Nicetas of Aquileia

Nicetas of Aquileia was Bishop of Aquileia from 454 or 455 to 485 . According to the bishops' catalogs, his predecessor was a Secundus who was in the city during the destruction of the city by the Huns under Attila on July 18, 452. However, if one follows the chronicler Johannes Diaconus , who wrote about 1000 , then this catastrophe only occurred under Bishop Nicetas. He was followed by a certain Marcellianus, who headed the community until 504.

The name of Nicetas appears in a letter from Pope Leo the Great of March 21, 458, in which he worries about the moral consequences of the destruction, imprisonment and flight, such as what should happen if a man and his own return from captivity Widow had already remarried. This letter also shows that around 447 a Januarius was bishop of Aquileia.

At that time there was already an extensive episcopate that crossed the borders of the province of Venetia et Histria and reached as far as the Danube . It is not known whether Nicetas was able to return quickly to his official residence after 452 after the Huns had left. According to tradition, Nicetas found refuge in Grado , where a cathedral is said to have been built in his time. However, this work was only completed under the much later Patriarch Helias in the years before the synod of November 3, 579. The structural restoration measures were mainly initiated by the Eastern Roman general Narses .

Nicetas was later venerated as a saint, but was also often confused with Nicetas of Remesiana (355-414), who worked in the province of Moesia superior .

reception

Ideal portrait of Nicetas in the throne room of the Diocesan Museum and the Tiepolo Gallery in Udine . The inscription claims that after the expulsion by the Huns, the bishop turned to Pope Leo I for help so that he could maintain discipline and orthodoxy in his diocese, as well as the question of baptism by heretics .

As early as 1719, Johann Jakob Schmauß showed in his Detailed Lexicon of Saints that Baronius must have made a mistake if he considered the said saints to be one and the same person, "because Baronius believed that Aquileja was also called Roma and Romatiana ancestors." This is a mistake, but since Baronius the Church of Aquileia no longer celebrates its saints on January 7th, but on June 22nd (“and it has only happened since the Baronii times that the memory of their S. Nicetæ at Aquileja on June 22nd . commit. "). According to Schmauß, St. Nicetas "announced the destruction by Attilam to the inhabitants and died in 458." Johann Heinrich Zedler argues almost literally in 1740 in his large, complete Universal Lexicon of All Sciences and Arts , Volume 24, Sp. 480.

The institution of the two saints of the same name, brought into the world by Baronius, was given up, but defended with a new argument. Accordingly, “Petr. Braida ”, as ... stated,“ makes a more apparent assumption, namely that the civitas Romatiana was a place in the ecclesiastical diocese of Aquileja and probably also an episcopal in a broader sense. Aquilejensis. ”However, this seems too arbitrary to the author and there is no evidence of such a place.

Reliquary of the saint with the inscription “S. NICEÆ. EPIS. AQVIL. "

Giuseppe Cappelletti stated in his Storia Ecclesiastica Universale from 1861 that the destruction of Aquileia could not have been “total”, because there was no indication that the then bishop “Secondo” had left his official residence, just as little as his “holy successor” 'Nicetas. After Cappelletti, Nicetas did not take office until late 453 or early 454. However, he had brought the remaining church people, the church treasures and the relics to Grado. This author also emphasizes the question of whether the new marriages entered into by women of men believed to be dead is valid. However, as the Leo letter demanded, these had to return to their first husbands. Cappelletti also expressly points out that the confusion of the saints of the same name should be ruled out simply because of the large time lag between Leo's letter and that of "san Gerolamo", which came from 374.

The question of when the cathedral in Grado was built and which was called post attiliana also led to long discussions. While Giovanni Brusin assumes in his Monumenti paleocristiani , published in 1957, that the church was built under Marcellinus, the successor of Nicetas, Carlo Guido Mor suspects that such a building was much less likely in the troubled times of the early Ostrogoths than in decades long recovery time after the destruction by the Huns.

According to the chronologically closest source, the Historia Langobardorum of Paulus Diaconus (II, 10), it was the Patriarch Paulus (557-569) who found refuge from the Longobards "ad Gradus insulam" with his church treasures: "Langobardorum barbariem metuens, ex Aquileia ad Gradus insulam confugit secumque omnem suae thesaurum ecclesiae deportavit ”. The Cronica de singulis patriarchis Nove Aquileie followed this view . The question remains when the Grado castrum was built. Only Andrea Dandolo thinks in his Chronica per extensum descripta that this was built in the course of the uncertainties caused by the attacks of the Visigoths under Alaric on northern Italy, i.e. after 401 and 408. Archaeological investigations, but also a deeper understanding of the changes in the Grado lagoon , clarified. According to this, the defenses of Grado were not built until the middle of the 6th century. Mario Mirabella Roberti was also able to prove the remains of the small basilica of Peter from the 4th century, which was only 14.7 by 6.7 m, about 1.0–1.1 m below the floor of today's Santa Eufemia Church. A total of three churches can be identified, but their dating can still not be considered certain.

literature

• Sergio Tavano: Niceta. Vescovo di Aquileia , in: Dizionario biografico dei Friulani
• Giuseppe Cuscito: La lettera di S. Leone Magno a Niceta di Aquileia. Contributo alla comprensione storica del mito di Attila , in: Attila Flagellum Dei? Convegno internazionale di studi storici sulla figura di Attila e sulla discesa degli Unni in Italia nel 452 DC , Rome 1994, pp. 216-228.
• Giuseppe Cuscito: Il Castrum di Grado ei suoi poli di culto. Una nuova cronologia? , in: Aquileia nostra 77 (2006), columns 262-277.

Remarks

1. ↑ Art. S. Nicetas or Niceas, Bishop of Romatiana in Dacia , in: Johann Jakob Schmauß : Detailed Lexicon of Saints, Darinn The godly life and the virtue-walk, the steadfast leyden and dying, and the great miracles of all God's saints, To be venerated by the H. Church and contained in the most complete Collectionibus of Actis Sanctorum, Described in alphabetical order for the Heyl, Consolation, Exempel and Doctrine of all pious Christians who are concerned about the benefit of their souls; together with the attached saints calendar, useful for daily devotion and contemplation of the life of saints , Cologne and Frankfurt 1719, column 1537 f. ( Digitized version ).
2. ↑ Göttingische learned advertisements , Vol. 3, 190./191. Piece, Göttingen 1831, p. 1897.
3. ^ Giuseppe Cappelletti: Storia Ecclesiastica Universale , Giuseppe Civelli, Milan and Verona 1861, p. 793 f.
4. ^ Giovanni Brusin, Paolo Lino Zovatto: Monumenti paleocristiani , Deputazione di storia patria per il Friuli, Udine 1957, p. 166ff.
5. ^ Carlo Guido Mor: La fortuna di Grado nell'altomedioevo , Antichità Altoadriatiche (1972) 299–315, here: p. 303, note 6.
6. ↑ Giuseppe Cuscito: Il castrum di Grado ei suoi poli di culto. Una nuova cronologia? , in: Aquileia nostra 77 (2006), Col. 262-277, here: Col. 262.
7. ↑ Mario Mirabella Roberti tries more exact dates: Architetture e musaici paleocristiani di Grado , in: Aquileia e Grado. Atti della prima e della seconda Settimana di studi aquileiesi. 1-7 maggio 1970 e 29 aprile - 5 maggio 1971 , pp. 317-321 ( riassunto (PDF)).