Stephen

ON ST. STEPHEN, POPE I AND MARTYR,

AT ROME.

The Year 257.

PRELIMINARY COMMENTARY.

Stephen, Pope I and Martyr, at Rome (S.)

BHL Number: 7847

BY THE AUTHOR P. B.

§ I. His cult as a martyr properly so called.

The universal Church throughout the world long ago venerated St. Stephen, the Roman Pontiff, first of this name, as a Martyr; so that what is ascribed to him in the modern Roman Martyrology ought not to be reckoned novel, in these words: He is venerated as a Martyr, both in the Latin Church on this day, On the fourth of the Nones of August, at Rome in the cemetery of Callistus, the birthday (natalis) of St. Stephen, Pope and martyr, who in the persecution of Valerian, while he was performing the sacred rite of Mass, when soldiers came upon him, undaunted and unmoved before the altar completing the mysteries he had begun, was beheaded in his own chair: for most similar, and altogether of the same purport, is the eulogy which Usuard composed for him at the same day in the ninth century. A little older than Usuard, Ado had gone before; yet in describing the martyrdom of St. Stephen the Pope far more copiously; and before Ado again the old Roman Martyrology, published by Rosweyde, marking the memory at the same day: At Rome, of Stephen the Pope and martyr. With the title of martyr also (to say nothing of Notker, Rabanus, Wandelbert, our Bede, and the Sacramentary of St. Gregory) he is adorned in the most ancient codices of the Hieronymian Martyrology at this same day in Florentini. With the same he is often adorned in the Diploma of St. Paul, Pope I, which, although it is only of the eighth century, ought nevertheless to be of very great weight on this account, that it was drawn up by him who first translated the body of our Saint from the cemetery where it had first been buried and venerated, not without manifest indications, as it is right to believe, of martyrdom. Consult Baronius at the year of Christ 761.

[2] But neither among the Greeks is his memory read to have been celebrated otherwise, whether on this day 2 August, than in the Greek [Church on the same day, or the following, or even on 30 August and 7 September.] or on others: for in a very old Constantinopolitan manuscript codex, concerning which Lambeck writes in the Library of the Caesars, book 8, page 100, it is thus read there on page 219: Greek text That is: In the month of August, on the 30th day. The martyrdom of the holy hieromartyr Stephen, Pope of Rome, and of his twelve disciples, and of the rest of the holy Martyrs who completed martyrdom at Rome. But in most of the Fasti of the Eastern church he is marked twice; and once indeed on this day, as in the manuscript Menaea of the Ambrosian library and the Menologion of Sirlet in Canisius; or on the following day, as in the manuscript and printed Menaea of Chifflet: but again (I know not for what cause) on the 7th day of September, on which he is noted in the same books (at least the three former: for the Chiffletian Menaea from the end of August to the beginning of March have perished) and in a Fragment of the manuscript Menaea

of the library of St. Mark at Florence. Everywhere, moreover, he is not only announced as Pope and martyr; but the Acts of his martyrdom too are set forth in compendium, these two little verses being prefixed at 7 September:

That is:

Stephen, cut down, seizes the eternal crown, Now a mighty martyr, who before had been Pope.

The other eulogies spread abroad in either place I pass over, content to have here translated that one which is reported in Greek at the end of this volume in the month of August from the Menologion of the Emperor Basil. It runs thus:

[3] Eulogy from the Menologion of the Emperor Basil. In the same month (August), on the second day, the contest of the holy hieromartyr Stephen and his Companions.

The holy martyr Stephen was under the reign of Valerian, a native of ancient Rome. Now while for the sake of the persecution he lay hidden at home, he cleansed with baptism the heathen who came to him; and consecrated deacons and presbyters; and commended the salvation of the world to God by prayers. Indeed, having restored to health the daughter of Emesius (rather, Nemesius) the tribune, he drove the man himself (her father) to baptism; and not him only, but besides him very many men and women; who indeed through diverse tortures accomplished their course. And their gathered relics the supreme Pontiff Stephen honorably buried. Presently, compelled to enter the temple of Mars and to adore (Mars), he did indeed enter; but, pouring out prayers to God, he cast down the idol. But after this, sacrificing at the altars, he was beheaded, and laid in the same seat, together with his disciple, who held in his hands the sacred symbol of faith (that is, the Eucharist): namely Tarsicius.

[4] Some doubt about his martyrdom; These things we have recounted at some length, that it may appear that they speak against the sun who now at last do not fear to call in doubt the martyrdom of St. Stephen, asserted by so many most ancient testimonies throughout the universal Church; and that by the following arguments. First, that neither St. Augustine, nor St. Vincent of Lérins, where they commend the faith, the prudence, the unblemished integrity in administering the episcopate, and the holiness of St. Stephen (the latter in the Commonitory, chapter 9; the former in the book On the one Baptism against Petilian, chapter 14), say a single word about his martyrdom. Secondly, that St. Pontius in the Life of St. Cyprian writes thus about St. Sixtus, the successor of St. Stephen: Now concerning Sixtus, a good and peaceable Priest, and therefore a most blessed martyr, a messenger had come from the City: for if we listen to the heterodox author in the Cyprianic Annals at the year 257, num. 5, by these words Pontius seems to censure Stephen (as though he were neither good, that is, nor peaceable) and to deny either that he underwent martyrdom at all; or, if he did undergo it, that he was a true and blessed Martyr. Thirdly and finally, that in the most ancient Roman Calendar, divided by Bucherius into two classes, of which the first has the title "The deposition of the bishops," the other, "The deposition of the Martyrs"; that in that Calendar, I say, there is read enrolled in the first class the deposition, On the fourth of the Nones of August, of Stephen in the cemetery of Callistus; but in the second it has no place.

[5] To the first I reply that neither by St. Augustine nor by St. Vincent is the martyrdom of St. Stephen denied. whose arguments There is no reason, therefore, why it should be opposed to the Church asserting it. Next, Augustine had no need, for the matter he was treating, of any other praise of St. Stephen than that which had been of their own accord conceded to him by the Donatists themselves: whereas that he often commemorates the martyrdom of St. Cyprian, as also his other virtues, he necessarily had to do; lest he should seem, in refuting the doctrine of one whom he refuted, to refute his holiness and merits. For Vincent's argument too it was uniquely to the point to extol the prudence and holiness of St. Stephen. But to add his other praises was for both of them as unnecessary as it was optional to pass them over. To the second I reply that the argument is worthy of none but a heretical author: for by what indication can it be judged that St. Pontius, in praising St. Sixtus, wished to censure St. Stephen, or had regard to him at all; when neither about St. Stephen, nor about his controversies with St. Cyprian, in that whole Life does he so much as once mutter? Certainly if Pontius had wished to censure Stephen, he ought at any rate also to have praised Cyprian, at least on this head, that he had kept peace with a Pontiff neither good nor peaceable toward him, even when provoked by his commands and most grievous threats.

[6] To the third, I confess, I venerate the antiquity of the Bucherian Calendar; they are refuted; far be it from me, however, to think it to be set on a level with, much less (whatever Pagi thought otherwise in his Critique at the year of Christ 253, num. 5) preferred to, the most constant consensus of the universal Church. What of this, that there are open flaws in that Calendar, if under the title "Deposition of the bishops" it be said to embrace only those who were then held in the Church for Saints indeed, but not for Martyrs? For under that title are placed also St. Lucius and St. Felix, Roman Pontiffs; whereas that the martyrdom of both was always acknowledged by the Church, not only the sacred Fasti testify, but also the holy Fathers: and of Lucius indeed there is this luminous passage of St. Cyprian, far more ancient than the said Calendar, in the epistle (in Pamelius's edition, 67) to Stephen: For the glorious honor of our predecessors, the blessed martyrs Cornelius and Lucius, must be preserved; whose memory, since we honor it, much more ought you, dearest brother, to honor and preserve by your gravity and authority, you who have been made their vicar and successor. For they, full of the Spirit of God, and set in glorious martyrdom, etc. But of Felix, Pope I, the ecumenical Council of Ephesus makes mention thus in the year 431, before two hundred and more Fathers, in Labbe, tom. 3, page 512: Of Felix, most holy Bishop of Rome and martyr, etc.; which same words St. Cyril of Alexandria uses in the same place, page 852; to these add St. Vincent of Lérins in the Commonitory, chapter 42, where discoursing on the same council, "There were also read there," he says, "certain letters to certain persons of St. Felix the martyr and St. Julius, Bishops of the city of Rome." It is clear therefore that for overthrowing the martyrdom of St. Stephen the authority of that Calendar cannot be great.

[7] as also of those who do indeed acknowledge the martyrdom; For neither do we think that Tillemont is here to be heeded (note 3 on St. Stephen the Pope, and elsewhere); when he says that the martyrdom of St. Stephen seems indeed certain to him; but that it was less illustrious, however, than that of St. Sixtus II, his successor: nay, that it may be that it was of another kind; that is, that he died in prison or in exile, etc.; but not by the sentence of a judge, or by the hand of persecutors, which was then reckoned a true and perfect martyrdom. Nor does he pronounce otherwise concerning the martyrdom of Sts. Lucius and Felix, being followed here and there by the more recent writers. Doubtless these things tend to this, that he would have the true and properly-so-called martyrdom of Sts. Lucius, Stephen, and Felix held for doubtful; and so that he may find a way of reconciling the credit of the aforesaid Calendar with the testimonies of the holy Fathers and of all the Martyrologists and finally of the whole Church: to wit, if it be said that in this Calendar alone none are called Martyrs, except those who truly and properly were Martyrs; but in all the other monuments of the Church, from the age of St. Cyprian onward, and indeed by a usage then already received among all (if you except only the writer of this Calendar) in the Church, metaphors are employed, and through them men are improperly called Martyrs, even those who properly could only be called Confessors. Who does not see how forced this interpretation is, nay how false? It is false, if it be referred to Ado, and to Usuard, Notker, and the others who followed him, or to the Greek Fasti; since in these, from the added description of his true and perfect martyrdom, it is most certain that the word "Martyr" is used not tropically, but properly: it is forced, if it regards the Little Roman Martyrology, the Hieronymian Martyrology, the Gregorian Mass of the Saint, the titles cited from the Ephesine synod, etc.: for in writings so very simple of this kind, or in bare catalogues of the Saints, to fabricate oratorical metaphors and hyperboles seems to me at least so absurd, that if the Bucherian Calendar cannot otherwise be defended here, I should think it must be given up. For what impiety is there in this, if the testimony of a private man, however ancient, be set after the public tradition of all the churches?

[8] but less properly so called. The testimony, I say, of a private man: for I am wholly persuaded of this, that that Calendar was never drawn up by public authority for the use of the Roman Church; but by some private Christian, who composed it after the middle of the fourth century for his own use of some sort and information. Why I think so, the immense difference makes clear which intervenes between it and the other most ancient and most certain Calendars of the Roman Church. That you may perceive this, receive, if you please, not only that of the eighth century not far advanced, which was edited and illustrated by Fronto; but especially that which not long ago Martène published in the New Treasury of Anecdotes, tom. 5, from column 65, and contends was written in the same fourth century, or at the beginning of the following. There the course of the year is divided by the ecclesiastical rite; not so in Bucherius: there stations, and to each celebration its own Gospel reading, are assigned; not here: there the holy Confessors and Martyrs are recounted in the same order; here there is one series of Martyrs, another of Confessors, and among the Confessors those alone have place who held the Roman chair from Lucius to Julius, and among these very ones St. Marcellus is omitted: there in each month, besides the more solemn feasts, wont to be everywhere observed from the birth of the Church, besides the Sundays and Weekdays occurring for the time, far more birthdays of Saints are noted, which it is incredible were not celebrated in the Roman Church before the fourth century had run half its course; whereas in the Bucherian Calendar, besides very few depositions of Saints, nothing is noted. Finally, to pass over the rest, that one has both the name and the form of an ecclesiastical Calendar; but the Bucherian neither bears the title of Calendar, nor deserves it; being more like a necrology, in which someone noted, according to his knowledge or, if you prefer, ignorance, only those things which it concerned him to remember. Compare, if you have leisure, the two, and you will feel, unless I am mistaken, as I do.

[9] Thus far concerning the common veneration of the whole Church toward this holy Pontiff and Martyr; His particular cult. by which even now it everywhere proposes his birthday to be celebrated yearly with a simple Office. But if it be a question of particular churches, either erected under his name, or enjoying a notable part of his relics, there can be no doubt that in these he obtains a more famous cult: but such churches we shall enumerate not a few below, when we shall discuss the translations of his relics. Now let us examine those things which pertain to his life and Acts.

§ II. His homeland, parents; certain deeds down to the year of Christ 255.

Since the Acts of St. Stephen, Pope I and martyr, begin their narration from the persecution of Valerian, and thus exhibit only his martyrdom with the circumstances St. Stephen, son of Julius, a Roman, which most nearly touched it; the things which pertain to the rest of his history must be drawn from elsewhere. Stephen, then, was a Roman by nation, born of a father Julius; as have the Catalogue of the Pontiffs, written in the sixth century and published by Henschenius in tom. 1 of April in the preliminary Diatribe; and Anastasius the Librarian: although there are not lacking manuscript exemplars of both works, in which it is not read "born of a father Julius," but "born of a father Jobius," or "Jovius"; as may be seen both in Schelstrate in the Antiquity of the Church Illustrated, tom. 1, page 430 and following, and in the most recent Blanchini recension of Anastasius, tom. 1, page 25.

[11] What he did before the Pontificate, we learn from Anastasius alone in the Lives of Sts. Cornelius and Lucius: for in the former, concerning Cornelius, he relates: first archdeacon of the Roman Church, After this, that is on the third of the Nones of March, already before his passion he handed over all the goods of the Church to Stephen his archdeacon: but in the latter, concerning Lucius: Who, seized by Valerian, was beheaded on the third of the Nones of March. He gave the power of the whole Church to Stephen his archdeacon, as he went forth to his passion. And concerning this last text there is no controversy, no discrepancy of the old codices; such as there is in the first text, on which, in the cited Schelstrate, page 429, Holstenius notes this: The lesser Vatican codex… does not acknowledge those things which are subjoined about the goods of the Church handed over to Stephen the archdeacon (by St. Cornelius) (in the other codices); and it has been badly transferred here from the following Life of Lucius: nor does the royal codex acknowledge them. St. Stephen therefore had, before he was raised to that supreme summit of the Church, been enrolled in the Roman clergy, as Anastasius testifies; and in it, to say nothing of Cornelius, he had so approved himself to Lucius, that he chose him out of all as the one to sustain the mass of the tottering Church in most difficult times.

[12] thereafter Pontiff from the year of Christ 253. Nor indeed was the judgment of St. Lucius about Stephen one thing, and that of the Church and of God another: for whose burden he had undertaken, its dignity he shortly obtained: for that Stephen succeeded Lucius, when he had died a glorious death, is the most certain authority of Eusebius, Optatus of Milevis, Augustine, Prosper, and finally of all; although it is not equally established in what year this happened; as may be gathered even from the more than once changed opinion of our Predecessors in designating it. But the more common opinion now, and one that does not displease us, is that of others, which sets the year of Christ 253 for this matter; as being confirmed by the consensus of the most ancient Catalogue of Roman Pontiffs in Bucherius, of Eusebius, and of St. Prosper in the Chronicles: for Eusebius (whom Georgius Syncellus seems to follow), marking the beginnings of St. Stephen before the death of the emperors Gallus and Volusianus, yet in the same year as this, cannot be understood otherwise than Prosper, when he repeats the beginning of the same Pontificate from the consulship of Volusianus II and Maximus together with the already-mentioned Catalogue, although the latter, less accurately, calls the same consulship, without any doubt, that of Volusianus and Maximinus. To these may be added, as will be seen below, the catalogue of Roman Pontiffs written in the sixth century, as also the Liber Pontificalis later than it; if they be rightly corrected or explained. Moreover, as it is certain that Gallus and Volusianus fell under the same consuls; so it is ascertained that those consuls pertain uniquely to the year of Christ 253. Both the Pagis, the one in the Critique on the Annals of Baronius at the year 253, num. 5, the other in the Breviary of the Roman Pontiffs, following John of Chester in the Cyprianic Annals at the same year, num. 5, besides that year, maintain also that the day of his accession to the See was the thirteenth of May; nor amiss, if we are to stand by the authority of the Bucherian Catalogue, by which Stephen is said to have sat four years, two months, twenty-one days: for just so many are counted backward from the day 2 August of the year 257, on which we think he died, to the 12th or 13th day of May in the year 253.

[13] His care and charity extended in every direction. Meanwhile the Church, which, when the tyrants Gallus and Volusianus had been destroyed about the beginnings of Stephen the Pope, breathed again a little under Aemilianus, and at length, this man too being slain three months afterward by his own men, obtained under the empire of Valerian a somewhat secure peace of nearly three years. Then indeed the holy Pastor, having gained a greater freedom of action, turned his solicitude even to the most remote churches throughout the world: concerning which it is truly to be lamented that, in those monuments of those times which survive, so few particulars are found noted. But indeed these very things suffice to make a conjecture about the rest. Thus when in Eusebius, book 7, chapter 5, we read St. Dionysius, patriarch of Alexandria, writing among other things to our holy Pontiff: All the provinces indeed of the Syrias with Arabia, to whom from time to time you supply necessaries, etc., we cannot indeed doubt that he succored also all other provinces whatsoever, begging his aid in a like want, with the same liberality and charity. For what had the best Pastor, born at Rome, to do with the faithful of the Syrias or of Arabia, so far removed from Rome, that he should have commended them to himself in particular beyond the rest? Whose care for feeding bodies was so great; how great shall we reckon it to have been for souls? Doubtless these, though absent, he cherished with epistles, as he did those with money: for this same thing too Dionysius openly relates, subjoining to the words just cited: And to whom you have now written letters.

[14] Hence it seems must be established how great was his diligence and zeal in ecclesiastical affairs of every kind, because of the heresy and schism of Novatian whether those which we now wholly ignore, or those of which only an obscure knowledge survives; which therefore must be judged not to have been lacking even in the very case of Marcian, though drawn out somewhat at length. Now Marcian was, as St. Cyprian testifies in the epistle (in Pamelius, 67), bishop of Arles; but openly and obstinately addicted to the errors and schism of Novatian, not without harm to the churches and to his own, and to the sorrow and groaning of the neighboring ones. The matter therefore was first referred to St. Stephen, both by Faustinus, prelate of Lyons, and by the other fellow-bishops established in the same province; then through the letters of the same Faustinus it was once and again commended also to the patronage of St. Cyprian; and then at last it was taken up before the supreme Pontiff and completed through the epistle already cited, of which these are the chief points, and very suitable for asserting the authority of the Apostolic See: he deposes Marcian, bishop of Arles. Wherefore you ought to write very full letters to our fellow-bishops established in the Gauls, that they suffer not the obstinate and proud Marcian, an enemy of divine piety and of brotherly salvation, any longer to insult our college, seeing that he seems not yet to have been cut off (abstained) by us; who LONG SINCE boasts and proclaims that, being a follower of Novatian and pursuing his obstinacy, he has separated himself from our communion. And a little further: Let letters be directed by you into the Province and to the people abiding at Arles, whereby, Marcian being cut off, another may be substituted in his place, and the flock of Christ, which to this day is despised as scattered and wounded by him, may be gathered. Let it suffice that many there of our brethren IN THESE PAST YEARS have departed without peace; or let the rest be succored who survive, etc.

[16] Cyprian wrote these things to Stephen not before the second year of his Pontificate, he deposes him. the year of Christ 254; as the author of the Cyprianic Annals proves; when now long since, in the past years, and indeed at least from the very beginnings of Stephen, Marcian had scattered the church with impunity. Do not these things then argue some negligence of our Pontiff here? Far be it indeed: for neither (to say nothing else) is whatever is done slowly to be said to be done negligently; unless someone deny that prudence can consist with diligence; whereas the law of both is one, "Make haste slowly": which law those times especially dictated to the prelates of the Church, in which, under heathen dominion and a newborn peace, severity could not yet seem safe enough, and they were compelled for a while to dissemble great evils, lest they should stir up greater ones. Certainly not even St. Cyprian, who could commend this business to Stephen far more safely than Stephen could execute it, is known to have done so before the repeated prayers of Faustinus. To what end, I ask; unless because he had thought the time not yet opportune for a judgment of this kind? When therefore this seemed to have arrived, Cyprian so exhorted the Pontiff to decide the case at once, that he in no way doubted of its most ready outcome and of the diligence of St. Stephen; which the last part of the same epistle manifestly betrays in these words: Signify plainly to us who has been substituted in the place of Marcian at Arles; that we may know to whom to direct our brethren, and to whom we ought to write. And that Marcian was then cast down by him from his see, this can be an indication: that his name is not read in the ancient diptychs of the church of Arles, in Mabillon, Analecta, tom. 3, page 432.

[16] He restores Basilides and Martial, cast down from the episcopate; Into about the same time is believed to fall the case of Basilides and Martial; of whom the one being bishop of the churches of León and Astorga, the other of Mérida in the Spains, they were said to have contaminated themselves with certificates witnessing to idolatry, and with other by no means light offenses: hence both were held unworthy of the episcopate by their own people, and cast down; and in the place of Basilides a certain Sabinus, in that of Martial a Felix, as it appears, were substituted. Not bearing this, the deposed men fled to the protection of the Roman See (as is certain indeed of Basilides; of Martial very probable;) where, absolved by the judgment of St. Stephen, they returned to the churches they had lost, not without a great commotion of those churches, nay of certain prelates too, some rejecting them as condemned by a just sentence; others receiving them as approved by a superior and legitimate authority. This dissension, those who adhered to Faustinus and Felix, uncertain by what method at last to compose it, having conferred their counsels together, at length sent those very men with letters explaining the whole series of the business to St. Cyprian at Carthage, asking that their solicitude be relieved either by his solace or by the aid of his sentence. Cyprian, having heard the legates in synod, and having read through the letters they had brought, so approved whatever had been done by them, by his own vote and that of the bishops gathered with him, that he at once sent back an epistle (the sixty-eighth in Pamelius, and the sole source of this history) addressed to Felix the presbyter and the peoples abiding at León and Astorga, likewise to Laelius the deacon and the people abiding at Mérida; whereby he might both show that they had done everything rightly, and their adversaries most unjustly; with whom therefore it was no less a crime to have any communion, than to be unwilling to keep any with Felix and Sabinus, lately substituted by legitimate ordination.

[17] yet not deceived by their surreptitious approach or by his own negligence; Nor can he rescind, he says, an ordination rightly

made complete, because they had not been deposed in a legitimate manner. on the ground that Basilides, after his crimes were detected, and his conscience laid bare even by his own confession, going to Rome, deceived Stephen, our colleague, placed far off and ignorant of the deed done and of the truth concealed; so as to canvass to be reinstated unjustly into the episcopate, from which he had been justly deposed. This tends to this, that the offenses of Basilides are not so much abolished as heaped up; so that to his former sins there was added also the crime of deceit and circumvention. For he is not so much to be blamed on whom a thing was surreptitiously imposed through negligence, as this man is to be execrated who fraudulently crept in. But if Basilides could impose upon men, upon God he cannot; since it is written: God is not mocked. But neither can deceit have profited Martial, so that he too, involved in grave offenses, ought not to hold the episcopate…, especially since long ago together with us and with all the bishops established throughout the whole world, Cornelius also, our colleague, a peaceable and just Priest, and honored moreover with martyrdom by the favor of the Lord, decreed that men of this kind can indeed be admitted to do penance; but are to be prohibited from the ordination of the clergy and from priestly honor. In which words are contained two heads of accusation, branding, if they are true, no light stain upon the glory of our Pontiff: for by the one Stephen himself is attacked; as though, ignorant of the concealed truth, he suffered himself in so great a matter to be deluded through negligence; by the other his sentence is marked, not indeed as passed with an unjust mind; but yet as unjust in itself, and contrary to the prior decree of St. Cornelius and of the whole Church; and therefore not to be observed.

[18] But I do not know whether, when St. Cyprian so judged, he ought not rather himself to be seen to have here suffered something human: but St. Cyprian thought; for although we do not know the considerations by which Stephen was impelled to pass sentence, because his decree has perished; yet those on which Cyprian here rests, sufficiently appear not to be weighty: for whatever he decides in this epistle, he decides with the other side unheard, that is, from the sole report of the legates, who were the bishops substituted for the deposed, and from the letters of those who had deposed the latter and substituted the former. But were these fit witnesses in their own cause? Could they not equally impose upon Cyprian, as Basilides upon Stephen? Was Rome so much farther distant from the places here in question than Carthage, that deceit could penetrate thither from there, but not hither? Or were the dealings between the Carthaginians and the Spaniards, bound by no tie of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, so frequent; those of the Spaniards with the Romans, to whom they were subject by both civil and ecclesiastical power, so rare; that Stephen at Rome could not know or examine what was being done there much better than Cyprian at Carthage? He could, you say; but he did not, or at least did it negligently. Why so, I pray? Because he suffered himself to be surprised, to be circumvented. And yet even the most diligent and most cautious man is sometimes surprised; especially if he is full of charity, which believes all things, and thinks no evil; and of mercy, always more inclined to the accused than to the accusers. Since with these virtues both Cyprian and Stephen, being both holy, shone; whence shall we say that the one was rather deluded than the other; or either of them through negligence?

[19] Nay indeed, grant that the matter was narrated and proved to St. Cyprian wholly as it was; grant that St. Stephen not only was ignorant of it when he restored Basilides, but because they had not been deposed in a legitimate manner. but did not even then wish to examine it: I deny even so that he ought to be judged either negligent or incautious; or his sentence unjust, and repugnant to the decree of St. Cornelius: for though he were ignorant of all the rest, yet these two things he could not be ignorant of; namely that Basilides and Martial had been thrust from their sees by the Spaniards, and others set in their place; and that they had done this without consulting the Roman See, to which causes of this kind were altogether to be referred; as we saw above from St. Cyprian himself, where he treats of Marcian; and in the same author epistle 55 to St. Cornelius may be seen; or also in the most Eminent Aguirre, Councils of Spain, tom. 1, in the whole seventh dissertation. The holy Pontiff therefore neglected nothing in this place, since nothing else needed to be known or inquired for rescinding the acts of the Spaniards, as he did, if not absolutely and in perpetuity; at least until they (as the cited Aguirre thinks, dissert. 14, excursus 3) should renew the cause in legitimate order, that is, with the Apostolic See aware and approving; which they afterward had in mind to do, when they implored the help of St. Cyprian, Baronius thinks at the year 258, num. 5. But what was the final outcome of this cause is unknown. Cardinal Aguirre, in the place just assigned, thinks it remained in the same state until the Pontificate of St. Sixtus II, as one who confirmed his Predecessor's sentence for the same reason for which it had been pronounced. And if this is true, St. Stephen needs no other defense against Cyprian's censure. As for St. Cornelius, that he wished graver causes, such as this was, to be referred wholly to himself, is clear from the epistle 55 of St. Cyprian to him just assigned. When therefore he decreed that men of this kind can be admitted to do penance; but are to be prohibited from the ordination of the clergy and from priestly honor; either he only prohibits that such men, if they were not yet bishops or clerics, be ordained (and thus his decree in no way pertains here;) or if he decrees that those who were already clerics or bishops are to be deposed; that, the order of law being observed, and therefore not without the knowledge and assent of the Roman Pontiff, he must be judged to have wished done.

§ III. His sentence against St. Cyprian and others concerning the repetition of Baptism conferred by heretics or schismatics.

Baptism received outside the Church A graver storm presently followed the troubles of the Spaniards throughout the East and Africa: for it had been established in both places, from the opinion of those who denied that the true Baptism of Christ could be conferred outside the Church, that it was altogether necessary that whoever, having been dipped by heretics or schismatics, wished to return to the Church, should be baptized anew in it. This a frequent assembly of prelates in Africa under Agrippinus, bishop of Carthage (about fifty years before), had decreed, as St. Cyprian testifies in epistle 73 to Jubaianus: this too had been resolved in the East by synods gathered from Galatia, Cilicia, Cappadocia, and the neighboring provinces at Iconium and Synnada about the year of Christ 230; as report, in Cyprian epistle 75, Firmilian, bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia; in Eusebius, book 7, chapter 7, St. Dionysius of Alexandria. But the same decree now began to be urged more vehemently, chiefly by the authors in the East Firmilian and Helenus; in Africa Cyprian.

[21] St. Cyprian and others determine that it must be repeated in it; And Cyprian indeed wished to assert it not only by his letters, but also by synods; and that so fervently, that at almost one time he celebrated two at Carthage; the former, about the end of the year of Christ 255, of thirty-two bishops, whose names its synodical epistle bears, the seventieth among the Cyprianic in Pamelius; the other a few months later (say in the year of Christ 256 before Easter, as Pearson thinks in his Annals) of seventy-one prelates of Africa and Numidia: for just so many St. Cyprian himself counts to Jubaianus. In both the same matter was approved by the votes of all: then, that nothing might be lacking to establish it once for all, common letters from the fathers of the later synod, to which they had joined both the synodical letters of the recent council and others of St. Cyprian to Quintus, a bishop in Mauretania, on the same subject, were transmitted to Rome to St. Stephen, with that confidence which these their words to Stephen (epistle 72) display: These things we have brought to your conscience…, believing that they please you also, for the truth of your religion and faith, being both religious alike and true.

[22] which St. Stephen severely forbids to be sown: But indeed it turned out far otherwise than they had believed: for the holy Pontiff, when he learned that such great and so hasty movements of the churches were being stirred up to proscribe the apostolic tradition, and that by prelates flourishing with an exceptional fame of holiness and learning, and inflamed, as they thought, by no other ardor than that of vindicating sincere truth and religion, perceived at once that against so precipitate an evil not any remedy whatever, but a most efficacious and most ready one, must be applied. He therefore soon sent letters to St. Cyprian and the Orientals, in which he showed that the custom handed down by the Apostles was contrary to their opinion; and then concludes thus by enjoining: If therefore anyone come to us from any heresy whatsoever, let nothing be innovated, save what has been handed down, that a hand be laid on him in penance; since the heretics themselves properly do not baptize those coming over to them from one to another, but only admit them to communion. See Cyprian's epistle 74 to Pompeius. And that they might feel this precept to be most grave, he both joined to it all his authority, and threatened, not without a sharp but just rebuke, an armed severity if they should neglect it: for he enjoined it as a Bishop of bishops, as is drawn from Cyprian himself in the third synod of Carthage in St. Augustine, On Baptism against the Donatists, book 6, chapter 6; and as holding the succession of Peter, upon whom the foundations of the Church were laid, as Firmilian indicates in the same St. Cyprian, epistle 75: and thus he threatened those not obeying with the sentence of excommunication, or at least signified that they ought to be held worthy of it; as is clear from the epistle to Pompeius and others.

[23] These letters, it can scarcely be told, how much they galled Firmilian in the East, whence arose a grave dissension; but without schism or excommunication; and Cyprian in Africa; so that no other example is needed to demonstrate the frailty of men, however holy and learned, in their own cause: for even St. Cyprian himself (who boiled over less impotently than Firmilian), if you read his epistle 74 to Pompeius, you would say suddenly forgot what he had long before so excellently taught in the book On the Unity of the Church, in epistle 55 to Cornelius, and elsewhere, about the authority of the Roman Pontiffs. Certainly those things which he wrote against him after receiving St. Stephen's letters, St. Augustine, where he refutes the epistle to Pompeius, On Baptism against the Donatists, book 5, chapter 25, was even ashamed to mention, as poured out rather by a movement of an angry mind than dictated by an even judgment: Now those things, he says, which, provoked, he poured out against Stephen, I am unwilling to recount; … and it is better to pass over those things which had the peril of a pernicious dissension. And we too therefore let these things go; content to have given this warning, which the same holy Doctor observes a little further: Yet the peace of Christ prevailed in their hearts, so that in such a dispute no evil of schism arose among them.

By which words he signifies that Cyprian never withdrew from the communion of Stephen (which all confess, and Cyprian himself repeatedly inculcates;) nor was he by Stephen cut off or severed from it: for if either had happened, some evil of schism would surely have arisen between them. The same is nonetheless expressly asserted in the same work, book 4, chapter 9; where St. Cyprian is said to have tolerated his opposing colleagues in this matter, just as he himself was tolerated. But he so tolerated them, that on that account he excommunicated no one: (for this he so often repeats:) therefore neither was he on that account excommunicated by them.

[24] Moreover, as Cyprian ought altogether to fear the threats of the supreme Pontiff, unless he either obeyed him thus severely enjoining, the peril of which not the synodical legation, or strove at least to wring some indulgence for himself and his Africans; so he seems to me to have had this in view, when for the next Kalends of September of the same year 256 he proclaimed a new synod, and, on this business, a third, at Carthage, of as many bishops as could be gathered from the provinces of Africa, Numidia, and Mauretania; prepared, I suppose, either to comply with Stephen, if this seemed good to the majority; or to deter him at least from a hasty sentence, if he could set before him all Africa together with no small part of the East; which surely the Pontiff would seem not so instantly to be about to renounce it all, and that on account of a mere diversity of discipline (as with Firmilian Cyprian judged); but would rather forestall so great a loss to the Church by some conciliation or connivance. There assembled therefore on the said Kalends prelates in all eighty-five: who all and each, Cyprian exhorting that each should set forth his own opinion on the proposed matter as freely as possible, confirmed the decrees of the former assemblies by their own vote and that of two absent bishops besides; as may be seen in Labbe, Councils, tom. 1, from col. 787. From this number, as it appears to us by far more likely, legates were presently chosen to St. Stephen by St. Cyprian and the other fathers of the synod; but again not with the outcome they hoped: for everything had already been reported to the Pontiff before these arrived; since he, when they came, as Firmilian testifies, forbade them not only his own converse, but even the shelter and hospitality of the brethren, so that they could nowhere stay in Italy. And so, compelled to turn their sails, the matter unfinished, they could report this one thing to their own, which had befallen them.

[25] but St. Dionysius of Alexandria, or other causes, removed. It cannot be doubted that this news not moderately increased the fear of the African prelates, and especially of St. Cyprian, lest so open an indignation of the Roman Pontiff, soon bursting forth into a greater evil, which it had shortly before threatened, should not suffer it to be long deferred. But neither was there hope of recalling Stephen from his purpose by himself or his own, since he had not even admitted bishops sent as legates by so great an authority of a synod. What then in these straits shall we say Cyprian determined, that he might not be proscribed from the Chair of Peter, whose communion so necessary to all Christians he had luminously demonstrated elsewhere? He knew that Firmilian in the East had long been engaged in the same cause and peril: him therefore he at once informs of the state of African affairs, exhorting him at the same time, as I think, that if he had any friends either in the East or in Egypt (for elsewhere all vehemently abhorred the novelty), whom he knew to be not suspect at Rome and to have some influence, he should straightway employ them as intercessors with Stephen against the misfortune now more nearly threatening the Eastern churches as well as the African. That something of this kind was certainly done, St. Dionysius, patriarch of Alexandria, in Eusebius book 7, chapter 5, allows us to suspect by these words: Previously indeed he (St. Stephen) had written letters about Helenus and about Firmilian, and finally about all the priests established throughout Cilicia, Cappadocia, and all the neighboring provinces, that on that account he would withdraw from their communion, because they rebaptized heretics… Concerning all these things I sent to him (St. Stephen) an epistle BEGGING AND BESEECHING… But also to our dearest brethren and fellow-presbyters (the Romans)… previously indeed briefly, but now in many words I have written.

[26] both by the Africans and by the Orientals. However it be; whether intercessions of this kind, or any other causes whatever, restrained St. Stephen, we do not believe that he proceeded further; but that he stood within the sole threats of excommunication; and that both in respect of St. Cyprian and the Africans, as we have already seen from Augustine; and of Firmilian and the Orientals, as is clear from the produced text of St. Dionysius written after Stephen's martyrdom. Nor indeed is anything more made out from the epistle of Firmilian: for he there, both indulging rhetoric more than enough, and, his bile stirred, the more agitated, amplifies beyond measure with everywhere swelling speech whatever seemed to contribute anything to procuring odium for Stephen, and thus inveighs against him, as though he had already done what he had said he would do. See Schelstrate, Antiquity Illustrated, part 2, dissert. 1, chapter 5, art. 2; or, if you prefer, Pierre Coustant, Epistles of the Roman Pontiffs, tom. 1, in the Dissertation on the sentence of Stephen Pope I concerning the reception of heretics, §7, from col. 249.

[27] It remains therefore, and it much concerns the glory of this most holy Pontiff of ours and Martyr, How this cause of St. Stephen is to be vindicated; that what he is said to have done in this matter be shown to have been rightly done by him. And this indeed can be accomplished in a twofold way; the one, if his words and deeds be explained one by one and all defended from the calumnies of adversaries; the other, if they be regarded in general, and thus said to have been of old commended by the constant judgment of the sounder part of the Church, never noted for even the least fault either in matter or in manner; whereas nevertheless the fault of those opposing Stephen was not concealed. That former defense is indeed not very difficult; but longer than suits this place, nor indeed even necessary; since already others have more than once undertaken it, as the authors just praised, and those theologians everywhere who cease not excellently to defend the authority of the Roman Pontiff—so often assailed in vain by this very example of St. Cyprian, Firmilian, and the rest adhering to them—against heretics, schismatics, and especially the innovators of these times; among whom the anonymous author deservedly claims for himself no last place, in a French little work which, published at Paris in the year 1725, he entitled: Dissertation théologique sur la célèbre dispute entre le Pape S. Étienne et S. Cyprien, évêque de Carthage; où l'on explique la véritable pensée de S. Augustin touchant la même dispute. Here therefore we shall employ only the latter, as being shorter, plainer, and by far the weightiest.

[28] But before we do this, it will help to bring some reckoning of the time, and at what time it was chiefly in force. at which we have said Stephen did these things. That is gathered from the epistle of Firmilian, in which he so agitates the acts of the supreme Pontiff against the Africans and Orientals, that he betrays, by most crude oration and precipitate impulse, that the grief conceived from them was altogether recent when he wrote. Whence it cannot be doubted that the interval between that epistle and the things it contains about Stephen was by no means long. This then, at what time of the year was it written? Both it itself indicates; the year indeed by these words: For nearly twenty-two years ago, in the times after the emperor Alexander, many conflicts and pressures happened there: the time of the year the following denote: But since that legate sent by you (Cyprian) was hastening to return to you, and the winter season was pressing; as much as we could, we wrote back to your writings. Firmilian therefore wrote back, winter now impending, when after the emperor Alexander nearly twenty-two years had flowed by; which must altogether be referred to the advanced year of Christ 256; since it neither ought nor can be extended further. It cannot, I say; because before the autumn of the following year St. Stephen had undergone martyrdom, and Cyprian exile, contrary to the manifest hypothesis of the whole epistle: neither ought it; because from the year of Christ 235, in which it is agreed Alexander perished, and indeed (as most suppose) in the month of March, down to the year of Christ 256 now nearly run out, plainly nearly twenty-two years intervene. Into the same year, then, but somewhat less advanced, the said acts of Stephen fall.

§ IV. The Acts of St. Stephen against St. Cyprian and the rebaptizers, constantly approved from the beginning by the sounder part of the Church.

[Of the very time of the controversy this is testified by a contemporary Anonymous,] Who in this controversy about Baptism was the common sense of far the greater number of churches concerning the equity and zeal of St. Stephen, no one can testify better than the anonymous author who was published among the works of St. Cyprian by Rigault and others, and then also by Labbe, Councils, tom. 1, col. 770; since indeed he impugned the novelty of this about the very time of Sts. Stephen and Cyprian, as Tillemont proves against Oudin with most of the learned in annotation 40 on St. Cyprian. He then, having at once set forth the most ancient custom and ecclesiastical tradition (by which upon those dipped outside the Church and returning to it only a hand was wont to be laid by the bishop;) then upon the question of those opposing that same custom by a novelty, pronounces thus: In which kind of question, as it seems to me, no controversy or dispute at all could have emerged, if each one of us, content with the venerable authority of all the churches, and with necessary humility, were eager TO INNOVATE NOTHING. Come now, does he not here openly enough praise that decree of St. Stephen, "Let nothing be innovated"; and that not as just by his own judgment only, but as so approved by the venerable authority of all the churches, that each one ought to acquiesce content, who did not lack necessary humility? Surely he carps at nothing in the one commanding, who requires in the subjects only humility, and indeed necessary; nay he extols his equity as much as their contumacy; while he there accuses them of vainglory, of the stupor of heretics, of audacity and impiety; while he calls them turbulent men; while he says it is like a monstrosity that the bishops themselves should devise such scandals; and more, which may be read heaped together at the very entrance of the cited treatise. Nor indeed would all the churches have defended that decree of Stephen, unless it had been most just on every side; all, I say, for so that author speaks; because compared with these the African and some Oriental ones were scarcely reckoned to make a number.

[30] St. Augustine, This place of the anonymous, thus far somewhat obscure, because he makes no mention of Stephen nor of Cyprian with his followers by name and in express words, St. Augustine notably illustrates, expressly setting forth both in the book On the one Baptism against Petilian, chapter 14; where about the same time of this dissension being in force he speaks thus: Behold, there were two at one time (to say nothing of others) who thought differently: there were the bishops of two most eminent churches, namely the Roman and the Carthaginian,

Stephen and Cyprian, both established in Catholic unity: of whom Stephen judged that the Baptism of Christ was in no case to be repeated, and was gravely angry with those who did this: but Cyprian thought that those baptized in heresy or schism, as not having the Baptism of Christ, were to be baptized in the Catholic Church. Many were with him; CERTAIN also thought with this man. Where you see those words "many," "certain" used as opposed, and sounding the same as "many," "few." Augustine therefore also testifies that many bishops thought with Stephen, who judged that the Baptism of Christ was in no case to be repeated and was gravely angry with those who did this; but few with Cyprian. But yet how few thought with Cyprian; how many with Stephen? Hear the same St. Augustine against Cresconius the Donatist, book 3, chapter 3: Accordingly, if it is at all now to be believed that it seemed good to fifty bishops of the Orientals, which seemed good to seventy Africans, or even somewhat more, against so many thousands (the number is a certain one for an uncertain, but a very great one) of bishops, to whom this error throughout the whole world was displeasing, etc. You see how many thinking with Stephen he opposes to how few adhering to Cyprian? Observe here in passing, according to St. Augustine, that Stephen treated of the Baptism of Christ alone; but that is not the Baptism of Christ which lacks the legitimate form, as the same Augustine teaches On Baptism against the Donatists, book 6, chapter 25: either therefore no other was then in use among the heretics; or if there was, Stephen did not forbid it to be repeated; and therefore did not approve it.

[31] Of the same time of the controversy arisen between Cyprian and Stephen, a contemporary of Augustine, St. Vincent of Lérins, transmitted an illustrious testimony to posterity in the Commonitory, chapter 9; and St. Vincent of Lérins: where, when he had said that the presumption of Agrippinus, who had before determined that heretics were to be rebaptized, brought in afterward so much evil, that it gave occasion of error not only to all heretics for a form of sacrilege, but also to certain Catholics (he means Cyprian, with his followers reviving the resolutions of Agrippinus); he thus continues: When therefore on all sides all cried out against the novelty of the thing (the Cyprianic decree), and all priests everywhere, each according to his own zeal, resisted; then Pope Stephen of blessed memory, Prelate of the Apostolic See, resisted, with the rest indeed of his colleagues, but yet before the rest; thinking it worthy, as I suppose, if he surpassed all the others as much in devotion of faith as he excelled in authority of place. You see, again, that to Stephen, as the chief leader of this expedition, fellow-soldiers are joined from all sides, and all (in an accommodated sense indeed) priests everywhere, that is bishops; to whom therefore then, as afterward to Vincent, his war seemed most religious.

[32] And these things indeed were said, as I noted, of that very time in which the excessive ardor of disputation so carried away certain men, Of the time soon following, and of Cyprian himself, the same Augustine, that they could not, nay would not, attend to the equity of St. Stephen's cause: but after it soon subsided, who refused to look up to the religion of that same Pontiff, whether still surviving or now dead a glorious death; who refused then to submit himself to his precept; whom did it not either shame or grieve to have before resisted him? Of St. Cyprian St. Augustine wishes this to be believed, although he confesses that he cannot show it written, On Baptism against the Donatists, book 2, chapter 4, and more strongly in the same book chapter 5; where he has thus: How he (St. Cyprian) could have received the truth, found contrary to what he thought; though the letters are silent, his merits cry out: if the epistle is not found, his crown testifies: if a council of bishops does not indicate it, the fellowship of angels indicates it. And epistle 93 to Vincentius the Rogatist, chapter 10: But that Cyprian thought otherwise about Baptism than the form and custom of the Church held, is found not in the Canonical writings; but in his own and in the council's letters: but that he corrected that opinion is not found; yet it is not incongruous to think of such a man that he corrected it; and perhaps it was suppressed by those who, too much delighted with this error, were unwilling to lack so great a patronage.

[33] and the venerable Bede; What of this, that that writing, which Augustine could not find in Africa, and therefore thought suppressed, was preserved with a better fortune at Rome, and thence flowed elsewhere through Europe, and down to the eighth century remained in Greater Britain? Certainly he is not such a man, the holy and venerable Bede, then there by far the most illustrious in letters, whom one may suspect of having rashly asserted what he had nowhere read, when in the book of various Questions, question 5 on that saying of the Apostle, "Let each one abound in his own sense," he wrote the following: If you work through charity the good things which you know; divine grace will grant you that, if you are wise in anything otherwise than is fitting, this too you may sometime understand: as it is evident happened to Bl. Cyprian; who with his fellow-bishops, who were in Africa, determined that heretics were to be rebaptized against the custom of the Church: but because he studied in his own sense, which seemed to him right, to abound in good works, he presently merited to be corrected, and to be brought back to the universal norm of the holy Church by the instruction of spiritual men. And indeed it is necessary to confess this, unless one dare to feign Cyprian harder than all his fellow-bishops:

[34] of the African bishops, St. Jerome; of the Orientals, St. Augustine, For the other African prelates too soon repented of their tergiversation, as St. Jerome makes us believe against the Luciferians in these words: Bl. Cyprian tried to flee the broken cisterns, and not to drink of alien water; and therefore, reproving the Baptism of heretics, he directed an African synod on this matter to Stephen, then Bishop of the city of Rome, who was the twenty-sixth from Bl. Peter; but his attempt was in vain. Finally those very bishops, who had determined with him that heretics were to be rebaptized, rolled back to the ancient custom, sent forth a new decree: What do we do? So both our elders handed down to us, and to them their elders handed down. The Orientals too repented, as is clear from the testimony of Cresconius the Donatist, which St. Augustine in the third book against him, chapter 2, thus reports: But your elders, to whom you gave such testimony, that they were separated from the communion of the Orientals for this reason, because those rescinded their own judgment, whereby it had seemed good to them that it was fitting to agree on that question of Baptism with Cyprian and that African council, etc.

[35] [as those who submitted themselves under St. Sixtus, the successor of St. Stephen.] But although it is not added at what time these things happened; yet it is probable that it befell under St. Sixtus, who, following St. Stephen shortly, preceded St. Cyprian by an illustrious martyrdom: for that those dissensions were not laid to rest before, appears from the epistle of St. Dionysius of Alexandria given upon them to Sixtus in Eusebius book 7, chapter 5: but that they were composed under Sixtus, St. Jerome seems to intimate: for if THOSE VERY BISHOPS, who had determined with him (St. Cyprian) that heretics were to be rebaptized, rolled back to the ancient custom, sent forth a new decree; surely they must be said to have done this, before either they could assemble

in a synod, or Valerian's most cruel persecution had removed a great part of them from their midst. The same is urged by the passage cited above from St. Pontius in the Life of St. Cyprian: Now concerning Sixtus, a good and peaceable Priest, and therefore a most blessed martyr, etc. For why does he call him peaceable, unless because he had made some peace in the Church? And what other peace can be said or feigned to have been made, except that which, through the novelties of Cyprian and others concerning Baptism, though not altogether removed, had yet been greatly disturbed? The same, finally, can be gathered from this, that St. Dionysius of Alexandria, who, according to St. Jerome in the Catalogue of Ecclesiastical Writers, chapter 69, had consented to the dogma of Cyprian and the African synod, is known under the same Pontiff Sixtus to have been so far led away from that opinion (And why not by the example of those by whose authority he had before been seduced?), that he did not dare even to baptize anew a man whom he knew to have been so dipped by heretics, that from that man's own report he rightly doubted whether the legitimate form of Baptism had been observed by them. And so he had recourse to Sixtus, that he might determine what was to be done by him in this matter, as may be seen in Eusebius book 7, chapter 9.

[36] Now if we descend to the following centuries, what could commend the glory of St. Stephen more excellently, What in the fifth century the Donatists themselves thought of St. Stephen; both in all the other things which he did, and especially in this business, than the confession of the Donatists themselves concerning his integrity? That is drawn from these words of St. Augustine in the book On the one Baptism against Petilian, the Donatist bishop of Cirta in Numidia about the beginning of the fifth century, chapter 14: But I wish this man (Petilian) to solve me a question; since, when he recounts the bishops of the Roman Church in order, among them he recounted Stephen also, whom he confessed to have borne the episcopate unblemished. Who does not know that nothing was dearer to the Donatists than Cyprian; nothing more familiar than the works of Cyprian; nothing in his works more noble than those in which, against the edict of the Roman Pontiff, he had contended that the baptism of heretics was to be repeated? For these things they constantly chanted at the Catholics. Petilian therefore had read and worn threadbare these things. He could not therefore be ignorant of the most base faults, by which the episcopate of St. Stephen was there said to have been contaminated, because he plucked up that very error which the Donatists afterward doted upon. And yet Petilian could not be so moved by all these things, but that of his own accord and openly, against his own cause, against the authority of St. Cyprian—whose sayings against Stephen he was thereby arguing to be mere calumnies—he absolutely professed that same episcopate to be unblemished. But indeed this truth must have been not only open to all, but in a manner violent; since not even the most hostile enemies could dissemble it. And are not certain writers today ashamed, who wish to be held Catholics (I mean Tillemont and others worse), to abuse the letters of Cyprian and Firmilian for defiling, at least in this deed, the memory of this most holy Pontiff—unblemished on every side even to the Donatists of old?

[37] Not so indeed of old were both St. Augustine and the Catholics who lived with him: what at the same time with the Catholics to whom the decree of St. Stephen seemed so equitable, that they thought it absurd if anyone should say St. Cyprian had resisted him, whom they contended never even to have thought otherwise about Baptism. Augustine is a witness to Vincentius the Rogatist, chapter 10, thus asserting of his own time: Although there are not lacking those who contend that Cyprian did not at all think this (namely that the baptism received from heretics was to be repeated in the Church); but that under his name it was fabricated by presumptuous and lying men. And that this opinion was not displeasing to Augustine, is clear from the reason which he immediately subjoins: For, he says, the integrity and knowledge of the letters of one bishop, however illustrious, could not be so guarded, as the canonical Scripture is guarded by the letters of so many tongues, and by the order and succession of ecclesiastical celebration; against which nevertheless there have not been lacking those who forged many things under the names of the Apostles; in vain indeed; because that Scripture is so commended, so celebrated, so known. But what audacity of impious endeavor could do against letters not founded on Catholic authority, it has shown even from this; that it did not fail to raise itself even against those which are firmed by so great a mass of knowledge.

[38] St. Augustine; Nor does it matter that he immediately adds: We however, for two reasons, do not deny that Cyprian thought this: for although he does not deny it, that he may confound his adversaries by the argument which they call ad hominem; yet he by no means also asserts it; since a little further he again builds up the same opinion as probable to him among others in this manner: But moreover Cyprian either did not at all think what you recite that he thought; or he afterward corrected this by the rule of truth; or he covered this as it were a blemish of his most candid breast with the abundance of charity; while he both most copiously defended the unity of the Church growing throughout the whole world, and most perseveringly held the bond of peace: for it is written: Charity covers a multitude of sins. To this was added also, that whatever in him needed to be amended, the Father purged, as a most fruitful branch, with the pruning-knife of passion. He shows therefore that that suspicion did not seem to him at all light. Moreover about the purgation of Cyprian through charity or the pruning-knife of passion he makes mention elsewhere also, as in the book On the one Baptism against Petilian, chapter 13, and book 1 On Baptism against the Donatists, chapter 18. To what end, pray, does Augustine here turn himself in so many directions, that he would have Cyprian's obstinacy against Stephen either fabricated, or diluted by correction, charity, martyrdom? Doubtless these things denote the equity of the Pontifical decree; which could not be resisted without baseness, without sin. On which point I would also have it observed, that where Augustine sets Cyprian as having resisted Stephen, and so as having sinned, he does indeed more than once try to lessen the gravity of his offense; but never by accusing Stephen, as though he had overstepped the limits either of moderate prudence or of his authority. Nothing therefore did he acknowledge of those things which Cyprian and Firmilian impute to the most holy Pontiff. He says, I confess, that Stephen was gravely angry, and that Cyprian too was provoked; but neither this one rightly, nor that one wrongly; nay rather Stephen deservedly, Cyprian undeservedly; since he confesses that the latter sinned in that hypothesis; but yet afterward washed away this sin of whatever kind.

[39] what St. Vincent of Lérins; But no one praises this deed of Stephen more expressly than St. Vincent of Lérins in the Commonitory, chapter 9, where he adduces it to prove this thesis set forth at the beginning of the chapter: This custom always flourished in the Church, that the more religious anyone was, the more promptly he would go against novel inventions. And so after the words which we recited thence above at num. 31, he thus continues: Finally in the epistle (of St. Stephen) which was then sent to Africa, he sanctioned it in these words: "Nothing is to be innovated, save what has been handed down." For the holy and prudent Man understood that the rule of piety admits nothing else, but that all things which had been received from the fathers by faith should be consigned by the same faith to the sons; and that we ought not to lead religion whither we would; but rather to follow whither it leads; and that this is proper to Christian modesty and gravity, not to hand down one's own things to posterity; but to preserve those received from the elders. What then was the outcome of the whole business? What indeed, but the usual and accustomed one? Antiquity, namely, was retained; novelty exploded. So much for what Stephen did in this business; but what of St. Cyprian? Such things he judged unworthy of so great a man, in the same place, chapter 11, that against the heretics reviving their memory he thus inveighed: Whose wickedness I judge worthy of a double hatred, both because they do not fear to give the poison of heresy to others to drink; and also because they toss with a profane hand the memory of every holy man (say chiefly Cyprian, of whom he here especially treats), as though ashes now laid to rest; and defame by a revived opinion things which ought to be passed over in silence; following altogether the footsteps of their author Ham, who not only neglected to cover the nakedness of the venerable Noah, but even proclaimed it to the rest to be mocked; whence he merited so great an offense of injured piety, that his posterity were bound by the curses of his own sin; very unlike those blessed brothers, who would neither violate the very nakedness of their reverend father with their own eyes, nor lay it open to others'; but, turned away, as it is written, covered him: which is neither to have approved nor betrayed the error of a holy man: and therefore they were gifted with a blessed benediction upon their posterity. So that Saint against the heretics; because the Church had not yet seen Catholics who by this example of Cyprian would defend their own opinions.

[40] I am mistaken, unless these things abundantly suffice, not only to vindicate the proposed cause of St. Stephen from calumnies, [what in the sixth century Facundus of Hermiana; what even now the universal Church.] but also to adorn it with notable eulogies. Yet I cannot but add the testimony of Facundus, bishop of Hermiana, who flourished in the sixth century, and cannot seem suspect, whether he pronounce against St. Cyprian, being an African and most loving of Cyprian; or for St. Stephen the Roman Pontiff, being himself a schismatic. By him therefore in the Defense of the Three Chapters, book 10, St. Cyprian is said, in his epistle to Pompeius, to have treated injuriously the same blessed Stephen, by whom he had been rightly blamed. Then in the book against Mocianus: Therefore blessed Stephen also, Prelate of the Apostolic See, when he learned that St. Cyprian and other African bishops had decreed concerning the baptizing of all heretics; although, as has been said, with no anathema interposed, nor against any older decrees of a general council, or conniving at heretics, they had brought forth such a sentence; yet at once denounced to him, that, if they dared this, they would be driven from the Church. And the Church holds the sentence of Stephen rather than of Cyprian, NOT ONLY CONCERNING NOT REBAPTIZING HERETICS, BUT ALSO CONCERNING NOT TOLERATING THE REBAPTIZERS. Which also now the same Church demonstrates not without singular zeal, when it proposes the memory of this matter, as most glorious to St. Stephen, to be celebrated yearly on this day in the Roman Breviary in these words: Those baptized by heretics, he (St. Stephen) forbade to be baptized again, writing back to St. Cyprian in those words: Let nothing be innovated, save what has been handed down. He who wishes more, let him consult the authors whom we have praised above.

§ V. Other things which are narrated of the Saint's deeds by various writers, especially by Anastasius the Librarian.

The constitution of St. Stephen, and his ordinations: There are also some other things which are read to have been done by St. Stephen the Pontiff, but at an uncertain time; as those which Anastasius the Librarian relates, and before him the Catalogue of Roman Pontiffs published before the first tome of April, where we said it seemed to have been composed before the middle of the sixth century; and it has thus: He (St. Stephen) ordained that priests and levites should not use the sacred vestments for daily use, except in church. He held two ordinations in the month of December, five presbyters, five deacons; two bishops for the several places. Anastasius, however, counts seven presbyters (elsewhere six), five deacons, three bishops for diverse places. Of these, says Baronius at the year 260, num. 6, one was Melanius, bishop of Rouen, famous for holiness; whom the other monuments call Mellonus or even Mallonus, as we shall see at the day 22 October, on which his Acts are to be illustrated. Besides these two ordinations, others are asserted in the Acts to be brought forth below, chapter 1, num. 2 and 4; and chapter 2, num. 15.

[42] Two decretal epistles also are circulated under the name of this St. Stephen, decretal epistles, and others falsely attributed to him: which may be seen in Labbe, Councils, tom. 1, from col. 729, and others. These now nearly all the learned hold as spurious and supposititious; on which matter we too have more than once treated elsewhere, and Coustant promised to treat more copiously, Epistles of the Roman Pontiffs, tom. 1, in the Preface, §10, who deserves to be read in the meantime, until a continuator not unequal to the author most worthy of a longer life shall have redeemed his pledge. More things certain recent writers ascribe to our Pontiff, which do not deserve even to be recounted, much less refuted; since they rest on either no authority of the ancients, or one wrongly understood; as when he is said to have decreed that in the Mass the hymn Gloria in excelsis should be recited in church on the Lord's day; which Anastasius narrates not of this our Stephen, but of Stephen Pope IV: as likewise when he is said to have written those things which are had concerning the chapters of the first Council of Nicaea in the first part of the Decretum, distinct. 16, canon 13, as written by Stephen the Pope to Luythobius, some bishop of Mainz I know not whom. And how prettily do these things fit Stephen I, who eight and sixty years before the Nicene synod had gone to heaven a martyr? I pass over other things no more solid.

[43] Far be it from us, however, to disparage those things which the Acts of Sts. Hippolytus, Eusebius, and their fellow Martyrs relate concerning our Martyr's apostolic labors endured at Rome in the year 256 in the conversion of the heathen, his burning zeal in the conversion of the heathen. in the Annals in Baronius at the year 259, num. 8 and following; but neither are these to be commemorated here, since at the day 2 December those very Acts will have to be given and discussed. But the things narrated in them about Stephen are worthy of the greater admiration, that they agree with those times in which a most grave controversy about Baptism detained the tireless Pontiff. For who, while he considers him restraining with so great diligence the commotions of nearly all Africa and of the East, would not at the same time wonder that he was so occupied at home in baptizing the heathen, as if he either had no other business, or presbyters were lacking to whom he might commit that care, while he himself was free for graver matters? And yet in these too he bore himself most prudently and most bravely, and at the same time so embraced that care, that the number of Christians growing through it day by day gave the heathen occasion of envy and delations, but to Valerian occasion of hastening the persecution; as these Acts assert, which indeed are not approved by Pagi, following the heterodox Pearson, in the Baronian Critique at the year 256, num. 18 and 19; but were afterward digested conveniently enough by Tillemont, Ecclesiastical Monuments, tom. 4, in St. Stephen Pope and martyr, so that they can be defended, nay are defended by him (though not as wholly authentic) in the same place, annotation 2 on St. Stephen.

[44] The rest, which can be told from the very time of this persecution down to the end of his life, The eulogy from the Liber Pontificalis, which is weighed. must be sought both from the Acts of the martyrdom, and from the eulogy of the Liber Pontificalis, which is commonly attributed to Anastasius the Librarian,

must be sought. And of the Acts indeed we shall discuss in the following paragraph: but Anastasius, besides what has been cited so far, has this: He sat four years, two months, ten days. He is crowned with martyrdom. Now he was in the times of Valerian and Gallicanus, and of Maximus, up to Valerian the third and Gallicanus the second. In his own times he was carried off into exile; afterward by the will of God he returned to the church unharmed. And after 34 days, seized by Maximian, he was sent into prison with nine presbyters, and two bishops, Honorius and Gastus, and three deacons, Sixtus, Dionysius, and Gaius. There in the prison at the Arch of the Star he held a synod; and gave all the vessels of the church into the power of his archdeacon Sixtus, and the chest of money: and after six days, going out under custody, he himself likewise was beheaded. So the text, published from the collation of very many manuscript codices by the most diligent editors of this work, Fabrot, Schelstrate, and Blanchini. Now it contains chiefly two heads, of which in the first the duration of St. Stephen's Pontificate is described, and its beginning and end; the other pertains to his martyrdom and its circumstances. Let us now weigh each.

[45] He sat four years, two months, ten days. The time he sat is 4 years, Four years the text of Vignoli too has, drawn from twenty and more codices: and although some codices count more years, in which we shall show that they were corrupted; yet none has fewer: and just so many the most ancient Bucherian Catalogue thinks, just so many the epigraph set up in the time of St. Leo the Great in the basilica of St. Paul on the Ostian Way, as Blanchini testifies and proves in his edition of Anastasius the Librarian, tom. 2, of the Prolegomena chapter 5, page 76 and 98; where he also reports the ancient catalogues, several of which agree on the number of four years: this then seems to be admitted before the rest; whatever number Eusebius reckons—only two years in the History, book 7, chapter 5, but in the Chronicle, according to the Pontacus edition, three years—and St. Prosper, who in this place transcribes Eusebius's Chronicle in his complete Chronicle, only the Consuls being added of his own; or also Georgius Syncellus, having borrowed the two years from the same Eusebius: for how great is the accuracy of these in enumerating the years of the Roman Pontiffs through these very times, is most openly clear even from this, that to St. Stephen's successor, St. Sixtus the second, Eusebius indeed ascribes eleven years in the History, book 7, chapter 27, but eight in the Chronicle; Prosper however, from the consulship of Maximus and Glabrio, that is, from the year of Christ 256, seven; Syncellus finally nine; whereas it is certain that Sixtus died before Cyprian, Tuscus and Bassus being consuls, that is in the year of Christ 258.

[46] two months, twenty-one days Two months also the Catalogue written under Liberius, which Bucherius edited, builds up; and the epigraph in the basilica of St. Paul; and under it the several catalogues cited in Blanchini. Yet the codices of the Liber Pontificalis so many together with the catalogue of the Queen of Sweden count five months; that Vignoli thought these should be brought into the text. But since to those five months some days are everywhere added, they cannot be admitted by those who hold that Lucius died before Stephen succeeded him: for if the latter died on the 2nd day of August in the year of Christ 257, as will be said; the former on the 5th day of March in the year 253, they were snatched from the living; there cannot have intervened, besides four years, five whole months, as is clear. It is better therefore to retain the two, with a small vacancy between the martyrdom of St. Lucius and the succession of Stephen. In the days finally there is no less diversity of the Pontifical codices: for many note only two days, many fifteen, together with several catalogues and the epigraph of the basilica of St. Paul: to which Blanchini thought he should adhere. Yet Pagi and others prefer the antiquity of the Bucherian catalogue to the number of all the rest; and thus count with it twenty-one days.

[47] from the consulship of Volusianus II and Maximus The beginning of this duration the following words ought to indicate: Now he was in the times of Valerian and Gallicanus and Maximus. These are taken from the sixth-century catalogue, which belonged to the Queen of Sweden: whose compiler indeed, as has been demonstrated elsewhere, had the Bucherian before his eyes; but either he himself or some copyist through drowsiness did not transcribe it fully enough: for what does Maximus mean, added to the augusti Valerian and Gallicanus, or rather Gallienus? But indeed the inept reading must be amended, both in the Anastasian Pontifical and in the said catalogue, from the purer source of both, the catalogue, I say, of Bucherius, which has thus: He was in the times of Valerian and Gallienus, from the consulship of Volusianus and Maximinus (read Maximus): for those omitted words, "from the consulship of Volusianus," are so suitable, so necessary for completing the sense of the cited text; that, if he who composed the later sixth-century catalogue did not express them, he must altogether be believed to have had them at least in mind, and to have wished to express them. And if this restitution is approved, to the other chronologers brought forth in §2, num. 12, the authority of this catalogue, and so also of Anastasius, as we noted in the same place, will accede.

[48] up to the consulship, not of Valerian III and Gallienus II, What is added, "Up to Valerian the third and Gallicanus the second," pertains to designating the end of this Pontificate; which, since it is signified by the consuls, it ought not to be doubted that its beginning too the same author, according to the correction of the preceding number, wished signified by the consuls. Moreover the consulship of Valerian III and Gallienus II here raises no light difficulty: for in the most emended Fasti it corresponds to the year of Christ 255. What then? Shall we say the Liber Pontificalis corrupt in this place in most manuscript codices, and to be corrected by others, in which its first editors read, Up to Valerian IV and Gallienus III, as it is in Crabbe, Lippomano, and others? And yet our reading the catalogues of Bucherius and of the Queen of Sweden defend, which both held forth a torch to the author of the Liber Pontificalis: we think it therefore genuine; but not on that account true; since it overturns itself: for it teaches that Stephen sat, from the consulship of Volusianus and Maximus up to the third of Valerian and the second of Gallienus, four years and more; whereas between the two termini only two years and perhaps a few months are found.

[49] There lurks therefore here an error. But where? Not in the beginnings of St. Stephen, but of Valerian IV and Gallienus III. placed under the consulship of Volusianus and Maximus: for this both Eusebius does and St. Prosper, with none, so far as I know, of the ancients dissenting. Not either in the four years with the added months and days attributed to his Pontificate: for in these so great is the agreement of the Liber Pontificalis and of the first catalogue with the other monuments, that they ought not to yield to Eusebius, Prosper, and Syncellus, who, since they err most widely in the years of Sixtus the second, make no great credit in the years of Stephen most nearly joined to them. We think therefore that an error was made both by the author of the Liber Pontificalis and of each preceding catalogue, in fixing Stephen's death under Valerian III and Gallienus II as consuls: for that he lived and sat longer, the whole epistle of Firmilian cries out, written (as we showed in §3, num. 28) under the following consulship, or the year of Christ 256, and with winter now indeed impending; which is an argument that not only did Stephen survive in that year 256, but also reached the following one: for since he died, according to the Calendar of Bucherius and ecclesiastical tablets everywhere, on the 2nd day of August, this surely, if it had happened in the year 256, Firmilian in Cappadocia does not seem to have been able to be ignorant of up to the impending winter. He must therefore be said to have sat up to the month of August of the year 257, Valerian IV and Gallienus III being consuls: for the Pontificate of St. Sixtus the second does not allow his times to be extended longer, illustrated by martyrdom on the 6th day of August, in the year of Christ 258, Tuscus and Bassus being consuls, but entered upon many months before; since Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, book 7, chapters 5 and 9, mentions three epistles, Stephen being now dead, given at diverse times by St. Dionysius of Alexandria to this Sixtus, Bishop of the city of Rome.

[50] The things which in the other part of the already-mentioned eulogy we recited concerning the confession and martyrdom of St. Stephen, The things read about the Saint's martyrdom in Anastasius, Tillemont, in note 1 on St. Stephen Pope and Martyr, compares with the Acts to be brought forth below; And although, he says, Anastasius is not of great authority; yet the things which he himself narrates can be believed more easily than those which the Acts report: so that there is ground for you to doubt, whether those Acts were not composed after Anastasius; or rather were despised by him as spurious (since they seem to have been received at the same time by Usuard and Ado, who excerpted much from them;) or finally, whether St. Stephen the Pope was not confused in them with some other Saint of the same name. So he; not extolling the authority of Anastasius, except to make it equal to the authority of the Acts; and thus to destroy the one by the other, as narrating things asystata (inconsistent), and to believe neither; as he does in fact in the text. But whence is that equality derived? I certainly do not attain it, whether I consult the age of each narration, or the usage of the Church, or the judgments of the learned.

[51] For if one wishes to regard the age; the Acts of St. Stephen Pope and martyr are older than Ado; they seem supposititious; since he himself found them written in the codices of Passions collected from everywhere, of which he makes mention in the preface to the old Roman Martyrology, when he was setting about to elaborate his own Martyrology, not yet a bishop, that is, before the year 860: but the eulogy of which we treat is nowhere known to have existed before Anastasius, somewhat younger than Ado, as is believed. Nay indeed there are those who attribute it not to Anastasius, but to his obscure interpolator. Thus Vignoli in his notes on the Liber Pontificalis at this place suspects that the things here had concerning Stephen's exile and return do not pertain here, but crept in wrongly from the preceding Life of St. Lucius, since, he says, of so many manuscript codices they are had only in the first Vatican: and what he suspects, to Schelstrate in his notes on the same work seems certain. But of the rest, which follow in the text of the eulogy given above, Schelstrate says thus in the same place: Whence the rest were taken by him who interpolated the Liber Pontificalis in this place, I confess I am ignorant. You see that these things are ascribed not to the author, but to the interpolator, by this distinguished antiquary, and that not only from his own opinion, but also from that of the most illustrious Holstenius, who had observed that all these things were absent from several manuscript codices, some of which are there cited in the margin; which Vignoli too after others

testified; who had very many Vatican codices; nor yet did he find all these things except in two. I suspect that these are a German offspring, but afterward adorned with several trappings, and thus at length intruded into the Liber Pontificalis: for the Lives of the Roman Pontiffs, falsely ascribed to Liutprand, but composed by some German, report something akin. Their author is thought to have flourished at the end of the ninth century; because he brought his work only down to the times of Pope Formosus; but this reasoning is not solid: for the work is imperfect, nor closed by any epilogue; such as anyone could even now set about, and, snatched away in mid-course by an unforeseen death, leave half-finished.

[52] nor were they ever set on a level with the Acts of the martyrdom; But be it so, however: let this fragment of eulogy be Anastasius's; and, if you please, even older than he; yet you will never prove that it was set on a level with the Acts in the Church, or that on account of it the Acts were rejected. Consult the Martyrologies, turn over the Breviaries both old and recent, not only the Roman, but of very many churches throughout the whole West; search too the Menologia and Menaea of the Greeks; and show me but one which has drawn the martyrdom of our Stephen down to this day from any other source than the Acts. The Church therefore despised, in comparison with those Acts, this eulogy of Anastasius, or rather of the pseudo-Anastasius. The same must be judged to have been scorned by the learned collectors of the Councils, who edited Stephen's Life from the Liber Pontificalis without this insertion; the same before them in the tenth century by St. Abbo of Fleury; the same by others everywhere who undertook to illustrate the deeds of the Roman Pontiffs; the same by all the Hagiographers, Jacobus of Genoa, Peter of Equilio, Aloysius Lippomano, etc.; of whom none deigned either to employ or even to touch this patchwork.

[53] nor do they deserve credit. As for what Tillemont says, that the things narrated there can be believed more easily than those which the Acts of the martyrdom report, he would say it more strongly if he himself believed it; which he does not: for he says that both narrations, namely of the Acts and of Anastasius, overturn each other; he moreover denies that it can be easily believed that Stephen's head was cut off, which that Anastasius asserts no less expressly than the Acts. If this is not easily believed; how can the rest seem credible, which the same Anastasius narrates concerning St. Stephen's exile, return, and imprisonment? In his own times, he says, he was carried off into exile. When was this done? In the very heat of the edicts confirmed by Gallus and Volusianus, when first he had been elected Pontiff. So Bencini in Blanchini in the notes on this passage. And when did he return from exile to the church? At the beginning of the emperor Valerian, when he was wondrously benign toward the Christians, and recalled the exiles; as the same author there thinks. But this, pray, how can it be believed? For Anastasius immediately adds: And after (his return) on the 34th day, seized by Maximian, he was sent into prison… and after six days, going out under custody, he himself likewise was beheaded. Is this that so-vaunted benignity of Valerian at the beginning of his reign? Who will believe it? Stephen administered the Church freely only for 34 days; and at the beginning of Valerian was taken off by the sword? Nay, whoever so believes Anastasius must needs take away all credit from Cyprian, Dionysius of Alexandria, and Firmilian. Blanchini himself, as I think, saw this in the same place, but somewhat further down; where he thought this exile of the Saint should be deferred until about the end of the consulship of Glabrio and Maximus II. But though perhaps one might assent to Blanchini in this, he cannot to Anastasius, who terminates Stephen's times before that consulship; though in this too fighting with himself. I would say more here, if the matter were worth so much. Now let us discuss what the Acts of the martyrdom themselves are, and what credit they deserve.

§ VI. The Acts of the Martyrdom, and their authority.

The Acts of St. Stephen, Pope and martyr, are most widely spread in the ancient monuments: For they are extant in most of the manuscript codices of the Vatican library, The Acts of his martyrdom, as they are everywhere at hand, says Schelstrate, Ecclesiastical Antiquity, tom. 1, dissert. 2, chapter 7, num. 2. We have the same in the old codices P. Ms. 6, P. Ms. 19, P. Ms. 20, P. Ms. 155, Q. Ms. 6, Q. Ms. 7; besides, in a copy of the Windberg manuscript codex, collated with another most ancient one of the illustrious Puteanus, and others of St. Maximin of Trier and of Saint-Omer; likewise in another copy, to which no other note is added except this: F. Johannes Vlimerius transcribed it from our old papyrus Passional, in the year 1580, on the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th days of August; and collated it. All these, both among themselves and with the Roman ones, so far as it is possible to gather from Schelstrate's fragments, agree not only in matter, but for the most part also in words. The same Boninus Mombritius edited in type in the fifteenth century, Sanctuary, tom. 2, fol. 272 verso, faithfully enough, if many errors of the typographer were absent. Cardinal Baronius afterward inserted these into his Annals at the years 259 and following, and indeed, as he asserts, cleaned up as much as possible by a collation of several exemplars: yet I fear that he cleaned up certain things not by his own judgment, but by the sole authority of old exemplars. Certainly he changed several things, passed over more, against the consonant text of all our manuscripts; as will be noted in its place. He too is believed to have made these Acts Greek from the Latin, Metaphrastes, and not without some, though not great, change, as may be seen in Lippomano (who again turned this work of Metaphrastes into Latin) or in Surius. It is necessary that those Acts of our Martyr be different from the Metaphrastic ones, which are preserved mutilated in the Imperial Library, in Lambeck cited above §1, num. 2: for neither do they agree at the beginning, nor in that part which there survives last, concerning the twelve disciples or clerics of St. Stephen.

[55] But as they are extant in the praised codices, they have long seemed of the highest value; they were always held in great value; as we learn from the title which is prefixed to them in the old Vlimerian codex in these words: The martyrdom of the most holy Stephen, Roman Pontiff, and of those who suffered at Rome together with him, which is had written in the most ancient manuscript exemplars, faithfully and gravely, by the Roman notaries in Latin. Such a one Ciaconius too seems to have read elsewhere, when, writing of Stephen, he affirms that his Acts, of sincere and undoubted credit, were first written down by the notaries of the Holy Roman Church. Hence perhaps, using the same in the eleventh century, St. Peter Damian, sermon 38 on St. Stephen Pope and martyr, did not hesitate to call the history of his passion authentic. Baronius too at the year of Christ 259, although he acknowledges that stains crept into their manuscript exemplars, signifies to himself nevertheless that they seemed legitimate, genuine, most faithful. As most faithful too they must have acknowledged them, Aringhi everywhere in Rome Subterranean, and Schelstrate, Ecclesiastical Antiquity, tom. 1, dissert. 2, chapter 7, drawing from the same as most solid arguments for proving their own matters: yet the latter rightly confesses in the same place, num. 3, that they are not genuine, or primitive, but written after Stephen's martyrdom; for this is gathered from the Acts themselves, at the number with us 21. He denies, however, that it follows from this that they are not ancient. Accordingly, he says, I should easily believe that, peace being restored to the Church, they were written by those who saw the authentic Acts of Stephen.

[56] until some years ago they began to be carped at, and to lose value. Now, ever since Pearson in the Cyprianic Annals at the year 256, num. 13, began to carp at these Acts, the judgments of certain learned men, even among Catholics, have changed about them: for Ruinart gave them no place among the sincere and select Acts of the Martyrs; Pagi in the Critique at the year 253, num. 5, when he denies that which is the chief head of those Acts, namely that Stephen fell by the sword, makes it plain indeed that he believes none of these things; Tillemont finally, to demolish utterly all their authority, in note 1 on St. Stephen, heaped together as many arguments as he could: for there are easily thirteen: whose force whether Odoacer Ilbach weakened by attacking them, in the Acts of the holy Martyrs vindicated, printed at Rome in the year 1723, or rather, beyond his intention, increased, I do not decide: for in book 5, spending three chapters, namely the fifth, sixth, and seventh, on vindicating these Acts, he was content in chapter 5 to refute one of so many objections, and that nearly the weakest of all; adding in chapter 6 many others, as most trifling, and which he believes he abundantly solved in the preceding books, to let go by his own decision. And so what he has in chapters 6 and 7 is drawn from elsewhere; nor pertains so much to defending the Acts as to refuting those who deny that St. Stephen truly attained the palm of martyrdom, or at least an illustrious one. I confess indeed that among the arguments objected to the Acts some may seem trifling; but there are also some such, that I have neither found them anywhere solved by Ilbach, nor easily believe they will be solved. Certainly he will win great thanks from us, if he assign the places where he has abundantly refuted them; but greater, if he shall dissolve by historical authority the following knots, which deter us from defending those Acts on every side.

[57] And indeed there are in them certain things difficult to believe; It is read in our Acts, num. 1: Many of the Christians, avoiding the savagery of the tyrants, hid themselves; but others, offering themselves, obtained the palm of martyrdom. Now a law had been given, that whoever betrayed a hidden Christian should receive [all] his goods, and should ask for whatever honor of military service he wished; or, as St. Peter Damian has in the cited Sermon, should not only receive all his goods, but a sacrilegious reward should also raise him to whatever honor of military service he chose; which sense Metaphrastes too followed. Three things here are most difficult to believe: first, if you attend to the time at which that law is said to have been given; second, if those against whom it was passed be considered; third and last, if the rewards proposed to the informers be weighed.

[58] To begin from the first; it is asked at what time the Acts assign this law. as an edict of persecution, in the year 256 not far advanced, Before the conversion of Sts. Nemesius and Lucilla (as is clear from num. 3;) and so long before those two, being seized, underwent martyrdom. But when did that martyrdom happen? On the eighth day of the Kalends of September, or, as others read better, of August, according to num. 11; when the consuls were, according to all our manuscripts num. 5, Gallienus and Maximus (which may be judged faulty, since that consulship never existed in the Fasti) or Glabrio and Maximus, as Baronius corrects, and as Metaphrastes read or believed should be read. It was passed therefore in the year 256, perhaps lately begun, certainly scarcely half elapsed; that is, about a year and a half before the African churches saw anything of an edict, though much milder,

according to the Passion of St. Cyprian; that is, some months before Cyprian, knowing or thinking nothing at all of a Roman persecution, celebrated that numerous council of eighty and more bishops at Carthage, and from it directed legates to Stephen; who, returning some time after, reported nothing of a persecution stirred up at Rome; but complained on the contrary of this, that the Pontiff had not only not deigned them his converse, but had moreover enjoined the whole brotherhood (the words are Firmilian's, who himself likewise, at the end of the same year, had heard nothing of a persecution) that no one should receive them into his house. An idle precept indeed; a most unjust complaint, if such had then been the state of the Roman Church as the Acts describe! So much for the time of the law, assigned in the Acts according to the common interpretation of the learned. This knot, however, he will loose more easily than the following, to whom the interpretation proposed in the Notes on chapter 1, letters n and p, shall not be displeasing, by which it is possible to recall the martyrdom of St. Nemesius to the year of Christ 257.

[59] Now weigh that second point. Whom did that law attack? promulgated at Rome against any Christians whatever; Any Christian whatever (as both the cited words of the Acts not obscurely, and those which follow at the same number most expressly signify) even a hidden one, and so not one caught in an assembly of the faithful, but anywhere in any manner whatever. Is this credible, whether it be determined to have happened in the year of Christ 256, or the following? For since in this persecution the cruelty of the edicts always grew (as is clear from the Acts of St. Cyprian), nor is any at Rome known to have been more severe, or more widely extending, than that which Valerian, absent, wrote back to the senate only in the year of Christ 258; yet not even in that is a penalty decreed or an inquisition against all Christians, as St. Cyprian testifies in epistle 82 to Successus: but only against bishops, presbyters, deacons, senators, men of rank, Roman knights, matrons, imperial officials: namely that the Christian religion, which was most widely poured out among the common people by their instruction or example, might, by their destruction or punishment, gradually and as it were of its own accord collapse among the populace. What of this, that in this matter our Acts themselves seem to fight with themselves, when at num. 18, 19, 21, 22 they exhibit a multitude of Christians appearing openly and with impunity before the heathen soldiers again and again? Nor is it established that it happened otherwise a whole year later in Africa, where a great crowd of Christians publicly accompanied St. Cyprian, when he was led to the place of execution, none of the heathen troubling them.

[60] The third, pray, what appearance of truth has it? A law had been given, they say, that whoever betrayed a hidden Christian should receive [all] his goods, and should ask for whatever honor of military service he wished. Were the Christians then so hidden from Valerian and his ministers, and the reward proposed in it to informers: that without the aid of informers they could not be caught? Valerian, I say, of whom St. Dionysius of Alexandria in Eusebius book 7, chapter 10 testifies: For neither did any of the former princes, not even those very ones who are said to have been openly Christians, embrace our people with so great humanity and benevolence as he displayed at the beginning of his reign. And his whole household abounded in pious men, and seemed to be a church of God. Who among the Christians under such a prince must be judged to have concealed his religion, nay not rather to have of his own accord in some manner displayed it? Most therefore were sufficiently known, and not to be sought out by informers at so unusual a price: for to whom was that price awarded? Whoever betrayed a Christian: that is, to any home-born slave or buffoon: for the office of an informer, so sordid among the Romans, and, as St. Cyprian affirms in his first confession, then proscribed by their very laws, no honorable man would have wished to undertake: is it credible therefore that to a man of this kind the reward assigned for so infamous an office was all the goods, not of one only, say of the senatorial order, but even of several, if he had betrayed several? To this man besides, by the same service, an open access would have lain to any rank of military service, the most noble veteran leaders of many palms envying in vain? But indeed these things smell altogether of an inept interpolation: for at Rome in this same persecution, by the edict of Valerian, the goods taken from the Christians fell to the fisc, St. Cyprian asserts in epistle 82 to Successus; not to informers, of whom he makes not a word.

[61] which edict does not cohere well enough with the rest of the narration: That the same law was fabricated, the very Acts which build it up almost compel us to confess; when they narrate that Stephen was not betrayed for a whole year and more after it; who nevertheless, according to numbers 2, 3, and 4, was so far from lying hidden, that he suffered himself to be approached by the heathen, as often as they wished to hear him discoursing of the Christian religion, even in troops; nay that he cleansed the tribune Nemesius, and his daughter Lucilla, led to the Pastor's title, with a baptism so solemn, that soon, at the report of the matter, two and sixty heathen flocking thither were all on the same day there purified with the lustral waters. Are the informers alone then to be believed to have been ignorant of what all knew? This kind of men was cunning enough, that if it could not otherwise, it would insinuate itself under the pretext at least of feigned piety into assemblies of this sort, where were to be found not Stephen only, but very many neophytes with him, even of the chief nobility; that is, as many men, so many treasures for the betrayer?

[62] Much more intricate is the connection of the martyrdoms described in these Acts. the connection of the martyrdoms among themselves inextricable: Nemesius (according to most manuscript codices and the edited exemplars of Mombritius and Baronius, and all the Martyrologists) accomplished martyrdom on the 8th of the Kalends of September: after him Symphronius with his Companions on the 7th of the Kalends of August. Not therefore both in the same year. Therefore Nemesius in the year 256 (for he survived the death of Maximus the consul;) but Symphronius in the year 257: for he preceded Stephen and the others. And yet the things already said at num. 58 do not allow the death of Nemesius to be fixed in the year 256: nor does the context of the Acts permit the contest of Symphronius to be separated from it by eleven months, as will be seen in the Notes, chapter 2, letter b. There is therefore here something faulty in most of the manuscripts, and in the edition of Mombritius, and in the Martyrologies: for Baronius, marking the martyrdom of Symphronius on the day before the Kalends of November, since he is opposed to all, cites nothing for himself. Again: Symphronius, according to our Acts, was buried in the year 257, on the 7th of the Kalends of August: but the 12 Clerics of St. Stephen, when? In the same year without doubt. But on what day? On the same day, the Kalends of August; which can be taken in two ways; but either way is equally absurd: for either it must be referred to the day on which Symphronius is said to have been buried a little before; and thus the sense will be that the burial of the Clerics happened on the same day (namely the 7th before) the Kalends of August; which sense most openly contradicts the Acts asserting that the martyrdom of the Clerics happened many days after the obsequies of St. Nemesius: or this time of the buried Clerics must be referred to the time of their martyrdom, which is supposed to have fallen on the Kalends of August according to Usuard's Martyrology and Baronius's interpretation; and thus the sense will be that the Clerics were entombed by Tertullinus on the same day (on which they had been cut down; namely) the Kalends of August. But see whither this sense leads: for it compels us to reduce this expression of the Acts, "after many days," to a space of only five days. But yet this is light. It compels besides (which it is strange Baronius, otherwise most perspicacious, did not notice), it compels, I say, us to assert that St. Tertullinus, buried by Stephen in the same year, according to the Acts, on the day before the Kalends of August, buried the next day, or on the Kalends of August, the 12 Clerics, and then was baptized by Stephen and ordained presbyter, and two days after his ordination was first seized by a certain prefect Marcus. What more absurd?

[63] The same Acts, and from them Ado on the day 4 August, that St. Tertullinus, the order of the priesthood conferred on St. Tertullinus: whose martyrdom they narrate at num. 17 to have happened on the day before the Kalends of August in the same year in which they had noted the martyrdom of Sts. Symphronius, Olympius, and their Companions; that Tertullinus, I say, the Acts make the same with Tertullinus, the steward of Olympius, as he is called at num. 8; but, unlike the other domestics of Olympius, who with their lord are said to have believed and been baptized at num. 10, more obstinate in the cult of idols, and so down to the day 26 July (from num. 14, and the sense of the Acts more favoring this place) not yet a catechumen, but still a heathen. And this such a man, in two days at most, which were scarcely enough for learning the first rudiments of the Christian religion, they would have not only baptized by Stephen, but even consecrated presbyter at num. 15. Is not this harsh? Certainly it so displeased Baronius, that Tertullinus's presbyterate, which he did not dare to delete in the Roman Martyrology, he omitted in these Acts, against the credit of all our exemplars, and for the words of the Acts, "he consecrated him presbyter," substituted these, "he consigned him to a presbyter"; likewise for these, "who two days after his ordination," these others, drawn I know not whence, "who two days after his baptism": yet this correction is favored by the old Roman Martyrology, published by Rosweyde, which on the day 4 August adds to St. Tertullinus only the epithet of Martyr, not of presbyter. But indeed if he was not a presbyter, our Acts are faulty not only in all the codices which now survive; but also in the much older ones which so many centuries ago Ado followed.

[64] Moreover, to pass over here many other things, and defer them to the Notes, who, however sensible, will believe genuine his reply, and not a few other things, the things which are had concerning St. Tertullinus and the prefect Sapricius in all our exemplars at num. 16: At once Sapricius the prefect… ordered him to be brought in, a herald's voice going before: Let Tertullinus, he says, the accused and sacrilegious man, be brought in. And when he had been brought in before the tribunal of the prefect, the prefect says to him: Declare your name. Tertullinus answered: A sinner, the servant of the servants of Christ. The prefect said: Are you a slave; or freeborn? Tertullinus said: So has the devil filled your heart, that you do not understand a man speaking. I told you: I am the servant of the servants of Christ. These things indeed Baronius wisely thought should be brought in (though again we do not know on the authority of what codices), before he commended these Acts as genuine.

[65] by which the Acts seem interpolated: yet not therefore to be wholly rejected: With whatever zeal therefore we are carried, that nothing of the esteem once won be lost to ancient monuments; yet we are frankly compelled to confess that not even in long meditation have we found protection enough for vindicating these our Acts, as they now stand, from the suspicion of interpolations. But far be it from us, with Tillemont, to take away all credit from them, or to deny that at least the chief heads of the matters are true: for it is rash, without most solid reasons, to wish to traduce as everywhere either false or suspect those things of which you may neither know the beginning,

and are bound to acknowledge an antiquity celebrated in the Church nine centuries back at the least. At the least, I said: for we have shown, in the Preface to Usuard, chapter 2, article 4, num. 142, that the old Roman Martyrology was composed more than a whole century before Notker, Usuard, and Ado, in which there are clear enough indications of the Acts of St. Stephen on the same days on which their parts are recited by Ado, 2, 4, 15 August, 31 October, and 4 December. Nay that they existed even in the fourth century, a poem ascribed to Pope St. Damasus allows us to suspect, which in his works, collected and published by Sarazani, is numbered the thirty-fifth: for the things it there briefly sings of St. Tarsicius are nowhere known to have been described except in the Acts of St. Stephen. But I should not believe that they then abounded in so many episodes; since even in the ninth century Ado does not seem to have read some of them, as we shall observe in its place.

[66] and so they will be given by us illustrated. They will therefore be given at the end of this commentary, such as they can now be given, from our most ancient and elegant codex Q. Ms. 6, carefully collated with the other manuscripts and printed editions of which we made mention before; and, illustrated by our annotations, they will be divided into two chapters, for no other reason than lest the mass both of the text and of the notes be too continuous: for we do not think that there are in a manner two parts of this narration, of which the first pertains to the year of Christ 256 (Baronius 259), the other to 257 (Baronius 260); but that the whole ought to be referred to the same year of Christ 257, and indeed to a small space of it, insofar as it describes the martyrdoms; namely from the day 25 July, on which we shall say Nemesius suffered, up to 3 August, on which St. Tarsicius seems to have been cut down: for what can be brought from the Acts for placing the martyrdom of St. Nemesius in the year 256, such as the consulship of Glabrio and Maximus, the death of Maximus the consul, the day of the martyrdom 25 August, how much they are to be valued, we shall note in the Acts.

§ VII. The first translation of his relics from the cemetery of Callistus to the monastery of St. Silvester de Capite.

The Saint's relics from the cemetery of Callistus Having now surveyed those things which pertain to the universal cult, the Acts, the martyrdom of St. Stephen, we proceed to examine those things which we find noted in various authors concerning his sacred relics. These will be indications manifest enough of the somewhat greater veneration with which the individual churches, as many as glory in some part of his remains, have followed and follow him beyond the rest. This whole treasure, the whole body, I say, and the chair dyed with this Martyr's blood, as, according to our Acts and the Martyrologists, it had received them immediately after the martyrdom was accomplished, so it long retained: the cemetery of St. Callistus, situated toward the south on the Appian Way at the second milestone from the City; and not without an anniversary celebration; as the old Calendars which we cited above and the Fasti of the Martyrs of the Roman Church testify. But this observance the wars at length removed, and especially that Lombard one, in which about the middle of the eighth century Aistulf had twice girt the City with a hostile army: for he, laying waste all things far and wide, did not spare his impious soldier even the most sacred cemeteries; so that these presently lay profaned, ruined, neglected, receptacles rather of quadrupeds than shrines of the Martyrs.

[68] This most unworthy thing Paul, Pope I, out of his signal devotion and holiness, did not endure: For this most blessed Pontiff, [they were translated by St. Paul the Pope to the monastery of Sts. Stephen and Silvester] says Anastasius in his Life, with all his spiritual zeal unceasingly bore a great care of solicitude toward the holy cemeteries. Whence, seeing very many places of those same holy cemeteries neglected, and the objects of antiquity's longing set in great demolition and now near to ruin, he forthwith removed those same bodies of the Saints from those ruined cemeteries. And bringing them with hymns and spiritual canticles within this Roman city, he studied to lay away some of them with fitting honor through the titular churches, and deaconries, or monasteries, and the rest of the churches. Then coming to our matter, he says: This most holy Prelate built in his own proper house a monastery from the foundations in honor of St. Stephen, namely martyr and Pontiff, as also of blessed Silvester, likewise Pontiff and confessor of Christ; where also, building an oratory in the upper walls of the same monastery, he laid away their bodies with great veneration. This is the first translation of the relics of St. Stephen Pontiff and martyr, namely from the cemetery of Callistus to the monastery consecrated in his name and that of St. Silvester, which is now called almost simply St. Silvester, likewise St. Silvester de Capite, and St. Silvester in Campo Martio; and of which we have an Italian History, by the author Giovanni Giacchetto, published at Rome in the year 1629.

[69] The same translation is confirmed by the very Constitutum of St. Paul, Pope I, in the year 761, on the 17th day of August, addressed to Icontius (elsewhere Leontius), presbyter and abbot of the venerable monastery of Sts. Stephen the martyr and Silvester confessor of Christ, and with him to that same venerable monastery; and fortified by the subscriptions of the supreme Pontiff, and of several Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church, and of prelates; given indeed on the fourth of the Nones of July, the lord Constantine augustus, the great emperor crowned by God, reigning, in the forty-first year from when he began to reign with his father; and after his consulship in the twenty-first year, in the fourteenth Indiction: as it is in Baronius at the year of Christ 761; where I should prefer this whole Constitutum to be read from the beginning, rather than in others who borrowed it thence not faithfully enough: it especially concerns us, that there the venerable bodies of Sts. Stephen, Pope and martyr, and Silvester, Pope and confessor of Christ, are said to rest in the praised monastery; then that which, as Baronius there testifies, is read subjoined to the Constitutum in the same parchment, in these very words of the same St. Paul: In the month of June, on the nineteenth day, we brought into this oratory the body of blessed Silvester, Bishop and confessor of Christ. In the month of August, on the seventeenth day, we brought in the body of blessed Stephen martyr and Pontiff, in the time of Constantine and Leo the augusti, and of Pippin the most excellent king of the Franks and defender of the Roman Church, in the fourteenth Indiction.

[70] according to the Bull of the same Paul I; This Constitutum our Papebroch once held suspect of supposition; but afterward recognizing his own error, he marveled at it, and confessing it frankly, ordered it expunged in tom. 5 of June, page 380. The collectors of the councils, Binius, and those who afterward followed, report it too in its place; but all from Baronius, from whom therefore, as I was just saying, certain things not accurately enough transcribed must be corrected. All affix it to the year of Christ 761, and that from the subscription already given, which our Labbe praises at the same year, in the first part of his Technical Chronology, as sound and whole and vitiated by none of its numbers. Pagi however in his Critique on Baronius, at the same year num. 1, detects not a little fault in it; but such as can easily be thrown back on the copyists, nor suffices to call that Constitutum into suspicion, or to remove it from the year of Christ 761. Less easy in this was Francesco Pagi in the Breviary of the deeds of the Roman Pontiffs, tom. 1, cent. 4, in the deeds of St. Silvester, num. 8; where he doubts of the sincerity of this document chiefly for two reasons; the first, that neither translation, there noted, fell on a Sunday or feast, contrary, as he thinks, to the custom of the eighth century; the second, that the body of St. Silvester, which is here said to have been translated by St. Paul I, is narrated elsewhere to have been given long before by Stephen, Pope II, Paul's brother and predecessor, at the request of Aistulf, to St. Anselm, and carried from Rome to the abbey of Nonantola in the diocese of Modena. A third could be added, that that Constitutum, given in the 14th Indiction, on the fourth of the Nones of July, asserts that both bodies then already rested in the monastery of Sts. Stephen and Silvester; and yet the little appendix of the Constitutum seems to affirm the contrary in these words: In the month of August on the seventeenth day we brought in the body of blessed Stephen martyr and Pontiff… in the fourteenth Indiction.

[71] But none of these reasons seems to us firm: for the first lays down as certain which we defend. what is hitherto unheard of; namely that it was proper to the custom of the eighth century not to translate the relics of Saints except on Sundays or feast days. But why should this have been observed in that century especially, not in others? Consult our Acts, tom. 2 of April, page 68, and you will find a translation of Martyrs made at Verona in the year of Christ 755, on the 22nd day of May, which was then neither a feast nor a Sunday: another too will occur in March, tom. 1, page 455, celebrated in the year 765, on the 4th of the Ides of March, that is, on the third weekday. And what need of more? The second reason rests on the authority of documents to be examined more thoroughly elsewhere, but which if anyone wishes here in the meantime to be solid, we do not decline. But who does not know that in the Catholic Church nothing is more ancient, nothing more frequent, than that a great part of a sacred body, nay often not a great part, be called the body? Let there have been therefore some part of St. Silvester's body translated in the year 753 from the cemetery of Priscilla to Nonantola; but another left in its place until the year 761, when St. Paul removed it to the church built by him. The third reason falls; if you determine that the body of St. Stephen was indeed brought to the monastery before the Constitutum was given; but rested for a while outside the place destined for it, and perhaps not yet sufficiently fitted or finished, say until the 17th day of the following August, on which the Pontiff both brought it into the oratory, and added the mentioned little appendix to the Constitutum. Thus there will be nothing in that document which an over-fastidious criticism could deservedly gnaw at.

[72] From that appendix, moreover, the days of both translations must be judged to have passed into the Calendar of the monastery; The anniversary feast of this translation. in which they are noted even today for the memory of the yearly celebration, as Giacchetto testifies, page 73; and in June indeed it is written on the 19th day: The translation of St. Silvester Pope and confessor; then in another hand is subjoined: The body is present, and a procession is made with the head: But in August on the 17th day: The translation of St. Stephen Pope and martyr; and in another hand is added: Commemoration of the Octave of St. Lawrence: but of a procession nothing. Whence this difference of the two solemnities? For my part I cannot divine it: for the birthday of both is announced in exactly the same manner: as on the day 2 August: Of St. Stephen Pope and martyr, Patron of the church; and in other letters: The body is present: On the day 31 December: Of St. Silvester Pope and confessor, patron of the church, and in other letters: The body is present. The heads too of both, separated from the rest of the bones, and each enclosed in its own silver reliquary, cunningly made in the form of a head, are kept, as Giacchetto narrates page 68: so that

and so the one could be carried about as conveniently as the other.

[73] But as this translation seems set sufficiently beyond doubt; But those relics, so it appears obscure, what and how much of the relics of St. Stephen passed over in it from the cemetery of Callistus to the already-mentioned monastery: for of the chair, sprinkled with his blood, neither Anastasius there nor St. Paul made mention; but only of the body. Then the word "body," by the most common usage of the Church, unless the word "whole" be added, rarely signifies the entire body: for here, if anywhere, most usual everywhere is the figure of synecdoche, by which the whole is put for the part; as we have shown a thousand times in the Acts. And Giacchetto himself confesses, page 14 and following, that the same word has no other signification in this place either. Since therefore the church of Sts. Stephen and Silvester is known to have lost nothing of this its sacred deposit, from when it first received it, it is asked how much of it she possesses, and so how much St. Paul once translated to it. Giacchetto could have declared the matter, being not only the historiographer of the monastery, but also once, as he signifies page 43, the confessor of the Poor Clare nuns who long inhabited it; to whom therefore it was easy to survey everything with his own eyes: yet he explains nothing less than what we seek:

[74] For being about to confirm the translation just described by us, from page 18, through the discovery of relics made in the year 1596 (when the old building of the same church was restored from the foundations, so that they are simply called the body of St. Stephen Pope and Martyr, and reduced to the form which it now has), from the authentic acts of that discovery, drawn up in the court of the Cardinal vicar of Rome, or the inventory, as they call it, which he says is kept in the archive of the monastery, he recites only the beginning and the end, omitting the middle, in which, unless I am mistaken, the bones then found had been enumerated one by one according to custom and exactly defined, which at the beginning and end are named only confusedly: for that inventory has thus toward the beginning, as Giacchetto reports page 19: In the building of this church of St. Silvester, and the removal of the seal from the marble slab of the high altar, and within the altar, were found divers relics; and also beneath the confession of the said altar, one chest of baked earth, covered over with two marble slabs; and also under the said ark between two slabs, likewise of marble; in which places under the altar it is indicated that the bodies of the holy Silvester, Stephen, and Dionysius, Pontiffs and martyrs respectively, and of other Saints, whose names his divine Majesty knows, had been laid away. You see how obscure this narration is? So far is it from your drawing out hence what and how much of our Martyr's body was there found, that you cannot even understand whether the relics of his body were so distinguished from the relics of the other sacred bodies that they could be told apart; or all mixed and confused among themselves.

[75] they do not seem to be the whole body; From the end of the same document much less light shines forth; for it is recited thus page 20: And since all the aforesaid are true and were true, the procurator of the monastery of St. Silvester, by name Don Florio Coluccio, asks urgently and most urgently, with due reverence, for the perpetual memory of the matter, and for the devotion of the whole people, and in honor and veneration of the said holy Silvester the Pontiff, and Stephen and Dionysius the martyrs, and the other Saints, that concerning all and each of the aforesaid it be ordered by the most reverend lord Vicegerent that an inventory and public instrument be made, and all things be described, redacted, and registered in public form, with the insertion of the whole tenor of the Bull of Pope Paul the first, and his authority be interposed thereupon, not only in the aforesaid manner, but in this and every better manner. Which most reverend Father, the lord Fabrizio Mandosi, the aforesaid vicegerent, having seen the aforesaid, and having taken into counsel theologians and other pious men, approved the said relics. These are all the things which Giacchetto excerpted for us from that instrument; but which by no means satisfy the proposed question.

[76] but only some notable part of it; Nor will the inscription make us more certain, which he reports page 55, the church being now renewed, on the left side of the high altar, somewhat further off however, to be read thus carved on white marble: The venerable body of St. Silvester Pope and confessor, translated by Paul the first, Supreme Pontiff, on the 19th day of June within the walls of the City with wondrous pomp, was sumptuously laid away in this church built by himself, and dedicated in his name. Thereafter, Pope Clement VIII, the church being renewed on account of its age, the same body of St. Silvester, the clergy and people being present, found beneath the high altar, and there most worthily replaced, is kept with honorific devotion, together with the holy Pontiffs Stephen and Dionysius, and the relics of the other Saints. From the Apostolic letters of the supreme Pontiffs Paul the first, Agapitus the second, and from the inventory and the rest of the acts of the court of the Vicar of the City in the year 1596, Indiction 9.

[77] so that even elsewhere there may be other equally notable parts. Finally in the whole history of the monastery we find the relics of St. Stephen, which St. Paul, Pope I, translated thither, designated no otherwise than by these words: body, head, from the head. And something taken from the head of St. Stephen Pope and martyr is said, page 50, together with the remains of very many other Saints, to have been used for consecrating in the same church in the year 1522, on the 20th day of April, a new altar of Sts. John the Baptist, Stephen, and Silvester; which same thing is then intimated to have been taken from the recently demolished altar of Sts. Paul the Apostle and Nicholas the confessor, for whose consecration it had probably, according to page 49, been employed in the year 1267. But it is clear that a particle of the head, however minute, can be called "from the head." Now the head of St. Stephen Giacchetto indeed relates, page 68, was in his time enclosed separately in a reliquary elaborately made of silver in the form of a head; but he does not say that it was whole, as he asserts the head of St. Silvester to have been whole in the same place. And here therefore he left room for synecdoche, by which you may understand any part of the head by "the head." Finally what "body" put absolutely everywhere signifies, we have already warned, with the same author, a little before. Yet I do not deny that here a notable part of the body must be understood; since that writer in the same place, after he had made mention of the separated heads of Sts. Silvester and Stephen, subjoins this: Of the remaining quantity of those sacred bones (of Sts. Stephen and Silvester together) they partly filled two very elegant little chests, which are kept in the same choir; partly others similarly adorned, which the lord Vicegerent replaced with his own hands under the altar, where the relics had first been found. These, I say, argue relics of our Saint notable enough here; not so, however, as to compel us to deny that in other places too, of which we must now treat, parts of the same body equally notable are found; which indeed was the reason why we instituted so long an examination in this place.

§ VIII. Their other later translations and divisions.

Someone will now ask, if only some part of this body must be judged to have passed from the cemetery of Callistus to the already-mentioned monastery; where the residual part of the body remained, together with the chair of our Pontiff and Martyr. The rest of his relics then seem to have been left in the cemetery of Callistus; The most Eminent Baronius at the year 561, after reciting the Bull of Pope St. Paul, thus proceeds: But as the body of St. Stephen Pope and martyr is said to be still placed in the cemetery of Callistus; this is thought to have come about from the fact that, as was wont to be done in others, when the sacred bodies of the Saints were being translated, some part was wont to be left in the former place. If these things be referred to that place of the cemetery of Callistus where St. Stephen had first been buried, they can scarcely be reconciled with the cited text of Anastasius, much less with the Constitutum of Paul; in which the cause of this translation and of the others is openly said to have been, that those places of the cemeteries, in which those bodies had rested up to then, being ruined, profaned, neglected, were then a disgrace rather than an honor to the sacred pledges: and that cause ought to have moved St. Paul's devotion no less to leave nothing sacred in so unworthy a place, than to carry something away thence. And so that nothing has long remained there, Panvinio testifies in the book On the Seven Churches of the City, page 94, in the Roman edition of the year 1570. Since therefore Paul is thought to have left something in the former place, that must be taken more broadly, so that the same cemetery of Callistus indeed be signified, but not that same definite place of the cemetery in which these Saints had first been laid. Thus St. Paul may be said to have left in the former place whatever of the relics of St. Stephen is reported to have been deposited in the very ancient church of St. Sebastian, set upon the cemetery of St. Callistus at the second milestone from the City.

[79] There certainly, and in no other place of that cemetery, is both the body of this Saint said to be kept, [in a safer place, however; namely at St. Sebastian's; whence certain things elsewhere] and the head (both, however, by synecdoche) and the marble chair in which he was beheaded. Of the body, in the work just cited, page 98, Panvinio writes thus: The basilica of St. Sebastian… within has several altars. In the greater (which contains the most holy Eucharist) is buried the body of St. Stephen Pope and martyr, slain in this cemetery. The same, page 99, says that in another altar of the same church are laid away the heads of the holy Callistus and Stephen the Pontiffs, and that besides other relics of the same Stephen, both there and in another altar of which he makes mention page 97, were placed. Of the head Severano too testifies in the Sacred Monuments of the Seven Churches of the City, part 1, page 451, and part 2, page 98, where he intimates clearly enough that that head (or rather part of the head) is the chief pledge of St. Stephen which still survives there; since he mentions only it. Finally that the chair, sprinkled with this Pontiff's blood, was kept there, besides Panciroli in the Hidden Treasures of the fostering City, page 663, Piazza in the Sacred Hemerology, and others, Marco Antonio Boldetti too testifies in the Observations on the cemeteries of the Martyrs, book 1, chapter 10, adding that it was at length translated from this place, where for so many centuries it had been in the greatest veneration, now to Pisa by Cosimo III, Grand Duke of Etruria, who obtained it as a gift in the year 1700 from Pope Innocent XII, when in his piety he as a suppliant visited the Roman sanctuaries.

[80] and were presently translated; as to St. Praxedis's, in the year 817; But as that chair migrated thence at the beginning of this century, so from the same place other things of the same

remains (as indeed all hold) of the Saint, divided long ago through the City and the Catholic world, I should believe went forth: and of them especially it is made probable, of those which are in the Roman church of St. Praxedis, that there (in Panvinio, On the Seven Churches, page 259) in the wall near the oratory of St. Zeno this marble tablet stands: In the name of the Lord God, of the Savior Jesus Christ, in the times of the most holy and thrice most blessed and Apostolic Lord Pope Paschal (namely the first), the venerable bodies of the Saints were brought into this holy and venerable basilica of the blessed virgin of Christ Praxedis; which the aforesaid Pontiff, removing them lying in the ruined cemeteries or crypts, and laid away under this most sacred altar with the greatest diligence by his own hands, in the month of July on the 20th day, in the 10th Indiction (and so in the year of Christ 817). Now the names of the Roman Pontiffs are these: of Urban, Stephen, Anterus, etc. For from the ruined cemetery of Callistus he can be said to have transferred even those things which he translated from some non-ruined place of that ruined cemetery (say from the church of St. Sebastian).

[81] to Sts. Silvester and Martin, in the same century, The same I think for my part of the rest; although I confess that I have nothing by which to affirm it, nor would I wish to be preferred to those thinking otherwise; since of those translations either no testimonies are at hand, or obscure ones. Thus Anastasius in the Life of Pope Sergius II, who sat from the year 844 to 847, narrates that relics of St. Stephen the Pontiff and martyr were indeed translated by him to the famous Roman church of Sts. Silvester and Martin; but whence they were received, he does not explain. But this, you say, the marble tablet explains, whose inscription, as most ancient, Baronius recites at the year 847, num. 4: for in it, both of the pledges of St. Stephen and of the other Saints, replaced at the same time and place, it is said: These bodies of the Saints were translated from the cemetery of Priscilla on the Salarian Way. So it is; but that the antiquity and credit of that inscription, at least in this part, is not such that one may safely acquiesce in it, Papebroch showed long ago in a long dissertation. Consult also Pagi in the Critique of the Annals at the year 847, num. 4 and following. And indeed who ever handed down that either Stephen, or certain others of the Saints there commemorated, were buried in the suburban cemetery of Priscilla, or afterward conveyed thither? For the rest, although we do not know that the relics of St. Stephen which Sergius deposited in the church of Sts. Silvester and Martin were afterward removed thence, and so plainly think that they are still kept there; yet we wonder that this is asserted less expressly by the Reverend Father Master Giovanni Antonio Filippini, then for the third time Prior of the place when he wrote (in his Italian description of the same church, published at Rome in the year 1639, chapter 16;) than both before him by Ottavio Panciroli in his index of relics appended to the Hidden Treasures of the City, and after him by Carlo Bartolomeo Piazza in the Roman Sanctuary, part 1, on the day 2 August; and part 2, Station 31.

[82] There are several other churches in the City to which the singular veneration of our Martyr, obtained through some portion of his body and to other churches, both in the City, at a time and in a manner unknown to us, extends: say to the church of St. Cecilia; where, as Piazza testifies in the Hemerology at this day, is a notable bone of his: to St. Eusebius's; where Ugonio, Station 31, says there are relics of St. Stephen the Pope, and indeed of our Stephen, as Piazza interprets in the cited place; since he asserts that his feast is there (for this reason without doubt) solemnly celebrated every year: to St. Mary of Ara Coeli; where, according to Piazza in the same place, is exposed his head, or something of the head of St. Stephen Pope and martyr, as Panciroli explains in his index. And these are, if not all, certainly the most famous relics of this Saint among the Romans: for although the Knights of our St. Stephen (of whom it will be spoken below) follow the festal light of this holy Patron of theirs with a peculiar cult at Rome, in the church which they call St. John of the Florentines, plenary indulgences too being obtained for illustrating it; yet Piazza assigns there nothing of his relics. But we think Giovanni Severano erred, On the Seven Churches, part 1, page 131, when he reckoned the body of this St. Stephen among the others which are laid away in the Vatican basilica of St. Peter; for he wrote Stephen for Hyginus; as is clear from Panvinio, Ugonio, and others describing the sacred treasury of the same basilica.

[83] But not Rome alone, as I have already intimated, venerates and possesses the sacred remains of this her Pontiff and Martyr; as through the rest of Italy; Sicily, Spain, since very many churches glory in the same throughout the rest of Italy, Sicily, Spain, Germany, Bohemia, Lorraine, Belgium; and in Italy indeed in the Neapolitan church of Our Lady of the Star, as Beyerlinck testifies in the Theater of Human Life at the word Relics, page 304, are kept relics of St. Stephen… Pope and martyr; in the metropolitan church of Trani a bone from his body, as was said in tom. 1 of June, page 258, letter D; among the people of Vieste too, of Colonna, of Pisa, what there is, will become clear in the following paragraphs. In Sicily, according to the Sicilian Martyrology published by our Ottavio Gaetani, is celebrated on the day 2 August, at Syracuse, in the college of the Society of Jesus, the translation of the head of St. Stephen Pope and martyr. In Spain among the people of Oviedo, Beyerlinck just praised, page 279, assigns I know not what of his relics; among those of the Escorial too, in the alphabetical Reliquary of the most famous and most august monastery, which we have transcribed, are noted one bone of St. Stephen Pope and martyr, two and a half fingers long, one broad; and one whole molar tooth; three other lesser relics.

[84] In Germany three churches in the one city of Cologne rejoice in some part of his sacred pledges; Germany, Lorraine, as the metropolitan, in Gelenius, On the Greatness of Cologne (Colonia Agrippina), book 3, syntagma 1, §5, the sixth reliquary; the collegiate church of St. Cunibert, which is said to have the head of St. Stephen Pope and martyr, in the same, syntagma 4, §2, locule seven, and in Winheim, Sacrary of Agrippina, page 63; the church of St. Barbara of the Carthusian monks, where is a part of the head of St. Stephen Pope and martyr, in Gelenius in the same place, syntagma 40, §2, num. 9, and Winheim page 206. The cathedral church of Speyer too, as it has St. Stephen Pope I for patron, so it glories in some portion of his sacred head, as William Eysengrein testifies in the Chronology of Speyer, folio 30 verso. In Bohemia, the metropolitan church of Prague has, as Pešina testifies in the Seven-horned Phosphorus, ray 4, page 514, a notable fragment of St. Stephen Pope and martyr, brought from Rome by Charles (IV, the most pious emperor) in the year 1370. In Lorraine at Verdun a parish church had long been consecrated in the name of St. Stephen Pope and martyr, when in the eleventh century Nanterus, abbot of the neighboring monastery of St. Michael, went to Rome and Monte Gargano, and returning thence brought into his homeland, besides many others, also relics of our St. Stephen; which (the words are translated from the French of Richard Wassebourg, once archdeacon of the church of Verdun, Antiquities of Belgic Gaul, book 4, folio 225 verso) are even now religiously kept in the parish church of St. Michael, near the said abbey; which parish church had long before been dedicated and founded in honor of the already-mentioned St. Stephen Pope and martyr.

[85] Belgium; nay, even the East; Finally in our Belgium at least three cities have obtained of old some part of his relics; as Brussels, where the Belgian Treasury of Rayssius, page 396, testifies that there is kept in the court chapel a silver arm, which, among others of like kind of other Saints, encloses relics of the arm of St. Stephen Pope and martyr: Utrecht, where the same author, page 260 and following, teaches from an authentic document that under Frederick of Baden, the fifty-sixth archbishop of Utrecht, there were found together with many others in the year 1515 in the collegiate church of St. John relics of St. Stephen Pope and martyr, which there, easily four hundred and fifty years before, Bernold, the twentieth among the bishops of Utrecht, and founder of the same church, had enclosed: Douai lastly, where Beyerlinck, at the word Relics, page 293, in the reliquary of the collegiate church of St. Amatus, among several relics of the Saints, there laid away since the thirteenth century, recites in the third place: Of St. Stephen Pope and martyr; and once indeed under this title: There follow the relics which Robert de Gondelcont brought from Constantinople: whence it is clear that the relics of our most holy Pontiff and Martyr were at some time spread even into the East with a cult.

[86] if however everywhere they are the relics of the same Stephen. For the rest, let no one take it ill if we have here perhaps passed over many churches which believe that they too possess some part of the same treasure: for we are not doing this in this place, that nothing of the kind may escape us; but that we may gather in this kind as much as suffices, to demonstrate that peculiar devotion which the pious rivalry of so many nations has displayed for so many centuries now in the veneration of our St. Stephen. Whence neither do we think it must be discussed by us, whether all the things which we have either just given or are about to give are really of this Stephen, or the pledges, at least some of them, of some other Saint of the same name: for it is enough for the end proposed to us, that they think them to be of this our Stephen, who keep them laid away in wrought metals at so great a value, follow them with so great piety, so many honors. Now let us revisit Italy, where the sacred bones of this Martyr, as they are believed, dug up and translated not so long ago, brought a new and wondrous splendor to his glory. We shall recount the matter to you, reader, from the beginning, chiefly from the Italian Relation, printed at Trani in the year 1682, and running to ninety-four pages. This we shall reduce in compendium to three paragraphs, of which the first will set forth the translation of St. Stephen into Apulia; the second the discovery in Apulia; the third the translation into Etruria.

§ IX. Another translation of his relics to the monastery of Colonna near Trani in Apulia, in the year 1160.

Trani is a noble city in Apulia Peucetia, or the Land of Bari, on the shores of the Adriatic sea. From this, toward Vieste, only one mile distant, is a certain peninsula running out into the sea in the fashion of a modest hill, [The history of the translation of St. Stephen Pope and Martyr into Apulia, from a manuscript,] pleasant and beautiful; whose summit is occupied by the very ancient monastery of St. Mary of Colonna, or, as it is elsewhere called, of Colonia, twice abandoned by the Benedictines because of the piratical incursions of the Turks, and in the year 1427 at length assigned to the Friars Minor, whom they call Observants,

who thereafter held it more steadily. That the body of St. Stephen Pope and martyr was once brought hither from Rome, none of the inhabitants doubts; and although concerning the manner in which it arrived there, there is now, or at least once was, another report of the rude common folk: yet no one in any way wise above the vulgar has ever, from ancient times (as Staffa testifies in his history of its discovery, edited at Trani in the year 1622), believed it to have happened otherwise than as it is narrated in the history written in Latin by a very ancient hand and style on parchment, and then most diligently preserved in the sacrary of the same monastery together with the relics of the Saints. Of which history he himself recites a few fragments in Latin; we obtained a complete copy from our Fr. Beatillo; and it runs thus:

[88] From the fount of divine mercy a streamlet of salvation ever flows: [The people of Trani make the greatest account of the body of St. Stephen Pope and Martyr,] since the fount of life is with the Lord, and in his light shall light be seen. For he holds out mercy to all who invoke it. Whence God, most benign in all things and above all things, protecting his beloved people fleeing the power of Pharaoh, overshadowed them with two columns: one of cloud by day he set for them against the heat of the sun; and the other of fire by night he tempered for a remedy against the cold. So the sweet piety and pious sweetness of the Lord mercifully imparted to the people of Trani, panting in many calamities, the body of blessed Stephen, apostolic man and martyr, against the burning of sin, and against the chill of charity, and against the venomous snares of the demons. For this body of the aforesaid Martyr became to the same people of Trani a candlestick, like to that candlestick which is set in the temple of the Lord, from which Christ, ever benevolent without end, at the prayers of the aforesaid Martyr, would hold forth a lamp to their feet for walking, and show beforehand a light to their paths. The most holy body of this Martyr too became to the people of Trani the pitcher of Gideon, in which the torch of a light had been kindled: which pitcher, that it might break the enemy, was first broken in penitence; and, mercy being touched, the light suddenly issuing forth beat back the eyes of the enemies. As by the breaking of the fragile pitcher and the brightness of the poured-out light the enemies of Gideon were utterly put to flight; so from the body of the aforesaid Martyr, as from the broken pitcher; and from his prevenient aid, as from the disclosed light, the invisible enemies flee, and as it were are pierced with sharp lances. But how the most precious body of this apostolic Man and Martyr was brought hither to this monastery of St. Mary of Colonia, by the compassion of Christ, will be made plain by a truthful relation in this manner to all who wish to know.

[89] [secretly removed at Rome, and deposited among them, in the neighboring monastery,] A certain monk of this oratory, the clemency of the Lord providing, sets out rather eagerly for Rome, and secretly attached himself to a certain man appointed to the church of that city, in which the body of the aforesaid Martyr was laid away: he devoted himself to his every good pleasure, and gave himself over to his service; and accomplishing all things at his will, so made himself familiar to him, so bound himself heartily, that to him, as to an intimate friend, that keeper laid open all the secrets of his mind, the revered body of the aforesaid Martyr being shown beforehand. That monk therefore and the other cleric, who presided over the church, were so knit by mutual charity, that for the space of seven years they lived together in place and mind unanimously. But as some time went on (because the heart of man is depraved and inscrutable) the mind of the oft-mentioned monk was utterly changed to the contrary: for holding out snares to his friend, and exploring an opportunity for the wish of his mind, he snatched the body of the aforesaid Martyr from the place of his host and friend, and carried it over with gladness to the monastery from which he had departed. And when his abbot received the monk, thus returned to the monastery, with affection and fatherly sweetness as a brother and son, presently that man displayed the most precious body to his abbot and the brethren, as a gift destined from the Lord, carefully setting forth the series of his deed. Whence the abbot of this place and the monks, receiving the body of the blessed Martyr with great reverence and devotion, with no small praise of God, with all diligence lay it away in the altar of their monastery with the greatest solemnity; from which body of the holy Martyr very many miracles flashed forth on all sides throughout Apulia.

[90] where it shines with miracles; For through him a continual advancement of souls is bestowed upon the monks, for whose zealous salvation he was, the Lord disposing, brought into their monastery. Whoever also of men hold out vows to him, and send forth prayers of honesty without the gall of malice, presently he, merciful, entreats the Most Merciful; and to the vows of those asking, brings what is desired. To the people of Trani too, who are neighbors by a mile to the aforesaid church of St. Mary of Colonia, in which the aforesaid Martyr and Pontiff, by the Lord's mercy, rests, when necessity presses, he alacriously bestows the bowels of piety: thus pleading for his subjects, thus swiftly he sends forth the most pious voice of compassion: O Jesus, fullness of all good things, paradise of sweet fruits, fragrant storehouse of all graces, unfailing father, mother of all the afflicted, singular solace and sole hope of the wretched; how slow to punishments, how swift a prince to rewards; who grievest, as often as thou art forced to be fierce (For never wast thou without mercy, nor was compassion ever lacking to sinning man): hear, gracious Father and Lord, that thou mayest grant to those who ask: let thy piety alone restrain thee; that thou who by sparing overcomest sins, mayest now show to these needy suppliants the signs of thy most sweet piety. And presently now the most pious One is most piously bent to the prayers of the Martyr; and to the mercy which he has by nature, is now the more readily inclined: for with him are all the things which he asks: because Christ disposes in his most pious will. To him therefore be thanksgiving, honor, power, and jubilation for ever and ever. Amen.

[91] And when the body of blessed Stephen the martyr, Roman Pontiff, to the demons themselves rested placed by divine grace in the monastery of St. Mary of Colonia; so that it might bestow benefits on many, and they might feel the advantages of its presence, Amandus, formerly bishop of Vieste, received from a certain abbot of the aforesaid monastery, who was called Peter by name, the arm of the aforesaid Martyr, which he had asked for the church over which he presided. And when the said bishop directed his words to a certain man possessed by a demon, who had come to the church; that the divine virtue of the Word might become known through the arm of the Martyr; that he might pay to the Saint's arm honor with due reverence; and that, for the knowledge of God's virtue [and] the solemnity shown to the Saint, the merit of eternal life might come from heaven upon the peoples; the oft-named bishop secretly applied the arm of the aforesaid Martyr. And because the demons had known Christ the Lord in mortal flesh by vehement thought, and had named him the Son of God; from his justice it flowed, that they who had confessed to the Lord for the abasement of their malice, could not by malevolent silence conceal the excellence of his Servant. For as soon as the arm of the holy Martyr was secretly applied, the demon is tormented with pains; is consumed by the burning of flame: he foams, the possessed man who suffers; there is a trembling in his lips; into the voice of one thus eagerly complaining he broke out: Why dost thou now torment me, Stephen? Why dost thou now cut off my head, and mutilate my several members? Is it because thou didst endure the martyrdom of the head for thyself, that thou now strikest me with a fiercer penalty? Thy Lord on the cross broke my head: and now for the cutting off of thy head, I feel the breaking of my head. Whence thou hast broken the head of the dragon; thou hast given him as food to the peoples of the Ethiopians. Since now for his faith thou hast undertaken martyrdom, permit me to enter into a swine; as he permitted the legion of demons to enter into swine. This the aforesaid bishop hearing, with many standing by, and all the people too, paid to the holy martyr Stephen, formerly supreme Pontiff, with no small attention a greater cult and reverence; in the member, to the head; in the servant, to the Lord Jesus; presently to the Son, who is blessed for ever, showing due honor, praise, and glory.

[92] To his honor and glory, who redeemed us from the enemy: confessing his merits. there is an image of blessed Stephen the protomartyr at Taranto on the wall of a certain church, drawn out in various colors, formed to his likeness. A certain possessed man, looking upon this image of the protomartyr, is suddenly tortured with pains; is burned with flames, and other torments; like a little ship driven by the waves. At length the demon, through the possessed man, against the protomartyr Stephen poured out in these words the seed-plot of his malice, the incitement of discord, and the tinder of envy: But now before thy image, O protomartyr Stephen, I am tortured, torn, confounded gravely, and afflicted: for from this man, appointed to me as it were for a prison, in whom nevertheless by the effect of malice I took delight, whom I vexed with gladness, in whose zealous torments there was to me rest and joy, being overcome I am shut out—not by the urgency of thy prayers, nor by thy holiness demanding: nay by the prayers and merits of blessed Stephen, Pope and martyr; who in the monastery of the holy and glorious Mother of God and perpetual Virgin Mary of the island of Colonia, situated near Trani, for the salvation of the people of Trani received his dwelling, I am expelled by a stronger hand: fleeing the whole seacoast, I depart to the wilderness to be beaten. Nothing further does the demon speak, because, God not permitting, he grew dumb, and did not open his mouth; and because he did not quickly utter a voice, the possessed man was freed from the demon. These words of the demon the people hearing, faithfully and effectually understood, that Jesus Christ, the glory of the Martyrs, made the demon himself confess his praise and that of his Martyr, to his own confusion and ignominy. Let every Christian therefore do reverence to St. Stephen, Pope and martyr, and to Christ, the author of all good things, pay the tribute of zealous devotion; to whom be thanksgiving, honor, power, might, and jubilation for ever and ever. Amen.

[93] When the prodigies had for a time ceased, About the feast of blessed Stephen, Pope and martyr, a certain monk of the above-mentioned monastery of St. Mary of Colonia, addressing his Prior on such matters in the same place, having fallen into a dispute, said: Behold, good brother and lord, the body of this blessed Stephen, Pope and martyr, rests in the monastery in which we dwell: but since now for a long space of time no miracles favor us, nor does the nearness of the place bring us any, we show the due reverence to his body: whence we celebrate his feast and joy less solemnly. But why does it even occupy the ground? Let it be cut down as a useless tree, and driven from the place idly occupied. Which the monk asserted not out of malice, but out of a certain affection of inmost love. But the Prior of his monastery, hearing more attentively what the brother had said, admonished him honestly; rebuked him with all gentleness, and instructed him more earnestly with salutary discourses. But the words of the aforesaid monk became to God as it were a certain occasion

for newly exercising his power in his wonted works of wonders; that he might make the holy Pope and Martyr famous to the many remaining in his place, and declare him through evident miracles. Whence the hand of divine grace brought to act this which follows.

[94] they flourished again, especially in driving away fevers; A certain man vehemently feverish, led by divine clemency, flew to the monastery, imploring of the holy Pope and Martyr medicine for the goads of his sickness. This man Christ the merciful destined to the Martyr for this reason, that in him God's virtue might shine forth, and that he might make him renowned through miracles to all who ask him. Therefore, the arm of the holy Martyr being washed, the feverish man at once takes the washings as a salutary drink. For while the arm of the Martyr is washed with drawn water, presently, received by the sick man, it cured him of the disease with which he languished without delay. By the example of whose healing, whoever is consumed by a daily fever, whoever is vexed by a tertian, whoever is shaken by a quartan, or is agitated by the pains of any evil whatever, if the water with which the arm has been washed is given him to drink, provided that with the cup he has taken he have full faith in his own recovery, presently he obtains what he desired, and gets what he needed. Wherefore divine grace so works in the Martyr, that through him God manifestly succors the feverish. It is therefore salutary counsel, that whoever is cured of his sickness at the prayers of his Martyr, should ever have before his eyes that word of the Lord: Behold, thou art made whole; now sin no more, lest something worse befall thee. But he who has not yet obtained the gift of healing, let him so correct his reprobate works, let him so spend himself in compassion toward the wretched; that, while in his own calamities he implores the aid of the Martyr, he may feel him propitious to himself, him forthwith a ready helper toward the Lord; that both in the penalty and in the fault God may through grace, by the Martyr's intervention, work for him a miracle of piety; so that he who by the Martyr's effect has been mercifully freed by God, may by his intervention become more fervent in veneration, and more devout to God the deliverer, that to him may be thanksgiving, honor, and jubilation.

[95] This too must nonetheless be commended to tenacious memory and laudably ascribed to the proclamation of the Martyr, concerning which a history was once written, that when his miracles were set down in writing, and the writer read them aloud both to the abbot and to the brethren; when he brought back what he had noted, that it might be written in a larger hand, in the very act of returning the work slipped from the breast of the one holding it: which not being found, while it is sought, the writer is seized with grief, and pressed with sorrow: he seeks the work which he lost, and diligently sent out others to seek it: and when the very little work, lying in the road before their eyes, the many seekers did not see, the writer's nurse, going out as though destined by the Holy Spirit to praise the Saint, gazing on the work which lay overlooked, marveling recognized it. Whence eagerly taking it up, she at once brought it to her lord; who, receiving it with alacrity, thereupon showed a gift of thanksgiving [and] paid continual service of veneration to the Martyr.

[96] In the year from the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ one thousand one hundred and sixty, in the eighth Indiction, The epoch of the translation, the year 1160. in the first year of the Pontificate of the Father and Lord in Christ, the Lord Pope Alexander the third, Roman Pontiff, and in the tenth year of the reign of the Lord William, king of Sicily and Apulia, in the second year of the archbishopric of the archbishop of Trani… in the third year of the aforesaid lord Peter, venerable abbot; at which above-said time the monk and abbot of the aforesaid monastery of the abbey of St. Sebastian the martyr brought to the above-said monastery of the church of St. Mary of Colonia the holy body of blessed Stephen the martyr and Roman Pontiff. And this was done to the honor, praise, and glory of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is the light of light, and the true salvation of all: who is blessed for ever and ever. Amen.

[97] Upon this document rests the translation already described. Now it is to be observed in it, first, The age of this history; the place whence the translation was made. that no mention is anywhere there made of the Franciscan Order; which is an argument that these things were written before the monastery of Colonna had passed to the Reverend Franciscan Fathers, that is, before the year of Christ 1427. Yet that they were written a good while after the year 1160 is manifestly betrayed at num. 91, where Amandus is called formerly bishop of Vieste: for that Amandus, according to the most illustrious Sarnelli, is known to have sat at Vieste at least until the year of Christ 1181. The same you will equally evidently draw out from num. 93: but because the author supposes that the bones of the Saint had not yet been hidden in his time, I should not dare to make him younger than the thirteenth century. Secondly, that at num. 89 there is very obscurely designated that Roman church whence the Colonna monk carried off that body: for there that church is marked with no title; but is intimated to have pertained only to clerics: for he is there called a cleric, who presided over the church, the same a little before the keeper, the same is said to be secretly appointed, he being unaware and unwilling, the body is narrated to have been taken away by the monk through snares. What then do these words at num. 96 mean, "At which above-said time the monk and abbot of the aforesaid monastery, of the abbey of St. Sebastian the martyr, brought to the above-said monastery of the church of St. Mary of Colonia the body of blessed Stephen, martyr and Roman Pontiff"? What, I say, does that mean, "of the abbey of St. Sebastian the martyr"? The place, unless I am mistaken, is indicated whence the body was taken away; namely the church of St. Sebastian, which, though it be situated outside Rome in the cemetery of Callistus, is nevertheless reckoned among the churches of the City in no lowest place. But why is it called an abbey; if, according to num. 89, a cleric presided over it? Then why is that word there expressed in the second case, "of the abbey"? I truly fear lest something has here been corrupted on occasion of a certain abbreviation, and that it should be read, "from the church of St. Sebastian Martyr." And thus the very Reverend Father F. Bonaventura of Fasano seems to have read, in his compendium of this history, which is cited in the Italian Relation, page 28; although there it is read, "from the church of St. Stephen (for Sebastian; for it is added) outside the walls, in the cemetery of Callistus"; in which the church of St. Sebastian is known; but none, so far as I know, of St. Stephen.

[98] [The Saint's arm translated to Vieste; the name of the Archbishop of Trani omitted.] It is to be observed, thirdly, that, according to num. 91, the arm of this Saint was translated from the monastery of Colonna to the cathedral of Vieste by Amandus; not later; as the most illustrious Sarnelli thought in the Monuments of the Bishops of Vieste, page 44; where he says that it is still kept there. We think therefore that those were other relics of our St. Stephen, which Amandus's successor is there narrated to have laid away in the year 1182 in the church of St. Mary di Giano, situated outside the town of Vieste. But that there remained among the people of Colonna, long after Amandus's translation, either part of the same arm, or of another (yet of the same Saint), is clear from num. 94. Fourthly and lastly it is to be observed that in our copy at num. 96 the place is marked with little dots where the name of the archbishop of Trani perhaps could not be read in the original. But who that archbishop was, is not clear from Ughelli: since he notes neither the end of Bisantius the younger, who sat in the year 1143; nor the beginning of Amantius, who sat in the year 1179, and thus perhaps omits one or more intermediate ones, whom he did not know. Staffa however, reprinted in the Italian Relation, page 3, seems to have read the name of Peter in the original of our history; for he says that it was the same Peter, who was then at once archbishop of Trani, and at the same time remained abbot of Colonna.

* Staffa with others reads, "on the altar of St. Zenobius."

read tua*.

perhaps urgeat*.

perhaps ferretur or fieret*.

perhaps Qui*.

perhaps Post*.

perhaps non exhibemus*.

perhaps consequitur*.

perhaps amissum*.

§ X. Their long burial in the same place, and the discovery that followed; likewise the occasion and preparation of the new translation.

The people of Colonna rejoiced securely in this their deposit, when the commotions of wars in Italy, The bones of St. Stephen, long buried among the people of Colonna, and the sea infested with robbers, cast upon them a timely care, lest they should seem to have kept a thing of so great value too incautiously in a place exposed to all dangers and injuries. Therefore taking the relics of their St. Stephen from the altar, they lower them into a near and deep pit which they had prepared for this, and, the earth being heaped back, and the pavement laid as it had been before, so entomb them, that they let no indication of the hidden treasure appear. But when this happened, is uncertain. Yet that these pledges lay hidden there most long buried, the discovery presently to be described will teach. They were certainly laid away there before the year 1427, in which the monastery was given to the Friars Minor; since none of these ever knew the place under which they lurked: as Staffa narrates, and the Minister General of the Order Francisco Gonzaga confesses in the Origin of the Seraphic Religion, part 2, where he treats of the province of St. Nicholas, convent 5. Nay nothing appears more probable than if it be said that the body of St. Stephen was hidden in the church of Colonna on the same occasion, and so at the same time, on which the body of St. Nicholas the Pilgrim was concealed in the church of Trani: for no fear of danger could impel the people of Trani to consult thus for the safety of their treasure in a fortified city, which ought not equally to have urged the people of Colonna, relying on no fortification of the place, to do the same about their Stephen. And so, as at nearly one time, through the indication of the same Baracchia family, the relics of both were afterward found; so at nearly one time we judge them to have been buried before; say toward the beginning of the thirteenth century, when you will understand the body of St. Nicholas was hidden from what was said in tom. 1 of June, page 225, num. 76.

[100] Meanwhile to the Franciscan Fathers, in the long ignorance of this deposit, a solace was especially the arm of St. Stephen the Pontiff and martyr, besides the arm; which had not been committed with the rest of his bones to the underground hiding-place; but had come to them kept separately with some other relics of other Saints, and consigned to them with the monastery, as Gonzaga testifies, long before the body was brought to light, in the cited place. This too consoled them; that the persevering tradition of the place asserted that the rest of the ashes of the same Saint had never been carried off from their shrine, but rested laid away in the same shrine, wherever at last. Besides, hope and spirits were sharpened by a fame by no means doubtful concerning a sure and definite knowledge of this sepulcher, once entrusted to a certain noble family of Trani, called de Baracchia, on this condition, that it might be lawful to communicate the secret to none of their posterity, except at the point of death. But of these there always survived some down to the seventeenth century, in which flourished there Giovanni Vincenzo and Giovanni Giacomo, to whom it was believed that their uncle, near death, had revealed it, the canon of the church of Trani, Pietro Baracchia; and this was then held the more certain, because in the year 1603 one of them, Giovanni Vincenzo Baracchia, from the tradition of the same his uncle,

by tradition, had indicated the place where the bones of St. Nicholas the Pilgrim were found.

[101] These men therefore the Franciscan Fathers did not cease to exhort, by themselves and their friends, to the communication of the secret, until in the year 1611 meanwhile commending the matter to God with most fervent prayers, until in the month of December, in the year 1611, Giovanni Giacomo, led by I know not what impulse (for he had hitherto been inexorable, though often wearied by the solicitation of many), visited a noble friend, the same most zealous for the glory of the Minorites of Colonna, and especially of the holy Pontiff Martyr, and the author of this narration which we are abridging, Giovanni Luca Staffa; and to him soon of his own accord he devotes his help and knowledge for digging up the relics of the same Saint. The other accepts most eagerly, of course; and having summoned to himself at once from the monastery of Colonna two priests, namely Father Clement and Fr. Andrew Palumbo, to whom he knew this would be most welcome, he fills them with joy so unhoped for. A day for the work is at once appointed; and, that the thing might be done without noise, only six witnesses are designated; namely the two Fathers already named, then the brother of both, Gaspare Palumbo, canon of the metropolitan church of Trani, Pietro Campitelli besides, a man distinguished among the chief nobility of Trani, and finally Giovanni Giacomo Baracchia himself with his friend Staffa, the chief author of the expedition. Two besides were admitted, to dig, the one a servant of Staffa himself, the other of the family of the monastery of Colonna, Brother Giacomo, a layman.

[102] with great zeal Now the festal day of St. Stephen the protomartyr had dawned (for it had seemed good to appoint this for the discovery of the other St. Stephen), when a sudden inclemency of the winds and air cast so much delay on those going to the monastery, that they arrived much later than was needful. And so, when now all were present, when they had girded themselves to the work in the church, prayers being poured out to God, scarcely two hours remained until evening; which, when Baracchia denied were enough, he had to be entreated by the tears of all, not to defer the business. Conquered at length, and prostrate on his knees before the high altar, he broke forth into these words, weeping withal: My uncle, of good memory, the lord Pietro Baracchia, to me and to my cousin, the lord Giovanni Vincenzo Baracchia, while still of sound mind, before he expired, secretly revealed the glorious bodies of Sts. Nicholas the Pilgrim, and Stephen the Pope and martyr; of whom this one is laid away here close by the Epistle horn. At these words both diggers rushed upon the assigned place, this one with an iron bar, that one with a mattock. But Staffa restrained them for a while, until he himself with the assisting laymen had cleansed his soul by sacred confession before the Fathers who were present, Andrew and Clement, and then all, with the accustomed hymn, Father Andrew, as Guardian, leading, had invoked the Holy Spirit.

[103] and sought with labor, Then the work was resumed and continued unweariedly until evening; but with no reward of labor then indeed: so that Giovanni Giacomo Baracchia, distrusting his memory, judged it should be put off until the morrow, when he himself would by any means bring thither with him his cousin Giovanni Vincenzo. Said, done. Vincenzo is present with the rest the next day, there (as he was a canon presbyter) to perform the sacred rites out of his singular piety, but ignorant of the matter which was being chiefly agitated; until, at the high altar, catching sight of the dug-out earth, he easily conjectured what it was; and smiled, of course, as one who saw that those who sought the deposit were as far as possible from it. But these assail him by all means, that he designate the place; otherwise they would dig up the whole floor of the choir, until they found it. Vincenzo, to elude their importunate prayers, having promised that he would soon satisfy them, went away.

[104] and were found on the 27th day of December, Nor even so did Staffa lose heart: for he had determined within himself that, if nothing could be forced out of Vincenzo, he would at least so continue that trench, which had already been dug out at the Epistle horn, six palms deep and two broad, that it should encircle the whole altar: which purpose he pressed the more alacriously, because Brother Giacomo the layman asserted that thus without doubt they would find what they sought; for this, the past night now elapsed, he had learned for certain through a heavenly vision. The event proved the matter: for when by striking and digging they reached the middle of the altar, there first began to resound, then gradually to appear, a little casket, joined together of small stones and coated round with lime: which soon opened, displayed another enclosed within, of not much smaller size, but compacted of fir boards. And when the lid of this was drawn back, there was seen laid within a bag or little sack of cloth, containing sacred bones, with two little plates (the same doubtless which were found with the same relics before the last translation, as will be narrated below) marked with an authentic inscription. But that casket, although it seemed corrupted in no part, as soon as it was exposed to the air, fell into minute fragments; as also the pouch, which a little before kept the relics whole: the bones themselves too were broken into many parts; yet not yet (which all wondered at) dissolved into ashes: nay breathing forth a certain heavenly and perpetual odor upon those present.

[105] Among these Father Andrew Palumbo could not contain himself for joy, and shut up in the high altar; but secretly slipping away, flew to Trani, and stirred up the whole city with shouts of unwonted gladness, and forthwith brought the archbishop himself to the monastery, a promiscuous multitude of citizens running together. The other Fathers of Colonna meanwhile celebrated their domestic joys with a festal sound of bells, and, as is wont, with the solemn chanting of the Ambrosian hymn: which finished, they translated the relics with the greatest reverence into a new casket, procured beforehand for this use; until (in the following year, of Christ 1612, as will appear below) they were placed in another, transparent with crystal, and within the hollow of the altar, elegantly fitted and well fortified, so shut up, that, a torch being applied through the spiracle left, they could indeed be seen, but not touched. Thus far the Staffian narration is carried; which, as in certain not very necessary circumstances it is more than fairly verbose; so in the description and enumeration of the relics found (which was by far the chief head of this little work) will seem excessively meager and defective, if it be compared with those things which in the following paragraph will be brought forth concerning that opened receptacle of the altar and the Saint's remains drawn out from it. Perhaps in the year 1622, when Staffa wrote, all the things did not occur to his memory distinctly enough, which in the year 1611 and the following he had himself beheld in person.

[106] We do not think those relics were removed from this sacrary until the year 1682, where they always remained shut up until the year 1682 in which they were carried off to Pisa; for although in the year 1667 the Turks are said to have plundered anew the monastery and church of Colonna; yet they seem either not to have noticed this place, or certainly not to have touched it, much less broken it open; as it will be possible to gather below. Moreover, before we approach the Pisan translation, to be drawn from the Italian Relation which we mentioned, it will help to set forth beforehand its occasion and the preparation for wringing it out, long enough, from the same little book; since nothing can be brought forward more luminous, for demonstrating the value of this treasure both among those who had possessed it up to now, and among those who, to acquire it, spared neither industry, nor labor, nor any expense.

[107] When the lord Orazio de' Pannocchieschi, of the counts of Elci, acting as governor of the town of Vieste in the service of the Catholic king, The occasion of the new translation, a noble patrician of Siena, had been invited by the Fathers of Colonna in the year 1677 to honor with his presence the anniversary solemnity of St. Hilarion, patron of the church, on the 21st day of November (nay perhaps of October, on which he is venerated elsewhere); he asked of them whether there were notable relics of the Saints in that church. They say there are; and among others they mention the body of St. Stephen Pope and martyr; which also, to him desiring to see it, the altar-stool being removed, under which the aforesaid spiracle lay hidden, armed with an iron grating, and a light being sent in, they exhibit to be contemplated through the crystal mirrors. The Count stuck at these things; as one who had hitherto believed that the body of St. Stephen Pope and martyr was kept at Rome; he asks therefore whether they have any authentic document, to make credible a doubtful matter. The Fathers excuse their poverty, the cause of which was the last depopulation of the monastery by the Turks; for the rest they bring forth books (say the little works of Staffa, and of Bonaventura of Fasano, which our Relator too uses) and monuments, perhaps cited in those same books: for I doubt enough whether the original, which we gave in the preceding paragraph transcribed by our Fr. Beatillo, who died a holy death long before the last plundering of that monastery, survived there up to that time. Certainly the Relator does not say that it was exhibited to the Count; but only that the substance of this History was narrated. They added a prodigy, by which he himself there not obscurely signifies that he rests, through the lilies springing up around his feast, in a place extending about thirty paces along the shore, sandy, salt, parched, where the body is believed to have come ashore, salutary lilies growing every year for very many sick who, trusting in his patronage, pluck and drink them; so that whether you consider the place, or the time, or the effect, it is full of miracle.

[108] sought by the great duke of Etruria, Now these things were almost enough for the Count, to begin the web which he afterward wove out. Cosimo I, great duke of Etruria, had erected at Pisa in the year 1561 the most illustrious Order of the Knights of St. Stephen (not the protomartyr, as some err, but) Pope and martyr, and that on occasion of the notable victory over Strozzi, the leader in Italy of the king of France, near Marciano in the year 1554, won on the festal light of the same Saint. Of this Order one may see, besides the Pontifical Bullary, tom. 2, in various places, the French work or History of the Monastic, Religious, and Military Orders, etc., tom. 6, part 4, chapter 32; where a brief and elegant description of it is given, the authors on which it rests being cited at the end. To the same Order the same Cosimo had built at Pisa, besides two dwellings, an august basilica, which the succeeding dukes of Etruria, the same being also the supreme and perpetual masters of the Order, had adorned at great expense. Yet the chief ornament was lacking, the relics of St. Stephen Pope and martyr, Patron of the Order and of the church. To this Orazio looked, knowing very well how much he would deserve of his natural prince, Cosimo III, the most pious duke of Etruria, and of his Order, if he should ever obtain them. This counsel however he pressed down in the depth of his mind, until the miracle of the springing lilies, as we just said, in three continuous years afterward, in which he administered the government of Vieste, he had come to inspect with his own eyes, and thought there was no longer any doubting of the truth of the relics. But then indeed, having explored the most ardent will of the great Duke to urge this business, he at length resolved to act.

[109] and through the wondrous dexterity of the count of Elci And at first indeed, having approached the Reverend Father Guardian of Colonna, he said many things by which to persuade him of the translation of the body of St. Stephen to a safer place, and one not a little worthier of such a deposit. When he felt him resisting, adding nothing,

he turned his speech elsewhere. Meanwhile he secretly brought this about, that in the next chapter of the Minorites Father F. Bonaventura da Minervino, a jubilate lector, as worthy of that rank as he was a friend to himself, should be set over the monastery of Colonna. Having attained this, he shortly joined the whole monastery to his own party: for those of the lower ranks who resisted the translation, he easily brought it about, through the Father Guardian, that they should have to migrate elsewhere. Thereupon he won over the Reverend Father Giovanni de Bisceglie the Provincial, and after him the Reverend Father Antonio de San Giovanni the Commissary general. Hence to the magistrates of Trani (for their assent too was needed) he turned all his industry; and because he was not ignorant how arduous a province he was here undertaking, resigning the governorship of Vieste, he stayed at Trani for half a year, that by clandestine meetings, through himself and his friends, he might devote himself wholly to this care, so that when the magistrates left office others might not be substituted, except those of whose zeal, inclined toward him and his cause, he in no way doubted. Thus with much solicitation and sweat he at length wrung from these too what he desired.

[110] Presently thence he betakes himself to Naples, to entreat, in the name of his most serene duke, the most excellent viceroy the Marquis de los Vélez; obtained in the year 1682. whom indeed he found so ready and devoted to his counsels, that to promote these he most willingly lent all his authority, giving letters both to the nobles of the city of Trani, and to the governor of the province. And that the Most Illustrious Don Paolo Ximenes, archbishop of Trani, yielded with no less readiness, the Relation narrates; but this place is corrected in the margin; where it is written in Spanish by pen, that the archbishop indeed consented, but after he had resisted by all means forces much superior; to which at length he thought it necessary to yield; when he saw that those whom it chiefly concerned in no way struggled. Which same thing the Relator himself does not deny of the clergy of Trani. There remained the Supreme Pontiff to be interpellated on this business too by a suppliant petition; who when he too at length, the business being sufficiently discussed, had benignly assented, at once from Naples, where he had meanwhile stayed, the Count writes back to the great duke of Tuscany, that all things were now wholly smoothed out, for translating, as soon as it should seem good, the so long sought-for relics of his St. Stephen. Scarcely had Cosimo received so glad a message, when from the port of Livorno he sends down two galleys to Naples to Orazio, with a most ample instrument of the procuration entrusted to him; with the body of St. Fortunatus the martyr, to be consigned to the people of Colonna to make some return; with, finally, every preparation for sustaining the expedition as magnificently and liberally as possible. These reached Naples on the 1st day of July in the year 1682.

§ XI. The most recent translation of the relics from the monastery of Bl. Mary of Colonna near Trani to the city of Pisa in the year 1682.

From the arrival of the ships only one day had passed, when on the 3rd of July the Count set out on his journey into Apulia; with how numerous and illustrious a retinue of servants, horsemen, The Count comes from Naples to Trani, as procurator of the duke of Etruria, trumpeters, nobles, priests, hedged about; with how great an equipage furnished for demonstrating both the magnificence and the lavish bounty toward all of his most serene prince; then with what honors, by order of the viceroy, he was received throughout the whole journey, it is not to the point to say. When he approached Trani, you would have believed the duke of Etruria himself to be present; such was the pomp of the nobility poured out far to meet him as he came, such the thunders of the cannon discharged throughout the citadel and walls, while he was conducted all the way to his lodging, which was the most august palace of the city. Nor did he interpose delay, but treated with the most reverend lord Giuseppe Melazzi, vicar general of the most illustrious archbishop, who was then at Rome; that, according to the decree and assent of the Supreme Pontiff, the archbishop, the viceroy, and the others whom it concerned, the relics of St. Stephen Pope I and martyr of Colonna should be consigned to him, as procurator of the great duke of the Florentines. And at the same time he produced the legitimate acts of the procuration, which in the Italian Relation are recited in full in Latin; but here, because they are rather long, they are omitted.

[112] where on the 15th day of July The consignation, as was requested, being decreed by the most reverend lord Vicar for the 15th of July, the Count, conveyed in the great duke's own carriage, with his most splendid retinue, made an excursion to Vieste, to entreat the most illustrious prelate of that place, Francesco Antonio Ricci, not to be grieved to assist pontifically at the coming solemnity. He was received and conducted there no otherwise than at Trani, there being added to the public applause and noise of the city the acclamation, most pleasant to him as he departed thence, of the poor too and the wretched, upon whom everywhere he was lavish. Three evenings before the day appointed for the translation, the monastery of Colonna, aglow with festal fires, gave a prelude to the celebration, with every possible signification of gladness. On the very day 15 July, very early in the morning, the Count betook himself thither; there following the bishop of Vieste, the Vicar of Trani with the dignitaries of both churches, the canons, with the superiors and theologians of the religious Orders, as many as dwelt at Trani; then whatever men there were in almost the whole province of nobles, whether of the soldiery or of the gown. But while some arrive after others, it pleased the Count to go for a while to the shore beneath the monastery, to see if perhaps anything already appeared of the lilies, wont there a little later, namely around the feast of the Saint, suddenly to grow up and flower. And, behold, he found the miracle, reported in Italian in a legitimate document by a notary on the second day after the fact, and subscribed by eleven most grave witnesses, being all religious and priests.

[113] he marvels at the prodigious lilies of St. Stephen; In this instrument (not to translate and recite the whole into Latin) they all and each assert, first, that in that same place where by ancient tradition the relics of St. Stephen Pope and martyr are believed to have been for a short time hidden, about the day 1 August, which immediately precedes the Saint's feast, from time immemorial there are born every year within a few hours and flower wondrous lilies, white, fragrant, within a space of nearly thirty paces on the parched, burning, salt, and sandy shore of the sea. They assert, secondly, that on the day before the translation of which we here treat, that is, on the 14th day of July, they the undersigned witnesses went to the said place and diligently inspected it with many persons of noble rank and authority, both ecclesiastics and seculars, and there in the dry and arid sand saw and touched the withered and sapless clumps of the said lilies. They assert, thirdly, that the next morning, on the day appointed for the solemnity, before all who then flocked thither, among many still-dry clumps, there appeared in the same place the green stalks of the said lilies, which within a few hours of the same day grew and perfectly flowered, and gave forth a most sweet odor, and were thus plucked by the assisting religious and secular nobles and delivered into the hands of the most illustrious Count Orazio of Elci there present, and by him reverently, with many others born there in the same manner on the day after the translation, and with certain bulbs of the same lilies, placed in a wooden chest with sand taken thence. To these three common assertions the witnesses add their several names in the year 1682, on the 17th day of July, the notary Francesco Antonio Succhi of Trani closing the instrument by juridical formulas and his seal.

[114] The Count returning from the lily-field to the monastery, many thousands of the poor awaited: for when he had first entered Trani, scarcely had rumor scattered the cause of his coming among the common people, when the populace seemed to make a din and in a manner to threaten sedition. on the same day, after large alms and the sacred synaxis This had moved the Count, that at once by the voice of a herald he invited all the poor to the place and day of the solemnity, assigning to each, however many and from wherever they should come, one carlino (a coin of four asses or a little more), with two loaves. This promise therefore he now discharged, by the mere announcement of which he had a little before conciliated to himself the minds of all; and now indeed they extolled his munificence the more highly, the greater the number over which it was scattered, not only of those here present, but also of the sick, and of those ashamed to beg, to whom through the parish priests and religious men he had lavished a great sum of money in these few days, nay even of those held in prison, not a few of whom he had redeemed, the debts of the debtors too being wiped out; to say nothing of the churches and monasteries, which experienced his liberality by no means less. Thereupon, having entered the church, and having first refreshed himself with all his own with the most holy Eucharist, not without great edification of the beholders, when now all were present, he asks the most reverend Vicar not to defer to execute the resignation lately decreed by himself.

[115] Some masons therefore being ordered before all things to explore the wall, in the church of Colonna through which the first access to the relics was to be opened from the back part of the altar: which done, when the same men all affirmed on oath that no fracture appeared in it, nor had it ever been pierced through; and both the Minorite Fathers and certain elders of Trani testified the same by the religion of an oath; the most illustrious prelate of Vieste, clad in pontifical habit, began the sacred ceremonies with the hymn Veni, Creator Spiritus; after which he receives from the most reverend Vicar the mallet offered him, and strikes the wall, and then hands it to the masons, by whom, that former structure being thrown down, another inner access to the sacred deposit appeared, of three palms, obstructed by a stone of the same size. This being removed, by stairs let down there descended into the sacrary, with a chosen Franciscan priest of the monastery, Nicolò Maria Ferrante, canon and apostolic notary; who both, being about to take up the reliquary transparent with crystal and placed in the little altar under the spiracle mentioned above, found this carved on an applied marble: Here lies the body of St. Stephen Pope and Martyr, laid away A.D. 1160. Afterward found and replaced A.D. 1612. The ark then drawn out by them the Reverend Fathers, the Guardian of Colonna and the Prior of the Holy Cross the Dominican, being ready, receive, and, a supplication going before, bring it into the neighboring chapel of the most holy Crucifix.

[116] There presently the bishop after the hymn Te Deum laudamus, the relics of St. Stephen are consigned to him amid the redoubled murmurs of the bells and cannon of the city and citadel running their course, opened the chest, and, the bones being taken out thence, John Vincent Braico, most skilled in anatomy, standing by and marking each with its own names, transferred them into another, which the Count had prepared, excellently adorned. But it cannot be told, says the Relator, with how great joy all beheld that body so well preserved after so many centuries and so many translations: for although the bones cohered nowhere among themselves, and in great part, being crushed, had gone into dust; yet the greater part of the chief bones was seen almost whole. Besides these there were found in the same place four little flasks, stopped with lead; of which one was filled with fragments of bones, and, as many held, with the dust of the entrails; but three others with the blood of this Pontiff and Martyr. Finally at the bottom of the ark lay two leaden plates, authentically demonstrating the truth of these relics; the one six fingers long, the other five; and the former inscribed with these words: The body of St. Stephen Pope and martyr; but the latter with these: Of St. Stephen Pope and martyr, where by that S. many contended was signified the word "blood." All these things

(which compare, if you please, with the narration of Staffa above at num. 104) were transferred into the Count's reliquary; and soon before all the reliquary itself was not only closed and secured by keys driven in round it; but also bound with silk ribbons, on which nine seals were impressed; namely the royal, the archiepiscopal of Trani, the episcopal of Vieste, then that of the most illustrious governor of the province, of the Count of Elci, of the city of Trani, of the Vicar general of the archbishop, of the province of St. Nicholas of the Observant Minorites, and finally of the convent of Colonna.

[117] to be translated to Pisa; Then that same casket, enclosed in another wooden one, but decorated with sumptuous outer adornment, and especially with a cross, such as the Knights of St. Stephen have for their insignia, is consigned to the Count, as procurator of the great duke and supreme master of the Order, and likewise its perpetual conservator, an oath being at the same time exacted, whereby he should receive it, promising that he would translate it, thus shut up and sealed, first to Naples, and then to Pisa, there to be deposited and resigned in the conventual church of the same Order, dedicated in the name of this Saint. While meanwhile, on the spot where this whole matter was transacted, a legitimate instrument is drawn up by the apostolic notary whom we mentioned before, and confirmed by several seals; and now the most illustrious assembly prepares its departure; behold, the Count begins a new scene, by which he holds all uncertain and ignorant in suspense. He orders three arks to be brought by his men into the midst, and at the same time produces the letters of the great duke of Etruria, which they call credentials, and about which he had hitherto kept a deep silence; lest it might in a manner seem a bargain, that he had obtained, to the greater glory of St. Stephen, by the liberal benefit of those conferring it: for those letters directed what the Duke wished repaid, in this sacred business, to those who had deserved well of him.

[118] which benefit is repaid with benefits. These therefore being publicly recited, he hands to the monastery of Colonna a reliquary duly sealed, which according to the Pontifical inscription contained the body of St. Fortunatus the martyr, and indeed whole; as, the chest being unsealed by the Vicar of Trani, was found: he added also an urn, in which that reliquary could be placed, larger, notable in material and art: finally to the same Fathers, in place of alms, he holds out a bond of two thousand scudi for restoring the church and monastery, wherever there should be need. Then turning from the Minorites to the nobles, he produces from another ark two habits of the most illustrious Order of the Knights of St. Stephen Pope and Martyr, and as many pectoral medals, each glittering with seventy-five diamonds, which the great master of the Order had ordered to be conferred on men of known nobility, Domenico de Angelis and Antonio Posa, admitting both into his Order of his own motion; the former indeed as head and general syndic of the city of Trani, to which now wholly the Order was most bound; the latter, because his father Vincenzo Posa, a noble of Vieste (and the author of this Relation, as Sarnelli testifies in the Monuments of the Bishops of Vieste, page 93), had helped the Count of Elci beyond the rest, by his erudition, authority, favor, and counsels, to obtain the relics of the most holy Patron. Both admitting, as was fitting, the honors offered beyond hope, a solemn inauguration was appointed for the 17th day of July, on which, two days later, it was most augustly celebrated at Trani in the church of Sts. Paul and Agnes. Then at last, honoraria being drawn from the third ark and distributed among the rest who were present, the Count put an end to the solemnity.

[119] The Fathers of Colonna, moved by so great beneficence of the Count toward themselves and others, a part of the arm of St. Stephen is left to the people of Colonna. having conferred their counsels together, by an authentic notarial instrument, drawn up in the same year, on the 17th day of July, resolved to give him that reliquary in which they had kept the relics of St. Stephen up to that time, together with some particles of bones and dust remaining in it. This gift he indeed accepted; yet not for himself, but for him for whom he had procured the rest. The same men added that one thing still remained to them of the relics of the same Saint, but already long since separated from the rest in a peculiar reliquary, and wont to be exposed; namely a bone of the arm, nearly six fingers long; and that they did not deny that they owed this too to the great Duke by promise: but for the rest they besought that this one monument of a once richer treasure might be left them, with the good grace of the prince; for, lest so ancient a cult of the Saint there should perish, there was need of a notable part of his relics; this being retained, it would be lawful for them to celebrate his anniversary memory with a double Office; this omitted, not so. To petitions so equitable, to which the clergy and people of Trani too had subscribed, the Count most benignly assenting, after the 17th day of July, having saluted his friends, and repeated his most lavish alms to the churches, monasteries, and all the poor, departed (to speak briefly) with the same retinue and honor with which he had come; conducted as far as Barletta by the governor of the province, and much further by others of the nobility of Trani and Vieste.

[120] There is scarcely anything else in the oft-mentioned Relation which seems worth excerpting for our matter, Miracles except the miracles, of which it treats page 90; where they are said to have been among the people of Colonna so well known, so frequent, that all neither ought to have been written by the author of the Relation, nor indeed could have been comprised, except in a huge volume: and so only two are brought forward; but plainly singular ones, and which happened at this very time, namely on the day before the translation already described, in the very household or retinue of the Count of Elci. The first is thus: Domenico Radda of the Capitanata, a province of the kingdom of Naples, a Trojan by birth, and one of the four servants who had followed the Count, when on Tuesday the 14th of July in the morning he wished to outstrip in his course the carriage of the syndic, which he was following behind, stumbling with his foot, so fell down to the left of the carriage, that both wheels ran over both shins of the poor wretch. Those who were looking on and had heard him crying out the name of St. Stephen, believed him either dead, or without doubt maimed in both legs: when, behold, they at once see him rising, and pursuing his journey on foot, as though he had suffered nothing. Yet as an argument of the prodigy, where the wheels had pressed his shins, a livid swelling remained.

[121] The other happened to John Pircker, born at Graz in Styria, done at the same time. and a trumpeter of the royal cavalry among the Neapolitans, who himself too had followed the Count with a companion of the same craft. He, returning to Trani from Bari, whither he had made an excursion to venerate St. Nicholas, on the same 14th day of July in the evening, outside the gates of Vieste, incautiously plunged into a deep chasm and was submerged with his horse. His companions, struck by so sudden a misfortune, had scarcely invoked St. Stephen Pope and Martyr, when they marveled at the trumpeter standing at the edge of the precipice and unhurt. But neither was anything either dislocated or injured in the beast, drawn out thence no less happily a little after. By way of a make-weight it is subjoined that the matter was in no way unlike a miracle, that in that season of the year, than which none in those parts is reckoned more dangerous on account of the change of air, the Count had so prosperously accomplished so long a journey, and that too, on account of the infesting robbers, always undertaken by day; so that neither to himself, nor to any other of the retinue, had even the least inconvenience happened.

[122] The relics are brought to Naples, When he reached Naples, the Relation does not indicate; being composed and printed at Trani at that very time, nay hurried on, that its copies might be sent down to Naples to the Count, before the triremes had put in there, by which he was to be transported thence to Pisa; which seems to have happened about the 10th day of the month of October, on which the public relations, which they call Gazettes, of Brussels in the year 1682, in the Neapolitan article, had this: Three triremes of the great Duke of Tuscany, brought hither from Messina, took up the precious relics of the body of St. Stephen Pope and martyr, which the same Duke obtained, to be deposited in a certain church of the city of Pisa; after they had been translated hither from Trani two months ago. But those three triremes departed hence with a favoring breeze. Seventy Knights of the Order of St. Stephen had come hither, to receive the sacred body of their Patron.

[123] thence to Pisa, whither also the head of the Saint is brought from Siena. When the most longed-for treasure reached Pisa, it was at once conveyed to the church of St. Benedict, and there deposited until Low Sunday (Dominica in Albis) of the year 1683, when it was translated to the conventual church of the Knights, to which it had been destined from the beginning, as the most celebrated Antonio Magliabechi testifies in letters given in the same year, on the 5th day of October, to Papebroch, to which he had added also an accurate description of this most august translation, but too long to be inserted here. For the rest, whoever should read it would deny, I think, that anything more magnificent was ever seen in Etruria. Now, says Magliabechi in the cited letters, that sacred deposit is kept in the above-said church of the Knights under the high altar, in a crystal reliquary, sumptuously adorned with engraved and gilded work. The same finally closes that his epistle with these words: When the archbishop of Pisa instituted a recognition of the body before various witnesses, it was reckoned as a miracle, that at the very moment when the prelate wished to depart, the head of the Saint was brought, which had been sent hither from Siena. But whence the people of Siena had received it, neither does he say, nor do we find elsewhere. Then the birthday of this Pontiff and Martyr began to be celebrated with a double Office, approved at Rome in the year 1690, throughout the whole dominion of the great Duke. Of the Saint's chair, afterward translated also to the church of Pisa, we spoke §8, num. 79; nor does anything else remain, than that we bring forth the Acts themselves, of which we treated §6.

ACTS

From our vellum and very ancient codex Q. Ms. 6, collated with several other manuscripts and printed editions.

Stephen, Pope I and martyr, at Rome (S.)

BHL Number: 7845

FROM MANUSCRIPTS.

CHAPTER I.

St. Stephen, Valerian persecuting the Church, confirms his own people, and converts very many heathen to Christ.

In the times of Valerian and Gallienus many of the Christians, avoiding the savagery of the tyrants, hid themselves; The persecution being proclaimed, St. Stephen encourages his clergy, but others, offering themselves, obtained the palm of martyrdom. Now a law had been given, that whoever betrayed a hidden Christian should receive ^a his goods, and should ask for whatever honor of military service he wished ^b. Then blessed Stephen, Bishop of Rome, having gathered all his clergy, thus addresses them, saying: Brethren and my fellow-soldiers, you have heard the savage precepts of the devil published abroad, that if any Christian is detained by a pagan ^c, let him receive all his goods. You therefore, brethren, spurn earthly goods, that you may attain the heavenly kingdom. Fear not the princes of the world; but pray to the Lord God of heaven, and to Jesus Christ his Son, who is able to snatch us all from the hands of the enemies and from the savagery of the devil, and to associate us to his grace. The presbyter Bonus answered: We desire both to forsake earthly goods, and even to shed our blood for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ: if only we may deserve to attain his grace.

[2] And when both had spoken these things, all the clerics prostrated themselves at the feet of blessed Stephen, and ordains certain ones; baptizes very many, saying ^d that whatever pagan infants any one of them had in his own house, or in that of his neighbors, should be brought to blessed Stephen and baptized.

Blessed Stephen therefore ordered that on the next day all should gather in the crypt of Nepotianus ^e: and a little assembly being made in the same crypt, there were found of both sexes, men and women, to the number of one hundred and eight; whom on the same day he consecrated in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ with the mysteries of holy Baptism; and offered for their expiation the Sacrifice; and all partook ^f. But on the next day blessed Stephen the Bishop ordained there three presbyters, seven deacons, sixteen clerics: and sitting he taught them all concerning the kingdom of God and eternal life. Then many of the pagans began to run together, to hear his word, and were baptized by him.

[3] Meanwhile, while these things were being done, there came a certain tribune of the soldiers, and among these the tribune Nemesius, by name Nemesius, who had an only daughter, who from her very cradle indeed had her eyes open, but saw no light at all; he prostrated himself at the feet of blessed Stephen the Bishop, saying: I beseech thee, my lord Pope, baptize me and my daughter, that both she may be enlightened, and thou mayest rescue our souls from the everlasting darkness: for until now I have always been in afflictions on account of the blindness of my daughter. To whom blessed Stephen said: If thou shalt believe with thy whole heart, all things shall be ministered to thee believing. Nemesius said: I have hitherto believed with my whole heart, and I believe, that the Lord Jesus Christ himself is God; who also opened the eyes of the man born blind; and not unwilling * by the persuasion of men, but by his calling I have come to thy Holiness. And at once on the same day blessed Stephen, Bishop of the city of Rome, led him to the Title of the Pastor ^g. And when he had catechized him and his daughter according to the custom of the Christians, he enjoined a fast until evening. But the evening hour now approaching, he blessed the font in the above-written Title, and set Nemesius down in the water, saying: In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit I baptize thee ^h. Dost thou believe, he says, in God the Father almighty? And he answered: I believe. And in Christ, he says, Jesus our Lord? And he answered: I believe. The remission of sins? He answered: I believe. The resurrection of the flesh? Who answered: I believe, Lord.

[4] whose daughter Lucilla he frees from blindness. And while he was being lifted from the water, his daughter began to cry out: Behold, she says, I see a man, who touched my eyes, and a splendid light around him. Then he baptized his daughter too, by name Lucilla ⁱ; whom * he himself also lifted from the font. Many too began, prostrating ^k themselves at the feet of blessed Stephen the Bishop, to beg with tears that they might be baptized by him. And there were baptized on the same day on which Lucilla was enlightened, of both sexes, to the number of sixty-two ^l. And thenceforth many honorable men of the gentiles began, by the working of divine grace, to meet blessed Stephen, that they might be baptized by him. Blessed Stephen therefore, filled with the grace of the Holy Spirit, began to celebrate Masses and councils through the crypts of the Martyrs. Nemesius too, the father of Lucilla, he made a deacon ^m.

[5] The idol-madness of Maximus the consul is punished, Nemesius praying, Then Valerian, having learned that Nemesius the tribune with all his household had believed in Christ the Lord and had been baptized, and his daughter enlightened, her blindness driven away, reported it to Gallienus and Maximus the consuls ⁿ. And a counsel being entered upon, they decreed this, that, wherever Nemesius should be found, he should be punished without a hearing. But Nemesius, strengthened by the grace of Christ, went about the crypts and councils of the Martyrs, that, wherever he should find a needy Christian, he might minister from his goods, as he could and had. Now holy Nemesius, coming one day on the Appian Way in the silence of night near the temple of Mars ^o, found Valerian and Maximus in the temple of Mars sacrificing to demons according to their rite. Seeing this, holy Nemesius the deacon, on bended knees, prayed the Lord, saying: Lord God, creator of heaven and earth, scatter the counsels of the diabolical art in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, thy Son, whom thou hast sent into this world: crush Satan, that these unhappy men may come to their senses out of his snares, and forsake the hand-made idols, and acknowledge thee, God, creator, Father almighty, and Jesus Christ, thy Son. At once therefore Maximus is seized by a demon, and with a great voice began to cry out: Nemesius the Christian burns me; behold, his prayer afflicts me. At the same hour too, having gone out from the temple, they seized Nemesius. And while they held him and afflicted him with insults, suddenly Maximus the consul expired [p].

[6] But they, holding Nemesius, led him to Valerian into the palace of Claudius [q]. Who, presented to his sight, who, seized and having professed the faith, is thrust into prison, Valerian says to him: Nemesius, where is thy prudence, which we have always known strengthened both in counsel and in deeds? Do we not know what is better, and what is worse? Yet what is more useful for thee, we still exhort thee, that, the truth being known, thou forsake not the gods, whom thou hast always adored and worshipped from thy very cradle. Nemesius the deacon answered with tears, and said: I indeed, unhappy and a sinner, have always forsaken the truth and shed innocent blood; and now, too much burdened and heaped with sins, having obtained the mercy of Christ, the Son of God, I have now known my Creator, though with a late repentance, the God of heaven and earth, and Jesus Christ, his Son, by whose Baptism I am redeemed; who opened the eyes of my daughter, which no physician could ever do; who also enlightened the eyes of our hearts, that, spurning the superstition of the blindness of idolatry, we might be converted to the true light of Christianity. Him I fear; him I adore; to him I offer the worship of my servitude; and him and his help I always seek: for I cast away all the idols of stone and bronze made by hand, which I have known to be demons, who desire to destroy us and to damn us with them in eternal death. Valerian said: I have known thy incantations, by which thou hast also perpetrated murders; and how to * kill Maximus the consul of liberty by thy magic arts; and against our welfare and the commonwealth thou strivest to exert thyself through the rite of the Christians. Then Valerian, angered, ordered him to be committed to a private custody.

[7] Sending also he had Symphronius * presented to him, as also Lucilla, and Symphronius his steward, his trustee [r], inquiring of him the goods of Nemesius. But his daughter Lucilla he had assigned to the custody of a certain sacrilegious woman, by name Maxima. But on the next day [s] Valerian ordered Symphronius to be delivered to a certain Olympius the tribune, and to be examined under the trial of tortures. When he had entered, Olympius said: Hast thou known concerning what matter thou art presented to us? But Symphronius kept silence a while. Olympius says to him: Hear me, Symphronius, and do what the princes command: for if thou do it not, thou shalt perish by various punishments. Deliver to us in full the goods of Nemesius, and sacrifice to the gods, and live happily. Symphronius answered: If thou seekest all the goods of Nemesius, my lord, I have already delivered them for Christ; since they were his, and shall be: but if thou compel me to offer sacrifice; I sacrifice, but to Christ Jesus, my Lord, a sacrifice of praise and confession, to whom my lord Nemesius too offered himself.

[8] Then Olympius, filled with anger, Stretch him out, he says, on the rack, at whose prayers an idol melts down, and beat him with cudgels: bring before him the tripod and the god Mars: let him either sacrifice libations to the gods, or be beaten with cudgels the longer. Now there was brought a golden image of Mars, and set before Symphronius together with the tripod. And when Symphronius had seen the image, he said: The Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of the living God, shall crush thee. And at once the image was so melted, like mud [t]. But Olympius, seeing it, stupefied began to marvel; and ordered him to be received into custody in his house, saying: This night I will spend all torments upon thee. And he gave him in his house to Tertullinus the steward (vicedominus). But coming to his wife Exuperia, he told her how in the name of Christ, his God, the image of Mars had been dissolved. Then Exuperia, his wife, says to him: If so great is the virtue of Christ, which thou tellest, it is better for us to forsake the gods, who can help neither themselves nor us *. Let us seek him who enlightened the daughter of Nemesius the tribune. Then Olympius says to Tertullinus: I beseech thee, that Symphronius be with thee secretly with great honor; since I have many treasures to require of him.

[9] and Olympius the tribune is converted, with his wife and son, For on the same night Olympius, coming with his wife Exuperia, and his only son, by name Theodolus *, prostrated themselves at his feet, saying: We now have known the virtue of Christ, that he himself is the true God, the Son of God, who opened the eyes of the daughter of Nemesius the tribune: we ask thee, that thou deign to give us the Baptism of salvation in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, whom thou preachest [u]. Symphronius said: If thou shalt do penance with thy whole heart for the blood of the Saints which thou hast shed, and if thou shalt believe with thy whole heart with thy wife and thy son, all things shall be given to those who believe. Olympius said: Now thou knowest that I believe with my whole heart in the God whom thou preachest. And at once he opened his chamber, where he had the effigies of divers images, golden, silver, and stone; and said to Symphronius: Behold, they are in thy power: do thou whatever thou shalt command of them. Symphronius said to him: Break all these idols with thy own hand; the golden and silver too melt down in the fire, and lay them out for the needs of the poor; and then I know that thou believest with thy whole heart. Olympius did as had been commanded him; and broke the marble idols with hammers, but the golden and silver he had melted down by fire. And while these things were being done in the house, and the idols were being broken, a voice was heard: My Spirit rests in thee, Symphronius.

[10] Olympius, hearing this with his wife, began to be strengthened by exceeding fear, baptized by St. Stephen. and more and more to glow in the warmth of faith, and to hasten to receive as quickly as possible the mysteries of Baptism; and they suppliantly asked Symphronius to urge on with no sluggishness that this be done. Symphronius therefore announced it to Nemesius his lord: Nemesius too, hastening the more alacriously, went * to holy Stephen, and laid open everything in order. Blessed Stephen, hearing this, gave thanks to God the Father almighty, and to Christ Jesus, his Son; and went by night to the house of Olympius; and Symphronius cast himself at the feet of blessed Stephen, saying: Olympius has begged, together with his wife and son, the sacrament of Baptism: and he showed the idols all broken. Blessed Stephen the Bishop, seeing this, said: We give thanks to thee, Lord Jesus Christ, who hast deigned to grant mercy to thy servants, that thou mightest rescue them from the errors of the demons, [which they had devised in the worship of idols,

which they had devised in the worship of idols], and to gather these like wheat into thy barn. Then he catechized them in the ecclesiastical tradition, and baptized as many as believed in the house of Olympius, but also Olympius himself with his wife Exuperia and his son Theodolus; and offered for them the Sacrifice to God the Father and to Jesus Christ, his Son, for their redemption.

NOTES.

p. Suddenly Maximus the consul expired. This too Ado read in the same place. The title of consul can be explained by the preceding note; or, if you prefer, say that Maximus is called consul by anticipation, because he had before been twice consul; so that he be thus distinguished from very many others, to whom the name Maximus was common among the Romans. Tillemont, taught by the heterodox Pearson to accuse prodigies, disparages this too among others after him. To me it seems neither so unusual that for that cause it cannot easily be believed; nor so necessary that on account of it the substance of the Acts ought to be impugned. That they would have this Maximus to be the same who in the Acts of St. Cyprian is called Galerius Maximus, and as proconsul in Africa in the year 258 condemned St. Cyprian to death; that they do not prove. And so here Tillemont argues badly according to his own principle on this matter, set down in the history of the emperor Valerian at the year 256.

q. The house of Claudius was together with the temple on the Caelian hill, which, begun by Agrippina, Vespasian finished. So Baronius here, from Suetonius.

r. He calls him "creditarius," one to whom the care of all the goods was entrusted. Baronius here. Consult also Du Cange.

s. But on the next day, namely after St. Nemesius was seized with his daughter. Refer hither what follows, chapter 2, num. 11: It came to pass therefore after the third day.

t. This too Ado has at the day 4 December. It does not therefore savor of the style of Metaphrastes, as Tillemont emphatically asserts; since Metaphrastes is younger than Ado. But it is strange, and less obvious in sincere Acts. Be it so. Is it therefore false? Even in Acts which are certainly sincere, if not this, certainly other miracles are not rarely recited; as may be observed both in our work, and in Ruinart everywhere. For the rest, neither does this necessarily pertain to the substance of the narrated martyrdom; but only the conversion of Olympius and his family, somehow promoted through Symphronius.

u. What follows down to num. 10 is not read in Ado; nor does it appear why it cannot be absent.

x. And yet Nemesius, according to num. 6, was not free, but committed to a private custody. I should prefer therefore to read here simply with Ado: Blessed Stephen the Pontiff, therefore, being summoned, came by night to the house of Olympius, and baptized him after catechizing, etc.

other codices: invitatus* (invited).

al. quam*.

al. quo praesentato*.

rather quae*.

perhaps ut &*.

Baronius, Metaphrastes: Sempronium*.

al. adesse*.

al. Theodulo*.

CHAPTER II.

The martyrdoms of St. Stephen the Pope and of his disciples.

It came to pass therefore after the third day ^a, that Valerian and Gallienus, hearing all these deeds done, were kindled with exceeding fury, The martyrdom of Nemesius and Lucilla; and the charity of St. Stephen. saying: The worship of the gods is taken away because of the superstition of the Christians: and they sent and seized Nemesius the deacon with his daughter Lucilla; whom at once without a hearing they had punished: for Lucilla, the daughter of Nemesius, before her father's beheading he had cut down by the sword on the Appian Way before the temple of Mars. Whence I judge that he did this by a diabolical counsel, that the father, perhaps seeing a cruel death inflicted on his daughter, might believe he was giving his consent to it. But the father, whose secrets the Holy Spirit already possessed, beholds the precious death of his daughter, which for the name of Christ Jesus she willingly underwent; and he went forth to the heavenly homeland. But Nemesius the deacon himself they ordered to be beheaded between the Appian and Latin Ways on the eighth day of the Kalends of August ^b: whose body blessed Stephen the Bishop gathered, and buried near the place where he was beheaded, on the Latin Way not far from the City.

[12] But on another day Valerian ordered Symphronius to be presented to him in a public hearing; Symphronius, Olympius with his wife and son are set before the tyrants, and soldiers being sent, they brought him laden with iron chains, and naked, and haltered ^c, and Olympius with his wife Exuperia and their son Theodolus; and they were led into the place of Tellus ^d: and Valerian and Gallienus sat in their tribunals in the above-written place. Now the Saints of God were brought in by the voice of a herald into their sight: to whom Valerian said in these words: Why do you not take counsel for your own selves, and adore the gods, whom we have known to govern the commonwealth and our welfare? Symphronius answered: Christ has governed us until now, who has deigned to lead us to this glory. But Gallienus said to Olympius: Olympius, I still indeed defer to inflict the punishments of penalties: but I am not doubtful of thy conscience, that thou forsakest the gods whom thou hast always adored; nay, thou didst compel others too to adore them: for thou didst persecute even unto the shedding of blood, afflicting with many torments, whoever would not give consent to sacrifice to our gods. Olympius answered: And I indeed did it not as Olympius, but as an impious and cruel man: for which committed evils I repent and pour out tears of bitterness in the sight of him whom I believe, the true and living God, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, that he may deign to remit to me the iniquity which I wrought in the blood of his Saints, which I caused to be shed in my unbelief.

[13] But Gallienus, filled with anger, addresses Valerian: then slain by flames, they are buried by St. Stephen. If these, he says, be not destroyed, all the city of Rome will run to their sect. Valerian therefore ordered at once that the Saints be consumed by fire ^e: and, sentence being given, they were led before the statue of the sun near the amphitheater; and stakes being fixed, their hands bound, they fastened them; and fire

being placed under with a heap of twigs and thorns, and ship's tow, they had them consumed by burning. Blessed Symphronius too together with holy Olympius and his wife Exuperia and Theodolus his son, at the very beginning of the fire cried out, saying: Glory to thee, Lord Jesus Christ, who hast deigned to gather us with thy holy servants and Martyrs. And saying this, they all gave up the spirit. But their bodies were left after the triumph before the image of the sun near the amphitheater; but the soldiers departed. And the same night holy Stephen the Bishop coming with clerics, and religious hymns being rendered according to custom, they took away their bodies and buried them near the Latin Way at the first milestone ^f, on the seventh of the Kalends of August ^g, Valerian the third and Gallienus the second being consuls ^h.

[14] The 12 Clerics of St. Stephen accomplish martyrdom. After many days too ⁱ it came to pass that Valerian and Gallienus, most abominable persecutors of the Christian name, sought with the utmost zeal blessed Stephen, Bishop of the city of Rome; that they might afflict him, or his clerics being seized, with various penalties, and hand them over to the destruction of death: and they set up an edict ^k in the most frequented places of the city, and with a herald's voice resounding, that whoever should know Stephen or his clerics to be lurking in hiding-places, should at once divulge it to the impious ears *, and should receive all his goods. Whence it came to pass that of his clerics they found twelve, whose names we indicate: Bonus, Faustus, Maurus, Primitivus, Calumniosus, John, Exuperantius, Cyril, and Honoratus ^l: whom at once without a hearing they ordered to be beheaded ^m. Who were beheaded on the Latin Way beside the channel of the aqueduct ⁿ. Whose bodies Tertullinus gathered, though still a gentile; and placed beside the bodies of the holy Jovinus and Basileus, on the Latin Way ^o, on the same day, the Kalends of August [p].

[15] Tertullinus, converted by St. Stephen and ordained presbyter, Hearing this, Stephen the Bishop sent and called Tertullinus; whom, teaching with many exhortations of the Christian religion, and imbuing him concerning the kingdom of God and eternal life, he completed the grace of holy Baptism according to custom; and, set in white garments, consecrated him presbyter [q]: to whom also among other holy admonitions holy Stephen especially commended this: Brother, he says, let it be thy care to seek out the various bodies of the holy Martyrs. Who two days after his ordination was seized by a certain prefect Marcus [r], and led to Valerian. And Valerian says to him: Delay not to betray the goods of Olympius, thy lord. To whom Tertullinus thus answered: If thou seekest the goods of my lord, thou shalt be able to live [s], which he, dying for Christ, received unto eternity; if only thou believe in Christ the Lord, and deny the idols of demons. Valerian said: Then the goods of thy lord bestow eternal life? Tertullinus answered: Eternal life and a perennial kingdom bestows Christ the Lord God, who has power of death and life. Valerian says: This man seems to me made mad. Let him be stretched out, he says, and beaten with cudgels the longer. And when he was impiously being cut, Tertullinus cried out: I give thanks to thee, Lord Jesus Christ, who hast not separated me from my lord Olympius, thy servant, who preceded me, his martyrdom accomplished. And when amid the blows he said this, he ordered fire to be placed to his sides. To whom it was said by the impious: Tertullinus, sacrilegious man, restore the goods of thy lord Olympius. But Tertullinus, steadfast, joyful in face, said: Do, wretch, what thou doest, more quickly; that thou mayest offer me from this fire, though a sinner, yet for his name, a sacrifice to Christ.

[16] then seized, and often tortured, Valerian therefore ordered him to be lifted up, and handed to the prefect Sapricius, saying: Diligently inquire of him the goods of Olympius, his lord, and compel him to offer libations to the gods. But if he do it not at all, kill him with various penalties. At once the prefect Sapricius had a tribunal prepared for himself in the place which is called the Private prison of Mamertinus [t]; and ordered him to be brought in, a herald's voice going before: Let Tertullinus, he says, the accused and sacrilegious man, be brought in. And when he had been brought in before the tribunal of the prefect, the prefect says to him: Declare thy name. Tertullinus answered: A sinner, the servant of the servants of Christ. The prefect said: Art thou a slave, or freeborn? Tertullinus said: So has the devil filled your heart, that you do not understand a man speaking. I told you: I am the servant of the servants of Christ [u]. Sapricius said: Know now what is commanded thee, and do it without delay; and thou shalt live; that is, sacrifice to the gods, and restore the goods of Olympius: but if otherwise, in the torments of penalties, in thy evils thou shalt fail. Blessed Tertullinus answered: If thou knewest eternal life, thou wouldst not think of the present life, which with the worshippers of demons shall be assigned to eternal fire. Then he ordered his mouth to be shattered with stones. Tertullinus therefore, giving thanks to God, said to the prefect: Thou hast had my mouth crushed: my Lord Jesus Christ, whom I confess, shall crush thee, and the devil, the deviser and inventor of the servitude of idolatry *. Sapricius said: Why dost thou draw out spaces of delay? Delay not to declare the goods of thy lord Olympius, and sacrifice to the gods, lest thou consummate thy life by the beheading of thy head. Tertullinus answered: I, strengthened in the Lord Jesus Christ, in whom I have believed, desire this, that I may be able to lose this present life, and find that eternal one, of which there is no end.

[17] Then Sapricius, angered, ordered him to be stretched on the rack, after a notable martyrdom he is buried by the same Pontiff. and to be twisted the longer by the cords. Amid these torments Tertullinus said: Lord Jesus Christ, forsake not thy servant confessing thee; but grant me fortitude, believing thee the Son of God the Father, that persevering I may resign to thee this soul, which thou hast redeemed from the darkness of ignorance and from the worship of idols, and which by thy grace and Baptism is cleansed. Then Sapricius ordered him to be burned with fires. But he, strengthened by the grace of the Holy Spirit, incessantly by mouth and heart begged the help of the Lord Jesus Christ. But while he hung on the rack, Sapricius, the officer [x] suggesting it, sent word to Valerian the tyrant, that Tertullinus was full of madness, and was softened neither by torments nor by admonitions, to sacrifice to the gods, or betray the goods of Olympius, his lord. Valerian, angered, orders that, sentence being given, his head be cut off. Who, taken down from the rack, was led on the Latin Way, at the second milestone, and there was beheaded. Whose body holy Stephen, gathering with clerics, and hymns being rendered to God, buried in the same place in the sandy Crypt [y] on the day before the Kalends of August [z].

[18] For on another day [aa] Valerian sent a multitude of soldiers, St. Stephen himself is set before Valerian: and they seized blessed Stephen the Bishop with a multitude of clerics, that is, of presbyters and deacons. Who when he had been brought, very many of the Christians followed from afar with tears. Stephen the Bishop coming therefore, it was ordered that he alone should enter before the tribunal of the tyrant. To whom Valerian thus says: Art thou Stephen, who triest to overthrow the commonwealth and by evil persuasions and exhortations persuadest the people to withdraw from the worship of the gods? Blessed Stephen said: I indeed do not overthrow the commonwealth; but I admonish and exhort, that, the demons who are adored in idols being forsaken, they return to the living and true God, creator of heaven and earth, and know that Christ Jesus the Son of God is God, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit alone is everlasting; that they perish not with the devil in everlasting destruction.

[19] and by the fall of the temple of Mars, being set free, Valerian said: Now indeed thou shalt be handed to perdition, that others fearing may be able to live unharmed. And he ordered him to be led to the temple of Mars, and there, sentence being given, to be beheaded, if he would not consent to adore the image of the abominable Mars. Then blessed Stephen, led by the soldiers outside the walls of the Appian gate to the temple of Mars, lifting his eyes to heaven, before all said: Lord God, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who didst destroy the tower of confusion in Babylon [bb], destroy now this place too, where by diabolical superstition through the worship of idols the souls of the peoples perish. And at once there came a huge crash of thunder with the terrors of lightnings; and the greatest part of the sacrilegious temple fell [cc]. Seeing which, the soldiers, terrified, fled; and dismissed blessed Stephen with all the Christians who had gone with him.

[20] while he fortified his people with prayer and Sacrifice, But at the same hour blessed Stephen the Bishop goes with all the Christians to the cemetery of St. Lucina [dd] and with many consolations addresses all who had set out with him, that by no terrors they should dread the penalties of the adversary; or lest perhaps by any promises of the tyrants they should forsake the crown of martyrdom prepared, saying: We ought to be mindful that our Lord Jesus Christ said: Fear not those who kill the body, but cannot kill the soul; but rather fear him who has power to send both body and soul into gehenna. With these and such exhortations, as a good shepherd, he ministered pastures to his sheep purchased by the blood of Christ. After this he offered the Sacrifice to God almighty.

[21] Valerian therefore, hearing what had been done, and about the overthrow of the temple, by the soldiers coming upon him he is beheaded. and because there was a very great multitude of Christians with Stephen, many were sent to the former soldiers; who coming found blessed Stephen the Bishop offering the Sacrifice to the Lord. And he, intrepid and steadfast, before the solemnities of the altar and completing what he had continually begun, in the same place was thus beheaded in his own chair [ee] on the fourth day of the Nones of August. But there was made in the same place a very great lamentation of the Christians, who sent such a Pastor with the glory of martyrdom before them to the heavenly kingdoms. Whose body they buried in the same crypt with the very chair, where his blood standing by was shed, in the place which is called today [ff] the Cemetery of Callistus, where he rests in peace.

[22] The martyrdom of St. Tarsicius the acolyte, illustrious by a miracle. For on another day [gg] the soldiers of the pagans found an acolyte, by name Tarsicius, carrying the sacraments of the Body of Christ; whom the pagans, seizing and examining *, that he might indicate what he was carrying. But he, judging it unworthy to betray pearls to swine, in no way would betray the most sacred Mysteries. Whom they beat with cudgels and stones so long, until he breathed out his spirit: and his lifeless body being rolled over, the sacrilegious examiners could find nothing in his hands and garments; and leaving his body, they fled in terror. But coming to the Appian gates, they found a copious multitude of Christians; and coming to Valerian, they made everything known, and whatever had been done they lay open in order. For on the same day the Christians gathered the holy body of Tarsicius, and buried it in the cemetery of Callistus, on the Appian Way: and the church of the Christians being united, they ordained in the place of blessed Stephen the Bishop and martyr, Sixtus the Bishop, on the ninth of the Kalends of September [hh], Valerian the third and Gallienus the second being consuls [ii], but with us our Lord Jesus Christ reigning, to whom is honor and glory for ever and ever. Amen.

NOTES.

p. On the same day, the Kalends of August. The Windberg manuscript has, The same Kalends of August. This is the knot which we proposed to loose in the Commentary §6, num. 62. Our codices P. Ms. 19 and P. Ms. 20 have, on the 6th of the Kalends of August; and certain not very old Martyrologies agree, as was said in tom. 1 of March, page 128, num. 1. But these do not remove the difficulties of this place; as will be clear to one considering.

q. Consult the Commentary §6, num. 63; where we said that this ordination can be understood with difficulty; unless perhaps this Tertullinus was some other than Tertullinus, the steward of Olympius.

r. Here you have Marcus the prefect, and a little further Sapricius; yet neither was in this year 257 prefect of the City (for that was Junius Donatus, according to the Bucherian catalogue;) but perhaps his vicars: and that several such were at the same time in the City, and indeed called prefects, St. Cyprian teaches in epistle 82 to Successus, given in the year 258, in these words: On this persecution the prefects in the City press daily; so that if any be presented to them, etc.

s. Thou shalt be able to live. Our codex P. Ms. 155 perhaps has more rightly, Thou shalt be able to see.

t. The Mamertine prison, I think, of which enough has been said in the Acts of Sts. Peter and Paul the Apostles, tom. 5 of June, page 433.

u. See the Commentary §6, num. 64, and Observe, that many episodes here are cut out not only by Baronius; but also by Ado on the day 4 August; which yet are read in all the manuscript codices now.

x. Officio, that is, the minister of the judge. See Du Cange.

y. In the same place, etc. That is, in the cemetery in which the same St. Tertullinus had laid away the Cleric Martyrs of St. Stephen; according to Aringhi, book 4, chapter 5.

z. On the day before the Kalends of August. So some codices with Metaphrastes. Other codices and Ado: on the second of the Kalends of August; which means exactly the same. Our codex P. Ms. 6 has, On the third of the Kalends of August; on which day he is referred in certain Martyrologies, as was there said in the Passed Over. Alone, so far as I know, Baronius writes, On the Kalends of August. Yet he is venerated in Ado and others on 4 August.

aa. On another day. Baronius, On the following day; Metaphrastes, On the next day. It seems therefore that St. Stephen was seized the day before he was beheaded. If however this place is not interpolated and intruded.

bb. Didst destroy. This a certain heterodox modern carps at, as contrary to the Sacred writings; but why can he not be said to have destroyed a work, who so forced the architects to desist from it already begun, that it could never be advanced?

cc. The greatest part of the temple fell. This too appears fabulous to the modern critics, and the less credible indeed, because in the Acts of St. Sixtus the second, Pope and martyr, in the following year the same is read to have happened in the same temple in nearly the same manner. But neither does this prodigy pertain to the substance of this martyrdom; nor the sentence given a little before, nor the seizure, nor the public leading of Stephen either to the shrine of Mars, or to the place of execution. It is enough for us, if he be believed to have been seized at the altar, beheaded by the raging heathen together

with the ministers assisting him, in nearly the same manner, though not by the same punishment, in which St. Tarsicius is said below to have died.

dd. The cemetery of St. Lucina; which presently received its name from St. Callistus the first. This most famous cemetery, situated at the second milestone from the City on the Appian Way, Aringhi illustrates more fully, book 3, chapter 11.

ee. He was beheaded. This kind of his martyrdom too Tillemont thinks most difficult to believe, note 3 on St. Stephen; but by those arguments which we refuted in the Commentary §1, num. 5 and following. Nor does it matter that some more recent writers, whether to overthrow the punishments described in these Acts of Stephen or of the Martyrs preceding, deny that the edicts of Valerian were so severe in this year: for granted they were milder in the provinces; yet at Rome, on account of the singular dexterity and zeal of the most holy Pontiff in propagating the religion of Christ, the persecution seems even to Tillemont himself to have begun both earlier and more cruelly, even without general edicts, in the Persecution of Valerian article 1, and elsewhere. Nay that not even in the provinces themselves was the moderation of the governors toward the Christians everywhere the same in the year of Christ 257, St. Cyprian luminously teaches in the epistle given in the same year, according to Pearson, to the Confessors set in the mine.

ff. Today. From this word Schelstrate rightly gathers that these Acts were composed after the age of which they treat. The codices P. Ms. 19 and P. Ms. 20 have, "even today." Baronius, against our manuscripts and Ado, expressed neither.

gg. For on another day; other codices, But on another day: which seems to signify, as above more than once, the following day, say the third of August: although the feast of St. Tarsicius M. is celebrated on the 15th day of the same month. Metaphrastes reads, on the same day; but against our Latin exemplars. I noted, moreover, in the Commentary §6, num. 65, that Pope St. Damasus made mention of this history.

hh. On the ninth of the Kalends of September. What follows pertains to designating the year of the same ordination, except in the Windberg manuscript, in which to the words already cited these are subjoined: But blessed Stephen, Bishop of the city of Rome, was martyred, Valerian the third and Gallienus the second being consuls, on the fourth day of the Nones of August, our Lord reigning, etc. To this nearly agrees the Roman codex cited by Schelstrate, Ecclesiastical Antiquity, tom. 1, dissert. 2, chapter 7, num. 4. For the rest, of St. Sixtus, the successor of St. Stephen, it will be treated on the day 6 August.

ii. Valerian the third and Gallienus the second being consuls. So all our manuscripts with the edition of Mombritius. Schelstrate, in the place just cited, reports two Vatican codices, of which the one has, Under Valerian and Gallienus consuls, the number of the consulship being omitted; but the other, Valerian for the fourth time and Gallienus for the second, being consuls. These faults we have already shown to be everywhere at hand. And so here too, and above, num. 13 at the end, it should be read: Valerian IV and Gallienus III being consuls; both because after the consulship of Valerian the third and Gallienus the second, Maximus was made consul, who according to these Acts must be said to have perished before the martyrdom of St. Nemesius; and because it seems certain from the epistle of Firmilian that Stephen lived in the year of Christ 256 now growing old; and so long after the consulship of Valerian III and Gallienus II, which corresponds to the year of Christ 255.

al. imperatoris*.

al. saevientis*.

al. autem*.

al. tenuerunt, discutientes*.