Florentius of Peterborough

Saint Frithestan
Saint, Martyr
Died7th Century
Venerated inCatholic Church
Feast27 September

Florentius of Peterborough was a seventh-century saint and martyr.[1][2]

Peterborough Cathedral from the southeast c. 1898.

Florentius was a Roman, and is known to history mainly through the hagiography of the Secgan Manuscript.[3]

According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle manuscript E, Florentius' relics were purchased from Bonneval Abbey[4] and moved to Peterborough Cathedral in 1013 or 1016 by Abbot Ælfsi of Peterborough.[5]

Florentius' was venerated at Peterborough along with Cyneswith[6] and Cyniburg. However, his feast day on 27 September might suggest that he was in reality Florentinus of Sedun, who was martyred by the Vandal persecution.[7]

References

  1. ^ Propylaeum, pp. 418–19; R.P.S.
  2. ^ Florentius in the Oxford Dictionary of Saints.
  3. ^ Stowe MS 944, British Library
  4. ^ Benneval Abbey is in modern France, but at the time was within the Duchy of Normandy, and hence shared the same ruler as Northhumbria.
  5. ^ W. T. Mellows and A. Bell, The Peterborough Chronicle of Hugh Candidus (1949).
  6. ^ Cyneswith had been one of the founders of the Abbey and had been reburied by Ælfsi at Peterborough.
  7. ^ Swanton, Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, p. 144, n. 8.