Saint Syrus of Pavia

Syrus was, according to tradition, the first bishop of Ticinum, today’s Pavia. His story reaches us from a late hagiographical source, the fourteenth-century manuscript *De laudibus Papiae*, and it tells something that is one of the loveliest bits of hometown pride of the Middle Ages: Syrus was supposedly the boy in the Gospel, the one who had the five barley loaves and the two fish with him. “There is a boy here…,” says Andrew in the Gospel of John, “but what are they among so many?” According to that story, the boy later followed Peter to Rome, and Peter sent him to the Po Valley to preach. He became bishop of Pavia and traveled the whole region. Historians place Syrus in the fourth century, not the first, and believe that moving him back to the time of the apostles grew out of the rivalry with Milan: Pavia, which had been the capital of the Lombard kingdom, needed a Church as old as the Ambrosian one, and preferably older. The fact remains that he is the patron saint of Pavia and that the cathedral keeps his relics. And there also remains one of the most affectionate scenes a city has ever invented for itself. If your name is Syrus, today is your name day.