February 09, 2014

⛪ Saint Raynald of Nocera - Bishop of Nocera

Saint of the Day : February 9

 Born :
c.1150

 Died :
•  9 February 1217 in Nocera, Umbria, Italy of natural causes.
• Body discovered incorrupt.
• Relics enshrined in an urn in the church of Santa Maria dell'Arengo.
• Relics enshrined in the cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta in 1456.
• Relics moved to the church of San Felicissimo on 26 September 1997 following earthquake damage to the cathedral.

 Beatified :
• Popular devotion and reports of miracles begin soon after       the death of Raynald.
• Bishop Pelagio Pallavicini approves the cultus in late 1217.
• When his body was discovered to be incorrupt, he was chosen patron of Nocera.
• Declared co-patron of the diocese of Nocera in 1448.

 Patronage :
• Assisi-Nocera Umbra-Gualdo Tadino, Italy, diocese of
• Nocera, Italy

Rinaldo of Nocera Umbra (d. 1222). What is transmitted about the life of this patron saint of the Umbrian hilltown of Nocera Umbra (PG) comes from a brief sketch in the late thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century _Chronicon Gualdense_, from a later fourteenth-century longer Vita used for readings in the cathedral of Nocera (BHL 7079p), from a shorter version of the same (BHL 7079r) preserved in the legendary of the convent of St. Francis at Gualdo Tadino (PG), and from entries in the _Annales Camldulenses_ transcribed from now lost documents at Fonte Avellana. The son of a count of nearby Postignano, Rinaldo (in Latin, Rainaldus) is said to have lived when he was a young man as an hermit on the Serrasanta near Gualdo Tadino. Later he became a monk at the Camaldolese house of Fonte Avellana where in 1217 or 1218, when he was already in his sixties, he was elected prior.

Late in 1218 Rinaldo was elected bishop of Nocera Umbra. During the three years of his episcopate he is said to have continued to live ascetically, to have brought into his household an orphan boy whose presence he used to remind those dining with him of the need to succor the poor, to have enforced church order through visitations in his diocese, and to have excommunicated the profaners of a church in the territory of Gualdo Tadino. Rinaldo died on this day; after enbalming his body was laid to rest in his cathedral. His cult was probably immediate. Rebuildings of the cathedral led to translations in 1257 and 1487.


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