Gregory

ON SAINT GREGORY,

BISHOP OF ELVIRA IN SPAIN.

TOWARD THE END OF THE 4TH CENTURY.

Gregory, Bishop of Elvira, in Spain (St.)

By G. H.

[1] Illiberis, or Eliberi, formerly an Episcopal city in

Hispania Baetica, near the city of Granada, is thought by many to have been situated on a neighboring hill, now called Elvira, from which now a certain gate of the city of Granada is called Elveria. Sacred veneration at Granada, There are also those who suppose that that city was not destroyed, but is called Granada by a new name: concerning which matter Francisco Bermúdez de Pedraza disputes at great length in book 2 of his Antiquities and Excellencies of Granada, printed at Madrid in 1614, chapter 5 and following. On this April 24 the Church and Diocese of Granada venerates Saint Gregory the Bishop under the rite of a double office, whom Antonio de Quintanadueñas also numbers among the saints of the Diocese of Seville, supposing him to have been born and educated at Utrera, which was formerly called Baetis, and thence to be called Gregory the Baetican. and at Utrera: But he could also have been so surnamed because there was another city on the coast of Catalonia called Eliberis or Illiberis, commonly Colibre. His name was of old inscribed in the Martyrology of Usuard in these words: memory in the Fasti of April 24, "In the city of Eliberi, Saint Gregory, Bishop and Confessor." The same is commonly read in Bellinus, Maurolycus, Galesinius, Canisius and in very many manuscripts; in some, in place of Eliberi, is written Heliberi and Aiberi. In the modern Roman Martyrology these things are found: "At Illiberi in Spain, Saint Gregory, Bishop and Confessor." Concerning him Peter de Natalibus, in book 10 of his Catalogue, after he had in chapter 72 treated of Saint Gregory Bishop of Tours, who died on November 17, gives these things in the following chapter 73: "Gregory the Bishop was famous in the Spains. He was Bishop of Eliberi, and November 17. who unto extreme old age wove together various treatises in middling style, and compiled a great volume on the Catholic faith; and conspicuous in life and speech at the city of Eliberi, he rested in peace, and, buried there, lives in virtues." Thus Peter de Natalibus, by whose example Richard Whitford inscribed the same Saint Gregory in the Martyrology printed in English.

[2] Concerning the writings of Saint Gregory, Saint Jerome treats in his book On Ecclesiastical Writers, chapter 105. A book written by him on the Faith, "Gregory the Baetican," he says, "Bishop of Eliberi, to extreme old age composed various treatises in middling style, and an elegant book on the Faith": which is even today said to survive, that is, in the 14th year of Theodosius the Great, of Christ 392, as he himself testifies at the end of the book. There has been much inquiry for this book On the Faith, of which Honorius of Autun also makes mention in his On Ecclesiastical Writers chapter 106. German Genus, a Benedictine monk of the Abbey of Pomposa in the Ferrara district, believed he had found it, by whom another work was published under his name, and handed it over to Achilles Statius, who published it at Rome in 1575 and dedicated it to Maria, daughter of King Emmanuel and Infanta of Portugal. Baronius in his Notes to the Martyrology says: "The commentaries of this Gregory, covered with worm-eaten decay, buried in oblivion and defaced by errors, our Achilles Statius of praiseworthy memory cleansed and published." And in the Annals for the year 371, no. 124, he brings from the end of this tract some things in which Saint Gregory is said to glory that he kept the faith uncorrupted and was never polluted by the communion of heretics. This tract is found twice in the fourth tome of the Library of the Fathers, published at Paris by Margarin de la Bigne in 1589: first, from page 841, it is by Faustinus the Deacon or Presbyter, a Luciferian, under the name of Faustinus the Deacon, or, as Gennadius in chapter 16 thought, Priest, addressed to the Empress Flaccilla, wife of Theodosius the Great; then from page 1271, under the name of Gregory Baeticus, addressed to the Empress Galla Placidia, who was the daughter of Theodosius the Great by his second wife Galla, and sister from the same father of Honorius and Arcadius: which inscription Baronius rightly observes, for the year 388, no. 100, has been wrongly intruded. But because the said tract belongs to Faustinus, the Luciferian priest, it is not repeated in the Library of the Fathers subsequently published at Cologne under the name of Gregory the Baetican, whose elegant book on the Faith still lies hidden. Philip Labbe in his historical Dissertation on Ecclesiastical Writers, p. 313, says: "All learned men after Trithemius — who asserts he flourished in the year 390 — judge that that little work should be attributed to Faustinus, who is known to have lived under Damasus and his successor Siricius."

[3] That Saint Gregory also had communication by letters with Saint Eusebius, Bishop of Vercelli, is clear from the latter's reply, which Nicolas Faber drew out from the library of Peter Pithou and published at Paris in 1598, together with the fragments of Saint Hilary, Bishop of Poitiers. A letter of St. Eusebius of Vercelli to St. Gregory, We consider that this letter must necessarily be given here. Its title there is: "Eusebius to Gregory, Bishop of Spain," that is, of Eliberi, as Baronius and others explain. And these things are handed down: "To his most holy lord and brother Gregory the Bishop, Eusebius, greeting in the Lord. I have received the letters of your sincerity, in which I learned that, as befits a bishop and priest of God, you resisted the transgressor Hosius, and that, when many were falling at Rimini into communion with Valens and Ursacius and the others whom they themselves, with the crime of blasphemy acknowledged, had previously condemned, you refused your assent, keeping the faith which the Nicene Fathers wrote. We congratulate you in this, and we congratulate ourselves, because, shining in this purpose and this faith, you have deigned to remember us. To you remaining in the same confession, and holding no fellowship with the hypocrites, we promise you our communion: in which his constancy in the faith is praised: with such means as you can, you will deal, with such labor as you can prevail, with the transgressors; rebuke the unfaithful, reprove them, fearing nothing from the secular kingdom, as you have done, because greater is he who is in us than he who is in this world. We, however, your fellow priests, laboring in our third exile, say this which we have thought manifest: that every hope of the Ariomaniacs depends not on their own unity or lawful consent, but on the protection of the secular kingdom; ignorant of what is written, that cursed are they who have their hope in man; but our help is in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth Jer. 17:5. In sufferings we desire to persevere, that, according to what has been said, we may be glorified in the kingdom. Deign to write to us what you have accomplished by correcting the evil, and how many brothers you have either found standing, or have yourself corrected by admonishing. All those who are with me greet you, especially the Deacon; and they also ask that you would deign with our service to greet all who are faithfully adhering to your side." Thus far Eusebius to Gregory, as it appears, after the Council of Rimini, while Constantius was still living, who died in Cilicia in the year 361, on the third day before the Nones of October, or, as others hand down, of November; after whose death under Julian, Saint Eusebius and commonly other bishops were permitted to return from exile to their churches.

[4] Garsias Loaisa in his Collection of the Councils of Spain adds at the end a treatise by Isidore and Ildefonsus, Bishops, On the Illustrious Men of the Holy Roman Church, to which he subjoins twelve Lives by an uncertain author, which in the manuscript Codex were placed before the said treatise. The last of these is the Life of Marcellinus, a presbyter of Italy, who among other writings narrates various things concerning Hosius, Bishop of Cordova, and Saint Gregory, Bishop of Eliberi, which, although disapproved by others as we shall then say, we here nevertheless set down. "For after the impious prevarication of Hosius," he says, "when Saint Gregory, Bishop of Eliberi, had been brought to the city of Cordova by imperial decree, and refused to commune with him, Hosius is said to have been hostile to him, Hosius, moved, says to Clementinus, the Vicar of the Prefect of Constantius, that he should send him into exile. But he says: 'I do not dare to send a bishop into exile, unless you first cast him down from the bishopric.' When Saint Gregory saw that Hosius would pronounce the sentence, he appealed to Christ with all the bowels of his faith, crying out thus: 'Christ God, who art to come to judge the living and the dead, suffer not today a human sentence to be pronounced against me, the least of thy servants, who, standing as accused for the faith of thy name, have been made a spectacle; but do thou thyself, I beseech thee, judge today in thine own cause; deign thyself to pronounce the sentence through vengeance. I do not wish to flee from exile as one fearing it at his prayers he is said to have expired. — since for thy name no torment is grievous to me — but that many may be freed from the error of prevarication, when they shall see present vengeance.' When these things had been said, behold, suddenly Hosius, sitting in the pride as it were of royal power, as he was trying to pronounce the sentence, twisted his mouth, distorting at the same time his neck, and from his seat was dashed to the ground, and immediately expired. Then, to the astonishment of all, even that pagan Clementinus was terrified, and although he was the judge, yet fearing lest a similar judgment should be executed against himself, prostrated himself at the feet of the holy man, beseeching him that he would spare him, who had sinned against him through ignorance of the divine law, and not so much of his own will as by the command of the one who had mandated it. Hence it is that Gregory alone of those who vindicated the integral faith was neither turned to flight nor suffered exile. For everyone feared to judge further concerning him." Thus far that.

[5] Isidore himself also begins his book On Illustrious Men with the said Hosius, and inserts the same story entire (adding, as a certain one says). Where in the margin Garsias Loaisa notes these things: "But Athanasius in the Epistle to the Solitaries holds the opposite, as does Augustine in Against the Letter of Parmenian, chapter 4, but from Athanasius, whose opinion I think is to be embraced, because Isidore followed Marcellinus, who, infected with the stain of heresy, was the first author of this opinion." So Garsias. The words of Athanasius are these: "Constantius used so much force against the aged Hosius, and held him so tightly that, afflicted and bound by evils, at last and with difficulty he communicated with Ursacius and Valens — but yet so as not to subscribe against Athanasius. But not even so did he hold that thing as a light matter: for when about to die, as in his testament, he protested against their violence and condemned the Arian heresy, forbidding it to be approved or received by anyone." and disapproved by Augustine, But Saint Augustine among other things has these: "What they say of Hosius, formerly Catholic Bishop of Cordova, must be demanded that they prove ... For this is more credible (if at least Hosius, condemned by the Spaniards, was absolved by the Gauls), that it could have come about that the Spaniards, deceived by false accusations and beguiled by the cunning fraud of snares, passed sentence against an innocent man; and afterwards, peaceably and in Christian humility, yielded to the sentences by which his innocence was proved, lest, by defending their former sentences with obstinate and zealous perversity, they fall into the sacrilege of schism, which exceeds all crimes, through the blindness of impiety." These Augustine's words, which Baronius more fully explains under the year 357, no. 31 and following. How the above-mentioned Faustinus and Marcellinus were stained with heresy and were standard-bearers of the Luciferian faction is more easily proved from their little book, presented around 384 to the Emperors Valentinian, Theodosius

and Arcadius, against Pope Damasus on behalf of the Antipope Ursicinus, which little book Jacques Sirmond published in 1650.

[6] Tamayus Salazar in the Hispanic Martyrology celebrates the birthday of Saint Gregory, and published a Life written by R. P. F. Peter of Saint Caecilius, of the Discalced Order of Blessed Mary of Mercy, who in a new manner tries to reconcile the statements of Saints Athanasius, Augustine and others with the encomium in the Life of Marcellinus and Hosius indicated above, as though Hosius had seemed to die at once. Whether Hosius seemed to revive to do penance, "But still he drew out in his body a hope of vital kindling of breath, though brief; and, as is believed, being called back to his senses after the swoon of his mind, at the urging of the Bishop of Eliberi, coming to the second plank of penance after the shipwreck of his defection, he reached the port of eternal life amended, with the blood of Christ assisting him." So there: which we should wish to be confirmed by an ancient writing. In other respects the said Peter of Saint Caecilius here obtains the same credit as in the rest of the Acts here produced, when he establishes that there were two Bishops of Eliberi called by the name of Gregory; and whether on account of St. Augustalis a double Gregory must be set up? and between the two he interposes Saint Augustalis from the Pseudo-Dexter Chronicle — though this Saint Augustalis was a Bishop of Gaul who was present at the First Council of Orange in 441, and to whom and to other bishops of Gaul Saint Leo the Pope wrote concerning the controversy between the Bishops of Vienne and Arles over the division of the province and the election and consecration of Ravennius, Bishop of Arles; and who, although in the most ancient Martyrologies of Saint Jerome, Rabanus and others, he is assigned to the city of Arles, yet not as Bishop of the said city, but as one who could have died there and shone with miracles. Saint Gregory, Bishop of Eliberi, of whom we are treating, flourished in the fourth Christian century, and in 359 was present at the Council of Rimini; but in 392, on the testimony of Saint Jerome, he was still alive, having died at least before the end of the said century, if Serenas (who was present at the First Council of Toledo in 400) was Bishop of Eliberi, which Peter of Saint Caecilius, Tamayus and others hand down.

[7] In the year 1668 there appeared in Spain, in two volumes, a certain new monster (for so uses the words that most experienced connoisseur of true antiquity, Gaspar Ibáñez de Segovia Peralta, Marquis of Mondejar, then writing to us), under the name of Aubertus Hispalensis, with Notes by Fr. Gregorio de Argaiz, who leaps over the innumerable ineptitudes of the new Fiction with as secure a foot as though they were not repugnant to all ecclesiastical history. [Whether he wrote a Martyrology recently published with the Pseudo-Aubertus Hispalensis,] And at the beginning of the work he proposes a certain Martyrology patched together under the name of Gregory Baeticus. In it, by their proper names, there are expressed about one hundred and eighty who suffered, as the title professes, in Spain, besides other anonymous ones, sometimes defined by a fixed number, sometimes by none — who, under the bloody persecution of Diocletian and Maximian, made illustrious by their blood more than one hundred and thirty different places, also expressed by their names. In illustrating the names of which places the commentator spends almost his entire effort, while he recognizes that these very ones of whom the chief question is are, with few exceptions, altogether unknown to his countrymen; and thinks it enough to prove the truth of all that a good part of them are named in the pretended Chronicles of Dexter or Aubertus. But it is well done that the forger of this new Martyrology took care only in the very fewest cases to add the day on which he wanted them to be believed to have been crowned with martyrdom: for through this he has freed us from the anxiety of refuting his fables, which in no fixed place of our work would have to be touched upon. Nor is there need of any other refutation than that, for the greater part, they have no support except the writings of an equal or even more evident imposture — about which we take the less care, the sharper the champions which truth has found even in Spain itself.

[8] For the immense confusion of ecclesiastical history, and the cult of Spanish saints deformed by intolerable lies through the assertors of the figments of Dexter, could not but move the Spaniards themselves to draw their pens in defense of their own country — which in no wise needs fabulous praises — and, by refuting particular falsehoods more closely, to confirm our judgment on Pseudo-Dexter and his followers. Wherefore we are not moved by the censure of Argaiz, who writes of us thus: "Since they give no effective reason which would force them to reject Dexter, they declare that they are not historians, not chronologists, but mere collectors of Lives, such as they have found written, and which have been sent to them from Spain by Spaniards, from Italy by Italians: and therefore we do not admit them into the number of those whom we should be concerned to refute. By a reckless man, and one condemning them. For, having no other study, because of their pusillanimity, than to labor at purging the accidental faults with which the small diligence of the scribes who transcribed the said Lives from the Gothic script stained them; they pretend this alone against Dexter, that he has not been faithfully copied." So he; whose Spanish word "copiado" it pleased him to fit to the Latin language, so that it might appear that not even this language was sufficiently known to him to understand our books: for with what face otherwise would he have dared to mix our Latin words with his Spanish, "Nor is he written with that fidelity that we should be compelled to stand by his authority"? Let him himself see things he could not understand, whether, having now published five large volumes in the Spanish tongue, he judges himself unworthy of the rank of writer, and prefers to be thrust down to the benches of "copistas." I say "copistas," with a Spanish solecism, lest, if I should again speak in Latin and, with Cicero, say "librarii," he himself, accustomed almost solely to the Spanish language, in which "librero" denotes a bookseller, should again misunderstand. We — to whom it was not leisurely in the Preface to February to set forth otherwise than summarily why we judged the Chronicles recently brought forth to be falsely ascribed to Dexter and other great authors — said of the former that Dexter, son of Pacian, a man "of polished eloquence and clear speech" (to use the words of Jerome about him), and so devoted to the reading of Cicero that Jerome said to him, "your Cicero" — we said, I say, that such a Dexter would never have written so barbarously. Then we said that any grave man would not have ascribed to Spain whatever he could seize upon even on the slightest indication, nor enrolled in the class of saints those concerning whom it could be doubted whether they were Christians (which, however, is shown to be done in the pretended chronicle of Dexter everywhere in its places); nor would he have counted the years from the birth of Christ instead of by Roman Consuls or the Spanish Era — and that, too, ignorantly. These things having been said, we left the Spaniards to have that chronicle in what place they would — that to us it did not seem to be the All-Embracing History of Dexter (of which alone Jerome makes mention and for which this insipid farrago is palmed off), nor to be written with that fidelity nor did he even take the trouble to read it, — that is, with that maturity of judgment, selection of authors, diligence in examining truth, caution in regard to fables and rumors (for all these things win credit for a writer, of a far different sort from what is demanded of a librarius or "copista") — such that we should be compelled to stand by its authority. But let us dismiss the man fighting with phantoms which he has himself fashioned for himself, when he first read the title of our work and its names in his adversary, who cited only those words of ours which I have mentioned; namely, because he was not concerned to fill up his discourse — which he wished to be brief — with transcribing those arguments which moved others, but to show that there are many who think with him that the pretended chronicle of Dexter is neither Dexter's nor indeed the work of any writer worthy of credit; leaving to others the task of reading the authors commonly known, and of learning for himself what reasons moved each one of them. Let him read our volumes — I do not say March or this April, in which with a freer hand we overturn whole wagonloads of falsehoods at nearly every day, but even that February, in which we seem to have acted more leniently; and he will find our censure, not in one place, proved by an evident conviction of the fictions objected to. Whether we deserve any name among the Historians or Chronologists, and whether we are mere collectors of Lives, he will be able to judge more certainly when he shall deign to learn our works by himself and examine them more closely. We certainly took care not to respond anything to his censure before we had received his works from Spain.