ON ST. PRUDENTIUS, BISHOP AND MARTYR
At Atina in Italy.
ABOUT A.D. 300.
CommentaryPrudentius, Bishop and Martyr, at Atina in Italy (Saint)
D. P.
[1] Among the Colonies by which the Roman Republic held the peoples of the Volsci in obedience was Atina, near the Pontine marshes, surnamed "excellent" by Virgil: posterity preferred to call it Atinum. The deeds of this and of other bishops of Atina are lost: This city, since it boasts of having received the seeds of the Christian faith from Peter himself, Prince of the Apostles, and first also Mark as the prelate of the sacred things, had its cathedral church formerly dedicated to the same Saint Peter, and in this the bodies of its holy Bishops, by whose sweats the Christian religion watered there made notable progress in a short time. Their marvelous deeds, though they used to be read briefly in writings, yet at the church which had once been built in honor of Saint Mark, but now is named by the name of Saints Nicander and Marcian, are reported to have been consumed by fire. Thus Adenulph, from the year 1008 Archbishop of the See of Capua, in the preface to the miracles of Saint Mark, the first (as we have said) Bishop of Atina.
[2] It is therefore not to be wondered at if two anonymous Atinate writers, by whom the Chronicle of that city has been composed and brought down to the year 1355, preserved in Ferdinando Ughelli's Italia Sacra, Volume 1, at the end of the book, from a very ancient manuscript of the monastery of Fossanova—it is not to be wondered at, I say, if concerning Saint Prudentius, whom they number the tenth Bishop, memory preserved in the Atinate chronicle: they were able to report only a few things. Which things Philip Ferrarius from there transcribed into the Catalogue of the Saints of Italy on this day, and into Volume 6 of Italia Sacra the aforesaid Ferdinando Ughelli: these are as follows: "Gaius, in the second year of his pontificate, ordained in the city of Atina Prudentius as Bishop: who sat 25 years (in another reading 30), two months, five days. He, when on a certain day he wished to overturn an idol of Juno which was in the temple situated beside the Antonian Baths, being seized by the pagans, is killed: whose body they left unburied before the temple for three days, is taken by the Christians; and is buried in the church of Blessed Peter, on the day of the Kalends of April itself."
[3] The place of passion at Atina, Nor should you, hearing "Antonian Baths," doubt whether Prudentius suffered at Atina, on the ground that those baths were held famous at Rome, having taken their name from their author Antoninus Caracalla, as besides others Eusebius in the Chronicle is a witness to us. For this was the folly of even other cities that enjoyed the right of Roman citizenship, especially Italian ones: that whatever at Rome were public buildings of chief fame, they transferred the nomenclature of them also to their own places of similar use, such as Capitols, Amphitheaters, and other things of that kind. Indeed also "in the times of the Emperor Antoninus Caracalla," say the aforesaid authors of the Chronicle, "there was dedicated at Atina a Forum of the same Antoninus, not far from the Amphitheater, with great stones and polished marbles; beside which forum is also placed a temple of Saturn (before whose doors an aqueduct is extended), adorned with various works… which temple and forum were dedicated by the rite of the Gentiles on the 10th day before the Kalends of June, in the reign of Severus and Antoninus," that is, before the year 213. Why then, on account of the convenience of the aqueduct, would not baths not long after have been added, and called by the same name as the forum, the Antonian?
[4] Concerning the time of Saint Gaius the Pope we shall treat on April 22, and we shall say that his first year falls in the year 283 of the common era: from which it would follow that Saint Prudentius was afflicted with martyrdom either in the year 303 or 304, that is, in the last time of the Emperors Diocletian and Maximian. But lest we dare to trust such calculations, and the time is not sufficiently certain: both the antiquity of the matter itself tells against it, done at a time when the custom had not yet become established of enumerating the episcopal years, together with the names of individual bishops, in the diptychs of the churches (which was an invention of a far later age); and also Ferdinando Ughelli's judgment on this very Chronicle, by which in Volume 5 of Italia Sacra, column 512, he considers that the order of the bishops and the times have been so inverted by it, that it scarcely seems able to be tolerable even when corrected. It is to be wondered at, however, that an author is found who, when he says Prudentius was consecrated in the 11th year of Gaius and sat for 25 years, yet ascribed his Martyrdom to the reign of the Emperor Probus: since this latter died before the creation of Gaius.
[5] Witnesses of the ecclesiastical cult paid to Saint Prudentius by the people of Atina are, besides Ferrarius, both Peter Paul Florus of Urbino, cited by him, in a little book on the lives and passions of the holy Protectors of Atina, not yet seen by us; and another Italian manuscript little book with the same title, which, compiled at the beginning of this century, our Antonio Iacobilli found and transcribed at Naples at the house of the honorable man Bartolomeo Chioccarello, in 1638. In this, both the aforementioned things are rendered in the vulgar tongue, when the cult was received at Atina: and this prayer is subjoined to be recited: "God, for whose honor thy glorious Pontiff Prudentius fell by the swords of the impious: grant, we beseech thee, that all who implore his aid may obtain the saving effect of their petition." Which prayer, since it is taken with only the name changed from the Office that the Roman Church ordained to be recited for Saint Thomas of Canterbury on the 4th day before the Kalends of January, is an indication to us that the feast of this holy Pontiff was received among the Atinates by more recent usage, and perhaps after the year 1563, in which Aloysius the Notary of Atina transcribed into one Codex, from a very ancient Lombardic manuscript, as many Acts or other monuments of the Saints of Atina as he could find, together with their Offices; which Lombardic manuscript itself the aforepraised Ferdinando Ughelli testifies to have read through, and to have collated his manuscripts with it, subscribing this by his own hand in the Acts of the Saints received from there, and given to us most generously when we were at Rome: in all which no mention of Saint Prudentius is made; nor of his predecessor Carus: concerning whom accordingly we shall treat on April 29 with equal brevity.