Pontianus of Spoleto

Saint Pontianus (Pontian) of Spoleto, martyr, was a young Christian of the second century, who suffered in the time of the emperor Marcus Aurelius, in 169 or 175 (according to one source, on 14 January 175). He is commemorated on 14 January and on 19 January. He is venerated by the Roman Catholic, the Old Catholic and the Orthodox Churches. At Spoleto he is invoked as protector against earthquakes; he is patron of the city and of the Frisian village of Marssum.

The suffering

According to the Passion preserved in the cathedral of Spoleto, Pontianus was an eighteen-⁠year-⁠old youth of a noble family of Spoleto, denounced to the Roman authorities as a Christian. Brought before the judge Flavian (Fabian in the Russian source), he chose torture and death rather than renounce his faith. According to the Russian source, a young nobleman to whom the Lord appeared and who was to follow Him; he was condemned to be thrown to lions, but they fawned on him; then he was forced to walk on coals, and bore that too; water and food were withheld, but the angels of the Lord fed him. Then he was led onto the Bloody Bridge (Ponte Sanguinario) and beheaded. At once an earthquake came, but without great damage, whence the saying "Spoleto will shake but not collapse", and from this the protection against earthquakes. On the hill of Ciciano, at the moment the holy head fell, a spring gushed forth.

Veneration

The body was buried in the cemetery outside the city, called di Sincleta, and later the basilica of San Ponziano was built over his grave; beside it a monastery of Benedictines was raised, later of nuns, suppressed in 1810 during the Napoleonic occupation; today a community of Lateran canonesses keeps it as a guesthouse. Every year a festival with a procession is held in the city; the saint's skull, kept in the basilica, is carried in procession.

In 966 Bishop Balderic of Utrecht, on his way to Rome, obtained an arm of Pontianus, enshrined in his cathedral; so he was named co-⁠patron of the diocese. At the time of the Reformation Calvinist mobs attacked the cathedral, and members of the Old Catholic Church, centred at Utrecht, protected his relics. In 1994 the primate of the Old Catholic Church solemnly returned this relic to the abbess of the monastery that keeps the basilica at Spoleto, in a great feast; a part remained at Utrecht, in the cathedral of Saint Gertrude. In 1703 the first of a series of devastating earthquakes occurred on his feast day; thousands died in the region, but no one died at Spoleto. One of the statues in Saint Peter's Square in Rome is his; churches were dedicated to him at Spoleto and Lucca.