The Itinerarium Malmesburiense, a guide to saints' graves around and within Rome, is written in Latin in Rome, in 642/683. Overview entry
E07883
Literary - Pilgrim accounts and itineraries
Lists of Shrines in Rome
Itinerarium Malmesburiense
William of Malmesbury prefaces the Itinerarium Malmesburiense, which he included in his Gesta Regum Anglorum, as follows. (The context is an excursus on the city of Rome, and how it has fallen from its imperial greatness.)
Sed, ne quid honori desit, aditiam et portarum numerum et multitudinem sacrorum cinerum; et, ne quis obscuritate uerborum se causetur a cognitione rerum reici, erit sermo cotidianus et leuis.
'But that it [Rome] may lack none of its due honour, I will append the number of the gates and its long list of the remains of saints, and, that no one may complain that the obscurity of my language repels his attempt to learn the truth, I will use the casual words of everyday speech.'
William then proceeds to give the itinerary, without telling us that he has derived it from a (much) earlier source.
The itinerary guides us through the cemeteries surrounding Rome, listing the graves that lay along the major roads out of the city, one road after another. It starts with the via Cornelia and the grave of St Peter, and then proceeds clockwise round the city, ending with the via Aurelia, before providing us with a short list of saints buried within Rome itself. Listed here below are our entries in the database for each individual road:
The graves outside the porta Cornelia ('St Peter's gate') on the via Cornelia - E07884
The graves outside the porta Flaminia ('St Valentinus' gate') on the via Flaminia - E07885
The graves outside the porta Pinciana on the via Pinciana - E07886
The graves outside the porta Salaria ('St Silvester's gate') on the via Salaria - E07887
The graves outside the porta Nomentana - E07888
The graves outside the porta Tiburtina ('St Laurence's gate') on the via Tiburtina - E07889
The graves outside the porta maior (= Porta Maggiore) on the via Labicana - E07890
Three gates, and the graves on the via Latina - E07891
The graves outside the porta Appia on the via Appia - E07892
The graves on the via Ardeatina - E07893
The graves outside the porta Ostiensis ('St Paul's gate') on the via Ostiensis - E07894
The graves outside the porta Portuensis on the via Portuensis - E07895
The graves outside the porta Aurelia ('St Pancratius' gate') on the via Aurelia - E07896
The saints buried with the city - E07897
Text and translation: Mynors, Thomson, and Winterbottom 1998, 614-615.
Summary: Bryan Ward-Perkins.
Cult building - independent (church)
Burial site of a saint - tomb/grave
Burial site of a saint - cemetery/catacomb
Non Liturgical ActivityPilgrimage
Visiting graves and shrines
Source
The graves of the martyrs of Rome are quite exceptional in two respects: for the overwhelming number of saints whose names are recorded; and for the level of detail we have on where their bodies were venerated - in the many Martyrdoms surviving from Rome (incomparably more than from any other city), in uniquely rich epigraphic evidence, and in a narrative history, the Liber Pontificalis, that records in loving detail papal improvements to the saintly graves and churches of the city. From the century between circa 590 and 690, we even have four long lists of venerated graves, which were compiled entirely independently of each other: one (the Monza papyrus, E06788) is a catalogue of holy oil collected at these graves, but the other three, the Notitia Ecclesiarum (E07900), the De Locis Sanctis (E07901) and the Itinerarium Malmesburiense (E07883), are 'itineraries' - in other words texts that introduce their readers to the graves by taking them on a journey through the burial churches and cemeteries that ringed the city. They are often described as pilgrim-guides, which was certainly one of their functions, though they could also serve to introduced the saints of Rome to distant readers.William of Malmesbury, a monk of Malmesbury abbey in Wiltshire (England), included one of these itineraries in his massive work of history, the Gesta Regum Anglorum ('Deeds of the English Kings'), which he completed in 1125: hence the modern title given to this itinerary, the Itinerarium Malmesburiense (the 'Malmesbury Itinerary'). William introduces the text as an excursus on the gates and saints of Rome, as if it were his own composition: '... that it [Rome] may lack none of its due honour, I will append the number of the gates and its long list of the remains of saints'. But in reality he is quoting a much earlier text, that he had found somewhere in an English library, dating from before the massive translation of saintly bodies into the city in the late eighth and ninth centuries; indeed, as we will see below, the text can be dated with confidence to the mid or later seventh century. There is of course a possibility that William edited what he had found; but there are no obvious anachronisms in what he recorded, and when he wrote, in introducing the itinerary, that he 'will use the casual words of everyday speech', he may well be excusing the verbatim transcription of a text so simple that it rather offended his educated sensibilities.
Like the other two itineraries, the Itinerarium Malmesburiense, takes one round the suburban cemeteries of Rome, major road by major road, listing the churches and principal graves that lay along them, starting with the via Cornelia and the church and grave of Peter, then proceeding clockwise round the city to the via Aurelia, and closing with a short list of those saints whose bodies already rested within the walls. Uniquely, our itinerary names not only the roads, but also the relevant gates in the Aurelianic walls, revealing that these were increasingly being called after the saints whose shrines lay near them. Unlike the Notitia Ecclesiarum, which directly addresses the reader in the second person singular ('Then you go ...' etc.), the Itinerarium (in common with the De Locis), uses the impersonal 'By this road is ...' etc.
The Itinerarium can be dated with confidence to the years between 642 and 683, from information given in its list of intramural saintly burials (E07897). There we learn that the bodies of Primus and Felicianus were already in the church of Santo Stefano Rotondo, the result of a translation from a cemetery on the via Nomentana effected by Pope Theodore I (642-649; E01629). On the other hand, the translation of the bodies of Simplicianus, Faustinus and Beatrix from the via Nomentana to the church of Santa Bibiana, carried out by Pope Leo II (682-683; E01678), is not mentioned, and, since our author seems to have done a very thorough job of recording intramural burials, this must mean that it had not yet occurred.
Bibliography
Edition:Mynors, R.A.B., Thomson, R.M., and Winterbottom, M. (ed. and trans.), William of Malmesbury. Gesta Regum Anglorum (Oxford Medieval Texts; Oxford 1998), vol. 1, 614-621.
Glorie, F. (ed.), Itinerarium Malmesburiense, in Itineraria et alia geographica aetatis patrum, saec. VI - VIII (Corpus Christianorum. Series Latina 175; Turnhout: Brepols, 1965), 325-328. [Reproduces Valentini and Zucchetti's text.]
Valentini, R. and Zucchetti, G. (ed.), Codice topografico della città di Roma (Istituto storico italiano - Fonti per la storia d'Italia; Roma 1942), vol. 2, 141-153.
(Partial) Translation:
Lapidge, M., The Roman Martyrs. Introduction, Translations, and Commentary (Oxford Early Christian Studies; Oxford: Oxford University Press 2018), 664-666. [Translates most of the text, but omits parts less relevant to the martyrdom accounts that he includes in his collection.]