ON THE HOLY VIRGINS AND MARTYRS FAITH, HOPE AND CHARITY, AND LIKEWISE SOPHIA OR WISDOM THEIR MOTHER,
AT ROME.
CRITICAL COMMENTARY.
Faith, Martyr, at Rome (S.)
Hope, Martyr, at Rome (S.)
Charity, Martyr, at Rome (S.)
Wisdom, Martyr, at Rome (S.)
BY THE AUTHOR J. B. S.
A Little Preface.
The Saints here proposed in the title are, however illustrious, in that number, that besides the martyrdom, and the cult so most-received in the Church, nothing at all is handed down about them, in their so various Legends, The cult alone is undoubted. which would not detain an attentive and erudite reader; even the very names, which by a most rare example—unknown at least to me—are enunciated among the Latins in Latin, among the Greeks in Greek, so that they seem to be called appellative rather than proper, received namely from the glorious contest, by which, endowed for the faith of Christ with such hope and charity, wisdom leading, they obtained the palm of martyrdom; inasmuch as we do not think that at Rome, in the very arena of martyrdom, they were known by certain other names. Further, whether it was Rome (which is more probable to us) or Nicomedia, is not so undoubted. Nor are their race and fatherland more explored: for whatever their encomiasts—John presbyter of Milan, Metaphrastes and others—so confidently designated, we do not see these adjuncts more solidly proved than the rest pertaining to them; so much so that the Greeks disagree among themselves about the age of the Saints, some naming the times of Hadrian, others of Diocletian. But about the sacred bodies what is to be thought, and further about the Acts themselves, twisted in diverse ways, you will understand from what is to be said below: here we begin from the less doubtful.
§ I. The cult of the Saints among the Greeks as well as the Latins, but on diverse days and in diverse manners.
by Usuard at Rome, About these holy Virgins and Martyrs, and their mother Wisdom or Sophia, we treated in the observation on Usuard on this very day, where, his text being related—Likewise at Rome, the passion of the holy virgins Hope, Faith and Charity, and their mother Wisdom, who under prince Hadrian obtained the crown of martyrdom—we showed in the Variants the preposterous announcement of the codices, that against the received order Hope is set before Faith; and then we sought in vain whence those sister virgins with their widowed mother could have become known to Usuard, who namely are wholly unknown to all the more ancient ecclesiastical Tables. We noted there also, among the Usuardine supplements on the 23rd of June, that they are marked with Greek names from Notker, whose words it will be helpful to relate here: At Nicomedia, the passion of the holy virgins Pistis, Elpis, Agapis, who in Latin are called Faith, Hope, Charity, and of their mother Sophia, who is interpreted Wisdom, and of many others. And these two, Usuard and Notker, among the classic Martyrologists are the first and only who, toward the end of the 9th century, made mention of these Martyrs, and indeed in a manner so diverse that it is not credible that their announcements flowed from the same source.
[3] Further, that those Greek women who are said to have suffered at Nicomedia with many others are diverse from those who under Hadrian consummated their martyrdom at Rome, by Notker at Nicomedia is in no way probable; since elsewhere, namely in the Chronological Tract on the Alexandrian Patriarchs page 18, number 92, I have shown clearly enough that those most holy Virgins were most well-known even among the Egyptians, whom they themselves acknowledge to have triumphed at Rome in the time of Hadrian, Eumenius sitting as patriarch at Alexandria. No one therefore would easily divine whence Notker fetched his history, erring in this especially, that he attributes to Nicomedia things which far more probably are to be ascribed to Rome. For the rest, in this they rightly agree, that they do not think the mother should be separated from the daughters, so that I do not yet see—which I also warned long ago—that I have it explored: why Baronius sundered the mother from the daughters, and transferred her to the 30th of September, against the faith of the Acts, such as they are, which assert that she flew to heaven three days after the daughters, a martyr also on this title, that, intrepidly assisting at the butchery of her offspring, she animated them to the glorious contest.
[4] There will perhaps be one who suspects that Belinus here, as generally elsewhere, in both places with the mother shone before Baronius, whom also Grevenus and Molanus had imitated: but the matter being more attentively weighed, I find a plainly other opinion of those three, from that which Baronius here seems first to have introduced. For the opinion of Belinus is most openly clear, writing thus on this day: Likewise at Rome, the passion of the holy virgins Faith, Hope and Charity, and their mother Wisdom, who under prince Hadrian obtained the crown of martyrdom; where you see manifestly that the mother is in no way disjoined from the daughters, so that when on the 30th of September he adds in the last place to the text: On the same day, of St. Sophia the widow, he nowhere, even by a shadow, hints that he there speaks of the mother of our three Virgins, whom he himself in today's text, already related, called not Sophia but most expressly Wisdom, and so it remains uncertain about what Sophia Belinus there intended to treat, perhaps unknown to himself. For the rest, the name Sophia is not so infrequent that even in the Roman Martyrology itself two other synonymous ones are noted: besides that Belinus studiously abstained from naming the position, stadium, or place of the martyrdom, nay from the martyrdom itself.
[5] But wholly other is the reckoning of Baronius, when on this day, 1 August, he thus announces: whom Baronius transferred elsewhere. At Rome, the passion of the holy virgins Faith, Hope and Charity, who under prince Hadrian obtained the crown of martyrdom: where you immediately observe that the mother is not there expressed, whom on the 30th of September he wished more expressly designated in these words: In the same place (at Rome), of St. Sophia the widow, mother of the holy virgins Faith, Hope and Charity; so that now I openly think it evident that the segregation of the mother from the daughters is to be imputed not to Belinus but to Baronius alone, which he could find neither in Usuard nor in any other Martyrology: for those ancient codices which marked this Sophia on the 30th of September, on that very same day also related the three daughters, just as also the Greeks, when they affixed their martyrdom to the 17th of September. Hence it will seem strange to no one that I have not judged the mother should be separated from the daughters; led also by this argument, that nothing can be said about her which is not so connected with the history of the most holy daughters that it cannot be torn from it without grave injury.
[6] Other codices read otherwise: Nor are the things more liquid which we find handed down by others, especially in the Pulsano and Vatican codices, where on that 30th day of September not only the mother, but at once all are announced in this manner: At Rome, the passion of the holy virgins Pistis, Elpis, Agapis, and Sophia their mother, that is, Wisdom: which interpretation is absent from the Vatican codex. On the contrary, in the Hagenau Usuard, no longer on the 30th of September, but on the 10th of May, only thus is read:
Likewise, in the bishopric of Strasbourg, of Sophia the widow. Then in the Viola Sanctorum printed at Hagenau: On the same day (namely 10 May), the deposition of St. Sophia, a day chosen in some way for that tract of the Rhine, on which elsewhere there is nowhere any memory of these our Saints; so that I am wholly compelled to suspect that these latter things proceeded from some Strasbourg tradition, noted in its Breviary printed in 1478, where after the lessons on SS. Gordian and Epimachus is added: On the same day also is celebrated the translation of St. Sophia and her daughters Faith, Hope and Charity, who by the venerable Remigius bishop of Reims in the times of Charlemagne were translated into Alsace, where her prayers will flourish unto the present day.
[7] Is Strasbourg right? I called it a tradition, doubtless received among the people of Strasbourg; but unless I am greatly mistaken, not sufficiently founded, at least on this title, that the venerable Remigius the bishop, by whom the relics were translated, I know not whence, is ineptly joined with Charlemagne, in whose time one will seek in vain a Reims bishop of that name. Nor would you say that here perhaps that Remigius is indicated, celebrated at Reims in the 9th century for the praise of doctrine; for he pertains not to the times of Charles the Great, but of Charles the Bald. But about the relics it must be said below; to our matter it would here pertain more closely to dig out from somewhere whence at last Usuard came into the knowledge of our Saints, while meanwhile no one more ancient than he, nay not even a contemporary, related them in the manner in which they are mentioned in him. But what I had suspected, that they could be drawn from some Acts, similar to those which Surius edited, I am now compelled to reject; since it is most probable that those Acts were first adorned by Metaphrastes, whom it is certain could by no means have been consulted by Usuard, so that accordingly it must be judged that there existed other Latin Acts, which shone before Usuard, and which afforded others occasion of leisurely forging longer histories, as those times were. But what these can be called, I have in vain, as I was saying, sought hitherto. But whatever it be of this, in the whole progeny of Usuard and in the other later Martyrologies, it is certain that the most holy Martyrs are constantly celebrated with the mother.
[8] The Greeks neither on the day Nearly equal is the reckoning of the Greeks, among whom, nay in the whole East, that they were in veneration, their tables the Menaea and Menologies show, with this only difference, that not on 1 August, or any other day marked above, but on the 17th of September they are commemorated; what reason underlies which, no one would easily divine, so that it must be reckoned arbitrary, just as we have not once observed elsewhere that it happened to so many other Saints. In this the Greeks agree with the Latins, that they testify they suffered at Rome, and narrate the same history; but so that the Menaea defer the matter by a whole century and a half, when they thus begin their elogium: These were Italian women in the reign of Diocletian; where the Menology of Sirletus agrees with the Latins in every way. They have their own Office in the Menaea, which follows the already-mentioned elogium, these three little verses being prefixed, of which the third is also exhibited in the Greco-Moscow Ephemerides.
Τῇ πρὸς σὲ πίστει, Πίστις, Ἐλπὶς, Ἀγάπη Αἱ τρεῖς τριὰς κλίνουσιν αὐχένας ξίφει. Ἑβδομάτη δεκάτη Ἀγάπην τάμεν, Ἐλπίδα, Πίστιν.
In faith toward thee, O faithful ones—Faith, Hope, Charity, the Triad of Virgins bowing their three necks to the sword. On the seventeenth it slays Elpis, Pistis, Agape.
[9] Lo now the words of the Sirletian Menology: The birthday of the holy martyrs Pistis, nor do they agree on the age. Elpis, Agape and Sophia the mother. The blessed martyr Sophia, since she loved the faith of Christ, having with her three daughters, Pistis, Elpis and Agape, came to Rome under the emperor Hadrian, and there with the three daughters was baptized by the bishop of that city in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit: who, preaching the faith of Christ, converted many to God. Wherefore both she and the daughters, detained by Hadrian and interrogated, freely professed the name of Christ, and on that account were vehemently tortured. And first the holy Pistis, twelve years old, after diverse torments, was beheaded. After her the holy Elpis, in her tenth year, herself too, after very many torments, by the cutting off of the head passed to the Lord. In the third place the holy Agape, nine years old, both cast into a burning furnace, and herself consummated by martyrdom, all of whom the mother Sophia buried, and, sitting by their sepulcher, after three days rendered her soul to God himself.*
Notes* Or should it not read ipsa (she herself)?
§ II. The names, race, fatherland, age, relics, and Acts.
What in the names of our Saints seemed to us strange and unusual, we have already insinuated above. Other names involve the matter more. The things augment the difficulty which Castellanus testifies he read in the Coptic January, in the Supplement to his universal Martyrology, namely that those three Virgins are called in Ethiopic Basenes, Helis and Ghani. If he had consulted the Coptic of Ludolf on the 2nd day of September, he would have found Sophia there called the gem of the city of Rome, but two of the daughters called Barnaba and Axiosa, and the third, on the 4th day of the same month, called Elisabeth; so that now you may abundantly perceive that no light can be fetched from Egypt or Ethiopia, no more than from other parts of the East, besides those things about the age which we have related probably enough in the already-cited Chronology of the Alexandrian Patriarchs, about which soon more. But let the things said about the names suffice; whatever further you investigate, you will find only this, that a matter most obscure in itself is more involved by other appellations equally unknown. Nor will any light shine at Constantinople: for I do not think anyone stupid enough to be ignorant that the church of St. Sophia there is consecrated not to this Sophia or her daughters, but to eternal Wisdom.
[11] About the race and fatherland that Legendary heaped up rather much, who under the name of John presbyter of Milan adorned the Acts at his own discretion, Race and fatherland uncertain; from which grew that opinion, that they were both most noble by race and Milanese by origin; for which Peter Paul Bosca contends, roundly enunciating them citizens of Milan, but adducing witnesses nearly all local, and those more recent than to make faith in a matter so ancient. But what the testimony of Galesinius about this is, Bosca does not explain; I find in him only the augmented tables of the church of Milan, whose authority Bosca himself sufficiently overturns. For the rest, it is all one to me whether they be called Milanese or Ticinese; this I ask, by what sufficient faith they can be vindicated to some certain city. That they were Italian, even this evinces, that it is not probable that the mother set out for Rome with such tender girls from a remote region. But whether they were born in Insubria, in Aemilia or in Picenum, or even nearer to Rome, there is no one who can discern sufficiently safely. Nor indeed is it pleasing to wrangle about the nobility; if anyone would have them less illustrious by blood, he will not go against it that they were most illustrious by the crown of martyrdom. Further, the little verses from Bulzius and Brautius which Bosca there recites, I have not judged to be referred hither.
[12] the age under Hadrian more probable. About the age no dispute remains, since we admit that they suffered under Hadrian—whether in the last, or the first, or the middle years of his rule; that indeed alone can be inquired; about which in the Tract already cited we have abundantly set forth our mind: we shall here relate the very words: "With this Chronology, referring the beginnings of Eumenius to the 14th year of Hadrian, it agrees not badly that in his time, as is said in the Patriarchal History, St. Sophia with three daughters was crowned by martyrdom. For the Acts to be illustrated on 1 August refer that contest to the times of Hadrian; nor did Baronius find in them any argument why he should refer it to the earlier rather than to the later years of the same emperor. For, the daughters of St. Sophia being slain, Hadrian felt the divine wrath being prepared for himself, which in the very deed he experienced in the year 138, extinguished by dropsy. That holy Martyr, who suffered at Rome, must have been most celebrated in the whole East, whose so honorable memory the Alexandrians commemorated; since even the Abyssinian Hagiologist thus sings the encomium of Eumenius: Salvation to Eumenius, who chose good things, spurned evil… In the days of this Apostle, that is, of the apostolic man, Sophia delivered her daughters to martyrdom."
[13] The relics, whether in Germany, The relics further entangle us in those knots and doubts with which we have already so often had to struggle, when controversies arose about the possession of the sacred bodies. And first indeed about the Roman there seems no doubt, since both there they suffered and were buried. Let Panciroli and Piazza be seen, assigning the very churches of St. Peter and St. Sylvester, in which even today their sacred relics are said to be kept and honored, if not wholly entire, at least for the greater part; so that I do not see sufficiently by what reasoning the people of Strasbourg can defend that translation, which we related above from their Breviary, as made by the venerable Remigius bishop of Reims, and indeed in the times of Charlemagne, into Alsace, without any more distinct or more certain notice of the place in which they were once held, or today are kept. If it was truly at some time made, perhaps from there some part was advanced to Cologne, since Gelenius mentions them there, and indeed the head of St. Hope on page 552. Why should they not have proceeded even as far as Paderborn, whence various bones were carried off into Spain in the year 1571, which there in the Escorial treasury in the year 1722 the associates Fathers Pinius and Cuperus venerated?
[14] or in Gaul, Another translation Saussay suggests to us in the Corollary of the Gallican Martyrology on this day, in these plain words: The birthday of the holy virgins Faith, Hope and Charity, who at Rome today, under prince Hadrian, on account of the championing of Christian piety, apprehended by Antiochus prefect of the City, and tempted with various flatteries, assailed with threats, and tortured with bitter penalties, at last by the beheading obtained the palms and crowns of martyrdom with an illustrious trophy. At whose sepulcher, three days after their agony, their mother Wisdom, mingling prayers with tears, by a pious vow rendered back to her daughters, rested in the Lord. Whose sacred bodies, all translated into Gaul, in the church of St. Mary of Vizan to be read Virgan in the territory of Cahors, enclosed in silver reliquaries, are honored with worthy veneration. The canon of Sarlat D. Armand Gerard—often praised and to be praised in this work—warned Henschenius in the year 1663 that what Saussay writes is true; but that those precious silver reliquaries, then about five years since, were taken away by sacrilegious thieves, and never recovered.
[15] There remains the question, by whom, and at what time, the heads were torn away from the sacred bodies of the three holy virgins, or at Brescia in Italy? which are said to be honorably kept in the monastery of virgins of Bellancour, of the diocese of Troyes, of the Cistercian Order, as Arthur testifies in the Gynaeceum, Desguerrois citing it in the Christian Sanctity
section 2 on the year 122; but that question we leave to be resolved by those whom it concerns; just as also another equally thorny one, namely in what manner in the Jubilee year 1600 those same sacred bodies could be translated from the city of Rome to Brescia (unless we refer them to the anonymous ones named from the crypts), whose epitaph Faynus offers us in the Brescian Martyrology on the 16th of the Kalends of January, as placed in the church of the nuns of St. Julia, of which this is the beginning: Hither, from the old church, of the holy virgins and martyrs Julia, Pistis, Helpis and Agape, and Sophia their mother, and also… whose bodies with innumerable holy relics under Clement VIII … were translated in the Jubilee year 1600, on the 16th of the Kalends of January. Further, what Theophanes means, when in the canon of the Menaea he exaggerates the miracles flowing from their reliquaries or relics, I ask someone to explain sufficiently to me.
[16] At last, after so various doubts and entangled matters, there remains an article almost most difficult, The Legends being rejected, consisting in this, that among so various Greek and Latin Acts we should select those which are infected with fewer blemishes. Besides the Metaphrastic ones edited in Latin by Lipomanus and Surius, then those which in Mombritius are attributed to John of Milan, those in Vincent of Beauvais, St. Antoninus, Peter de Natalibus, and the more recent Legendists Lippeloo, René Benedict, Simon Martin and others; besides those, I say, among our papers I find diverse copies altogether six, collated with many others, from all of which, after the tedium in reading was devoured, what history could be called tolerable, I confess I have not hitherto been able to discern; since all savor of the muddy fountain whence they flowed, so that the writers seem to have contended not about seeking the truth, but about the ornament and elegance of composition, to such a degree that they thought it fine to assign to each little maiden as many torturers as they counted years. I will say candidly, none seemed to me worthy to occupy a place here; and so I preferred the compendium of Ferrari, not itself free from paint, on this title alone, that it is sprinkled with fewer side-matters and episodes. Thus it exhibits the whole substance of the matter:
[17] a brief one is given Faith, Hope, Charity, virgins, daughters of St. Sophia, a matron distinguished both by race and by piety, being accused, because they were Christians, before Antiochus prefect of the City, under the emperor Hadrian, together with the mother are ordered to be kept in custody with Palladia, a woman of the Senatorial order. Called forth to the tribunal, when the tyrant tried by flatteries and threats to lead them away from Christ, they answer: We neither seek thy delights in this life, nor dread torments: for what can be more pleasant to Christians than to suffer for Christ? At which words Faith, twelve years old, at once stripped, and her hands bound behind her back, is most savagely beaten with rods; and when with great constancy she bore those stripes, her breasts are cut off, milk marvelously flowing forth instead of blood; after these things she is cast into a kindled fire, and, nothing hurt, is cast into a pan boiling with pitch and bitumen: finally, having suffered nothing thence either, the judge being turned into fury, transfixed by the sword, she flew to her Spouse.
[18] from Ferrari The judge in the second place assails Hope with bland words, inviting her to sacrifice to Diana: who, when she said that she was not unlike her sister, stripped, scourged with raw ox-sinews, sent into a burning furnace, and coming forth thence inviolate, hung upon a wood, is so torn with iron claws that her bones, bared of flesh, exhibited a pitiable spectacle to the bystanders: and when the most constant Virgin insulted the tyrant, he, roused to wrath, orders Hope to be cast into a cauldron full of pitch and resin and vehemently kindled. But when, the cauldron being broken by divine virtue, the boiling liquor had extinguished not a few of the ministers, by the cutting off of the head she consummated her martyrdom.
[19] A compendium of the Acts. After whom the remaining Charity, when with the same constancy she neglected the flatteries of the tyrant, extended with thongs, is most cruelly tortured, so that, the frame of her body torn apart, the virgin seemed to render up her spirit: but when most constantly she refused to give honor to Diana, after the rack she is ordered to try a furnace greatly kindled; whose flame, turned back upon those casting her in, burned them up. Finally, unharmed by the fire, affected with other punishments, and her body pierced with borers, she too, rejoicing, is beheaded, on the Kalends of August in the year of salvation 122. Whose bodies, collected by the mother and anointed with unguents, were buried with the honor that was fitting. At whose sepulcher she too, praying, a little after fell asleep in the Lord.