ON ST. AGABIUS, BISHOP AND CONFESSOR.
At Verona in Italy.
CommentaryAgabius, Bishop and Confessor, at Verona (St.)
BY THE AUTHOR J. B. S.
[1] Where the deeds of St. Proculus, bishop of Verona, were illustrated on the XXIII of March, volume III, page 450, He was the 3rd bishop of Verona. and then those of St. Alexander at the day IV of June, volume 1, page 399, there were set forth concerning Verona itself and its first bishops all those things which would otherwise have to be premised here in full: from which, among other things, it is given to understand whence the first prelates of that city, previously unknown to all the Classic Martyrologies, obtained a place in the present-day Roman Martyrology — namely through the procurement of the celebrated bishop, afterward Cardinal, Augustine Valerio; so that we may here assume that enough has already been said there. Among them, third in order, is St. Agabius, or Agapius, concerning whose deeds or certain date Panvinius roundly declares that nothing is established today; nor does the praised Valerio deny it, when among his bishops of Verona he composes this brief eulogy for him, page 37: Agabius, bishop of Verona, was a man outstanding in piety toward God and in mildness of manners. Of all the virtues, especially of faith and of liberality toward the poor, he left an example to all the bishops who came after him. He died on the day before the Nones of August; he was buried in the crypt of the basilica of St. Proculus, beneath an altar erected in his honor. These few things Valerio.
[2] Baptista Peretti, in a brief Italian history of the Lives of the four first bishops of Verona, The rest Peretti invented. appended to Valerio's work, while indulging perhaps too much in ornament, invents other things, from where he could have drawn which no one skilled in history will understand. He feigns, namely, one Irenæus, I know not who, bishop of Jerusalem, and indeed a writer of ecclesiastical history, who in a pretended history is supposed to have handed down that this St. Agabius of Verona had earlier been bishop of Cæsarea in Palestine, where, after many labors endured, he substituted Pamphilus for himself, and thus, that first see of his being deserted, having landed in Italy and in the parts about Verona, he was designated third successor in that church to St. Cricinus the second prelate; and the consequences that follow thence; of which you will find not even a shadow in Panvinius, Valerio, or the other illustrators of Veronese matters; so that accordingly one must simply adhere to Valerio's eulogy; to which Ughelli found nothing of any great moment to add, when he asserted that the faith once planted was most diligently cultivated by him, and says that he suffered much from the tyrants of the Christian name. By all is reported this inscription of his tomb:
Sacred to Agabius, who succeeded third in the pontificate.
[3] Other things are not available which can here be handed down by us concerning St. Agabius, besides those alone which pertain to the discovery of his sacred body, The discovery of the sacred body is noted, of which all the cited writers speak, however much Ughelli dissents from the rest in the year in which the matter took place, who substitutes another for the year 1492, doubtless by a printer's error. In vain would that history be here described, which on the occasion of St. Proculus was long ago given entire in the Acts at the said day XXIII of March, page 453, where at number 14 these things are found which pertain more closely to St. Agabius: Afterward, when in that chest which had first been uncovered toward the North no indication appeared of a human body laid within it, and the chest itself seemed to the bishop not even to equal the due measure of such a body; they nevertheless removed the huge stone by which it was covered, and all the bones of the already consumed body were found beneath it, as whole as if they had been recently brought there; and on the chest itself these letters appeared carved: Here rests in peace the holy bishop Agabius. Concerning the same discovery of the four first bishops Valerio recounts several things here and there, but which come plainly to the same thing.
[4] and the piety of the Veronese toward him. Valerio reports another inscription in the church of St. Proculus, where the sacred bodies are honored, set up in the year 1502, in which St. Agabius is recorded in his own place and order, so that everything concerning his present-day cult is beyond doubt. Nor would I here pass over another monument of the constant piety and veneration of the Veronese toward their four first prelates, namely a deprecatory prayer, by which all together are invoked under this formula: Almighty everlasting God, who through the beginning of the salutary preaching of blessed Euprepius, Cricinus, Agapius and Proculus, your confessors and pontiffs, deigned that we your servants should come to the knowledge of your name, grant to your suppliants that we may be aided before you by the prayers and merits of those by whose instruction, healed of old, we deserved to have the first beginnings of the Catholic faith. Through our Lord. Amen.