Richard of Andria

Richard of Andria, known in Italian as San Riccardo di Andria, was a bishop of Andria in Apulia in southern Italy and is venerated as a saint in the Roman Catholic Church. Later hagiography and the Roman Martyrology describe him as of English origin, often as a pilgrim who came to Italy and was then placed over the see of Andria. That appointment is traditionally ascribed to a pope named Gelasius. Writers have identified this pope either with Gelasius I in the late fifth century or with Gelasius II, who reigned only in 1118–1119. A fifth-century date cannot be reconciled with an English origin or with the Germanic name Richard, and consecration under Gelasius II would imply an extremely long episcopate if the death year sometimes given in modern lists were accepted. Careful discussion therefore treats the Gelasian appointment as legendary or confused, while still accepting that a Bishop Richard of Andria lived in the twelfth century.

A bishop of Andria named Richard is historically attested in the later twelfth century. He is recorded as having taken part in the Third Lateran Council, called by Pope Alexander III in 1179. Surviving notices of a Bishop Riccardo of Andria in this period place him among the Latin bishops of Apulia when that region belonged to the Norman, and then Staufen, Kingdom of Sicily. Beyond his tenure of the see and his presence at the council, contemporary evidence for his administration, writings, or inner life is lacking. No reliable source attaches him to a religious order; he appears as a diocesan bishop of the Latin Church. Almost nothing verifiable is known of his family, any marriage before ordination, or the place and date of his birth.

The year of his death is not fixed by a contemporary obituary. Tradition assigns his death to 9 June, which became his feast day, and some later compilations add the year 1196, but that year is not securely documented. He is believed to have died at Andria. In the fifteenth century, during work on the cathedral, a tomb identified as his was brought to light, and relics attributed to him have since been kept and venerated in the Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta in Andria. The find strengthened a local cult that had probably existed in a more limited form already. He was not the subject of a formal papal canonization of the later centralized type. His sainthood rests on longstanding local veneration and on entry in liturgical books, including the Roman Martyrology, which commemorates him on 9 June as bishop of Andria and notes the tradition that he was of English origin.

Richard is the principal patron saint of the city of Andria, and his feast on 9 June has been kept there with both religious and civic observance. Older lives surround him with miracles and with a detailed story of his journey from England, but those narratives cannot be confirmed from independent medieval records and should be read as hagiographical tradition. What can be said with caution is that a prelate named Richard, associated by tradition with England, occupied the see of Andria in the twelfth century, that he attended the Third Lateran Council, and that the church of Andria has honoured him as its holy bishop and patron from the later Middle Ages to the present.