concerning the holy ones of God, Eleutherius the Bishop and Ancia his mother, at
the city of Rome, on the fourteenth day before the Kalends of May, under the Emperor Hadrian,
our Lord Jesus Christ reigning, to whom be honor, virtue, and
glory forever and ever. Amen."
[x] The names of the Bishops of Rieti are hidden, up to Saint Probus,
who seems to have died about the year 570, as we said on March 15. Here one could doubt
whether the Bishop, the burier of the sacred bodies, was truly called by the name
Primus; or whether, being first in the episcopal series, by posterity ignorant of the true
name, he thus came to be called as if by a proper name.
[y] These
words indicate not only a full peace of the Church, adorned by temples publicly erected;
but also the course of one or another century, after the construction of the Urbanian
church.
[z] It was
not the day of death (concerning which we know more certainly from the Hieronymian Martyrology)
but of the church first dedicated in Urbanianum, or of the relics translated
within the city to the church of Saint John the Evangelist; concerning which more
below. But whether now the people of Rieti keep December 24 as festal, or rather
this present one in April, we have not discovered.
CENSURE OF THE ACTS.
Eleutherius, Martyr at Rome (Saint)
Anthia the mother, Martyr at Rome (Saint)
Parthenius, Martyr at Rome (Saint)
Calocerus, Martyr at Rome (Saint)
Febus, Martyr at Rome (Saint)
Proculus, Martyr at Rome (Saint)
Apollonius, Martyr at Rome (Saint)
Fortunatus, Martyr at Rome (Saint)
Crispinus, Martyr at Rome (Saint)
Expeditus, Martyr at Rome (Saint)
Mappalicus, Martyr at Rome (Saint)
Victorinus, Martyr at Rome (Saint)
Gagus, Martyr at Rome (Saint)
By D. P.
[20] In these Acts there displeases the Emperor Hadrian present at all things, Now turn your mind to me, Reader, and consider
how throughout all these Acts the Emperor Hadrian is introduced,
plainly in that manner in which some theatrical tyrant might act in a comedy;
as though he were present at all the tortures, not only for decreeing
but also for inflicting them, and played the role of the lowest judge
or prefect of the executioners; just as in certain other
histories of Martyrs, written after many centuries quite unskillfully,
the Emperors themselves are feigned both to say and to do everything,
which their own Governors and judges did far from their presence and knowledge,
torturing Christians according to the Imperial decrees.
Note then that in killing Eleutherius the element of fire is said to have been applied
four times, and that in not very different manner;
which is foreign to usage and reason. the fire-punishment resumed four times, For whereas the Gentiles ascribed
to magical arts the fact that the Martyrs remained unharmed by fire,
to whom will it seem likely that they were so mad as, in the element in which
they had once and a second time experienced the victors, to offer them
a third and fourth time to be defeated and ridiculed themselves; and not
rather think of another way of inflicting death, if perhaps by this method
those were unconquerable whom their magic armed against fire.
I think that what to some was a burning bed, by others is called a gridiron;
and that the punishment of the frying-pan with boiling oil is not to be distinguished
from the punishment of the glowing furnace, but because some named these
and others those from the tradition of their elders, so the mode of attempted
torture, which it sufficed to double, was quadrupled, as the more prudent Florus did.
[21] Unobserved horses That the Martyrs were often bound to horses or chariots to be torn apart
in four or dragged through rough paths, we often read; but never did we conceive this
to be done in such a way that no one watched the horses or chariots, as here is read
that unobserved Eleutherius went up with his chariot into the mountain, and there lay hidden
until he was found by hunters; and by hunters indeed
who had not come to catch animals customary to Italian forests, but lions and
leopards for theatrical spectacles. Those beasts were not so easily obtained,
as those skilled in Roman affairs know, being accustomed to be brought
at enormous expense from Asia and Africa for such uses. lions and leopards in Roman forests, What then? It was reported
that when the Martyr was exposed to wild beasts he had them obedient; that was enough
for the compiler, to bring them in in a double scene: once as divinely brought
to Eleutherius, then as sent upon him by the tyrant. Nevertheless
it is displeasing, that for bringing back to Rome one man sitting among wild beasts,
and presenting him to the Emperor, not only many apparitors but many
entire cohorts with their tribunes are said to be sent, when those many soldiers sent for the capture of the Saint,
who from the whole multitude believed in Christ, on seeing the power which Eleutherius exercised
over the wild beasts, are said to have been more than six hundred and eight men, among whom
were three Counts of noble birth. A similar stumbling-block
occurs in the first capture, when up to the city to which Eleutherius had been consecrated
Bishop (in Illyricum, that is, or in Apulia), Hadrian is said to have sent Count Felix
with two hundred soldiers, and it is added that he, entering the church
with all his men, found the Bishop preaching; for neither was so great an apparatus
necessary to bring in one accused man, nor elsewhere are Roman Emperors
read to have done such a thing. They ordered that letters be written to the Governors of Provinces or
cities, who added a few guards to those whom they had been ordered to send to Rome.
Thus one soldier is said to have attached himself to the Apostle Paul; thus Ignatius
Bishop of Antioch glories that he was going to Rome, bound to ten leopards,
that is, soldiers guarding him, as being beyond the usual custom many.
The same Ignatius and very many other holy Martyrs, The fiery furnace in the Amphitheater, in the amphitheater
are read to have been exposed to beasts; and this was among other spectacles
customarily shown to the people, frequent; the occasion being taken from
those whom it was custom to commit with beasts. But that Corribon
the Prefect of the City in like manner, after some beasts had been killed for pleasure,
is said to have brought forward Eleutherius to be consumed in a burning furnace,
I do not think can be proved from examples of other accused men or of Martyrs,
as though punishments or torments of this kind were part of public spectacles.
[22] The great youth of Eleutherius, I pass to the notes of time marked in the Acts. Here
first indeed Saint Eleutherius's mother Ancia is said in the Rieti Manuscripts
to have seen the Blessed Apostle Paul living in the body (which is absent from other Latin
Manuscripts); by Metaphrastes she is praised as being one who was instructed in
the faith by the apostolic exhortations of divine Paul: then Eleutherius, in the twentieth
year of his age already Bishop, is introduced as having suffered under Hadrian,
and that in the 25th year of the Emperor's reign. We have shown the martyrdom of Saints Peter and Paul
to pertain to the year 65 of the common era; and it is established that Hadrian
only began to reign in the year 117: let us grant therefore
not his 25th year (for he did not reign so many years), but at least his 15th year, when,
having traversed Arabia, with his mother's great old age; Egypt, and Asia, he set Antinous among the gods;
let us grant, I say, that the Emperor returning from the parts of the East
heard about Eleutherius, as is said in the Acts, and that it was the year
131. But if in that year Eleutherius was in his 20th year of age,
how old must we imagine the mother to have been, who had borne him
about the year 110, and before the year of Christ 65 had learned her faith
from Paul?
[23] And then to whom can those premature ordinations,
contrary to the usage of the Church, be sufficiently proved? Cajetanus tortures himself
in these matters, An Episcopate conferred in the 20th year of age and tries to find examples in Saint Timothy
the Bishop of the Ephesians, and in Saints Gregory and Athenodorus;
of whom the latter Eusebius asserts to have been made Bishops in Pontus while quite youths;
the former Cardinal Hugo thinks to have been not yet twenty-three
years old; but neither are these certain, nor do they sufficiently prove the point, that he should
be believed to have been consecrated Bishop at the age of twenty. It will be safer
to suppose Eleutherius a man of full age; and that this alone was the reason
why he is believed to have been ordained as so young and almost a boy, because he had
his mother as a companion of his martyrdom, whom they feared to ascribe
feminine weakness. by the Roman Pontiff. With this supposed, Eleutherius as a boy could have been
offered by his mother to the Roman Pontiff for the ministry of the church,
not indeed to Anicetus (which we believe to be a scribal error and we believe it never
would have come into Metaphrastes's mind even in a dream), but
to Anacletus the Archbishop of the city of Rome, who lived up to
the year 96 of our era. But if it were permitted to substitute Trajan, his predecessor,
for Hadrian, Eleutherius could also be considered to have been crowned with martyrdom
as a younger man, even before the thirtieth year of his age.
[24] These things being thus deduced, I do not fear being accused of rashness
for refusing to have the Acts of Saint Eleutherius in our work otherwise Since however among so many fictions some truth must be believed to lie hidden,
than as apocryphal; upon which no firm belief can be built
concerning either the times or the modes of the martyrdom he endured;
yet because concerning the very truth of the martyrdom it is clear,
and no less concerning the episcopal rank, neither ought all the rest in the Acts just
examined to be believed altogether freely invented; come let us grope
to find what true foundation these things, so confusedly heaped up
by posterity, may have had; leaving to each his liberty
to follow other conjectures which he may more approve.
I think that both things and times could have been so ordered,
that the mother Antia, perhaps a girl of twelve years when Saint Paul
died, and afterwards married to a Consular man (for whose
unknown name the author of the Acts substituted the name Eugenius,
signifying by its own interpretation great nobility),
bore him her son Eleutherius, not long after
the year of the common Era 70: [we suspect Eleutherius was born about the year 70, and enrolled in the Clergy at Rome in the year 80,] whom, having been educated as a Christian at home
up to the 12th year of his age or more, she handed over
to Pontiff Anacletus, and having been received by him and enrolled in the Clergy
she sent him to Apulia to the Bishop of the city of Aecana,
Dynamius (unless this name too, to signify the virtue and
probity of the man, was put in place of the proper name which was unknown),
to Dynamius, I say, the Bishop, she sent him to be imbued with sacred letters:
who at a suitable age consecrated him Deacon and Presbyter,
and finally sent him to Rome, that as his future successor he might be consecrated Bishop
by the Roman Pontiff, namely by Telesphorus, if Eleutherius endured
martyrdom under Hadrian, the same returned from Apulia under Trajan or Hadrian, already more than fifty years old,
his mother approaching her seventieth year; or
(if you allow Trajan to be substituted for Hadrian) by Pontiff Alexander,
only thirty years old, and thus between the borders of
adolescent age and full age, when his mother was fifty. The Pontiff,
to whom at that time perhaps Illyrians had come, seeking a teacher of the Christian
faith or even a Bishop for a widowed church,
handed Eleutherius over to them, until the church of Aecana
should demand back the Pastor dedicated to itself.
[25] All these things, on account of the remarkable nobility of his family,
and the fame of his mother most known among Roman matrons, and likewise the zeal
of defending and propagating the faith, fervent in Eleutherius,
and the consequent grace of miracles, could not everywhere
remain hidden from Gentile informers; it is probable
that Eleutherius was recalled from his journey and he going to Illyricum with Episcopal power
by which he was heading to Illyricum, and brought back to Rome; and after various
kinds of death had been vainly attempted, he was beheaded together with his mother, openly
professing herself a Christian: whose bodies then both those Illyrians who were accompanying
and the Romans buried and interred,
not far from the city of Rome; and piously venerated them there,
until either when the Church had obtained peace, it raised the sacred Martyrs from
the earth, in the presence of the Rieti Bishop, called there for that purpose or even
by divine summons; who perhaps for his newly
established diocese chose Eleutherius as patron, recalled to the city, slain, and buried near it. and
obtained a good portion of the bodies, while the other portion was sent to Constantinople.
But let this suffice, to have proposed these things not as history
but as conjecture: let us pass to things more certain, and
which can be proved by the very monuments of things and letters.
TRANSLATION OF THE RELICS to Rieti in the Sabine country.
From the Documents of the Church of Rieti.
Eleutherius, Martyr at Rome (Saint)
Anthia the mother, Martyr at Rome (Saint)
Parthenius, Martyr at Rome (Saint)
Calocerus, Martyr at Rome (Saint)
Febus, Martyr at Rome (Saint)
Proculus, Martyr at Rome (Saint)
Apollonius, Martyr at Rome (Saint)
Fortunatus, Martyr at Rome (Saint)
Crispinus, Martyr at Rome (Saint)
Expeditus, Martyr at Rome (Saint)
Mappalicus, Martyr at Rome (Saint)
Victorinus, Martyr at Rome (Saint)
Gagus, Martyr at Rome (Saint)
BHL Number: 2453
By D. P.
[26] It is an ancient opinion of the inhabitants that the city of Rieti
was sacred to the mother goddess Rhea, and was named after her;
and that her statue there was held in most religious cult
and stood in a most celebrated place, until, when the Christian religion
had long since been established, a church was built near the place where the statue stood.
This offense is thought to have stirred the demon inhabiting the statue
to exact vengeance upon the citizens now Christian, God permitting it, To restrain the demon
so that the people of Rieti decided to bring back to themselves more closely the bodies of their Martyrs,
buried in Urbanianum at a distance of one mile,
and thus both be freed from the hostile demon, and add
to the newly built church the patronage of the Saints. It still has in its archive an old Codex,
written more than 400 years ago, in which after
the Acts described above, followed the history of the said Translation:
but the book, with one leaf torn out, being mutilated, indicates that the beginning
of the history and the end of the Acts are missing; with damage lighter indeed from one
side, because the Acts, transcribed into a more recent codex
together with the augmentation of the first Translation under Bishop Primus,
could be completed from it; but from the other side irreparable,
because no other copy survives from which the beginning of the said history
can be recovered. Accordingly, from the statue of Rhea, as is believed, what we have said concerning the occasion
and cause of the second translation rests on mere conjecture,
founded on that fragment which has survived the greed of time,
and which is as follows:
[27] "The demon, namely, used to attack the weak with horrible appearances,
from which pregnant women, from the distress of fear, often suffered
miscarriages; men also feared to pass by; and so the city itself, troubling the citizens
wearied by the dwelling-place of an abominable guest, as though besieged
with dangers, could not breathe from this guest's attacks.
Therefore the Bishop and citizens of Rieti, trusting
in the Lord, who does not at all forsake those hoping in him,
with reverence placed the bodies of the aforesaid Saints (Eleutherius
and Antia) in the Church of Blessed John the Evangelist which
had been built around the aforesaid statue, the Relics are translated to the church of Saint John the Evangelist in the underground crypt of that same holy church.
But God, willing by the merits of the same Saints
to follow up the city and people with a special prerogative,
and to amplify the cult of the Saints with worthy miracles, put the demon to flight:
who from the day of this placement with his wiles immediately vanished,
never to return at any time; and then
with the Prophet they said: We passed, and behold it was not:
we sought, and his place was not found. Ps 36:36 and the vexation ceases.
Therefore the people of Rieti, freed from so great a snare of servitude,
praised the Lord on well-sounding cymbals,
and to the same church of Saint John, where
the bodies of the aforesaid Saints rest, there was such
a multitude of men flowing together, the fame of the miracle being spread far and wide,
that the same church flourished with ample abundance of gifts."
[28] Thus far that fragment, in which if at least the name
of the Bishop were added, through whom the Translation was managed, we could
to some extent define its time: now again we must have recourse
to conjectures. The friend from Rieti who sent us all these things
indicated that it seemed to him that all these things
happened a few years after the first Translation under Bishop Primus,
before which the very Martyrdom of the Saints had preceded
with scarcely any intervening interval. The matter seems to have been done in the 6th century We are driven to a quite different
view by a stronger reason; for although the Saints'
bodies were first buried in the countryside, not Roman but Rieti
(which nevertheless we have said is not proved to us, indeed the contrary
is persuasively urged by Metaphrastes), yet that scrap, sewn
onto the Acts prenoted in favor of the people of Rieti, on whose sole testimony
rests the truth of the first Translation, requires that we likewise believe
that in the estate of Bishop Primus at Urbanianum a church was built:
but this cannot and ought not be believed gratuitously to have been done
before the reign of Constantine the Great and the peace given to the Christian cause.
The same scrap also requires that in the same church
the cult of the Saints' bodies should have persevered for some centuries,
before this was written; since the holy Martyrs are said
to work many benefits in that place "to this day,"
as we are not accustomed to speak except after a long lapse
of time. Therefore we shall not oppose anyone who might suspect that
Saint Probus, and perhaps under Saint Probus the Bishop. mentioned above in note X, was the author of the
transfer of the bodies within the city in the 6th century of Christ, when
there still remained in various places many statues, monuments
of ancestral superstition. Certainly it is necessary that this Probus
was most devoted to Saint Eleutherius, since as a boy sitting by his dying father,
and terrified at the entrance of certain candidate-clad and most splendid
men, he heard these words from him: "Do not
fear, for Saint Juvenal (namely the Bishop and Patron of nearby Narni)
and Saint Eleutherius the Martyrs have come to me."
Whatever may be about him, it will appear from what is to be said below
in number 31 that the holy bodies were afterwards found under
the altar of that church, with Saint Peter the Bishop of Compostela present,
who is venerated on September 10, and flourished after the year 950.
[29] There follows in the aforesaid fragment how the city of Rieti
was destroyed by Roger King of Sicily, and then restored by the citizens.
Both Ughelli in volume 1 of Italia Sacra writes to have happened
under Bishop Adenulphus, who, elected in 1188, left the Cathedra
in 1209, being made a Cistercian monk in the monastery
of Tre Fontane in Rome. But as to the first part he is greatly mistaken: for King Roger,
who began to reign in 1129, did not prolong his life beyond the year
1150; About the year 1143 by Roger King of Sicily when he had died, the seventh year of desolation not yet having elapsed,
the city began to be restored: neither, therefore, could have pertained
to the Episcopate of Adenulphus. The words of the fragment itself are as follows:
"But when there came the savage tyranny of Roger King of Sicily,
who, conceiving hatred against the people of Rieti with no preceding
cause, surrounded that city with a great
retinue of horsemen and footmen, with a marvelous siege;
although by the same siege of many years' course they were pressed,
the city of Rieti overthrown they resisted manfully the royal power. The same King,
vomiting his conceived hatred, and not seeking
a spirit of compassion toward the people of Rieti, destroyed houses and churches and ornaments;
and she was made a widow who before was a wife. So
the men of that city were exiled from their own hearths for almost
seven years; but returning they could say,
Now is corn where Rieti was."
[30] After his death it is restored. At length the Lord Jesus Christ, mindful of his faithful ones,
the said King having paid the debt of death,
prepared the way for the Rieti inhabitants, that they might re-enter the same city
without any obstacle, plague, famine,
and the anguish of other tribulations having consumed men for the
greater part. Entering and rebuilding
their houses and churches, of happy memory the Lord
Pope Innocent III (he presided over the Church from
the year 1198 to 1217), Innocent I say, in 1198 Innocent III
Pope III, they began with all affection to entreat that he should visit
the city of Rieti with his presence, that forgetful of such
dangers, the shadow of the Vicar of Christ might cherish them;
and the damage which their extermination had brought, his
presence might compensate. Consenting therefore
the supreme Pontiff to the petitions of the peoples, he came to that very city;
and there lingering for some time, by juridical report he perceived
that the often-named Martyrs had shone with countless miracles. He decrees that the translation be made from the old to the new crypt:
Wherefore when a certain citizen, for remission of his sins,
had caused to be built in the said church another crypt under the high altar,
he disposed that the aforesaid bodies be translated from the earlier crypt,
by the counsel of the Lords Cardinals: so that the devotion
of the same Saints might be renewed, which in the long interval of time
had been obliterated, mindful
of that prophetic word: "A thousand years before your eyes
are as yesterday that has passed." Ps 89:4
[31] And because there was no memory in what part
of the earlier crypt the said Bodies rested, the same supreme
Pontiff commanded that they be diligently sought again. When these bodies of the Saints
had been found again, by the sign of a certain image painted there
pointing with the finger to those bodies, which happens with great pomp
having been exhumed with the reverence which befitted, the Lord Pope himself,
the Lord Cardinals, Archbishops, and Bishops
dwelling in the Curia, translated them into the new crypt with
hymns and canticles: in which a noble structure
he ordered an altar to be built at his own expense; and
wishing that the devotion of the people of Rieti should grow, to all
truly penitent and confessed, and who in the said place
on the day of this translation stretched out their helping hands
(as we have heard from our elders), three years
and three forty-day periods of the penance enjoined upon them
he relaxed: and annually it is celebrated August 16. which Indulgence the aforesaid Lord
Pope and Lord Cardinals, Archbishops, and Bishops
placed in that very place to last in perpetuity.
The festival of the aforesaid Translation is to be celebrated on the day
after the feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Mary, in
honor of Blessed Eleutherius and Anthia his mother the Martyrs,
and Blessed John the Evangelist, to whom be honor and
glory forever and ever. In faith of which thing and for
the memory of posterity, a plate was placed on the sacred ark, made on the 13th of the same month.
whose inscription Ughelli records in volume 1 col. 113: "In
the name of the Lord. In the year of the Lord's Incarnation
1198, in the month of August, on the 13th day, in the time of Innocent
Pope III, he himself assisting in the city of Rieti, here
have been laid up the bones of the holy Martyrs Eleutherius
and Anthia his mother, in the presence of Lord Sofredus
Priest, Cardinal of the title of Saint Praxedes, and Master Peter Deacon
Cardinal of Saint Mary in Via Lata, and Adenulphus the Bishop of Rieti;
which were found under this altar (as an ancient title that was found,
history, and public fame indicated), with Peter
formerly Archbishop of Compostela present."
[32] As to Urbanianum, there are those who assert that there was once
a monastery, and that it was the one of which, as being "established next
to the walls of the city of Rieti," Saint Gregory the Great makes mention in Homily 35 on the Gospels,
with many praises extolling Saint Stephen, in his own days the Father of that monastery, from the suburban church of Saint Eleutherius
and in book 4 of the Dialogues chapter 19 describing his happy death;
on account of which he is inscribed in the ecclesiastical Fasts on February 13,
and also commemorated by us in its place. If this is true,
then either the translation of Relics to the church of Saint John the Evangelist was prior
to the foundation of that monastery, or followed later because of
its desolation through the incursions of barbarians; for it is not
probable that a place flourishing in religion and discipline,
under such a holy Abbot or his next successors,
by which it subsisted and was preserved. However this may be; that first church of Saint Eleutherius, Where in an Abbey founded about the year 1300
restored in Urbanianum, in the 13th or 14th century was increased by a notable
Abbey of the Benedictine Order, over which at the said century's end, in the 14th century,
John the Abbot was presiding, brother of Louis the Bishop of Rieti;
who, with him, on account of his zeal for exterminating vices and
restoring discipline, brought into hatred of the people, was killed by conspirators,
while they were both attending sacred offices, in the principal church
of the town called Civita Ducale, the relics of Saint Anthia were held: and about eight miles distant from Rieti.
This John I believe obtained from the Bishop his brother
part of the Relics of Saint Anthia, about whose discovery in the last century
and their return to the city I shall presently speak.
[33] The aforesaid killing of the Bishop and Abbot, which happened in the year
1399, moved the Roman Pontiff Boniface IX
with such indignation, that he deprived the people of the sacraments, and the church
of episcopal dignity. He also pressed the rebels, Rinaldo
Alphanus, who, as Ughelli relates from writings of the time,
girded with iron and flame, dreadfully despoiled the fortunes and resources
of the conspirators, so that he did not even spare the bodies
of those who by any affinity touched the rebels. The same after the desolation of the Abbey,
Who can doubt that this calamity afflicted also the monastery of Saint Eleutherius,
bereft of an Abbot, and likely not entirely empty
of factious men or their blood relations? Perhaps from then it fell into that
servitude of commendation, by which it was gradually worn down and exhausted
and finally came to nothing, with the church remaining; but so desolated,
that in the year 1562 idle men, no one forbidding them, did not fear to dig up
its pavement and the altars themselves, hoping to find something of gold
or silver furniture. But they found a better treasure than they had thought or hoped,
as the following instrument testifies. in 1562 they are translated to the Cathedral church, "On Sunday April 12,
1562, since it was known in the city of Rieti
that the Relics of the holy Martyrs Eleutherius the Bishop and Anthia his mother had most recently been
found, under the high altar of the church of Saint Eleutherius, situated
outside the city by one mile, yesterday for today,
by mandate of the Reverend Lord Vicar (for Bishop Giovanni Battista
Osius was absent, present at the Ecumenical Council of Trent), of the Canons
and Chapter of the church of Rieti, on the said
day, at about the 22nd hour, the Vicar and Canons and Confraters
of each Confraternity, with their gonfalons,
crosses and insignia, and with lights, the greater part
of the People of Rieti and of men and women of both sexes accompanying,
approached with great devotion, and with
prayers and litanies to the said church of Saint Eleutherius;
and there they found hidden the Relics, as above,
of Eleutherius and Anthia his mother, in a certain marble
casket, upon which was a square stone with a cover
and letters: 'The bones of Saint Anthia, mother of Saint Eleutherius.'
And the said Relics so found were brought
and translated processionally, with the people accompanying with
lights, from the said church of Saint Eleutherius to
the Cathedral church of Rieti." Concerning these Relics
this only I think is to be held, that the title inscribed in marble
indicated only that they were of Saint Anthia, not also of Saint Eleutherius,
and that according to popular custom the Notary before had
jointly named both, in recording these things.
[34] namely to the new church of the Blessed Virgin Assumed, But when the Cathedral church is named here,
there is not understood that which was restored by Adenulphus, under the title
of Saint John the Evangelist, which today converted into a Rectoral church
survives; but another more spacious and more august, under the title of the Virgin
Assumed, raised I know not when, certainly not before
in the indulgence of Martin V in the year 1419 to the supplicating people of Rieti the bond of
anathema was loosed, and the right of having a Bishop was restored.
But the bodies of their holy Patrons were not
translated with the Cathedra, [in the old church of Saint John the Evangelist the bodies themselves are found in 1597,]
but were left in their church of Saint John; for in the above instruments
it is read subsequently thus:
"On February 16, 1597, on Sunday
at dawn, in the crypt of Saint John the Evangelist, in the square
of Rieti, by the Archpriest Don Antonino de Fabris,
at that time Rector of the said church, were found
two lead caskets, one a palm wide and
a foot long, the other of the same length and
width; and on one of them was written 'Relics of Saint Eleutherius,'
on the other 'Relics of Saint Anthia': which were placed
in one stone box, under the high altar of the said
crypt, upon which stone box on its cover
was written in capital letters: 'Relics of Saints Eleutherius and Anthia his mother.'"
[35] whence was received the joint of Saint Eleutherius Nor should you doubt, because only Relics are named, that this
is understood of the principal part of the aforesaid bodies: for behold
the testimony of Augustine Vivaldi, Rector of the Jesuit College of Genoa,
written at Rome on January 23, 1612. "Whereas
to the very Reverend Father Charles Scribanius, Rector of the
College of Antwerp, I have given one of the joints of a finger of Saint
Eleutherius Bishop and Martyr, son of Saint Anthia the Martyr,
(which I myself drew from the church of Saint John at Rieti, where his
and his mother's sacred bodies are honorably preserved,
in the year 1600) with the faculty of the Reverend Horatius Gentilis,
then Apostolic Vicar in that city; and besides
part of the bone of one of the companions of Saint Placid
the Martyr, it is preserved at Antwerp with the Fathers of the Society of Jesus. whose bodies divinely found at Messina
our most holy Lord Paul V declared to be truly their bodies;
that such sacred Relics might not be
frustrated of due honor, concerning all these things, by these letters,
subscribed with my own hand and fortified with the seal of the Society, I
have wished to make faith." These Relics are now preserved at Antwerp, with
various remains of holy Pontiffs and Martyrs, and other
non-Pontiff Martyrs, in the sacristy of the Professed House,
in most elegant hierothecas made for that purpose. Whether
in the progress of the present century anything has been changed among
the people of Rieti, is not indicated by him who supplied the above documents;
only concerning the present Cathedral church he speaks thus,
as though there is a casket where the bodies of the said
Saints are hidden.