medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture

Today (2. September) is the feast day of:

Nonnosus (d. ca. 565).  Gregory the Great (_Dial_. 1. 7) tells us at
third hand that N. was prior of a monastery located at the top of Mount
Soracte near Rome who bore with equanimity the harshness of his abbot 
and whose gentle nature often softened through humility said abbot's 
wrath.  He also tells us that N. was a thaumaturge.  When the brothers 
needed space on the mountain for a vegetable garden, N. by his prayers 
displaced from the chosen site a rock so large that fifty teams of oxen 
could not move it.  One another occasion, when N. dropped a glass lamp 
that he had been washing, causing it to shatter, he (fearful of 
abbatial ire) placed all the fragments before the altar and withdrew in 
prayer; returning, he found the lamp to be whole again.  On yet another 
occasion, when the monastery had run out of oil, he had the brothers 
collect what little oil could be pressed from the at this time not very 
rich or numerous fruit of monastery's olive trees and place that in a 
small vessel before the altar: everyone withdrew, N. prayed, called the 
brothers back and instructed them to pour a tiny bit of the oil into 
each of many vessels, all of which on the next day were found to be 
full.

And that's what is known about Nonnosus, the mid-sixth-century prior on 
Mount Soracte, whose virtues and doings are highlighted in the MR for 
today and who has often been referred to as an abbot, though there is 
nothing in Gregory to confirm this.  Gregory observes that the miracles 
of the rock and of the lamp have parallels operated by earlier Fathers, 
Gregory (the Thaumaturge) and Donatus (perhaps D. of Arezzo, if the 
later ascription to him of a parallel miracle is not merely inferred 
from the present passage).  He does not add (because it is so obvious?) 
that the miracle of the oil is paralleled by Jesus' miracle of the 
loaves and the fishes.

N. entered the roster of the saints not from Italy but rather from the 
German-speaking world, where he appears in the later twelfth-century 
_Magnum Legendarium Austriacum_ and in various later sources listing 
him for this day.  By way of contrast, the _Catalogus Sanctorum_ (ca. 
1375) of the Italian Petrus de Natalibus lists N. under saints whose 
feast day is not known.  He is especially venerated at Freising, where 
he is a patron saint and where a twelfth-century Invention of his 
relics was grounded in a tale of a translation, about a century 
earlier, from the monastery to which the friend of N. who informed 
Gregory's informant is said to have belonged.  A more plausible origin 
for this transalpine cult came to light in 1987 with the discovery in 
the Pfarrkirche St. Tiburtius in Molzbichl (Kärnten) in Austria of a 
late antique inscription identifying the burial site of a deacon 
Nonnosus who had died at an extremely advanced age on 2. September 
533.  This development in turn clarified an eleventh-century (ca. 1055) 
addition to the festal calendar of the monastery of St. Emmeram in 
Regensburg listing under this day a feast of Nonnosus, deacon and 
confessor.  Together these data permit the view that the details of 
Gregory's Nonnosus (whose day of death unknown) were at some time 
grafted on to the cult of his Vita-less synonym from Carinthia (whose 
_dies natalis_ is today).

The inscription at Molzbichl is shown here:
http://tinyurl.com/go9cu
A closer but only partial view is here:
http://www.spittal-drau.at/carantana/
For further information see Karl Amon, Karl Heinz Frankl, and Peter G.
Tropper, eds., _Der heilige Nonnosus von Molzbichl_ (Klagenfurt: Verlag 
des Kärntner Landesarchivs, 2001; = _Das Kärntner Landesarchiv_, no. 
27). 

This view of N.'s tomb in the cathedral of Freising:
http://www.heiligenlexikon.de/Fotos/Nonnosus-Grab.jpg
shows a space underneath through which devotees seeking assistance have 
crawled since the late Middle Ages in a ritual called the _reptatio per 
cryptam_.

The monastery on top of Mount Soracte has been dedicated to pope St. 
Sylvester since at least the early eighth century.  These views of the 
site (showing a medieval church that's still in use) may provide some 
visual context for aspects of Gregory's narration:
http://www.romecity.it/Montesoratte02.htm
http://www.romecity.it/Montesoratte03.htm
http://www.romecity.it/Montesoratte04.htm
http://tinyurl.com/kne5t

Elsewhere on the mountain hikers can view a formation called the Sasso 
di San Nonnoso ('St. Nonnosus' Rock'):
http://www.prolocosantoreste.com/NuoviFile/sasso-s.nonnoso.jpg
If you wish to believe it, this could be the very rock that once 
impeded the creation of the brothers' vegetable garden.  

Best,
John Dillon

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