Vincent

CONCERNING ST. VINCENT,

MARTYR AT CAUCO-LIBERIS IN HITHER SPAIN.

A.D. 303

Vincent, Martyr at Cauco-liberis in Hither Spain (St.)

D. P.

Illiberis, and afterwards Cauco-liberis, now Colibre, is a maritime town at the foot of the Pyrenean mountains in the County of Roussillon. The most ancient notice of it is found in Titus Livius, 3rd decade book 1, where it is said that Hannibal, about to enter the Gauls with his forces from Spain, having crossed the Pyrenees, pitched camp at the town of Illiberis. At which time several peoples of the Gauls gathered at Ruscino, Illiberis an ancient town, to whose chieftains Hannibal sent envoys: saying that he wished to confer with them, and that either they should approach more closely to Illiberis, or he himself would proceed to Ruscino. Indeed, when the chieftains of the Gauls, moving their camps immediately to Illiberis, came without reluctance to the Carthaginian, he led his army through their territories past the town of Ruscino. But Pliny, in book 3 of his Natural History chapter 4, treating of the province of Narbonne and describing the towns occurring beyond the Pyrenees, says first of all, "Illiberis, the slight vestige of a once great city." But as there are vicissitudes of things, Illiberis flourished again, becoming even an Episcopal city. For at the Third Council of Toledo, held in the fourth year of the reign of Reccared, A.D. 589, Spanish Era 627, illustrious by its Episcopal See: Peter, Bishop of the Illeberitan Church, subscribed in the 46th place: from whom another, Stephen, Bishop of the Eliberitan Church in the province of Baetica, also subscribed in the 31st place, as at 22 John Bishop of the Elne Church: to whom afterward the Illiberitan Church was united or certainly subject. García de Loaysa in his collection of the Councils of Spain hands down on page 132, the Division of the provinces of Spain and their Sees, called Cauco-liberis, as he found in the Hispalense codex of Saint Lawrence written in the year of the Lord 862, but perhaps composed long before. In this Division, in the first place is set the province of Gallaecia, in the second place the province of Gaul, and in this Narbonne the metropolis, and under it Cauco-liberis, Carcasonne and other cities, among which the last is Elena. Then other Divisions of provinces are subjoined, with Narbonne the metropolis and the name of Elne or Elena, to which Cauco-liberis were then annexed or subject, without any express mention of these. And so much concerning the situation of the city and the Episcopal See.

[2] In this place Saint Vincent suffered martyrdom, whom all Martyrologies, both printed and manuscript, mention everywhere: first the four manuscripts of the Hieronymian Martyrology in these words: At Cauco-liberi or Caucolibri, Saint Vincent inscribed in the ancient Martyrologies, the birthday of Saint Vincent. Usuard has these things: In the city of Cauco-liberi, the passion of Saint Vincent Martyr. Similar things are in Rabanus, Ado, Notker, Bellinus, Maurolycus, Galesinius, and other more recent writers together with the present Roman Martyrology. The martyrdom of the same Saint Vincent is celebrated by Ambrosius Morales in book 10 of the History of the Spains chapter 13, and in Spanish histories, Juan Marieta in book 2 of the History of the Saints of Spain chapter 38, Francisco de Padilla in century 4 of the Ecclesiastical History of the Spains chapter 18, Thomas de Trujillo in the Thesaurus of Preachers on this day, and Antonio Vicente Domenec book 1 of the History of the Saints of Catalonia.

[3] The manuscript Martyrology from the Centulensian monastery of Saint Richarius makes it credible that some Acts of his formerly existed, in these words: In Septimania in the city of Cauco-liberi, of Saint Vincent Confessor, whose Acts are extant. That Septimania is often taken for the Narbonensian Province is well enough known: change the title of Confessor into that of Martyr: Acts of the martyrdom. and nothing else will remain except that you should seek the deeds, which are said to exist. The authors written above sought them and did not find them: Tamayo de Salazar on this day in his Spanish Martyrology congratulates himself on having greater good fortune, speaking thus: All confess that his Acts have utterly vanished: these same things, described in full discourse in a Segovian Ms. belonging to me, we shall give: that the things which have been hidden from so many doctors hitherto may come forth to the public, by the ministry of my poor self and the providence of God, which very often hides similar things from the great and reveals them to the little ones: and then he sets forth those things found, as he says, in an Old Legendary Codex under this title: Here begins the Legend of Saint Vincent Martyr, who was crowned with martyrdom in the city of the Tarraconensian Spain of Caucoliberitana at the foot of the Pyrenees on the 13th day before the Kalends of May in the year 303. These must first be read before we pass judgment on them and proceed to other truer and more ancient things to be sought.

SUSPECT ACTS.

Printed by Tamayo de Salazar from a Segovian Ms.

Vincent, Martyr at Cauco-liberis in Hither Spain (St.)

BHL Number: 8656

[4] At the time when the wicked defenders of the superstition of Idols, raging impiously against piety and Religion, set forth edicts through each city and region, In the persecution of Diocletian that whoever Christians were apprehended should be compelled to sacrifice to idols; to the earlier authors of this threat, and the emperors of Roman iniquity, there succeeded Diocletian and Maximian, tyrants of the world; one of whom in the Eastern, the other in the Western parts of the world, strove with all their powers to destroy the Christian name. In order that they might accomplish this more easily, they dispatched through the Provinces subject to the Roman empire, Presidents and Judges, who should carry out the matter committed to them to the letter. Dacian therefore, one of the chosen Presidents, was appointed for carrying out so monstrous a crime, to the parts of Spain and Gaul. Who, having exhausted the regions of Gaul, and having made countless Martyrs through the arena of contests, resolved with horrid fury to enter the Spains through the ridges of the Pyrenean Mountain. When he had come to a maritime city in that tract, it is said that he was arrested by Dacian, called Cauco-liberis, the edicts of the Emperors having been published, Vincent, a resident of that city, a man of great faith and constancy, was apprehended and brought to Dacian the President. When he had been placed before the tribunal, the President said to Vincent: Come: be obedient to the gods themselves, and to the imperial edicts. But Vincent answered him: no one will ever be able to be reproved or condemned who has obeyed the precepts of Our Savior Jesus Christ. Then Dacian the President: I advise you to choose those things which are useful to you, and to attach yourself to the great gods, and to sacrifice to them together with us. For thus whatever you seek, you will obtain. Therefore consider with yourself, taking that counsel which befits both your nobility and the discretion of your mind, and do not wish to make trial of our wrath, nor to learn how great an evil impiety is. But if you do not obey these things, nor yield to my persuasions, it will be necessary that you should henceforth experience such severity, in vain solicited to apostasy as now you enjoy kindness and mildness: at which time, even if you should be led by repentance, perhaps nothing will profit you. To these words the Martyr replied: For me riches and life is Christ: but death to be undergone for his sake is for me a life far more precious: for whose sake no other of the pleasant things on earth has been counted pleasant by me. The torments which you threaten, these are pleasures to me rather than torments, to one fixing his eyes on him alone, and desiring not only to suffer these things for him but also, if it were possible, to die a thousand times. Do therefore rather that which is in your power, or lies in the cruelty of your ways. For I shall never worship wooden or stone gods.

[5] Then the President first inflicted blows upon his cheeks: then he displayed the Martyr, his garments torn off, naked to the people. torn with iron claws, The executioner digging each of his sides, and driving the flesh with a bloody claw, quickly the bleeding body, thrown on the ground, with repeated holes vomited forth blood. Then Dacian said: Who, if you do not obey, will be able to snatch you from my hands? I will cut you into small pieces and set you as food for wild beasts of the countryside to be devoured. What greater disgrace to a noble man than to be exposed naked to the sight of men? But if, coming to your senses, you should depart from the madness which holds you, and draw near to the kindness of the Gods, free and heaped with honors you will receive greater rewards. But the Martyr: For me, O President, it is no disgrace to be naked of garments, but rather the greatest adornment. For having put off the old man, I shall put on the new in justice and truth. You threaten that you will bring death upon me: for this I am ready: for this is what I desire. But if you even cut apart my limbs, then you will affect me with a greater benefit. For I owe my whole self, however much I am, and tortured on pulleys to my Creator; and this has always been in my vows, that he himself be glorified in all my members, and that I stand before his tribunal with all my members shining with the adornment of confession. Then the President, abandoning exhortations, proceeded to tortures; therefore moved by tyrannical fury he ordered Saint Vincent to be so racked on pulleys that his limbs were forced to be loosed from their joints by a most severe force. After this, being frequently raised aloft on them, and with swift blow let down upon the flints by the weight of his body, and rubbed on most sharp stones, he completed that first interrogation.

[6] But Dacian, who had foreknowledge of the constancy of the Spaniards, then shut in prison: whose minds could not easily be conquered by any severities of torments, by any terrors of opposing fortunes, ordered the Martyr to be in chains, until he should deliberate what was to be done concerning him. Saint Vincent, however, entering the prison, rejoiced in spirit, and gave thanks to God, saying: Glory to thee, O Lord, who dost not confound those who hope in thee. Having said these things, thrust down into the deep corner of the dungeon, to prayer

intently, and seeking from the Lord constancy in the remaining interrogations; suddenly a light illumined the hidden recesses of the cave, so that the Martyr, who was lying on his back and naked upon the bare ground, refreshed by the unusual splendor, sat up, though his limb-joints resisted. Then again giving thanks to God, he was presently found sound, without wound, without scar, and strengthened in spirit.

[7] where, since he was healed not by false gods On the next day, when Dacian had resolved to set out for Barcelona, coming very early to the forum, where the tribunal had been set up, he ordered his attendants with furious voice that they should find Vincent and bring him into his sight from the prison, unless he were already dead. When the executioners had brought him down, and he had beheld him enjoying sound health, raging with burning entrails, ensnared by the indignation of his eyes, he directed these words to the Martyr: And do you, overshadowed by these magical figments, propose to come into my presence? Perhaps you believed that I would embrace your inventions? Put aside your unhappy delusions; for if you gaze upon yourself as free, putting aside tricks, you must grasp that this has been done by the benefit of our gods, that you may recognize the obstinacy of your error by their adoration. To whom Vincent: I neither acknowledge magical arts, but by Christ the true God he had shown nor do I adore your gods as authors of my health. My Lord Jesus Christ, true God and true man, who for our salvation descended from the heavens, and was incarnate of the Holy Spirit from the Virgin Mary, that he might turn away the blindness of the darkening world, poured into the world the light of his brightness, of whom it was said: In him was life, and the life was the light of men, and the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it. And again: He was the true light, which enlightens every man coming into this world. This one indeed, O President, that he might clarify the darkness of my mind amid the obscurity of night, deigned to send forth the light of his dignation into the midst of the corner of the dungeon: by the splendor of whose heavenly light I beheld my wounds healed, and I am found prepared and strengthened to receive greater ones. Therefore not from your gods, whom I consider as dung, but from my God, who came into the world, and the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw his glory, I confess that the benefits of my health have come to me.

[8] Hearing these things Dacian, driven by headlong furies, with a copious fire kindled in the midst of the city, ordered Saint Vincent, with hands and feet bound, to be tortured by penal fires. and finally cast into the fire he died Then the ministers cast the holy Martyr into the midst of the flames: who amid the fires of the blazing pyre, confessing the Lord, was crowned with a happy martyrdom on the 13th day before the Kalends of May, in the year of the Lord 303. In which that solemn miracle appears, that the bindings of his hands and feet, as also the hairs of his head, sustained no injury from the fire. But his face shone with the beauty of a rosy color, so that he was thought rather to be sleeping than dead, whence many were converted to God and believed. The Christians taking away his body by night buried it, which afterward was honorably translated, by the granting of our Lord Jesus Christ, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns for ages. Amen.

[9] So far the Acts, which no one has known till now. Nor is it to be wondered at: these Acts are of more recent composition, for they are taken from the Segovian Ms. of Tamayo, from which we are compelled to excise from our work many other things of questionable credibility inserted in the Spanish Martyrology: yet it seemed good to set forth this complete, that from the style it might appear how recent a fiction that Ms. is, and with how light a judgment Tamayo embraced it as ancient. The individual phrases of this or the preceding cry out that all is of the latest age: as he will well understand who has gained some practice of similar things from the reading of this our work. To one less versed in these matters, yet knowing when the Spaniards began to abandon the use of reckoning years by their own proper Era, which anticipated the common reckoning by 38 years; the ascribed Year of the Lord 303 will attest its newness, although we have shown on April 16, treating of the Caesaraugustan Martyrs, that in that year Dacian did indeed rage in Spain. So it seems to us; that since from the pre-cited Martyrologies it was established that some Saint Vincent of Cauco-liberi was to be inscribed on this day, nor do they seem written otherwise than from conjectures. it seemed good to the more recent compiler of the aforesaid Legendary, to compose some Acts, such as could be adapted to almost any Martyr; taking from other Spanish martyrdoms Dacian, most notorious for the fame of his cruelty; and inventing words said back and forth, such as we read as said on a similar occasion; then from what he knew had befallen many, adding miracles of tortures and overcome flames: and because no memory of the body remained among the Cauco-liberitans, ending with this probable conjecture, that it afterward was honorably translated.

[10] We gave on January 22 the Acts of Saints Vincent, Orontius and their companions, are older and more worthy of credence who suffered in the confines of Gerona under Rufinus, President of Spain, whom some suspect to have been the Vicar of Dacian, named in the Acts of Saint Cucuphas on July 25; I would rather judge him to have been his predecessor in office, as was suggested in the aforementioned place on the 16th. The Acts, since they were not extant even in the Church of Embrun, to which the bodies had formerly been brought; Aridius, successor of Aetherius Archbishop of Lyons, instituted around the year 602, having obtained some particles of the said Saints, sought these from a certain Spanish Abbot, who had come to a Synodal council of Gaul (namely of Châlons), which at the beginning of the 6th century Aredius of Lyons polished. and received them composed very rustically, and polished them, adding how the bodies had been brought to Embrun, and the particles, of which he treats, had been obtained by his predecessor Aetherius and placed at Noviacum. That these are the acts of Saint Vincent, of whom on this day at Cauco-liberi the most ancient Martyrologies commemorate that he suffered, we are persuaded by the fact that the place of passion is described as one in which both the President of the Province had his palace and the Bishop had his established seat; which, since it cannot be understood of Gerona itself, must be understood of some famous and neighboring city at that time, which would be Cauco-liberis.

[11] first written from the tradition of the Geronans But you will say that his slaying is said to have been accomplished in the suburb of Gerona in the Castle of Gratianopolis. So it is, and for this and some similar reasons, I judge that those Acts, which the Spanish Abbot brought into Gaul, were written from the tradition of the Geronans, after perhaps one century had passed; not without some confusion, as is wont to happen; namely in this, that Victor the Deacon and shortly after Martyr, transferring the bodies of the slain Saints from the place of execution, being apprehended with them near Gerona, left them in the said castle: or being left in the neighboring Julian district, the Geronan Christians took them to themselves, and given on January 22. and buried them in their suburb: and thus the memory of the city of Cauco-liberi was obliterated, which the Martyrologies more faithfully preserved. That the Embrun people venerate those holy pledges, brought to them in the time of Saint Marcellinus, their Bishop, who flourished under Theodosius the Great, on January 22, we believe happened because of ignorance of the true natal day, and the celebrity of Saint Vincent Martyr of Caesaraugusta; just as in these most recent centuries the Geronans, having obtained notice from Embrun or Lyons of him who was venerated in Gaul, Vincent and his companions, since they did not wish to hinder the feast of their principal Vincent by the cultus of another, took the day January 30, as in the year 1522, when the decree of this cultus was being established, not impeded by any other office, whence the author's knowledge was received

[12] I do not here rework the Acts themselves, since they were given and explained on January 22. Those there being attributed to some anonymous Gallic Bishop, why we think they should here be specifically ascribed to Aredius of Lyons, a reason must be given: since Aetherius, whose successor the author writes himself to be, is only said in the Mss. to be Bishop of the Antincian or Antimian Church: which drew our Bolland, illustrating the said Acts, into various conjectures, since no such church is named in all the Gauls. Observe therefore that the author of the Acts at n. 19 somewhat indicates himself to be Bishop of Lyons, when he says that he hastened from Lyons to the Prince. Namely, from his place of residence: now to Aetherius Bishop of Lyons, deceased in the 7th year of King Theoderic, Secundinus was indeed substituted; but he held the Pontificate of only a few months altogether; since in the 7th year of the same Theoderic Arredius presided over the Synod of Châlons, before which immediately no other Synod is known to have been celebrated in Gaul. The author professes, however, that it was on the occasion of the Synod that he received the Acts of the aforenamed Saints which he used; where we think that for "Antimiae" we should read "Sanctissimae ecclesiae." That the original Acts utterly perished among the Spaniards, with most of the monuments of those regions perished in the course of so many centuries, we in no way wonder; as also we should not wonder that from the Gauls no other Acts are had, than those polished, as we said, by Aredius, and augmented by the narration of things done concerning the Relics. All of which we nevertheless propose thus to the Spaniards, that if they can show three holy Vincents, in the same persecution, in the same part of Spain, martyred, from more solid foundations than those on which Tamayo relies, we are willingly about to release the conjectures by which we are persuaded that the Vincent who suffered at Cauco-liberi was the brother of Saint Orontius, whose body and those of his companions were translated to Embrun from the suburbs of Gerona, as was said.