Evidence ID
E08258
Type of Evidence
Literary - Other
Cosmographia of Pseudo-Aethicus
From a passage describing the course of the Tiber:
[...] ingressus per domni Petri apostoli portam, inter Ostensem portam, quae est domni Pauli apostoli, et viam Portuensem, quae est sancti Felicis martyris, urbem egreditur [...]
'[The Tiber], having entered by the gate of St Peter the apostle, leaves the city between the Ostian gate, which is St Paul the apostle's, and the via Portuensis, which is the holy martyr Felix's ...
Text: Valentini and Zucchetti 1940, 315, lines 9-11.
Translation: David Lambert.
Places Named after Saint
Gates, bridges and roads
Source
The Cosmographia is a geographical work written in the 5th or perhaps early 6th century. It contains material from the Cosmographia of Julius Honorius (late 4th/early 5th c.) and the Historia contra paganos of Orosius, meaning that it cannot have been written before the latter work appeared in 417 (Valentini and Zucchetti 1940, 311). The work is anonymous. It acquired its epithet of 'Pseudo-Aethicus' because in some manuscripts it is wrongly identified as another work, the Cosmographia of 'Aethicus Ister' (Valentini and Zucchetti 1940, 311-312).The Cosmographia contains a reference to the consulship as an office still in existence and thus presumably dates from before the abolition of the consulship in the 540s. It has been dated to before 500 (by Valentini and Zucchetti 1940, 312) on the basis that it mentions pagan festivals as still taking place, and because it uses the word domnus for 'saint'. (The latter argument is not sustainable, however, since the evidence in this database shows that domnus remained in use throughout the 6th century.)
Discussion
The Cosmographia (assuming that it predates Procopius' Wars, written in the 540s) is the earliest text to refer to the gate in the walls of Rome previously known as the Porta Aurelia or Porta Cornelia as the gate of St Peter (porta domni Petri). This was the gate that led onto the Pons Aelius (now the Ponte Sant'Angelo), from which a colonnade led to St Peter's basilica. On the gate and its names, see Dey 2011, 179-80, especially n. 65.The Cosmographia also associates the Porta Ostiensis with St Paul, though still referring to it by its original name (it became known as the porta sancti Pauli because it led to Paul's shrine on the via Ostiensis, now San Paolo fuori le mura), and the via Portuensis with the martyr Felix, whose shrine was located there.
Bibliography
Editions:Valentini, R., and Zucchetti, G., Codice Topografico della Città di Roma, vol. 1 (Rome, 1940), 311-314 (preface), 315-316 (text - only the description of the Tiber).
Riese, A., Geographi Latini Minores (Heilbronn, 1878), 71-103.
Further reading:
Dey, H.W., The Aurelian Wall and the Refashioning of Imperial Rome, AD 271-855 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011).
Record Created By
David Lambert
Date of Entry
23/11/2021
| ID | Name | Name in Source | Identity | S00008 | Paul, the Apostle | Paulus | Certain | S00036 | Peter, the Apostle | Petrus | Certain | S02672 | Felix, martyr of Rome, buried on the via Portuensis | Felix | Certain |
|---|
Please quote this record referring to its author, database name, number, and, if possible, stable URL:
David Lambert, Cult of Saints, E08258 - http://csla.history.ox.ac.uk/record.php?recid=E08258