Biography
Podius of Florence
About Podius of Florence
Podius of Florence was a bishop remembered among the saints of the Florentine church. The Catholic Church in Norway’s notice describes him as a canon regular before he became bishop. It gives two possible starting dates for his episcopate, 987 and 990, and places his death in 1002. The disagreement over the beginning of his tenure remains unresolved in that account.
Florence’s cathedral institution identifies him as its seventeenth bishop and places his life around the year 1000. It describes him as a friend of Marquis Ugo of Tuscany. This local institutional account offers a different relationship from the Norwegian notice, which calls him the margrave’s son; the family relationship is therefore uncertain.
His memory has a visible place in the Cathedral. A statue of Podius stands among the saints represented in the northwest tribune, known as the Hall of the Bishops. The group was made at the end of the sixteenth century for the wedding of Grand Duke Ferdinando I. The cathedral’s account also identifies an urn containing his remains near that of Saint Zenobius. These later monuments preserve Podius’s place in Florence’s ecclesial memory, even though the consulted accounts provide few details of his individual ministry.
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