medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
19. August is also the feast day of:
Magnus "of Trani" (?). This less well known saint of the Regno, also known as M. of Fondi and M. of Anagni, is widely venerated in southern and central Italy. The (pseudo)-Hieronymian martyrology enters him under today as a martyr of Fabreteria, now generally understood to be Fabreteria Vetus or today's Ceccano (FR) in southern Lazio, the general region in which his cult appears to have originated.
M. (in Italian toponyms, Magno and, by metathesis, Mango) has an undated but relatively late Passio (many versions: BHL 5167-5172b) that makes him a native of Apulia who succeeded St. Redemptus of Trani as bishop of that city and who was famous for miracles. Still according to the Passio, he was arrested during a great persecution and was brought to a temple to make sacrifice, where at his entry all the idols were broken, the soldiers were blinded, and he was liberated by an angel. M. then went to Naples, where he was received by St. Januarius (traditionally a martyr bishop of Benevento not ordinarily thought of as having been in Naples in his lifetime), went to Rome on pilgrimage, performed miracles, and was martyred on this day during the Decian and Valerianic persecution (seen in this account as a unity) at a place that some additions to the Passio specify as today's Fondi (LT) in southern Lazio.
Fondi's monastery of St. Magnus is of uncertain age; legendarily, it was founded by the town's sixth-century bishop St. Honoratus to honor M., whose remains H. is said to have brought there. When in the later eleventh century St. Peter of Agnani (P. of Salerno; 3. August) was building his town's then new cathedral, he devoted the main altar of the crypt to M., who according to local legend (already present in Peter's closely posthumous Vita and more fully recorded in a translation account, BHL 5175) had been translated first from Fondi to Veroli and later from Veroli to Anagni for safekeeping during a period of Muslim incursions. The diocese of Veroli is recorded from the late tenth century as having had a church dedicated to M. at today's Ceprano (FR).
M.'s altar in the crypt at Anagni:
http://tinyurl.com/2f9x9pa
A twelfth-century fresco in that crypt depicts M.'s laying to rest at Fondi (this is the first in a sequence depicting M.'s translation to Anagni):
http://tinyurl.com/5lrjb3
And here's an early thirteenth-century fresco in the same crypt, depicting one of M.'s miracles:
http://santiebeati.it/immagini/Original/93374/93374D.JPG
M. as depicted in the later twelfth-century mosaics of the Cappella Palatina in Palermo:
http://www.pbase.com/lucasarah/image/72040916
St. Peter's at the Vatican has a head reliquary of M. that is said to have come to it from the nearby, originally twelfth-century church of Santi Michele and Magno in Borgo. Other medieval dedications to M. are recorded from Apulia and from formerly Lucanian areas of southern Campania northwards to Tuscany and Emilia.
Best again,
John Dillon
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