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medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture

Metro (also Metron and Metronus; d. 8th or early 9th cent.?) is a saint of Verona traditionally venerated there and later in Germany as well.  According to Rather of Verona's _Invectiva de translatione Metronis_ (two versions: BHL 5942, 5943), written in 962, Metro was a repentant sinner who a) chained himself to a great stone in front of the cathedral, b) proclaimed that he wished to suffer until his sins were fully expiated, c) threw the key to his chain into a branch of the Adige that flowed near the spot, and d), exposed to the elements, endured all sorts of hardships for seven years until the key was found in the belly of a fish by two fishermen who brought it to the bishop.  The bishop, recognizing God's will, released Metro from his chain, had him washed and decently dressed, and admitted him to Communion.  Metro died soon thereafter; miracles at his grave proclaimed his sanctity.  Rather concludes by noting that, though Metro's remains had been found to be missing on 27. January 962, the populace still venerates him at his empty tomb.

The church of Verona has continued to venerate Metro, whom since at least the eleventh century it has considered a martyr and whose presumed remains were quickly returned or replaced (they spent the rest of the Middle Ages in the church of San Vitale and are now in Santa Maria del Paradiso).  His  local feast on this day and his commemoration today in the Roman Martyrology follow an early Veronese practice re-established in 1961.

From at least the eleventh century until the Reformation Metro was also venerated at Gernrode, now a _Stadtteil_ of  Quedlinburg in Sachsen-Anhalt, where in ca. 1300 it was said that the west choir of the Stiftskirche St. Cyriakus held relics of St. Metro(nus) and where celebrations of his translation are recorded in the abbey's later fifteenth-century Book of Vigils and in an Office added by hand to a late fifteenth-century breviary for the Use of the abbey.  A high-ranking Ottonian noble named Gero, the founder of the abbey (later, canonry) at what became Gernrode, is thought to have been in Italy in the early 960s and it is supposed that it was he who arranged for the translation to his foundation of bone relics believed to be Metro's.  But whereas Gero's donation to the abbey, apparently in 963, of an arm relic of St. Cyriacus of Rome obtained from the pope is reasonably well established (though the abbey's church was dedicated to the BVM and to St. Peter, the presence of the relic caused the abbey itself to become known as that of St. Cyriacus), evidence for his presumed role in Metro's translation to Gernrode is merely circumstantial.

As far as I have been able to determine, Metro is not officially a patron of urban railway systems (subterranean or otherwise).


Some period-pertinent images of St. Metro:

a) as portrayed in a probably eleventh-century statue in the seemingly late eleventh- or early twelfth-century Holy Sepulcher in the Stiftskirche St. Cyriakus in Gernrode:
http://tinyurl.com/h284kax
Detail view:
http://www.wga.hu/html_m/m/master/zunk_ge/zunk_ge6/07head.html

b) as depicted (at center, between Sts. Dominic of Caleruega and Anthony of Padua) by Liberale da Verona in a late fifteenth- or earlier sixteenth-century panel painting (betw. ca. 1490 and ca. 1526) over Metro's altar in Verona's chiesa di Santa Maria del Paradison (smallish, grayscale view):
http://catalogo.fondazionezeri.unibo.it/foto/80000/56800/56623.jpg

c) as portrayed in relief (at right; at left, with a demon: St. Cyriac) on the early sixteenth-century sarcophagus of margrave Gero (1519) in the Stiftskirche St. Cyriakus in Gernrode:
http://tinyurl.com/jgktf5l
Detail view:
http://www.stift-gernrode.uni-goettingen.de/Metro.png

Best,
John Dillon
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