Florentius of Peterborough

Saint Frithestan
Saint, Martyr
Died	7th Century
Venerated in	Catholic Church
Feast	27 September

Florentius of Peterborough was a seventh-century saint and martyr.^[1][2]

Peterborough Cathedral from the southeast c. 1898.

Florentius was a Roman, and is known to history mainly through the hagiography of the Secgan Manuscript.^[3]

According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle manuscript E, Florentius' relics were purchased from Bonneval Abbey^[4] and moved to Peterborough Cathedral in 1013 or 1016 by Abbot Ælfsi of Peterborough.^[5]

Florentius' was venerated at Peterborough along with Cyneswith^[6] and Cyniburg. However, his feast day on 27 September might suggest that he was in reality Florentinus of Sedun, who was martyred by the Vandal persecution.^[7]

References

1. Propylaeum, pp. 418–19; R.P.S.
2. Florentius in the Oxford Dictionary of Saints.
3. Stowe MS 944, British Library
4. Benneval Abbey is in modern France, but at the time was within the Duchy of Normandy, and hence shared the same ruler as Northhumbria.
5. W. T. Mellows and A. Bell, The Peterborough Chronicle of Hugh Candidus (1949).
6. Cyneswith had been one of the founders of the Abbey and had been reburied by Ælfsi at Peterborough.
7. Swanton, Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, p. 144, n. 8.