Serena of Spoleto

Saint Serena of Spoleto belongs to the large number of early Christian saints whose names have been preserved in local Italian tradition but whose biographies cannot be reconstructed from contemporary historical evidence. She is associated with Spoleto, an ancient city in Umbria that was already a significant municipality in the Roman period and that became an important Christian center in late antiquity. No passio, vita, or inscription that can be dated to the period of her life has been identified as referring to her with certainty. As a result, even basic facts such as the century of her death, the manner of her death, and whether she was a martyr, a consecrated virgin, or a holy woman of another kind remain beyond the reach of verification.

Later hagiographical tradition sometimes confused or combined various women named Serena. The Roman Martyrology, in an entry that modern historical criticism regards as legendary, commemorates on 16 August a Saint Serena described as formerly the wife of the emperor Diocletian. That notice has no foundation in the well-documented history of the Tetrarchy: Diocletian's wife was Prisca, and both Prisca and their daughter Valeria suffered in the political aftermath of Diocletian's abdication, according to sources such as Lactantius. The legendary empress Serena should not be assumed to be identical with the figure called Serena of Spoleto, nor should an imperial marriage be attributed to the Spoleto saint on the basis of that later story. The two traditions may have influenced one another in medieval calendars, but they do not yield a reliable biography.

Spoleto's Christian history in the third and fourth centuries is better attested for other figures than for Serena. The city and its territory remembered martyrs such as Pontian, Gregory the Priest, and Concordius, whose cults were established in churches and in the city's religious topography. Umbria as a whole saw the growth of Christian communities during the later Roman Empire, and episcopal organization was in place by late antiquity. It is in this general setting that a local memory of a holy woman named Serena could have arisen, whether she was a native of the city, a martyr whose relics were kept there, or a saint whose cult was introduced from elsewhere. Without an early narrative source, however, her place in that history cannot be specified.

Like most saints of the pre-Congregation era, Serena would have been recognized by popular cult and episcopal or local liturgical acceptance rather than by a formal papal canonization of the kind that developed in the later Middle Ages. No reliable record identifies a pope who canonized her, a date of beatification, or a list of patronages attached to her name in the way that later saints acquired official patronages. Her feast, if it was kept at Spoleto, would have been a local observance; it is not securely established in the universal calendars under the epithet of Spoleto. Historians and hagiographers must therefore treat Serena of Spoleto as a name attached to a local Christian memory, while remaining explicit that the details of her life, family, and death are unknown.