medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (27. September) is the feast day of:
1) Hiltrude of Liessies (d. ca. 790). Along with her brother Guntrand, H. (also Hiltrudis, Hiltrud) was one of the saints of the several times rebuilt abbey of Liessies in what is now France's _département du Nord_. According to her undated Vita (BHL 3953), she was a daughter of the abbey's founder, refused t5o marry, and lived at the abbey as a holy virgin. The abbey was renewed as a Benedictine house in the eleventh century and lasted until the 1790s. H.'s chapel at there survives as today's église de Sainte Hiltrude at Liessies.
2) Deodatus (?), venerated at Sora. Today's perfectly obscure saint from the Regno is in fact venerated rather well upstream from Sora (FR) in Lazio, but in the same diocese, at San Giovanni Valle Roveto, a _frazione_ of today's San Vincenzo Valle Roveto (AQ) in Abruzzo located in Italy's central Appennines near the headwaters of the river Liri. The question mark in the parenthesis after D.'s name could easily be multiplied. Not only are his approximate dates unknown but so also are virtually everything else about him apart from his name, his veneration at this locale, and evidence (noted below) indicating that his cult there is at least late medieval in origin.
In 1617 the then bishop of Sora, Girolamo Giovannelli, discovered in the church of San Giovanni in the aforementioned Valle Roveto community of the same name an altar inscribed in "Gothic letters" to a Deodatus and bearing in relief a depiction of the dedicatee (since dated to the fourteenth century). The latter, Giovannelli learned, was from time immemorial (_a tempore immemorabili_) celebrated annually on 27. September with a mass from the common of confessors with the collect for an abbot.
The altar, which according to Giovannelli had not been been mentioned in accounts of previous episcopal visitations, had had a _fenestella_ cut into it, suggesting that the body of a saint might be present. The altar was removed and, sure enough, human remains were found in a largely disintegrated burial case tucked away down below. A formal recognition followed and Giovannelli had a new chapel constructed in the church (now San Giovanni Vecchio) to house a new altar that he then had built for D. On 4. June 1618 Giovannelli, who had procured a papal indulgence for those present at this event, translated D. (now enclosed within a suitably dressed effigy) to his new resting place above this altar. At the same time, he saw to it that the portion of the old altar bearing D.'s inscription and relief was mounted there in a visible location.
D.'s display coffin and effigy reliquary are still present at San Giovanni Valle Roveto; a view of them is here:
http://tinyurl.com/85bwu
D. has yet to grace the pages of the RM.
The "Santi Beati" website carries an unattributed account of D. that identifies him with the abbot of Montecassino whom prince Sicard of Benevento deposed in 834 in order to get his hands on the abbey's treasury and who died imprisoned in Benevento on 9. October of the same year:
http://www.santiebeati.it/search/jump.cgi?ID=91167
Both this identification and the assertion that Montecassino's abbot St. Bertharius (d. 883) hid D.'s body at San Giovanni Valle Roveto in order to protect it from Muslim raiders are undocumented speculation.
Best,
John Dillon
(Deodatus venerated at Sora lightly revised from last year's post)
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