Himerius

Saint Himerius (Italian: Sant'Imerio) is an early medieval Italian bishop commemorated in the Roman Martyrology on 17 June as bishop of Amelia, the ancient Umbrian town of Ameria. Reliable contemporary evidence for his life is lacking. Later tradition places him in the sixth century, in the era of Ostrogothic and then Byzantine rule in central Italy, but no inscription, letter, or conciliar signature survives that would fix his dates or the length of his episcopate. He belongs to the large class of local Italian holy bishops whose names were preserved by cult and martyrology rather than by a documentary archive.

A medieval life, composed long after the period in which he is supposed to have lived, presents Himerius as a native of Calabria who first followed an eremitical or monastic vocation and was afterwards chosen bishop of Amelia. In that narrative he appears as an austere pastor. None of these biographical particulars can be confirmed from independent sources, and they should be treated as pious legend rather than as established fact. No writings attributed to him are known. The political and ecclesiastical setting of a sixth-century Umbrian bishop—relations with the see of Rome, the Gothic wars, and the imperial reconquest—can be described in general terms for the region, but cannot be tied to any documented act of Himerius himself. His year of birth and the precise year of his death are unknown.

The historical core of his cult is the translation of his relics. In the mid-tenth century, according to Cremonese tradition, Bishop Liutprand of Cremona, the Ottonian courtier and historian who occupied that see from 961 until 972, brought the body of Himerius from Amelia to Cremona, an event commonly dated to 965. From that time the saint’s principal shrine has been in Cremona, associated with the cathedral dedicated to the Assumption of the Virgin Mary. The Roman Martyrology itself notes that his body was translated to Cremona. In the civic and diocesan religion of Cremona he came to be honored as a patron of the city, together with Saint Homobonus, a twelfth-century Cremonese layman who is the town’s principal patron. Amelia retained a memory of its former bishop, but the public center of the cult moved to the Po valley after the translation.

Himerius was not canonized by a formal papal process of the kind that developed in the later Middle Ages; his name entered the martyrological tradition through local veneration and eventual Roman recognition of that cult. His feast is kept on 17 June. He is distinct from several other historical or hagiographical figures of the same name: Himerius of Tarragona, the fourth-century Spanish metropolitan known from the decretal of Pope Siricius; the Jura hermit Saint Imier (also called Himerius), associated with the Swiss town of Saint-Imier; and Saint Himerius of Bosto, a priest-hermit venerated in the Varese area of Lombardy. Confusion among these figures is common in older popular notices, but the Himerius of the Roman Martyrology for 17 June is the bishop of Amelia whose relics rest at Cremona.