Saint Nonnosus | |
|---|---|
 Nonnosus statue, Thierhaupten Abbey | |
| Born | Italy? |
| Died | 560? Monte Soratte? |
| Venerated in | Roman Catholic Church Eastern Orthodox Church |
| Major shrine | Freising; Bamberg; Monte Soratte |
| Feast | September 2 |
| Attributes | oil lamp or hanging lamp ; rock;[1] depicted sometimes as a Benedictine monk (in black habit) or as an abbot with a staff or as a deacon wearing a dalmatic[2] |
| Patronage | Freising (co-patron);[1] Castel Sant'Elia; dioceses of Sutri and Nepi; invoked in Germany against diseases of the kidneys;[3] invoked against physical defects, back pains, and school-related students' crises[1][2] |
Saint Nonnosus (c. 500 – 560 AD), also Nonosius, was a prior at the San Silvestre monastery on Monte Soratte north of Rome and later a monk at Suppentonia, near Civita Castellana. He was a contemporary of Saint Benedict of Nursia.[2] Alban Butler has written that “so little information has survived about Nonnosus that he is not especially interesting in himself.”[3] His name does not appear in any ancient martyrology.[3]
A deacon Nonnosus is mentioned in a 12th-century collection of legends from Carinthia, Austria.[3] His cult was strong in Bavaria,[3] where relics are kept in the crypt of Freising Cathedral. Veneration of Nonnosus was also established at Monte Soratte in the 1650s, due to the efforts of Andrea di San Bonaventura, a Cistercian monk, and in 1661 some of his relics returned to Monte Soratte and Nonnosus' cult spread across central Italy.[3] It is highly likely that the legends of two different persons had been merged into one by then.