ON STS. ELIAS THE PRESBYTER, PAUL AND ISIDORE THE MONKS,
MARTYRS IN SPAIN.
IN THE YEAR 856.
CommentaryElias the Presbyter, Martyr, in Spain (St.)
Paul, Monk and Martyr, in Spain (St.)
Isidore, Monk and Martyr, in Spain (St.)
G. H.
Cordoba, once the seat of the Saracen kings in Spain, among other Martyrs who under them professed the Christian faith with their blood poured out along with their life, venerates on this day with an ecclesiastical office under a semi-double rite three whom St. Eulogius the eyewitness pursues with this encomium, in book 3 of the Memorial of the Saints, chapter 15. "Moreover, Helias the Presbyter, Encomium from St. Eulogius now an old man, from the province of Lusitania, with Paul and Isidore the monks, still flourishing in youthful age, under the profession of the former were killed on the 15th day before the Kalends of May, in the Era 894; whose bodies, raised up on gibbets, after many days are buried by the Baetic bay." So St. Eulogius, who himself in Era 898, on March 11, not a full four years having elapsed, suffered martyrdom under the same King Muhammad, who had succeeded Abd ar-Rahman, extinguished in Era 890 by a miserable death. These three Martyrs therefore died in the year of Christ 856, and after them St. Eulogius in the year 860. At the same time there flourished at Paris Usuard, a monk of St. Germain, and in his Martyrology which he dedicated to Charles the Bald, Emperor and King of the Franks, name in the Martyrologies he inscribed them on this day in these words: "Likewise at Cordoba, of the holy Martyrs Helias the Presbyter, and Paul and Isidore the Monks." Afterwards all who composed Martyrologies followed him—Bellinus, Maurolycus, Felicius, Galesinius, Canisius, and others, with today's Roman Martyrology. Tamayo Salazar in his Hispanic Martyrology adorns them with such an encomium: "At Cordoba, the memory of the holy Martyrs Elias the Presbyter, Paul and Isidore the monks perseveres: who, for the exaltation of the faith of Christ, terrified by no torments, cast their bodies into the hands of their enemies, and commended their spirits crowned into the arms of Christ." also monastic
[2] The same were inscribed in their monastic Martyrologies by Wion, Dorganius, Menardus, Bucelinus; but Tamayo Salazar contends that Elias the Presbyter was not a monk, though he could have been both a Presbyter and a monk. Whether of the Benedictine Order is not equally clear. We do not wish, however, to deny this, especially if those asserting it bring some fitting proof. Neither does Tamayo grant Elias to the present-day Portuguese, since Lusitania comprised almost all of Extremadura, from which he could have been a native; which Martin de Roa also observed in his work on the Saints of Cordoba, who judges Paul and Isidore to have been Cordobans. Meanwhile Jorge Cardoso in his Lusitanian Hagiology has inscribed Elias, whom he calls Presbyter and monk. The other Spanish historians treat of them (but in words taken from the said encomium of St. Eulogius), and with them Coria and Alegre in the Carmelite History, who judges that they should be counted among the Elians, as John Baptist de Lesana, in volume 3 of the Carmelite Annals, page 422, says is rightly maintained by them. But to refute these more laboriously, let alone follow them, is not the part of a sufficiently prudent man. More prudent is Thomas de Herrera in his Augustinian Alphabet, at the name B. Heliae, which the author of the Theatrum Triumphale had inserted into the Augustinian Order: "On what pretext," he says, "he refers him among our own, I do not know": which Antonio a Purificatione did anew in his Lusitanian Monastic Chronology, published at Lisbon in 1642.