Simeon of Mantua

Simeon of Mantua (Simeon the Armenian) was a Benedictine monk of Armenian birth and a hermit in Palestine and then in Italy, born in 953 in Byzantine Armenia (according to another source, in an unknown year of the tenth century) and died on 26 July 1016 at the monastery of Polirone, near Mantua. He is a saint of the Roman Catholic Church, with commemoration on 26 July. We present him here because he was Armenian by birth and lived at a time when the Church was not yet divided, but his veneration comes from the West.

He was born into the family of a military commander. As a young man he received monastic tonsure and after some time became a hermit. He then left Armenia and travelled widely, seeking the greatest holy places of Christendom, visiting the churches of Jerusalem and other places in the Holy Land. Then he came to Rome. There his foreignness aroused the hostility of the crowd and he was accused of heresy, but Pope Benedict VII, who ordered his teaching to be examined, declared it orthodox, that is, in accord with the true faith.

He then travelled through Italy, France and Spain, made a pilgrimage to the tomb of Saint James at Compostela and to Saint Martin at Tours (one source says he was also in England), and returned to Lombardy. He was already very well known for his charity and miracles. The townspeople of Mantua were astonished to see Simeon quietly playing with a lion in the circus. Crowds gathered around this unusual ascetic, who travelled across Italy on his little donkey, and the news of his miracles went before him, and pilgrims joined him.

At last he entered the Benedictine monastery of Polirone, of the Cluniac reform, where he spent the rest of his life, known for his kindness and generosity. The miracles attributed to him drew the attention of the Holy See. One source says that Pope Benedict VIII officially approved his veneration and that in 1024 Simeon was canonized. The other source says that his cult was approved by Benedict VIII (1024) and Leo IX (1049) and that the canonization took place in the middle or late eleventh century. The sources do not agree on the date of canonization.

His tomb was a place of many miracles. In 1913 his relics were solemnly exposed. Marquis Boniface III of Montferrat later rebuilt a local church and dedicated it to Simeon. In a painting by Ambrogio Lorenzetti, at the church of San Pietro all'Orto in Massa Marittima, Simeon is shown standing to the right of the Mother of God.