medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (29. October) is, in Taunusstein-Bleidenstadt (Rheingau-Taunus-Kreis)
in Hessen as well as elsewhere in Germany, the feast day of:
Ferrutius of Mainz (d. ca. 304, supposedly). We know nothing of F.
prior to the later eighth century, when, it is said, the recently
celebrated archbishop St. Lull of Mainz (d. 786) translated the saint's
remains from their resting place at a locale at Mainz known as
'Castellum' (probably today's Mainz-Kastell, across the Rhine from Mainz
proper) to a collegiate church at Bleidenstadt and Riculf the deacon
(subsequently archbishop of Mainz, 787-813) provided his tomb with a
sepulchral inscription in fluent dacytlic hexameters. This inscription,
which survived at least into the early modern period when the Jesuit
historian Nicolaus Serarius published a text of it in his _Moguntiacarum
rerum libri V_ (Mainz, 1604), informed its readers that F. had exchanged
military service for an altar (had he become a priest?) and that for
this he had suffered a grievous martyrdom, being chained in a jail cell
for six months until he finally died from abuse. A priest named
Eugenius and someone else whose name is given as Barger buried him.
Since at least the later ninth century, when the historian Meginhard of
Fulda wrote for community at Bleidenstadt a Passio of F. (BHL 2914)
based on the inscription, it has been conjectured that F. was a Roman
soldier martyred during a persecution (though of course the inscription
does not rule out his merely having been a veteran). Rabanus Maurus'
two epigrams (_Carmina de diversis_, CVI and CVII) for the tomb at
Bleidenstadt show F.'s cult to have been important within the
archdiocese of Mainz from Lull's day onward but add nothing to our
knowledge of the saint himself.
In 1495 the foundation at Bleidenstadt ceased to be monastic and became
instead a Ritterstift (a house for noble pensioners). F. remained its
patron and was represented iconographically as a knight in armor with a
sword and a lance; the latter attributes though not F. himself survive
in the arms of Berghausen (Rhein-Lahn-Kreis), a former possession of
Bleidenstadt in the nearby Nassau section of today's Rheinland-Pfalz.
During the Thirty Years' War F.'s remains were removed (1631) from
Bleidenstadt for safekeeping to Mainz, where they disappeared during
the French occupation in 1792/93. Also in the Thirty Years' War
Bleidenstadt's church dedicated to F. was seriously damaged by fire
(1637). Rebuilt in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries,
it preserves portions of the old "romanesque" church in the choir and in
the belltower. Some exterior views:
http://www.taunusstein.de/uploads/pics/bleidenstadt2.jpg
http://www.taunusstein.de/uploads/pics/bleidenstadt.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/yyvcf4
Medievally, F. was celebrated in the archdiocese of Mainz on 28.
October. He remains listed for that day in the RM. The website of his
church at Bleidenstadt (now in the diocese of Limburg, as is also
Mainz-Kastell, F.'s presumed place of martyrdom) shows him as celebrated
today, as do several other German-language Roman Catholic sites.
Best,
John Dillon
(last year's post lightly revised)
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