Afra of Augsburg

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Afra of Augsburg
Inactive leaf with picture of St. Afra in the Messkircher St. Martin's Church
Inactive leaf with picture of St. Afra in the Messkircher St. Martin's Church
Deceased 304
canonization 1064 by Alexander II.
Holiday August 7th (Protestant, Catholic)
Place of worship St. Ulrich and Afra Basilica , Augsburg
Patron saint for penitents, penitent prostitutes, poor souls, in case of fire trouble; Diocese of Augsburg , City of Augsburg
Attributes Tree and fire

Afra von Augsburg († 304 possibly on a Lech island, probably near today's Friedberg ) is an early Christian martyr in today's Bavaria . She is venerated as a saint in the Roman Catholic Church . St. Afra is the patron saint of the city and diocese of Augsburg . In the Protestant Church , too , she is considered a memorable witness of faith.

Church historical circumstances

The Christian faith gradually spread through Rome throughout the western Roman Empire . Because the Christians refused to participate in the imperial cult , conflicts soon arose with the state power. Christian persecution took place several times , most recently at the beginning of the 4th century under Emperor Diocletian . In these waves of persecution, Christian deviants from the state religion were punished with death if they were convicted . Nevertheless, Christianity spread over the whole empire. In the province of Raetia there were followers of the new faith in the cities of Augusta Vindelicorum (Augsburg) and Castra Regina (Regensburg).

Life

Sarcophagus of St. Afra in the Basilica of St. Ulrich and Afra (Augsburg)

There are almost no confirmed facts about the life of Saint Afra. Much is based on oral tradition and legendary embellishments. According to tradition, after the Father of St. Afra, a Cypriot client king , was slain, the mother, who was later venerated as Saint Hilaria of Augsburg, is said to have set off with her daughter Afra. Afra was chosen by her Cypriot mother to be the servant of the goddess Venus . Afra must have found her way to Augsburg via Rome. Here she is said to have lived as a prostitute . Bishop Narcissus is said to have found protection in the case of Christians being persecuted in the house of Africa and to have made them familiar with Christianity. Afra is said to have been baptized on it. As a Christian, she is said to have been brought before the judge and sentenced to death by burning . The execution is said to have taken place on a river island in the nearby Lech . According to another source, Afra was tied to a tree trunk and beheaded .

Adoration

According to tradition, the church of St. Afra im Felde in Friedberg , at the gates of Augsburg, was built on the site of her execution. Venantius Fortunatus , an important poet of the Merovingian period , mentioned St. Afra around 572 as a place of worship and pilgrimage in the kingdom of the Franks . The church was destroyed in a Hungarian invasion in 955 (see Ulrich von Augsburg ). Afra was canonized by Pope Alexander II in 1064 .

Churches or altars consecrated to St. Afra often point to an influence of the Augsburg cathedral chapter.

Statue of St. Afra (right) next to the two other city saints of Augsburg

The feast day of St. Afra in the Roman Catholic Church and in the Protestant name calendar is August 7th . (For evangelical memory of saints see Confessio Augustana , Article 21).

St. Afra is called by penitents , repentant girls of joy and in the case of fire .

iconography

Afra is usually tied to a tree with a martyr's palm and a crown and is shown standing on a burning pile of wood. Tree and fire are their attributes . In rare cases it is also pine cones that serve as an attribute.

On the Afra altar by Hans Degler and Elias Greither in the St. Ulrich and Afra basilica in Augsburg, their fire martyr is depicted in 1607 .

In the north transept of the Freiburg im Breisgau minster there is a glass window from around 1250 with a saint known as Sancta Afra, who wears a headscarf, palm fronds and an ointment vessel. The saint figure in the “tailor's window” from around 1320 in the same church, previously interpreted as Maria Magdalena, is probably also Afra because of her crown.

Historical criticism

For Bernhard Schimmelpfennig , St. Afra a "literary fiction". In the Martyrologium Hieronymianum there would be a male "Afer" for a civitas Agustana or Augusta on August 5th, a female Afra on August 6th for Rome (in two manuscripts with dubious gender, namely designated as sancti Afre) and on August 7th in two manuscripts a female Afra in a civitas Agusta , which according to a manuscript was in Raetia.

Schimmelpfennig now considers it possible that the identification with Augsburg happened solely because Augsburg retained the name “August” among the various civitates .

On August 7th, a Veneria was also commemorated in the Martyrologium Hieronymianum (namely in Antioch and in Agusta ), and so the author probably took this as an adjective and made Afra a Venus servant. 100 years later, the Passion was then expanded to include the conversion story, with the grave being located two miles (about three kilometers) from the city. However, since the burial place traditionally revered in Augsburg was only one kilometer away from the city at that time, the information could not apply to Augsburg.

Schimmelpfennig therefore puts forward the hypothesis that the author of the Carolingian Passion took his information about the tomb from a template that was valid in a different location. A memorial church for Afra was then built at the only known cemetery of the Migration Period, without knowing the grave.

The compiler of the Lyons Martyrology (before 806) apparently knew nothing of Hilaria's death on August 12, but only Florus (2nd quarter of the 9th century). Even Rhabanus Maurus, as Archbishop of Mainz, to whose church province Augsburg belonged, did not yet know anything about Hilaria or one of her maids as of August 12th. Notker Balbulus then probably took over the Lyon tradition and Hermann Contractus reacted to it. Since the 11th century, St. Afer and on August 7th St. Afra worships. In the later period the various Passiones were then interwoven, Schimmelpfennig said, and only one female person was left, named Afra.

Relics

A relic of St. Afra is kept in Ehaben im Hegau in the St. John's Church in the body of an Afra statue about one meter high. How the Afra cult came to Ehaben is not clear. There is also an Afra fountain and an abandoned Afra chapel with a brother house above the Afra-Brünnele on the way towards Gottmadingen. As a gift from Emperor Heinrich IV , whose birthday was the day of St. Afra, a toe bone of the saint was kept in the Afra chapel of the Imperial Cathedral in Speyer , but was lost.

See also

literature

Web links

Commons : Afra von Augsburg  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hilaria von Augsburg in the Ecumenical Lexicon of Saints
  2. ↑ cf. Lexicon of Christian Iconography. Volume 5, column 39.
  3. ↑ Schimmelpfennig, Afra and Ulrich p. 40
  4. ↑ Schimmelpfennig, Afra and Ulrich p. 37
  5. ↑ Schimmelpfennig, Was the holy Afra a Roman woman p. 283
  6. ↑ Schimmelpfennig, Was the holy Afra a Roman woman p. 284
  7. ↑ Schimmelpfennig, Was the holy Afra a Roman p. 285 and note 43
  8. ↑ Josef Damian Szuba: The holy Afra. Sermon for the Festival of Privilege 2010. Salier Society, Speyer, August 7, 2010, accessed on January 26, 2016 .
personal data
SURNAME Afra of Augsburg
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Martyr, saint
DATE OF BIRTH 3rd century
DATE OF DEATH 304
Place of death uncertain: Augsburg