Fortunatus

The Latin name Fortunatus, meaning fortunate or blessed, was common in the later Roman world and was borne by several distinct Christian figures rather than by one man whose life can be reduced to a single set of dates and places. No verified year of birth, birthplace, or place of death can therefore be assigned to the name as such. In the New Testament, the First Letter to the Corinthians records that Paul was gladdened by the coming of Stephanas, Fortunatus, and Achaicus, who supplied what was lacking and refreshed his spirit. That brief notice is the only contemporary evidence for this Fortunatus. Later Eastern compilations of the Seventy Apostles sometimes include a Fortunatus, often identified with the man at Corinth, but those lists are products of subsequent centuries and do not constitute independent first-century testimony.

The best-documented historical bearer of the name is Venantius Honorius Clementianus Fortunatus, a Latin poet and hymnodist of the sixth century who ended his life as bishop of Poitiers in Frankish Gaul. He was born in the Treviso region of northeastern Italy, in the neighbourhood of the place later known as Duplavis or Valdobbiadene, and received a classical education at Ravenna. In the middle of the sixth century he crossed the Alps into Gaul. He himself associated the journey with an eye affliction and with devotion to Saint Martin of Tours; whether or not that motive is taken at face value, he visited Tours and then settled at Poitiers, where the former Frankish queen Radegund had founded the monastery of the Holy Cross. There he became the community's poet, correspondent, and hagiographer, composing a prose Life of Radegund, a large body of occasional verse, and liturgical hymns. Two hymns written in connection with a relic of the True Cross sent to Radegund from Constantinople, Vexilla regis prodeunt and Pange lingua gloriosi proelium certaminis, entered the Western liturgy and remained in long use. Fortunatus was ordained priest and, late in life, was made bishop of Poitiers. He died in the early seventh century. Some Western calendars commemorate him on 14 December.

Separate from the poet-bishop, Pope Gregory the Great, writing the Dialogues at the end of the sixth century, devoted a chapter to Fortunatus, bishop of Todi in Umbria, presenting him as a holy man of the Gothic-war generation who delivered a possessed Goth and who was remembered locally in connection with a dragon at a river crossing. That Fortunatus is honoured on 14 October. Martyrologies also record Felix, Fortunatus, and Achilleus as martyrs of Valence in the Rhone valley, placed by legend in the third century and described as missionaries sent by Irenaeus of Lyons; the written passion is late and historically insecure. Other local cults attached the name to a deacon associated with Hermagoras of Aquileia, to names in the early episcopal lists of Naples, and to relics venerated in Lombardy, notably at Casei. These cults do not share one feast day, one burial place, or one list of patronages.

None of these men held the see of Rome or a patriarchal throne of the Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Coptic, or Church of the East. Exact years of birth are unrecorded in every case: even Venantius Fortunatus can be placed only approximately in the second quarter of the sixth century, and his death only in the first years of the seventh. The sources do not document wives or children for them. A careful historical account must keep the several Fortunati distinct, rely on Paul, on Gregory, and on Venantius's own writings where those exist, and treat later martyrological expansions with caution.