ON SAINT URSUS, BISHOP OF RAVENNA IN ITALY.
IN THE YEAR 396.
PrefaceUrsus, Bishop of Ravenna in Italy (Saint)
G. H.
Ravenna is a noble and ample city of Romagna, adorned with an Archepiscopal See. Saint Apollinaris, sent by the Apostle Peter, founded this city, and had very many successors in it as Bishops, both Martyrs and Confessors, enrolled in the register of the Saints, whom we set forth in various days throughout this whole work. We too, setting out for Rome, turned aside to Ravenna, Sacred cult of Saint Ursus, and examined the monuments which were in the archives of the Archepiscopal Church, and learned that Saint Ursus, Bishop there, is venerated on the 13th day of April throughout the whole diocese with ecclesiastical office under a double rite, but all is taken from the Common of a Confessor Pontiff: which cult is confirmed by the Tables of the Roman Church in these words: "At Ravenna, of Saint Ursus Bishop and Confessor." The same veneration of him Hieronymus Rubeus testifies in book 2 of his History of the Ravennans, into which he inserts whatever he could find about Saint Ursus: thence some encomium was composed by Philippus Ferrarius in his Catalogue of the Saints of Italy on this April 13, Encomia written about him. Ferdinand Ughelli in volume 2 of Italia sacra, col. 330, Hieronymus Fabrius in part 2 of the Sacra memoria Ravennatum, p. 417, with Desiderius Spretus, Johannes Petrus Ferretus, and Hieronymus Rossus also cited; but chiefly Octavius Cajetan in volume 1 of the Saints of Sicily, because Saint Ursus is said to originate from that island: whom the same Cajetan also inscribed in his Sicilian Martyrology on this day: who asserts that "the Life of Saint Ursus was composed by me, partly from those things dispersedly said about him by Hieronymus Rubeus, partly from a certain monument, which from a manuscript codex of the Ravennate Church the same Rubeus, a most learned and most humane man, had sent to me through his brother Constantine." This Life therefore (because we could obtain nothing more certain) we here subjoin, and it is of this kind.
LIFE
From the History of Hieronymus Rubeus, composed by Octavius Cajetan.
Ursus, Bishop of Ravenna in Italy (Saint)
BY H. RUBEUS.
[1] Ursus, Bishop of Ravenna, born in Sicily of a noble and opulent family, was connected by affinity to Blessed Bassianus of Syracuse. a Indeed he, having taken up the faith of Christ, in order to escape the wrath of his pagan father, was warned by God to flee to Ravenna to Ursus his kinsman. Ursus the Sicilian, Someone will perhaps conjecture, from the connection of Syracusan blood, that Ursus originated b from Syracuse, a city of Sicily. But the cause and time at which, setting out from the island, he is created Bishop of Ravenna: he came to Ravenna, a city of Italy, is in obscurity. Where, honored with the most ample priesthood, he took up the government of the Ravennate Church, vacant by the death of his predecessor c Liberius, and betrothed to him, preferred before the rest on account of his outstanding gifts; for he had a pious and lofty soul, most of all inflamed for the increase of the religion of Christ: similar to his soul was his most chaste body, far from every stain.
[2] But nothing so made the name of Ursus famous to posterity as his distinguished deeds. For indeed he was the first to begin to construct a great temple for God at Ravenna, he built a church, so that, as a most vigilant shepherd, he might gather into one fold the flock of Christ, and his own, which was still wandering scattered in huts, and see it safely enclosed. And indeed great riches, which through sloth and luxury are a disgrace to others, were for Ursus a great glory: for he conferred the wealth, which he had abundantly received from his parents in Sicily, on adorning the houses of the Most Great God and their decorations; undertaking at Ravenna a work of outstanding art and magnitude, which would testify to the loftiness of his mind and his kindled zeal for religion. and adorned it with his own money For he built from the foundations a very great and most beautiful d temple, and left to the future shepherds of the city and the people a fixed seat of the sacred pontificate and religion: posterity called it "the Ursian temple," called the Ursian, with the name given from the founder, which is situated in the Herculean region (so called from a colossus of Hercules, which was seen before the forum next to the shrine of Blessed Agnes), and it remained to our own memory: although, as sicknesses extinguish the grace of bodies, so times have extinguished the beauty of the temple.
[3] For as Ursus, burning with zeal for sacred things and great in soul, set up the temple with a fourfold order of columns of distinguished and most splendid, Greek marble, painted the vault with mosaic, and not only distinguished the walls with vermiculated ornament and panels of men and animals, but also wove them about with precious stones and gems; the gems themselves silently exulting through a kind of ambition, that by the piety of Ursus they had been transferred from the vanity of men to the worship of God. And the people of the Ravennans, as a body governed by one soul, emulated the zeal of their pious pastor; and undertaking the labor of their own accord in constructing the house of Christ, showed forth joy and thanksgiving; and praised God because, by the prayers of their Priest, He was prospering the public affairs of the Ravennans. And indeed the temple, finished by the wealth of Ursus, dedicated on the day of Easter in the year 384. was dedicated on the Ides of April; on which was celebrated that year the birthday of Christ the Lord rising to life, which was from His coming forth e 384. From the day of the dedication, the name of the Basilica was the Anastasis.
[4] With the same zeal Ursus procured the honors and worship especially of the indigenous Saints: He promotes the cult of the Saints. for it is sufficiently established that from his very times the Sicilian Saints were held in great honor by the Ravennans, and that a temple was dedicated at Ravenna to the Most Holy Virgins f Agatha and Lucia. Then also the feast day and solemnity of Saint Euplius, Martyr of Catania, began to be celebrated.
[5] But when Ursus had presided over the Church twenty years, he was transferred to the blessed life by his merits in the year of Christ g 398, during the reign of Arcadius and Honorius. He departed in a mild sickness and milder death, on those same Ides of April, on that very day of the Most Holy Resurrection of Jesus Christ, on which Ursus had consecrated the illustrious temple h 13 years before. he dies in the year 398, April 13, This honor God seems to have given to his outstanding piety, that He should open the temples of heaven to him departing from life on the same day on which he had celebrated Him raised from death by the dedication of the magnificent temple. buried in the Ursian shrine, Ursus being extinguished, with the tears of all the orders, was laid in his own shrine, before the altar under a porphyry marble, whence in later times it is reported to have been transferred to the upper altar.
[6] Form of his body: He was of a comely body, with a long and beautiful face, the top of his head moderately bare of hair, of upright morals, lofty of soul. His image painted in mosaic is seen in the vault of the temple of Saint Apollinaris in Classe. Ursus had a house at Ravenna next to the channel of a stream which flowed from Organaria (the name of the place), under the bridge of the Prisci, which was once of wondrous size, and was inhabited by magnificent buildings. The same Ursus increased the city of Ravenna with many buildings. of the situation of his dwelling He delivered a very ample inheritance in Sicily to Christ and His Church, convinced by no affection of kinsmen. Surely, by public magnificence he equaled a Christian Prince; by virtues (which is a more solid praise in a Pontiff) he equaled the highest summit of the priesthood, magnificence. gaining eternal fame with posterity and heavenly honors through both.