineraries for pilgrims to Rome. Their relics are among the many that pope St. Leo IV is said to have translated into the city. The church of Santi Quattro Coronati is reported to have had Protus' head (or a piece of it) during Leo's pontificate; its continued presence there was noted in an inventory conducted in 1111. In the later Middle Ages the now demolished church of San Salvatore de pede pontis claimed to have relics of both saints (these went to San Giovanni dei Fiorentini in 1592).
Protus and Hyacinth have a relatively late, highly legendary Passio in a couple of versions that brings together in a single episodic narration various saints of their cemetery and others, notably St. Eugenia of Rome. This later-than 11th-century confection makes Protus and Hyacinth Eugenia's slaves or servitors who convert her to Christianity and who are martyred with her in the Valerianic persecution (in the version followed by Usuard, under Gallienus). Both are entered for today in the (ps-)HM, in the historical martyrologies from Bede onward, and in the Old English Martyrology. They also have a notice in the so-called Menologium of Basil II (late tenth- or early eleventh-century).
Felix, Regula, and Exuperantius (d. late 2d or very early 3d century, supposedly) Felix and his sister Regula, patron saints of Zurich, have a legendary Passio that makes them pilgrims who on the advice of St. Maurice of Acaunus were traveling in the vicinity of Zurich when they sought martyrdom at the hands of the emperor Maximian's minions. Promptly arrested, they refused to venerate pagan idols, survived horrific tortures while at the same time stoutly professing their faith, were decapitated outside the city at a spot by the Limmat, and then picked up their severed heads from the river and walked to their resting places at the top of a nearby hill.
Versions from of their legend the thirteenth century onward give Felix and Regula a servant named Exuperantius who is martyred with them and who also is a cephalophore. Still venerated in Zurich, Exuperantius has yet to grace the pages of the RM.
In the tenth century a church was built on an island in the Limmat where Felix and Regula were thought (or soon would be thought) to have been executed. Called in Latin and in German the 'Water Church' (modern German: Wasserkirche) since at least the mid-thirteenth century, it was rebuilt in the later Middle Ages. A stone in its crypt is traditionally called the Martyrs' Stone ('Märtyrerstein'). In seemingly the eleventh century a monastery church was built at a hilltop locale reputed to hold the graves of Felix and Regula (the monastery claimed foundation by Charlemagne; archaeological work at the site has yet to produce evidence of an earlier church or oratory as suggested by the Passio). That church was replaced by Zurich's present Grossmünster (c1100-1220; later modifications), which was dedicated to all three martyrs and which housed their putative remains until the latter's removal under Heinrich Bullinger in the sixteenth century.
Felix and Regula in the Stuttgarter Passionale of 1130 (Württembergische Landesbibliothek Stuttgart, Cod. Bibl. 2° 56):
Paphnutius the Great of Egypt (d. c360) was an Egyptian. In 308, during the Great Persecution, Paphnutius had one of his eyes put out, his legs mutilated, and then was set to forced labor. After he was freed in 311, he went to Antony the Great and became a monk. A few years after that, Paphnutius became bishop of the upper Thebaid. Reverenced for his suffering in the persecution, Paphnutius took part in the Council of Nicaea, actively fought Arianism, and (interestingly from a monk) defended the rights of married clergy against a move to force men who were ordained to separate from their wives; he argued instead only that clerics should not contract a marriage after their ordination.
Patiens of Lyons (d. c480) became bishop of Lyons in c450, a rather rough period in the history of Gaul. He organized a food distribution service reputed to have saved the lives of thousands in the famine after the Goths invaded Burgundy. He too fought Arians, and also practiced strict asceticism, continued the process of converting his diocese, and repaired churches.
Theodora the Penitent (d. 491) Her developed story has taken on elements of the tale of St. Pelagia of Antioch, but in its early form Theodora was the wife of a perfect of Egypt, living in Alexandria. She sinned, repented, and spent the rest of her life as a hermit, living disguised as a man among the desert monks of the Thebaid. Her sex was revealed only after her death.
Deiniol/Daniel of Bangor (d. c584) was a Welshman and in 514 founded the monastery of Bangor Fawr (Carnarvonshire) and became the first bishop of the new diocese founded there, consecrated in 516. He also founded and Bangor Isycoed in Clwyd (Wales), which became (according to Bede) the most famous monastery in Britain, with over 2,000 monks in its heyday. He was buried at Ynys Ynlli. (See Dec 10?)
Vinciana (d. 653) born in c. 600, supported her brother Landoald as a missionary in England. She died in Wintershofen (Belgium), and her relics made it to St. Bavo in Ghent.
Bodo (d. c670) was a native of Toul. His saintly sister convinced him and his wife to separate and become professional religious. Bodo became a monk at Laon, and went on to found three monasteries. He became bishop of Toul shortly before his death.
Elias the Speleote / Elias Spelaiotes (d. c960 [traditional]; c930 [recent scholarship]) was a Greek-speaking itinerant monk, thaumaturge, and monastic founder. Elias' nickname makes him "Elias the Caveman." According to his late tenth-century Bios (plus a Latin translation from ca. 1082), Elias was born into a wealthy family of Reggio di Calabria who provided him with a good religious education. At the age of eighteen he crossed over into Muslim Sicily, where he lived as hermit for about a year before going on to Rome. There he paid his respects at the tombs of the Apostles and performed his first miracle, rendering immobile a bunch of brigands who had unwisely elected to attack him. Returning to Calabria, he attached himself first to a saintly abbot Arsenios and later, after spending several years at Patras in Greece, to St. Elias of Enna, then residing at the Saline near Gioa Tauro. When that worthy departed for Constantinople never to return, he left his abode in the joint charge of his companion Daniel and of our Elias (who, however, is never mentioned in the Daniel-influenced Bios of this other Elias).
Elias moved on quickly to other places in Calabria, finally settling in a set of caves at Melicuccà near Seminara, where he founded what became a large and regionally famous Greek-rite monastic community. He died on September 11 in what the Bios unreliably says was the ninety-sixth year of his life and was buried in a tomb that he himself had dug in one of the monastery's caves. Many miracles were attributed to him in his lifetime; his grave, visited by numerous pilgrims some of whom sought relief while they slept by the tomb, was the site of many more. In some cases the incubation lasted more than a single night.
In the eighteenth century, when the monastery had long since been closed and most of the caves were already filled in by the action of earthquakes and by more regular geologic processes, Elias' tomb was rediscovered and his cult was renewed. Today it is still a place of pilgrimage, though (I believe) incubation is no longer practiced here. Four views of the restored main cave are here: http://www.provincia.rc.it/pagine/itinerari.php?t=testo_foto&cat=22
Peter of Chavanon (1080) as a priest, he longed for a less active life. When he was 'persecuted by the attentions of a woman who was attracted to him', he founded and built a monastery for canons regular at Pebrac, France. He was so successful that he was asked to reform several cathedral chapters. He is buried at Pebrac.
Ludwig / Louis IV of Thuringia (d. 1227) Not formally canonized, but the subject of a popular cult that began very soon after his death. Louis, who was born in 1200, became landgrave of Thuringia in 1217 and proved a capable ruler. He is most famous as the husband of Elisabeth of Hungary, whom he married in 1221 and consistently upheld in her penitential and caritative practices. Louis died at 27 while in Apulia on his way to a crusade with Emperor Frederick II; his body was brought back to Thuringia, where it became the center of a cult. When he was dying of malaria, he saw his room filled with doves, and his last words were 'I must fly away with these white doves'.
Sperandia (d. 1276) The penitent and visionary Sperandia was born at Gubbio in Umbria in around the year 1216. According to her Vita antiqua, she was divinely inspired at the age of nine to adopt a penitential lifestyle. This decision did not go over well with her father and with other members of her family. After enduring many tribulations at their hands (for how long we are not told) she exchanged her penitent's rags for a pig's hide and a belt of iron and, again acting on divine guidance, left home for good. Sperandia spent the bulk of her life as a wandering ascetic in towns of Umbria and the Marche, tormented by demons and gaining a reputation as a holy woman and thaumaturge. She seems to have made a journey to Rome. Still according to the Vita antiqua, her lifetime fame extended as far north as Venice. In about 1265 she settled down at a mountain grotto outside of Cingoli, founding there a community attested to by a donation of 1276 and by subsequent documents witnessing miracle accounts or bearing on relations between Cingoli and what had become her convent.
Though the Vita antiqua suggests rather strongly a life of Franciscan spirituality, tradition makes Sperandia a Benedictine abbess. Local veneration seems to have been both strong and immediate. In 1633 her cult was confirmed for the dioceses of Gubbio, Osimo, and Sanseverino (Marche). Also commemorated by the Benedictines and in other orders, she has never graced the pages the of the RM.
The Bollandists who edited the Acta Sanctorum chose to call Sperandia "Sperandea". In languages other than Italian she is often still so called, though this form seems contrary to the evidence of her Vita antiqua (which calls her "Spera in Deo"), of its late fifteenth-century revision ("Sperandia"), of the latter's Italian-language revision ("Sperandina"), and of late medieval usage in both Gubbio and Cingoli ("Sperandia", "Spera in Deo", "Sperandeus", etc.). Together with its dubiously attested early bishop Exuperantius, Sperandia is a patron saint of Cingoli, "Balcony of the Marche".
Happy reading,
Terri Morgan
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“The nice thing about studying history is that you can always find people who are a lot weirder than you are.” – Delia Sherman