San Dalmazzo is described as an itinerant evangelizer in the Maritime Alps, around the ancient Pedona, with missions in Provence and in the plains from Alba, to Milan and Pavia, where one would like him to be a local bishop and martyr .
Tradition places the date of his death on December 5, 254.
Reliquary bust of San Dalmazzo
San Dalmazzo in clothes from Thebes
(18th century painting)
However, the elements that have emerged so far, while giving proof of continuity of worship, have not provided new epigraphic or iconographic evidence proving the person of the saint and his eventual martyrdom.
Churches dedicated to him from the late Middle Ages are present not only in Piedmont, Provence and Liguria, but also in Lombardy, Emilia and Tuscany.
However, medieval liturgical and literary texts have raised many questions in this last century, leaving the idea of a vague legend in the end.
The undoubted result of recent archaeological investigations, which have brought to light the apse of a sixth century church, is proof of a continuity of worship for at least a millennium and a half on the place where tradition places the burial of San Dalmazzo.
Head of San Dalmazzo
(Sculpture on urn 1888)
Iconography – Saint Dalmazzo bishop or martyr?
From “Historical Iconographic Research on S.Dalmazzo di Pedona”
The uncertainty of the news from the most ancient literary and liturgical sources has left room for the spread of two distinct iconographic traditions.
In the first the saint is depicted as a bishop, according to the Pavia tradition, widespread in Lombardy, Emilia, and Tuscany.
San Dalmazzo guided by the angel
(18th century painting)
San Dalmazzo converts the centurion Cornelius
(18th century painting)
In the area of the Savoy state, from the end of the sixteenth century, San Dalmazzo is depicted in the clothes of a Theban legionary and as such appears in most of the representations dedicated to him in the church of Borgo, except in the modern statue which depicts him as a classical orator.