ON THE MANY HOLY ROMAN MARTYRS,
BAPTIZED BY POPE ST. ALEXANDER.
IN THE YEAR 116
CommentaryThe many Roman Martyrs, baptized by Pope Alexander (Sts.)
G. H.
St. Alexander, seventh in order of Roman Pontiffs, ruled the Church, truly Greatest: whose Acts, drawn from several manuscript codices, we shall illustrate on May 3, entirely sincere: from which we establish elsewhere the chronology of the preceding and following Pontiffs. In those Acts Trajan is said, after the Martyrdom of St. Alexander, History of the conversion and Martyrdom from the Acts of St. Alexander the Pope. to have died in the same year by the will of God. This is the 116th year: marked by the Consuls L. Aemilius Aelianus and L. Antistes Vetus: whom all the more ancient Catalogues of Pontiffs report, elsewhere deduced by us. In these Acts, among other things, is reported the Martyrdom of St. Quirinus, slain before these Martyrs: whose deeds we have illustrated on his birthday March 30. By his example others converted to the faith of Christ were crowned on this 10th of April in the same year 116; whose conversion and Martyrdom we give from the same Acts of St. Alexander, and they are of this sort:
[2] St. Alexander says to Quirinus the Tribune: "How many persons are enclosed in that prison?" And he said: "Near twenty…" St. Alexander said to him: "If you would grant me a favor, persuade all who are in the prison to be baptized, Captives, charged with crimes, that they may become Christians." Quirinus answered: "You Christians are holy: but some of these are burglars: others adulterers and evildoers, and charged with diverse crimes." St. Alexander said to him: "For sinners the Son of God descended from heaven to earth, and born of a Virgin calls all to pardon. Do not hesitate, make all come to me." Then Quirinus said to all in a clear voice: brought to St. Alexander, "Whoever wishes to become a Christian, let him come to me: and when he has been baptized, let him go free wherever he will." And when all had come to St. Alexander, they are catechized concerning God, God opened his mouth, and he said: "Little children; hear and believe. God who made heaven and earth, the sea and all things that are in them, who sends forth lightning and thunders, who kills and makes alive; whom sun and moon and stars, and clear weather and clouds and rains serve; Christ being incarnate, this God sent his Son from the high heavens through the womb of a Virgin, that he might be born of a human. He began to invite to his faith every kind of men: and when they were hard to believe, and refused to believe him, he did this sign, that dining with them, and after miracles done, when the wine failed at the feasts, he turned water into wine. Likewise he began to express the thoughts of individual men: likewise to open the eyes of the blind, loose the mouths of the mute, restore step to the lame, put demons to flight, save the languishing and feverish: but also raise the dead, command the winds, restrain storms, walk upon the sea with dry feet. crucified, While he was doing all these things, and an innumerable multitude was believing in him; the Pharisees and Jews, led by zeal, crucified him. Which he did not forbid them to do, though he could have; because he strove to take captive the author of our death. Which done, on the third day he rose from the dead, and before many witnesses ascended into heaven, giving power to his disciples to work miracles. He is to come at the end of the age as Judge, to render good things to the good and evil to the evil. See then, you who have believed, and appointed as Judge: and give your names, that you may be made Christians."
[3] The believers are baptized: And when all had believed, and he had made them catechumens, afterwards together, Quirinus also with his daughter Balbina and all his household, were baptized: and when all who were together in custody had been baptized, the prison was opened, and it began to be like a church. Then the warden went to Aurelian, and told him all that had happened. Whence enraged he ordered Quirinus to be brought, and said to him: "I loved you as a son: but you have mocked me, deceived by Alexander." Quirinus said to him: "I have been made a Christian: do you wish to kill me? do you wish to beat me? do you wish to cut me? I will be nothing else. They refused to leave the opened prison: For all who were in the prison, I made into Christians, and dismissed them: and they would not go anywhere: and they are all there in the prison, saying: 'If for our crimes we had to die and perish, how much more for the name of Christ ought we to offer our souls?' I however asked them that all who had been baptized should come out, and I clothed them with white and new garments, because the Christian religion also demands this: but up to now all stand prepared for martyrdom, toward their slaughter, like a hungry panther toward a feast. Now begin to do whatever pleases you." Then he had his tongue cut out… to be tortured on the rack, his hands and feet cut off, placed on a ship they are drowned. and thus beheaded and thrown to dogs… thereafter he orders all those baptized in the prison to be taken out in an old ship into the deep sea, and there, with stones tied to their necks, to be sunk into the depth of the sea.
[4] Thus far those Acts: in which it is said, Aurelian, Count of both militias, was summoned by the Emperor Trajan from Seleucia of Isauria for the killing of all Christians; who is also by others addressed as Judge, Prince, and Emperor. Memorial in the sacred Fasti. The sacred memorial of these Martyrs is inscribed in the Martyrologies of Usuard, Ado, Notker, Bellini, and as many ancient manuscripts as possible, with others more recent, with an elogium drawn from the reported Acts, which is thus reported in today's Roman Martyrology: "At Rome the birthday of the many holy Martyrs, whom St. Alexander the Pope, when he was detained in prison, baptized. But all these Aurelian the Prefect ordered to be placed on an old ship, taken into the deep, and there, with stones tied to their necks, to be sunk." We have retained in the title the indefinite number "Many," out of reverence for the Church which uses that Martyrology; otherwise more definitely and perhaps more truly, they could have been called, "Near twenty": for St. Quirinus expressed this number when asked about the captives: that others accrued from elsewhere, so that they might be called many, cannot be asserted on sufficient grounds. Peter de Natalibus in book 4, chapter 42, adds the motive of their conversion, that they had seen how St. Alexander the Pope had cured Quirinus's daughter of a hump or deforming tumor. This is St. Balbina, whose Life we have illustrated on March 31. Ferrarius in the Catalogue of Italian Saints, after giving the elogium from the reported Acts, notes that the names of these Martyrs are entirely unknown; nor has it been possible to know where their Relics are preserved.