Fulgentius of Otricoli

Saint Fulgentius of Otricoli, a hieromartyr, was bishop of the city of Ocriculum (today Otricoli, in Umbria) around the middle of the 6th century, during the third Gothic war. He is venerated in the Western Church and remembered on 22 May in the Western calendar.

According to tradition he found, in 540, the body of Saint Victor, who is honored together with him as patron of the town. Pope Gregory the Great relates in his Dialogues that when the Ostrogoth king Totila passed along the Via Flaminia through Ocriculum, the bishop sent clergy to meet him with gifts, to soften his fury. The gifts were refused, and Fulgentius was condemned to stay inside a small circle of ground. Then heavy rain began, yet the place where he stood stayed dry, and the Goths set him free.

Later Totila tried to draw him to the Arian heresy. The bishop stayed faithful and urged the king in turn to renounce Arianism. Totila ordered him taken out of the city and buried alive. When the pit was opened, Fulgentius was found dead, in the attitude of prayer. He was honored as a saint and his body was moved to the church of Saint Victor. After the Lombards destroyed the city, probably in 601, the survivors settled on the hills and founded present-⁠day Otricoli. There, in 1316, his body was brought to the collegiate church of Santa Maria Assunta, into a chapel near the sacristy.