medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture

Today (15. October) is the feast day of:

1) Fortunata, venerated at Patria (d. ca. 304, supposedly). This less well known saint of the Regno has a legendary, tenth-century Passio of Campanian origin by one Aripert (BHL 3081) or, as he was usually called until very recently, Autpert. Adapting matter from Eusebius as well as topoi from various Passiones, this account says that F. was a girl of noble birth from Caesarea in Palestine, where she, together with her brothers Carponius, Evaristus, and Priscian, was martyred after the usual series of failed execution attempts. Sailors brought her body and those of her brothers to Patria (ancient Liternum) on the Campanian coast, where the martyrs were honored with a cult. Although one cannot exclude a genuine translation of relics, the chances are excellent that F., who has often been treated as identical to her homonym in Eusebius, is in origin a local saint of Campania about whom no reliable information has been preserved.

Early medieval martyrologies indicate knowledge of F.'s veneration at Patria at least as early as the seventh century. In Campania her cult is known first from late ninth- and tenth-century writings from Naples: these (including John the Deacon's episcopal chronicle and the aforementioned BHL 3081) tell us that at some time between 768 and 780 bishop Stephen II effected a translation of her remains and those of her brothers from her long since abandoned church at Patria to the monastery of St. Gaudiosus at Naples, where he established in her honor a church and a convent of nuns. The general similarity of this story to doubtful Inventio portions of Campanian translation accounts of about the same date (e.g., those of Sossus from Misenum to Naples or of Matthew the Apostle from who knows where to Capaccio and thence to Salerno) raises questions about the true origin of these remains.

That said, it is clear that a Fortunata was venerated at Naples in the earlier ninth century (a saint of this name occurs under 14. October on that city's Marble Calendar) and it seems reasonable to suppose that she was the one whose putative relics were translated by Stephen II. These were rediscovered in the convent church of San Gaudioso by its abbess in 1561 and shortly thereafter underwent a formal recognition. When that church was destroyed by fire in 1799, among the relics that the nuns were able to save were those of F. and her brothers. These will have gone to the cathedral along with the also saved relics of St. Gaudiosus of Abitina (27. October); the latter are still there today and the former presumably are there as well.
 
Other remains of F. and her bothers are said in an also tenth-century translation account from Rheinau (BHL 3083) to have been found in a Saracen-destroyed Campanian city (so not Naples) in 874 by a German who had accompanied Louis II on his south Italian campaign of the early 870s (this is when he lifted the Muslim siege of Salerno) and to have been transported by him to Reichenau.

Reichenau's cult of Fortunata and her brothers led to a later, localizing version of her Passio, on which see Waltraud Götz, "Der Fortunata-Kult auf der Reichenau: Überlegungen zur Lokalisierung der Passio und zur Datierung des Offiziumstextes", in Walter Pass and Alexander Rausch, eds., _Beiträge zur Musik, Musiktheorie und Liturgie der Abtei Reichenau. Bericht über die Tagung Heiligenkreuz 6.-8. Dezember 1999_ (Tutzing: Schneider, 2001), pp. 127-139. Reichenau's Office for F. is edited by Götz in her _Drei Heiligenoffizien in Reichenauer Überlieferung. Texte und Musik aus dem Nachtragsfaszikel der Handschrift Karlsruhe, BLB Aug. perg. 60_ (Frankfurt: Lang, 2002).

From at least 986 through the end of the Middle Ages there was a rebuilt church dedicated to F. at the Lago di Patria in today's Villa Literno (CE); previously a dependency of Montecassino, from the early fourteenth century onward this was in the possession of the bishop of Aversa. In Naples, F. and her brothers have traditionally been celebrated on 14. October. That is also where they were in the MR prior to its revision of 2001, which latter dispensed with them altogether. Italian Capuchins commemorate F. today, one of the days on which an F. (probably this one) occurs in the (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology.

 
2) Barsen (d. 378). We know about B. (also Barses, Barsos) chiefly from accounts in the ecclesiastical histories of Sozomen and Theodoret. After a period as a solitary in northern Mesopotamia he became bishop of Edessa in 361. B. was a noted healer. His defence of Catholic orthodoxy against Arianism brought him into increasing governmental disfavor and in 373 he was ejected from his see by the emperor Valens and relegated to a coastal island in Phoenicia. There his orthodox teaching drew many disciples whose reports augmented his reputation. In 376 St. Basil the Great sent him two letters of consolation. Valens squelched all this by further exiling B. first to Oxyrhynchus in Upper Egypt and then to a place called Philo, perhaps near the border between Egypt and Libya. B. is reported to have died in March; Baronio entered him in the RM under today in accordance with entries in Greek menaea.
 

3) Severus of Trier (d. later 5th cent.). According to Constantius of Lyon's Vita of St. Germanus of Auxerre (BHL 3453; ca. 480), a bishop Severus accompanied G. on his second trip to Britain. Bede in his _Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum_ (1. 18) identifies S.'s see as that of Trier. The late eighth- or early ninth-century Vita of St. Lupus of Troyes (BHL 5087) makes this Severus Lupus' disciple and says that his preaching in Germania prima qualifies him for the title of its Apostle.


4) Thecla of Kitzingen (d. ca. 790). T. was an Englishwoman who joined her relative St. Leoba in St. Boniface's missionary enterprise in Germany and whose recollections, passed down to a monk in Germany, became part of Rudolf of Fulda's source material for his Vita of L. Like Leoba, she may previously have been a nun at Wimborne (today's Wimborne Minster in Dorset). We first hear of her at today's Tauberbischofsheim in northeastern Baden-Württemberg, where Leoba was abbess at a monastery that functioned as a training center for English missionaries. Later she went on to be abbess of the relatively nearby women's monasteries at Kitzingen and Ochsenfurt in today's Unterfranken in Bavaria. She is one of the three women addressees of a not very informative letter from Boniface (_Ep._ 67), encouraging them and asking for their prayers.

T. died at Kitzingen. Her relics were profaned and scattered during the Peasants' War of 1524-25.

After centuries of occupation and rebuilding, followed by heavy bombing in 1943, there's not much left of medieval Kitzingen. Ochsenfurt, on the other hand, though it never became a university town as did its namesake in England (and T. was of course never in orders, so we can't call her a clerk of Oxenford), does have some surviving later medieval buildings of interest. Herewith a few views of its Pfarrkirche St. Andreas (consecrated in 1288; statues from 1340 onward):
Exterior:
http://www.st-andreas-ochsenfurt.de/_borders/top.ht1.jpg
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1890/2294/1600/35.jpg
http://hvanilla.sakura.ne.jp/ochsenfurt/image/ochsenurt20.jpg
Interior:
http://hvanilla.sakura.ne.jp/ochsenfurt/image/ochsenurt5.jpg
http://hvanilla.sakura.ne.jp/ochsenfurt/image/ochsenurt11.jpg
http://hvanilla.sakura.ne.jp/ochsenfurt/image/ochsenurt13.jpg
http://hvanilla.sakura.ne.jp/ochsenfurt/image/ochsenurt10.jpg
Statue of St. Nicholas by Tilman Riemenschneider (ca. 1460-1531):
http://hvanilla.sakura.ne.jp/ochsenfurt/image/ochsenurt21.jpg
http://hvanilla.sakura.ne.jp/ochsenfurt/image/ochsenurt22.jpg

And three views of the nearby Michaelskapelle (1400):
http://tinyurl.com/yqecbh
http://hvanilla.sakura.ne.jp/ochsenfurt/image/ochsenurt3.jpg
http://hvanilla.sakura.ne.jp/ochsenfurt/image/ochsenurt4.jpg

Wimborne Minster is twinned with Ochsenfurt. Herewith an illustrated, English-language account of Wimborne Minster church (chiefly twelfth-century):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wimborne_Minster_(church)
Other views:
Exterior:
http://www.imagesofdorset.org.uk/Dorset/015/01.htm
http://tinyurl.com/2pfssf
http://www.imagesofdorset.org.uk/Dorset/015/03.htm
http://www.imagesofdorset.org.uk/Dorset/015/04.htm
Interior:
http://tinyurl.com/ylhtvdo
http://tinyurl.com/ygo4las


5) Gonzalo of Lagos (Bl.; d. 1422). Born to a family of fishermen in Lagos (Faro) in Portugal's Algarve, G. (in Portuguese: Gonçalo da Lagos) entered religion as an Augustinian Hermit at his order's great house of St. Vincent on the outskirts of Lisbon when he was about twenty. A person of exceptionally modest demeanor, he became an expert theologian but declined to use academic titles. G. is said to have been a good preacher and to have enjoyed teaching the faith to the unlearned, whether children or adults. A skilled calligrapher, miniaturist, and composer of sacred song, he served at several Augustinian monasteries in Portugal and rose to be prior at the convento da Graça in Torres Vedras, not far from Lisbon. G. was held in great affection while he was alive. After his death his cult was immediate. Papal confirmation of it came in 1788 at the level of _beatus_. In Portugal G. is often referred to as Sao Gonçalo da Lagos.

Best,
John Dillon
(Fortunata revised from an older post; Barsen and Severus of Trier reprised, and Thecla of Kitzingen lightly revised, from last year's post)

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