medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (26. July) is the feast day, at Malcesine (VR) on Lake Garda, of
Malcesine's patron saints, Benignus and Carus (d. early 9th cent.,
supposedly). But, because they're now trumped by St. Anne the mother
of the BVM, she gets the feast and they get a commemoration. Which in
fact may be more than they deserve.
The likelihood is very great that B. and C. are fictional. They are
_dramatis personae_ in a legendary translation, supposedly occurring
very early in the ninth century, of St. Zeno of Verona to his resting
place in the monastic church at Verona dedicated to him. In this tale,
transmitted both in a late twelfth- or early thirteenth-century
_Historia translationis Sancti Zenonis_ (BHL 9011) and in a reworking
thereof by the early fourteenth-century hagiographer of the Veneto,
Pietro Calo' (BHL 9012), bishop Rotaldus founded, and king Pippin
endowed, what is now San Zeno Maggiore. Because all in Verona feared to
touch the bones of this great saint, the bishop and the king asked the
famous hermit B. and upon C. his disciple (but according to Calo', the
disciple's name was Lazarus), who were living on a mountain on the shore
of Lake Garda near Malcesine, to perform the actual translation of Z.'s
relics from their previous location to their resting place in the new
church. And this the hermits did, their merits having made them worthy
of such a holy task. A fourteenth(?)-century fresco in San Zeno
Maggiore shows them engaged upon that labor:
http://www.domusalessandra.com/images/SS_Benigno&Caro.jpg
This detail allows one to read the text of some of the graffiti:
http://www.photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=2850167
Mario Carrara discusses the _Historia translationis Sancti Zenonis_ and
prints from it extracts dealing with B. and C. at pp. 365-67 of vol. 2
(1964) of _Verona e il suo territorio_ (Verona: Istituto per gli studi
veronesi, 1960-2003). These passages are imaginatively conceived and
probably had a lot to do with the later success of the cult of B. and C.
at Malcesine.
In 1314, during the consecration of the church of Santo Stefano at
Malcesine, the presumed remains of B. and C. were solemnly deposited
under its altar in the presence of a great crowd of prelates, priests,
and other clerics as well as of the imperial vicar for Verona and
Vicenza, Can Grande della Scala. An inscription was at this time placed
on their tomb proclaiming that the bishop of the translation story had
after their deaths pronounced B. and C. to be saints. Malcesine, by the
way, only entered the della Scala dominions in 1277; when _Historia
translationis_ was written (seemingly at the monastery of San Zeno in
Verona), it was a newly independent commune that until recently had
belonged to the bishop of Verona.
The medieval church of Santo Stefano at Malcesine was replaced in the
eighteenth century by its present-day successor on the same site. The
remains identified as those of B. and C. were translated to the new high
altar in 1769. In Malcesine's rural locality of Cassone there is a
rebuilt church dedicated to St. Zeno whose earliest certain predecessor
is recorded from the year 1320. Two late medieval carvings in this
church are reproduced here in reduced format:
http://www.malcesine.biz/pieve.htm
Below the church is a grotto called the Hermitage of Saints Benignus and
Carus, shown (not awfully well) here:
http://www.larenadomila.it/barbarani/museo/casson/eremo_interno.jpg
Best,
John Dillon
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