medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture

Honoratus of Fondi (d. earlier 6th cent.?). This monastic founder is the subject of Book 1, Chapter 1, of the _Dialogues_ of pope St. Gregory the Great. According to Gregory, he was the son of peasants working on an estate somewhere in the mountains of Samnium. Already very ascetic in his youth, he managed to irritate his parents by refusing to eat meat at a feast that they had prepared for their neighbors. The parents scoffed at Honoratus and asked if perhaps they should have a fish -- a foodstuff of which they had heard but which they themselves had not experienced -- brought to him in the mountains. Whereupon the young saint, fetching water for the feast from a spring, scooped up in his bucket a fish along with the water and brought it back, dumping it out when he emptied the bucket. The fish sufficed to feed Honoratus for the entire day.

Later (still according to Gregory) Honoratus founded a monastery at what now is Fondi (LT) in southern Lazio, became its abbot, and was exemplary in keeping his conversation to a minimum. One day a huge rock on an adjacent overhanging cliff broke free, threatening both the destruction of the monastery and the death of the brothers. Calling upon Christ, Honoratus stopped the rock in its course by making a sign of the Cross with his outstretched right hand; according to Gregory's informant, the rock can still be seen on the cliffside giving the appearance of being about to fall. Thus far Gregory.

The next chapter in Gregory's _Dialogues_ concerns a later head of the same monastery, St. Libertinus of Fondi, whose dating by Gregory to the Gothic War (535-554) provides a _terminus ante_ for Honoratus' death. By the early twelfth century it was believed that a monastery at Fondi honoring St. Magnus "of Trani" was the one founded by Honoratus and that Honoratus had brought Magnus' body there (so the Vita of St. Peter of Anagni and the separate account of Magnus' translation from Fondi to Veroli and thence to Anagni). An undated legendary Vita of Honoratus (BHL 3980b; earliest witness is probably fifteenth-century) from Fondi relates how his body, along with those of Sts. Paternus and Libertinus, was translated from his monastery to Fondi's cathedral during a pestilence that ceased miraculously once this pious operation had been completed (local historians have dated the pestilence, and thus the translation, to 1215).

Since at least the later Middle Ages Honoratus has been Fondi's principal patron saint and the name saint of numerous members of its later medieval comital family, a branch of the Gaetani (Caetani), notably including both Onorato I, count of Fondi and Traetto in the later fourteenth century and his descendant Onorato II, who for most of the later fifteenth century was logothete and protonotary of the mostly mainland kingdom of Sicily (_vulgo_, kingdom of Naples) and thus also a member of the latter's Sacro Regio Consilio. 16. January is Honoratus' day of commemoration in the RM. At Fondi he has long been chiefly celebrated on his patronal feast of 10. October.

Prior to Italian unification Fondi (which has been in Lazio only since 1927) was the first real town encountered by many travelers headed from either Velletri or Terracina towards Naples once they had crossed the border from the papal state. It was here, relatively close to Rome but in an Angevin-ruled polity, that in 1378 French cardinals unhappy with the recently consecrated pope Urban VI met in what was then the local cathedral and, hosted by count Onorato I, elected in his stead Robert of Geneva, cardinal priest of the Twelve Apostles. Taking up residence in Avignon and reigning from there as Clement VII, Robert commissioned the book of prayers that is now Avignon, Bibliothèque-Médiathèque Municipale Ceccano, ms. 6733 and that crossed the horizon of this honourable list only a few days ago in connection with images of St. Hilary of Poitiers. Some know him better as the first pope of the Avignon obedience during the Great Western Schism.

An exterior view of Fondi's much rebuilt, originally twelfth-century ex-cattedrale di San Pietro Apostolo:
http://tinyurl.com/4w43fx6
Two Italian-language accounts of this church:
http://www.santuariodellacivita.it/s_pietro_fondi.htm
http://www.sanpietroapostolofondi.com/la-chiesa/profilo-storico.html
Further views are here (starting with the cosmatesque throne):
http://www.laziosud.net/litorale/fondi.html
Minutes 4:55 to 11:47 of this half-hour Tv2000 program on Fondi from June 2014 offer a very informative tour of the church, clearly delivered and showing medieval decor not widely reproduced elsewhere:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=33OVYC-afew
That program's later segments on the holdings of the local historical museum (incl. an early Christian sarcophagus and various later pieces of religious art) and on Fondi's also originally medieval chiesa di San Francesco are also worth watching. 

Honoratus of Fondi (at left, holding Fondi's baronial castle) as depicted by Cristoforo Scacco in a late fifteenth-century triptych of the Annunciation with Saints in the ex-cathedral's cappella Caetani:
http://www.atlantedellarteitaliana.it/immagine/00020/13801OP2332AU21954.jpg

Best,
John Dillon
(an older post revised)

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