View source for Nonnosus

{{for|the Byzantine diplomat and historian|Nonnosus (historian)}}
{{Infobox saint
|name= Saint Nonnosus
|birth_date=
|death_date= 560?
|feast_day= September 2
|venerated_in= [[Roman Catholic Church]]<br>[[Eastern Orthodox Church]]
|image= Thierhaupten St. Peter und Paul Nonnosus 607.JPG
|imagesize=
|caption= Nonnosus statue, [[Thierhaupten Abbey]]
|birth_place= Italy?
|death_place= Monte Soratte?
|titles=
|beatified_date=
|beatified_place=
|beatified_by=
|canonized_date=
|canonized_place=
|canonized_by=
|attributes=oil lamp or hanging lamp ; rock;<ref name="heiligen">{{cite web|url= http://www.heiligenlexikon.de/BiographienN/Nonnosus.htm|title=Nonnosus|date=n.d.|publisher=Ökumenisches Heiligenlexikon|accessdate=August 23, 2008}}</ref> depicted sometimes as a Benedictine monk (in black habit) or as an abbot with a staff or as a deacon wearing a [[dalmatic]]<ref name="Götz">{{cite web|url= http://www.heiligenlexikon.de/BiographienN/Nonnosus.htm|last=Götz|first=Roland|title=Nonnosus|date=n.d.|publisher=Erzbistum München and Freising|accessdate=August 23, 2008}}</ref>
|patronage=Freising (co-patron);<ref name="heiligen"/> [[Castel Sant'Elia]]; dioceses of [[Sutri]] and [[Nepi]]; invoked in Germany against diseases of the kidneys;<ref name="Butler"/> invoked against physical defects, back pains, and school-related students' crises<ref name="heiligen"/><ref name="Götz"/>
|major_shrine= Freising; Bamberg; Monte Soratte
|suppressed_date=
|issues=
}}
'''Saint Nonnosus''' ({{circa}} 500 – 560 AD), also ''Nonosius'', was a [[Prior (ecclesiastical)|prior]] at the San Silvestre monastery on [[Monte Soratte]] north of [[Rome]] and later a monk at [[Castel Sant'Elia|Suppentonia]], near [[Civita Castellana]]. He was a contemporary of Saint [[Benedict of Nursia]].<ref name="Götz"/>  [[Alban Butler]] has written that “so little information has survived about Nonnosus that he is not especially interesting in himself.”<ref name="Butler">Alban Butler, David Hugh Farmer, Paul Burns, ''Butler's Lives of the Saints'' (Liturgical Press, 1995), 10.</ref>  His name does not appear in any ancient martyrology.<ref name="Butler"/>
A [[deacon]] Nonnosus is mentioned in a 12th-century collection of legends from [[Carinthia (state)|Carinthia]], [[Austria]].<ref name="Butler"/>   His cult was strong in [[Bavaria]],<ref name="Butler"/> where relics are kept in the crypt of [[Freising Cathedral]]. Veneration of Nonnosus was also established at Monte Soratte in the 1650s, due to the efforts of Andrea di San Bonaventura, a [[Cistercian]] monk, and in 1661 some of his relics returned to Monte Soratte and Nonnosus' cult spread across central [[Italy]].<ref name="Butler"/> It is highly likely that the legends of two different persons had been merged into one by then.
==Sources==
The sole source on Nonnosus' life is [[Pope Gregory I]] (r. 590-604), who wrote about Saint Nonnosus after being asked by some friends to create a compendium of miracle stories associated with Italian saints.<ref name="Butler"/>  Maximian, [[bishop of Syracuse]], provided Gregory with information about Nonnosus, after Gregory had forgotten the details of the stories associated with Nonnosus -details in turn acquired from Laurio, an old monk of the monastery of Suppentonia.  Laurio had been a friend of Nonnosus while the two lived the monastic life there under the Abbot St. [[Anastasius of Suppentonia]].<ref name="Butler"/> According to Gregory, Nonnosus was a particularly good-natured man and was buried at Monte Soratte.<ref name="Butler"/>
[[File:Nonnosus Inschrift Molzbichl 01.JPG|thumb|left|Inscription on the tombstone associated with Nonnosus, Molzbichl Church]]
A re-interpretation for the origins of Nonnosus was posited by archaeological excavations at the village of Molzbichl, near [[Spittal an der Drau]] in Carinthia.<ref name="Götz"/>  There, a tombstone carries an early Christian inscription plate that reads: “Here rests the servant of Christ, Nonnosus, deacon, who lived more or less for 103 years.  He died on September 2 at this place died on July 20...three years after the consulate of the illustrious men Lampadius and Orestes [i.e. in 533].”<ref name="Götz"/> The plate may have been translated to the church from the nearby ancient city of ''[[Teurnia]]'' (at present-day St. Peter in Holz in [[Lendorf]]), where Nonnosus could have served as a deacon in the troubled border area near the [[Danube]].<ref name="Götz"/> The area of St. Peter in Holz was, since the days of Emperor [[Arnulf of Carinthia|Arnulf]], under the jurisdiction of the [[Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Munich and Freising|bishops of Freising]], so relics could have been transferred to Freising from there.<ref name="Götz"/>
==Legends==
Miracles told of Nonnosus, as recorded by St. Gregory, state that Nonnosus removed an enormous rock that had occupied land on which he wanted to grow [[cabbage]] –fifty pairs of oxen had not been able to move it; that he miraculously restored a glass lamp that had been shattered against the floor;<ref>A similar miracle is told of [[Saint Donatus of Arezzo]]</ref> and that he completely filled several receptacles with [[olive oil]] after a particularly bad harvest for the olive crop.<ref name="Butler"/>  The legends told of him tell of his ability to calm his abbot, who was a despotic and irascible man.<ref name="Butler"/>
==Veneration==
When Monte Soratte was attacked by [[Muslim]] forces at the end of the 9th century, Nonnosus’ relics were taken to Suppentonia, and then, around 1050, to [[Freising]] in Bavaria.<ref name="Butler"/>  This occurred during the episcopate of Bishop [[Nitker]] of Freising (r. 1039 -1052).<ref name="Götz"/> A fire damaged the cathedral of Freising in 1159, and in 1161, while the foundations of the church were being dug, remains of three people were discovered, identified as the relics of Nonnosus, and two other saints: Alexander and Justin.<ref name="Götz"/><ref name="Butler"/>  The relics were reburied in the crypt of the cathedral, after being [[translation (relics)|translated]] there by [[Bishops of Freising and Archbishops of Munich and Freising|Bishop Albert I of Freising]] (1158–1184) in the presence of Archbishop [[Eberhard of Salzburg]].<ref name="Götz"/>
In 1708, they were rediscovered again when a brick wall collapsed, but no one could remember their origin.<ref name="Butler"/> Nevertheless, the Freising prince-bishop Johann Franz von Eckher (1696–1727) identified them as belonging to Nonnosus and buried the relics in 1709 with great pomp in the crypt again, and the cathedral became a popular pilgrimage site.<ref name="Götz"/><ref name="Butler"/> Nonnosus' head was taken to [[Bamberg]] at an uncertain date.<ref name="Butler"/>
Churches dedicated to Nonnosus stand not only in Molzbichl and St. Peter in Holz, but also in [[Berg im Drautal]], [[Hermagor-Pressegger See|Hermagor]], and [[Sappada]] (''Pladen'') in Italy. In Germany, Nonnosus was prayed to by sufferers from diseases of the [[kidneys]].<ref name="Butler"/>  At Freising, these sufferers performed a ritual that involved crawling three times around Nonnosus' sarcophagus on all fours, while praying for the saint’s help, a ritual called the ''reptatio per cryptam'' or ''Durchschlüpfsbrauch''.<ref name="Butler"/>
== References ==
{{Reflist}}
==External links==
{{Commons category|Saint Nonnosus}}
*{{in lang|de}} [http://www.heiligenlexikon.de/BiographienN/Nonnosus.htm Nonnosus]
*{{in lang|de}} [https://web.archive.org/web/20081019190228/http://www.erzbistum-muenchen.de/EMF112/EMF011117.asp Heiliger Nonnosus]
*{{in lang|it}} [http://www.santiebeati.it/dettaglio/68750 San Nonnoso sul Monte Soratte]
*{{BBKL|n/nonnosus|band=21|autor=Ekkart Sauser|artikel=Nonnosus: hl. Benediktinerabt|spalte=1068}}
{{Authority control}}
[[Category:Italian saints]]
[[Category:Christianity in Bavaria]]