Donatus

Saint Donatus of Arezzo is the bishop and martyr most commonly intended when Western liturgical books and Italian local devotion speak simply of Saint Donatus. He belongs to the fourth century and to the church of Arezzo in Tuscany. Almost nothing about his life can be established from contemporary documents. No birth year is known, and the year of death often printed in older handbooks, 362, is taken from a much later legendary passio that associates him with the reign of the emperor Julian; that association is not confirmed by independent fourth-century evidence. What is historically secure is the antiquity of his cult at Arezzo, his listing in the Roman Martyrology on 7 August as bishop and martyr of that city, and the long-standing presence of relics venerated as his in the cathedral of Arezzo.

The medieval passio, which scholars regard as a later hagiographical composition rather than a reliable biography, gives him a dramatic career. It makes him a native of Nicomedia who was taken to Rome in childhood, educated there with a companion named Hilarian (or Hilarianus), and left an orphan. After serving the Roman church he is said to have gone into Tuscany, to have been chosen bishop of Arezzo, and to have worked numerous miracles: exorcisms, restorations of the dead to life, and, most famously, the miraculous mending of a glass Eucharistic chalice that had been broken by pagans. The same legend claims that under Julian he was arrested with the monk Hilarian, that Hilarian was put to death, and that Donatus himself was beheaded. Historians note that Julian's brief rule did not produce a general persecution in Italy of the kind the passio describes, and that the Nicomedian origin and the chalice story have the character of folklore and biblical echo rather than reportage. The chalice miracle was nonetheless widely repeated in medieval Italy and became a standard attribute of the saint in art.

Devotion to Donatus was centered on Arezzo, of which he is the principal patron. The cathedral of Arezzo, dedicated to Saints Peter and Donatus, houses the Arca di San Donato, a large sculpted marble shrine of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries that stands over the high altar and contains relics associated with the saint. His feast on 7 August has been the city's principal religious celebration for many centuries. Beyond Arezzo, churches and villages named San Donato are numerous in Italy; not all of them necessarily refer to the Arezzo bishop, because the name Donatus was borne by several other holy men.

Confusion of homonyms is a persistent problem in the dossier of Saint Donatus. Donatus of Fiesole was an Irish pilgrim and scholar who became bishop of Fiesole in the ninth century and died in that century; he is a distinct, better-documented figure, with a feast in October. Donatus of Münstereifel is a martyr whose relics, taken from the Roman catacombs in the seventeenth century, became the focus of a Rhenish cult against lightning and storms; that patronage is often wrongly transferred to the Arezzo saint in popular lists. Donatus of Euroea (Evorea) in Epirus, a fourth-century bishop mentioned by the church historian Sozomen, is yet another person, commemorated in the East. None of these men was pope or patriarch. There is no reliable evidence that the Arezzo Donatus belonged to a religious order, was married, or had children; later legend portrays him as a cleric from youth, but that is not independent testimony.

Because the subject is known almost entirely through cult and legend, a careful account must remain modest. Donatus of Arezzo stands as a fourth-century Tuscan bishop whose martyrdom was believed from an early date, whose relics and cathedral shrine made him the civic saint of Arezzo, and whose legendary biography supplied medieval art and preaching with the image of a miracle-working pastor who restored a broken chalice and died for the faith. Precise dates of birth and death, place of birth, and the details of his passion cannot be verified from sources contemporary with his life.