Biography
Fortunatus of Fano
About Fortunatus of Fano
Fortunatus was bishop of Fano and worked to free people held captive. A surviving letter from Gregory the Great records that he had borrowed money for their ransom but could not repay the debt.
Fortunatus asked permission to sell consecrated vessels to meet the obligation. Gregory approved the sale, explaining that freeing captives was an authorized exception to the usual restrictions on disposing of sacred objects. He required that the sale cover only the debt, take place in the presence of his official John, and pay the creditors.
These conditions were intended to protect both the creditors and Fortunatus from later grievance. The letter preserves a concrete act of assistance and the financial difficulties it caused, but does not identify the captives or describe the completed sale.
A much later Life is attributed to John, a twelfth-century abbot of Nonantola. V. Bartoccetti’s account, quoted in Massimo Bonifazi’s study of Fano’s relics, says that this Life describes transfers of Fortunatus’s remains but does not identify his original burial place. That later history of veneration cannot supply a secure birthplace or death place for the bishop.
Fano remembers Fortunatus among its city protectors. His figure appears beside Paternianus and Eusebius in the group of patron statues on the Palazzo del Podestà.
The diocesan calendar commemorates Fortunatus with Eusebius and Ursus on June 8 in Fano.
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