Donatus of Münstereifel

Saint Donatus of Münstereifel is a catacomb saint, honoured as a protector against lightning, whose relics are venerated in the Rhineland. According to legend he was a Roman soldier of the second century and died a martyr. His relics were brought from the catacombs of Rome to Münstereifel in the seventeenth century. He is commemorated on 30 June and on 7 August.

According to the legend, his parents, Faustus and Flaminia, had no children, and Faustus fell gravely ill. Flaminia asked the help of Saint Gervasius of Milan, who assured her that her husband would recover and that they would have a son. So it was, and the boy was named Donatus, "gift". His mother raised him in the Christian faith. At seventeen he joined the army in the Twelfth Legion, called Fulminata, "of the Thunderbolt", and rose quickly to be an officer and, in some versions, a commander. He is said to have become a personal bodyguard of the emperor Marcus Aurelius.

The Twelfth Legion was engaged in the wars with the Marcomanni in Moravia on the Danube frontier. The historian Dio Cassius tells that part of the legion, surrounded and nearly overcome, was saved by a divine storm. Tertullian and other Christian writers ascribed the miracle to the prayers of the Christians in the legion, and later legend named Donatus as the leader of those prayers. The miracle, called the rain miracle, is shown on the Column of Marcus Aurelius. According to the legend Donatus gave thanks to God, and then, when he refused, in some accounts, to marry a granddaughter of the emperor and to give him honour as a god, he was put to death. His mother buried him in the catacombs later named for Saint Agnes.

In 1646 the catacombs were reopened and the relics of Donatus and other saints were rediscovered. Pope Innocent X gave them to the Jesuit church in Münstereifel, and they were carried in procession from Rome to the Rhineland. On 30 June 1652, in the church of Saint Martin at Euskirchen, as a Jesuit priest was saying Mass, lightning struck the church and set the altar and the priest on fire. He called on Saint Donatus and was saved unharmed. The miracle spread the martyr's fame through the region. His veneration was spread in Central Europe by the Jesuits of Münstereifel. He is a protector against lightning and, with Saint Florian, against frost. In Hungary he is invoked for the vintage on 7 August. He is shown in Roman armour, with a thunderbolt, and a martyr's palm or a grapevine. He is not in the Roman Martyrology. A district of Cluj, Donath, bears his name, and a statue of him stands there.