RIGNANO FLAMINIO. - At the twenty-sixth mile of the Via Flaminia, nestled at the foot of Soratto, lies R. F., which, under the name of Castrum Rinianum, is mentioned in a document of 962; in 1116 it appears as a territory belonging to the church of St. Cecilia in Trastevere.
R. F. has two notable early Christian monuments: an underground cemetery to the west of the settlement and an ancient church to the east. The Christian cemetery came to light in 1651 on the left of the Via Flaminia in an area called that of St. Laurenziano, belonging to the collegiate church of R., dedicated to Sts. Vincent and Anastasius. Three Christian cemetery galleries with intact tombs were found there at that time, as appears from a manuscript of the Archive of the said collegiate church. In 1702 the custodian of the relics, Monsignor M. A. Boldetti, went there and observed "a round chapel full of tombs and... some sacred paintings." The cemetery was then excavated in 1745 by the vicar forane G. B. Tomai and in 1746 by the gravediggers of the Sacristan. At the end of the 18th century, a part of the cemetery was sacrificed to build an oratory in honor of St. Theodora, patroness of the Savelli family, and a square in front of it. In 1857 G. B. De Rossi went there and transcribed and published the dated inscriptions scratched on the loculi, by then opened and violated, containing dates from 336 to 424. A report by the Sacristan is in cod. Vat. lat. 9023, f. 38. In 1908 and in 1946 the cemetery was restored by the Pontifical Commission of Sacred Archaeology. To the east of the settlement, on the steep slopes of a hill, stands the church in honor of Sts. Abbondio and Abbondanzio. The building consists of two distinct parts: the first is made of large squared blocks of tufa from a previous building; the second is in curtain masonry; in each of the two parts are inserted marble fragments, cippi, bases, capitals and a tabernacle arch with the characteristic 8th-century three-strand decoration. A cippus placed by an Atilia Marcella to the memory of her husband C. Clodius Fabatus (CIL, XI, 1, 3963) contains three hexameters of singular conception that have been considered by some as Christian and that are seen repeated in a cippus found at Niebla, near Seville in Spain (CIL, II, suppl., p. 856, n. 591). At the junction of the two parts a tall three-story bell tower with mullioned windows was erected, from the 11th century. The interior has a single nave; three pillars with capitals adorned with a Greek cross support three pointed arches; the walls were covered with paintings.
In the raised presbytery are the altar table and the seats in stonework. In the arch, in the center, is painted the divine lamb with a cruciform nimbus between the symbols of the four Evangelists and the seven candlesticks. Below, in the middle, the bust of the Redeemer between winged cherubim and choirs of angels. In the zone below, on the two sides, the 24 elders of the Apocalypse approach, twelve on each side, according to the type already established in the arch of St. Paul's and repeated in St. Praxedes, at Ferentillo, at Castel S. Elia and at St. John at the Latin Gate, to which they are linked especially by the same dating to the end of the 12th century. Below, a crypt opens. As for the martyrs Abbondio and Abbondanzio, they do not appear in the ancient calendars and martyrologies; they figure under 26 Aug. in the Cologne edition of 1515 of Usuard's Martyrology.
The Bollandists indicate (Acta SS. Septembris, V, Paris 1868, p. 293 ff.) a first Passio from a Buda manuscript and a second printed in 1584 by the Jesuit F. Cardolo, who made use of three manuscripts, of which the oldest, from the 12th-13th century, is in the Archivio Liberiano. The martyrs Abbondio the priest and Abbondanzio the deacon would have been beheaded at the fourteenth mile of the Via Flaminia, and buried by Theodora on her property at the twenty-eighth mile of the same road. The Passio seems to have been composed before the year 1000; it gives no mention of the cemetery; but only the "ecclesia quae est iuxta montem Soractis" is recalled. The provenance from this group or from the cemetery of the inscription: "Abundio prb. martyri sancto dep. VII idus dec." now in the Lateran Museum (CIL, XI, 4076) is not certain.
