Valerius

ON SS. VALERIUS, AND ANATOLIUS, PROTOLEON AND ATHANASIUS, MARTYRS AMONG THE GREEKS.

YEAR 303

Valerius, Martyr among the Greeks (S.) Anatolius, Martyr among the Greeks (S.) Protoleon, Martyr among the Greeks (S.) Athanasius, Martyr among the Greeks (S.)

By the author D. P.

[1] These four Martyrs, taken from Greek tables, Galesinius joins in these words: In Greece of the blessed Martyrs Valerius, Anatolius, These four reported together, Protoleon, Athanasius and others, who after enduring various labors of combat, bore testimony to the faith by death. Of the others we shall soon treat separately. The Greeks in the Great Menaea have a distich on each, and separately S. Valerius, which about Valerius is as follows:

Θείαν κεφαλὴν ἦρεν Οὐαλλερίου Κακὴ κεφαλὴ δήμιος διὰ ξίφους

The bloody lictor with sword took away The divine head of Valerius, a most wicked head himself.

That he was struck with a sword is also testified by the Ms. Menaea of Dijon, which are there preserved with our Chifflet. SS. Anatolius and Protoleon,

[2] The Saints Anatolius and Protoleon, Tribunes of soldiers, the same printed Menaea join with these verses added:

Λύσας Ἀνατόλιος ἐκτομῇ κάρας Ἐῶον εἶδε φῶς τὸ νοητὸν Κυρίου.

When his head by severance is cut off, Anatolius dies, At his very setting he sees the light of the dawn.

Of the dawn, namely, that spiritual and glorious one in heaven, as the property of the Greek verse indicates: in which there is a play on the name of Anatolius, derived from the East (Greek Ἀνατολὴ), and corresponding to this on the opposite side the verb to set, which is also transferred to the sun by a usual metaphor. The other distich needs some correction, and will have a not unbecoming meaning, if instead of ἀλκέας (for what does the name of a herb or flower, as is ἀλκέα, here serve to the matter?) you substitute ἀλκηείς, robust, noble. Then you will interpret it thus:

Ὁ Χριστομὰρτυς τέμνεται Πρωτολέων, Χριστῷ πεποιθὼς ὥσπερ ἀλκηεὶς λέων.

Protoleo Martyr offered his head to the sword, Following Christ as his leader, like a strong lion.

Ἀθανάσιος τὴν ἐκτομὴν τῆς κἀρας Ψυχῆς νοσούσης εὗρε φάρμακον νέον

Bearing the cutting off of his head, Athanasius Found a new remedy for his sick soul.

How S. George, engaged with this Athanasius the magician, was not only not conquered by his sorceries, but even emerged victor over him, converted through a great miracle to Christ, is not indeed found in the Venetian Codex, whence Lipomanus took the Acts attributed to Pasicrates: but it is read in all the other Greek and Latin Acts, and not only in these; but also by S. Andrew of Crete in the oft-praised encomium of S. George the same history is touched, in these words, in which also Anatolius and Protoleon, about whom above, and Glycerius, about whom below, he thus mentions: The two former expressed in the Acts of S. George, Moreover, he who studiously and diligently reads the history, will learn how not for himself alone that Martyr brought salvation by his labor, but also to very many others. I speak of these, whom he persuaded, that they themselves should run a like course, pouring out their own blood to God. For to Anatolius and Protoleon, that they should do this, he persuaded, those two soldiers: who, when they had been astonished at the miracles which shone forth in that combat, themselves also imitated the fortitude of Martyr George. Moreover also Glycerius, celebrated for the prodigy of that ox restored to life, we know was freed from the foolish superstition of idols. Whom all of them, as it were, (so to speak) drawn out from the very jaws of the dragon, as sacrifices perfected and acceptable to the proper Lord he offered.

[4] What of the fact that both the greatest and most immense miracles, partly God abundantly granted through his work to those who faithfully asked for them; partly asked not faithfully by adversaries, he himself so accomplished in fact through the prayers of the Martyr, that even a dead man from the tomb he raised up, to convict the madness of those who had asked for it, and to open more manifestly the knowledge of the truth? Which those who had demanded that thing would have obtained, if they had been willing to have more equitable eyes: For they themselves partly not giving faith to the events of miracles, as through his miracles converted to the faith: partly believing those things to be phantasms and empty visions, returned again into the same error. For when they had consumed all the engines of torments, and had been conquered by the patience of the Martyr, they resorted, in the Jewish manner, to the petition of those signs which seemed to them never possible to be done. Afterwards however, being convicted even by that same thing, they were turned into shame: for the miracles brought salvation to many, of these themselves acknowledging the God of George. When however they could no longer resist the boundless miracles which had been done through the Martyr, nor yet would allow themselves to be drawn away from the superstition in which they were; and when they had been blinded and dulled in heart, in ears and eyes (as is said by Isaiah), to their ancestral errors they were necessarily turning again, as also Athanasius the magician and thought they would overturn the truth itself by certain machinations. For they brought forth a certain Athanasius into the midst, who held much reputation in the magic arts: whose fame was celebrated far more than of those who once in Egypt thought to accomplish something against Moses himself. But no longer in this place also did all that deceit of the magic art have force: for the lie itself was overcome by the truth: and the presence of that magician then appeared more useful, than when the Egyptian magicians resisted Moses. For they, when they recognized that it was the finger of God, which was overturning their art, confessed it only with words: but this man, embracing the very faith made manifest to himself through the works of George, struck with the sword, endured death for the truth, and attained the inheritance of the life corresponding to his name.

[5] These things says S. Andrew, which are read more distinctly and more fully in the history of S. George which he had before his eyes. Nor ought the suspicion of Baronius to deter us from referring this Athanasius among the Saints, fearing lest perhaps the calumny of the Arians, he is by no means to be held among the fables. accusing S. Athanasius of Alexandria the Bishop of magic, and praising their own Pseudo-bishop George that he had conquered him, gave occasion for fabricating to S. George the Martyr a victory over Athanasius the magician. For it happened to the Most Eminent writer, what happens to those cutting down a dense thicket, who sometimes imprudently cut down with the same scythe a sapling of a better nature mixed with the same, and worthy not to be involved in the common extermination of unhappy stocks. Certainly what we have disputed in §4 of the Commentary preceding the Georgian Acts, and what we said there in §1 about the better credibility of the Greek Acts, sufficiently show that that suspicion, lightly conceived from the identity of names, was as easily to be laid aside, unless being too aroused against the fables read in the apocryphal Latins, it had displeased

Baronius, to discern from comparison with the Greeks, what these had that was in agreement with them, and therefore not to be rejected. Pontanus, a glorious soldier, who from Baronius's suspicion vainly boasted himself to have forged an unavoidable weapon against the very existence of S. George the Martyr, we have sufficiently refuted above, his very weapons being turned upon his own head, nor is it needful for the same to be pressed here again.