medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
According to his twelfth-century Vita et Miracula (BHL 4919-4920), Lidanus (d. 1118) was born at a place called Antena, now Civita d'Antino (AQ) in Abruzzo. The bearer of an unusual name (accented on the first syllable since at least the sixteenth century and thought by some to be a version of Lygdamus), as a young man he founded from Montecassino a monastery on land he had just inherited near Sezze (ancient Setia) in southern Lazio. Sezze is situated in the Monti Lepini at the former eastern edge of the Pontine Marshes; Lidanus' monastery, dedicated to St. Cecilia (said to have been his mother's name saint), included marshy territory. The Vita (whose author calls himself Dionysius) tells us that Lidanus was greatly annoyed by the constant confused noise of the area's numerous little frogs and that, smiting the marsh with his staff, he admonished them to be silent and to cease disturbing a man of God. Which, not surprisingly, they did: the miracle was that they stayed silent. According to Dionysius, not a peep has been heard out of them since.
Still according to his Vita, Lidanus lived at his monastery for seventy-two years (if we suppose that he was eighteen when he founded the monastery, that would give him a life span of four score years and ten) and was buried in its church. His putative remains were later translated to Sezze proper and interred in its cathedral, where they remain today. Lidanus' cult was confirmed papally by Leo X. One of Sezze's patron saints, he lives on in the names of many of his present-day _concittadini_. Today is his feast day in Sezze and in Civita d'Antino and his day of commemoration in the Roman Martyrology.
Lidanus as depicted in his oldest surviving image, on a cover of a fourteenth-century manuscript in the capitular archive at Sezze containing his revised Vita et Miracula by John, bp. of Sezze (BHL 4921):
http://tinyurl.com/n2te9y
Lidanus' monastery was situated at a place called _ad Tres Arcus_ ("At the Three Arches"). Just outside Sezze there is a row of Roman-period arches named after him. Herewith some views of the Archi di San Lidano:
http://www.sezzeweb.it/images/dekstop/archi1024.jpg
http://www.setino.it/inchiesta07-b.htm
Best,
John Dillon
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