Saints of Perugia

The only surviving early reference to the Christianisation of Perugia is in the Hieronymian Martyrology (5th century), which names the city as the place of execution of St Constantius.  Later unreliable legends allege that St Constantius had been the city's first (or perhaps second) bishop in the reign of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius (161 - 80 AD).  However, the earliest securely documented bishop of Perugia is Maximilian (recorded in 499). 

The next documented bishop of the city is St Herculanus (died ca. 542).  His later status as the principal patron saint of Perugia is clear from the fact that, from at least the early 13th century, subject cities were required to send gifts on his feast day.  Moreover, the arrangements for the feast were covered in detail in  the city statutes of 1279 (the earliest to survive).

These statutes mention only one other important feast, that of St Stephen the Protomartyr, who had been stoned to death in Jerusalem soon after the Crucifixion.  St Stephen was invoked as the protector of Perugia from hail and plague.  The Perugian church dedicated to him, San Stefano del Castellare, seems to have been important from an early date: according to a late tadition, Bishop Rugerio translated the relics of St Herculanus from San Pietro to this church in 936, and they remaind there until 966 (see below).  St Stephen became particularly important in Perugia in 1304, when Pope Benedict XI granted plenary indulgences to those visiting San Stefano del Castellare on 3rd August, the date of the feast celebrating the rediscovery of the relics of St Stephen in Jerusalem in the 5th century.  This indulgence attracted pilgrims to the city from Assisi, where the Portiuncula Indulgence was available each 2nd August.  Nevertheless, St Stephen was not formally a patron saint of the city.

The second patron saint seems to have been the Roman martyr, St Lawrence, to whom the Duomo of Perugia was dedicated.  According to a late tradition, Bishop Onesto dedicated the first church on this site to St Lawrence in 965, and translated the relics of St Herculanus to it a year later.  St Lawrence appears as a pendant to St Herculanus on the Fontana Maggiore (1278), which suggests that he was regarded as a patron of the city at least by this time, despite the fact that he was not mentioned in the statutes of 1279. 

St Constantius was adopted as the third patron saint in 1310, and the late elaborations of legend might well date to this period.  Figures of all three patron saints, SS Herculanus, Lawrence and Constantius, appear above the side door (ca. 1325) of the Palazzo dei Priori. 

St Louis of Toulouse was designated as the city's fourth patron saint in 1325, eight years after his canonisation.  This was done for political reasons since St Louis was the brother of King Robert of Naples, the leader of the Guelf alliance to which Perugia belonged.  The priors commissioned Benedetto Bonfigli to execute an imortant series of frescoes (1454-61) of scenes from the life of St Louis of Toulouse for their new Cappella dei Priori.

The statutes of 1343, which superceded those of 1279, mentioned the feasts of SS Herculanus, Constantius, Louis of Toulouse and Stephen (along with those of the Assumption of the Virgin and the Ascension of Christ), but once again, the feast of St Lawrence is oddly omitted.

[St Florentius]

["St" Bevignate]

["St" Manno"]

[Blessed Giles]

[Blessed Paolino Bigazzini]

[Blessed Colomba]

[St Bernardino of Siena]

Read more:

D. Webb, "Patrons and Defenders", London (1996).  Pages 101 - 3 deal with the case of Perugia.