St Florentius (5th June)

St Florentius was believed to have been an accomplished orator and philosopher in Rome in the 3rd century.  He acted as an advisor to the Emperor Decius, not least on the persecution of Christians.  However, when he saw their stoicism in the face of martyrdom, he consulted his teacher Julian about the tenets of their faith. 

These studies led Florentius and Julian to convert to Christianity and they were baptised in ca. 250 with their companions Cyriac, Marcellinus and Faustinus.  They then gave all their possessions to the poor. 

The Emperor Decius decided that they must be executed, but to avoid scandal in Rome he sent them to Perugia for execution.  Their bodies were thrown into the Tiber but Decentius, Bishop of Perugia recovered them and buried them in a church dedicated to the Virgin.  Local tradition identifies this as Santa Maria di Monterone, which was later rebuilt as the cemetery church of Santa Maria delle Grazie (see detour II of Walk VI).  This church was recorded in 1145 as dependent upon San Fiorenzo (which in turn was dependent upon the Camaldolesian Abbazia di San Salvatore di Monte Acuto).  At some point, the relics of St florentius seem to have been translated from Santa Maria di Monterone to San Fiorenzo (presumably for greater safety).  Both churches passed to the Cistercians in 1234.

In 1312, the civic statutes imposed the local celebration of the feast of St Florentius in an effort to revive his cult.  In 1348, at the height of the Black Death, the Cistercians of San Fiorenzo found the headless body of St Florentius beneath the high altar paraded it through the city.  St Florentius became an important plague saint in Perugia from this point: a similar procession was held, for example, during the plague of 1400.

In 1444, Pope Eugenius IV removed the Cistercians from San Fiorenzo and gave the complex to the Servite Observants.  It seems that the cult of St Florentius as a plague saint had declined by this time, perhaps overtaken by the cults that had grown up around processional banners such as:

  • the Gonfalone di Santa Maria della Pace (1464), which the Commune had commissioned during the outbreak of plague and housed at San Francesco al Prato; and

  • the Gonfalone di Santa Maria Nuova (1471), which the Confraternita di San Benedetto commissioned for their altar in Santa Maria Nuova. 

The Servites therefore commissioned the Gonfalone di San Fiorenzo (see below) during an outbreak of plague in 1476, and housed it in a chapel in their church that belonged to the Confraternita di SS Simone e Fiorenzo.

Despite his good work against the plague, St Florentius did not become a patron saint of Perugia until 1634.