Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Celebrating Santa Fermina


The Feast of Santa Fermina, the patron saint of the city of Civitavecchia and protector of sailors, is celebrated on April 28. The this sacred date to be to the celebrations in a city the relics of St. April 27, 1647 in the town of Amelia, the celebration of the procession on the following day, April 28. This event is preserved today at the Historical Archives of Civitavecchia, describing the arrival of the relics in the Holy City and that there is a witness of the first procession in Civitavecchia.
It is a tradition that  Fermina was born in Rome at the end of the third century AD, a prefect daughter Roman  Calpurnius, she converted to Christianity at an early age. Fled from Rome and the comforts of her home during the period of violent persecution against Christians, he boarded a ship bound for Centumcellae (modern Civitavecchia) during the short voyage a violent storm that Fermina settles down with her prayer. The ship arrived in Centumcellae and sailors witnessed the miracle, worshiped as the protector of sailors, while the population of the small port town proclaimed its patroness.

Fermina, in the short stay in the city Tyrrhenian spent in works of charity, prayer and the Gospel, made a cave not far from the landing point of the ship and which is still incorporated in the Fortress Giulia (Forte Michelangelo).During her visit in her humble home in Amelia , their stay at Centumcellae, , she was persecuted as a Christian by  the young Roman emperor Diocletian and was martyred November 24 306.
The remains of her body were buried in Amelia, and in Civitavecchia they  built the ruins of Centumcellae, in 1647 he dedicated a chapel in the church of Santa Maria, then the only parish in the city.
In 1642 a survey was made on the body of Santa Fermina, which was kept in the town of Amelia, where she was buried secretly and found  in 870. Viscount Collemodi Terence Francis Chamberlain and Valvassori, the papal city, had authorized  Amelia that some of the relics of saints were then to be donated to the town of Civitavecchia, where there was a cult which  remained unbroken for centuries.
A testimony about this very important tradition so deeply rooted in the Tyrrhenian city.,It is provided by the travel memoirs published in 1731 the French Dominican Father Jean Baptiste Labat, who, after having spent twelve years in the Antilles islands as a missionary and not only was transferred  to in Civitavecchia Italy  in 1710.

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