medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (26. August) is the feast day of:
Oronzo and companions (d. ca. 65, supposedly). Today's less well-known
saint of the Regno, O. is a medievally attested saint whose present cult
is essentially early modern. He is the principal patron of Lecce (LE)
on Apulia's Salentine Peninsula and a patron of several other towns and
cities in the region.
Prior to its latest revision (2001), the RM listed for tomorrow (27.
August) a group of four saints, Arontius, Honoratus, Fortunatus, and
Sabinian. Recorded for that day in the (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology
as martyrs at Potenza in today's Basilicata, all four were among the
dozen saints of southern Italy translated to Benevento by duke Arechis
II in 760 and there interred magnificently in his newly built church of
Holy Wisdom (Santa Sophia), shown here (exterior):
http://www.napolitudine.com/html/francobolli/Benevento/ChiesaSSofia.htm
and here (interior):
http://tinyurl.com/88nyz
This larger group was called the "Twelve Brothers" and a Passio was soon
written for them (BHL 2297; shorter version, BHL 2298; Donatus, Felix,
and companions) in which they literally _are_ brothers. Hailing, it was
said, from Hadrumetum in Roman Africa, they were tried in Carthage
(seemingly during the persecution of Diocletian) before an official named
Valerianus, imprisoned, and released by an angel. They then fled to
Italy and were there hunted down and executed in small groups at
different places at the command of the selfsame Valerianus (whose
obsession in this matter makes him something of a forerunner of Hugo's
inspector Javert). Alfanus of Salerno's _carmen 13_ is a metrical
version of these saints' Passion and translation to Benevento (BHL 2299;
1000 dactylic hexameters).
Arontius enjoyed a widespread cult of his own in Apulia and Lucania (the
latter including parts of today's Campania and Calabria as well as most
of Basilicata) that is documented from the eleventh and twelfth century
onward. At Lecce, his cult is first recorded in a charter of the
future king Tancred from the year 1181. The change in name form to
Oronzo (also Oronzio) seems to have occurred in the later Middle Ages.
In about 1480 Francesco II del Balzo, duke of Andria, count of
Montescaglioso, etc., etc. offered to Lecce the body of Sancto Orontio,
whose whereabouts the duke claimed to know. This was the same duke who
was so instrumental in the rediscovery of the long hidden body of St.
Richard of Andria (9. June) and in later vouching for that saint's
canonization when earlier records had inconveniently gone missing.
Whereas Lecce was slow to respond, its dilatory behavior seems to have
been actuated by concerns that were fiscal rather than epistemological
in nature.
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, O. (as we may now abbreviate
him) and two other local saints, Justus and Fortunatus, received a new
Vita said to have been based in part on a medieval document, not earlier
than the twelfth century, that has since disappeared. This new account
makes O. a native of Lecce who greeted the missionary Justus when the
latter had been sent to Italy in the 60s by the apostle Paul, who spent
time with Justus in Rome and then travelled to Corinth, where Paul made
him Lecce's first bishop, and who finally suffered martyrdom at Lecce
during the Neronian persecution. Neither the early Bollandists nor
modern historians have looked kindly on this story. Local persistence,
aided by O.'s great popularity in the Salento once he had been credited
with the region's relatively mild experience of a pestilence that was
severe in other parts of the kingdom, led in the seventeenth century to
official confirmation of the cult of Justus, Orontius, and Fortunatus by
the Sacred Congregation of the Rites. In this revised persona O. is
commemorated liturgically on 26. August.
O. has major patronal festivities this week at Turi (BA), Ostuni (BR),
Campi Salentini (LE), and of course Lecce itself, where his statue gazes
down on one from atop a Roman column (formerly at the harbor of
Brindisi) in the piazza that bears his name:
http://www.baroccolecce.it/photo6.htm
http://tinyurl.com/hvps6
http://tinyurl.com/panvz
And here he is again, above the piazza entrance to Lecce's baroque
cathedral, flanked by Justus and Fortunatus:
http://tinyurl.com/mzhvj
No medieval depictions of O. or medieval buildings dedicated to him
appear to have survived.
Best and a happy Santu Ronzu to all,
John Dillon
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