medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (26. July) is also the feast day, at Malcesine (VR) in the Veneto and perhaps at other locales on the upper portion of Lake Garda, of Malcesine's patron saints, Benignus and Carus (d. early 9th cent., supposedly).
The likelihood is very great that B. and C. are fictional. They are _dramatis personae_ in accounts of the legendary ninth-century translation 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 Calò (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 C. his disciple (but according to Calò, 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
At vol. 2 (1964), pp. 365-67, of the multiply authored history _Verona e il suo territorio_ (Verona: Istituto per gli studi veronesi, 1960-2003) Mario Carrara discusses the _Historia translationis Sancti Zenonis_ and prints from it extracts dealing with B. and C. 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 -- an assertion that, if accepted, would obviate any need for a papal canonization. Malcesine, by the way, had entered the della Scala dominions only 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 its new high altar in 1769.
In Malcesine's rural locality of Cassone there is, at 834 metres above sea level, a small rebuilt church of 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 that church is a grotto called the Hermitage of Saints Benignus and Carus (a name also used unofficially for the church above it):
http://www.larenadomila.it/barbarani/museo/casson/eremo_interno.jpg
Pilgrimages to this site, concluding with a Mass celebrated there, take place several times each year. One of these, on 27. July (the day following the saints' patronalia and their liturgical celebration in Santo Stefano), honors B. and C. An evocative, Italian-language description of the surroundings is here:
http://tinyurl.com/59msph
B. and C. have never graced the pages of the RM.
Best,
John Dillon
(an older post lightly revised)
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