ON ST. TERTULLINUS, PRIEST AND MARTYR,
AT ROME,
In the Year 257.
HISTORICAL COMMENTARY.
Tertullinus, Priest and Martyr, at Rome (St.)
BY THE AUTHOR P. B.
The Acts of St. Tertullinus, priest and martyr, are to be sought from the Acts of St. Stephen, Pope I and martyr, The Acts; the year, month, and day of his martyrdom. which we gave on the 2nd day of this month, illustrated as far as we could. See therefore what is narrated there concerning this Tertullinus, chapter 1, number 8, and chapter 2, numbers 14, 15, 16, and 17; but set before them what we discussed in the same place in the Preliminary Commentary throughout the whole sixth paragraph, and especially numbers 62, 63, and 64. The same year brought him the palm of martyrdom as St. Stephen; by whom he is said to have been buried in the Sandy Crypt on the day before the Kalends of August, that is, three days before the most holy Pontiff, his head cut off, should follow his holy disciple; so at least assert the ancient copies of the Acts of St. Stephen, Pope and Martyr, as many as we have inspected — unless you except our single codex, which relates that Tertullinus was buried on the third of the Kalends of August; which reading one or two Martyrologists have followed, as was observed in the Passed-over for the day XXX of July; whereas Ado and several others, concerning whom [see] the Passed-over at the day XXXI of July, have embraced our reading. But that St. Stephen died in the year of Christ 257, on the 2nd day of August, we have proved in its own place. It remains here that some things be added concerning the cult and relics of St. Tertullinus.
[2] Although certain Martyrologies, as we have just intimated, announce our Saint on that day His cult is on this day, though he died on another: on which he is related to have been buried, the usage of the Roman Church, which is preserved even today in the reformed Martyrology, deferring his celebration to the fourth day of the month of August, is most ancient; as is plain from the Old Roman Martyrology in our Rosweyde, where he is announced in these words: On the II of the Nones (of August), in the Sandy Crypt, of Tertullinus, martyr, at Rome; likewise from Ado, who at the same day has thus: Likewise at Rome, in the Sandy crypt, the birthday of Tertullinus the martyr, whom the blessed Pontiff Stephen baptized, and consecrated priest while still in his white baptismal robes: to whom among other admonitions he especially commended this: Brother, he said, let it be your care to seek out the bodies of the various holy Martyrs. He, two days after his ordination, being seized by Marcus the prefect, was led out to the emperor Valerian. Him that man ordered to be stretched out and beaten with cudgels. And when he was being impiously struck, he cried out: I give you thanks, Lord Jesus Christ, who have not separated me from my lord Olympius, your servant, who has gone before me, his martyrdom being consummated. And when he said this amid the blows, Valerian ordered fire to be applied to his sides. And when he persevered joyful and constant, and said: Do more quickly, wretch, what you do, that you may offer me from this burning as a sacrifice to Christ, sinner though I be, yet for his name; Valerian ordered him to be lifted up, and handed over to the prefect Sapricius. He first ordered his mouth to be battered with stones, then that he be stretched on the rack, and long tortured with sinews, then be burned with fires. And when, perseveringly strengthened by the grace of the Holy Spirit, he confessed Christ the Lord, he reported this deed to the tyrant Valerian. To whom Valerian sent back word that, sentence being given, his head should be cut off. Then Sapricius, taking him down from the rack, ordered him to be led along the Latin Way to the second milestone, and there to be beheaded. Whose body St. Stephen the Pontiff, gathering it up with his clerics, and hymns being rendered to God, buried in the same place, in the Sandy Crypt, on the second of the Kalends of August. Where a solemn concourse takes place on the 2nd of the Nones of August. On the same day he is reported by Usuard, Notker, and by more recent writers generally.
[3] perhaps on account of some translation once carried out on this day. Nor indeed is it easy to assign the cause of this transferred feast: unless perhaps there was once made on that day some translation of his body before the times of the Little Roman Martyrology; of which, however, no one makes mention. Panvinius gives occasion for suspecting this, in his little book on the Seven churches of the City, page 94, when he asserts that the body of St. Tertullinus, priest and martyr, was once in the cemetery of Callistus; that is, before Pope St. Paschal I translated it, with very many others, in the year of Christ 817, in the month of July, on the day XX, in the Xth Indiction, to the basilica of St. Praxedes; as the same author teaches on page 259 and the following. Yet Aringhi opposes this opinion in his Subterranean Rome, book 4, chapter 5, affirming that the bodies of our St. Tertullinus and of some other Martyrs were translated by Paschal from St. Tertullinus's own cemetery to the church of St. Praxedes: for no one hitherto, so far as we know, has asserted that the cemetery of St. Callistus was the same as that cemetery in which, according to the Acts of St. Stephen, Pope and martyr, the bodies of Sts. Tertullinus and of the 12 clerical Martyrs were first buried; since all place the latter on the Latin Way, the former on the Appian. I said: with that cemetery in which, etc.: for I can scarcely be brought to believe that St. Tertullinus and the Martyrs already mentioned were laid in the cemetery which Raphaël Fabretti, Ancient Inscriptions, chapter 8, page 547 and the following, and Marcus Antonius Boldetti, in his Observations on the cemeteries of the Martyrs, book 2, chapter 18, page 362, say was uncovered on that same Latin Way, at the second milestone from the City, and not far from the aqueduct, in the year of Christ 1687, with this inscription set at the entrance: Cemetery
of blessed Tertullinus, M. I do not think, I say, that those Martyrs were buried there, if it is true, as Boldetti affirms, that that cemetery was then found entirely intact. But what if the drawing which those authors produce exhibits only that part of the cemetery of St. Tertullinus which remained intact, but does not exhibit another part, long since emptied and demolished, in which the pledges of those Martyrs may have been?
[4] However it may be, whether the remains of our Saint rested in that cemetery or in another nearby; whether they were first translated thence to the cemetery of Callistus or were not; His body is now at Rome at St. Praxedes': and perhaps a part at Le Puy in Gaul. we cannot deny that they were once dug up again and brought into the church of St. Praxedes on the hills by St. Paschal, Pope I: for this, besides the old marble tablet in Panvinius above, is attested in the place cited by Aringhi, by Panciroli in the Hidden Treasures of the city of Rome, page 236, and in his index of relics; and by Piazza in the Sacred Hemerology at the day IV of August, where he says that the festal anniversary memory of St. Tertullinus, priest and martyr, is celebrated at St. Praxedes', where his body rests. Hence perhaps some part may have come into Gaul, to Le Puy. Certainly according to the Proper Feasts of the cathedral church of Blessed Mary of Le Puy, reduced in the year 1624 to the form of the Roman Breviary, his Office is celebrated on the day IV of August (the Office of St. Dominic being remitted to an unimpeded day) with nine lessons, three of which, of the second nocturn, are proper, and drawn from the Acts of St. Stephen, except that at the end these things are added: The bones of St. Tertullinus, brought to the church of Le Puy, once hung in two little caskets from the dome above the high altar; where even now they are held in veneration. For the rest, concerning the manner and time of this translation we have found nothing written, neither there, nor in Saussay in the supplement to the Gallican Martyrology on this day, page 1154, nor elsewhere. Concerning the body of St. Tertullinus the martyr, which, translated from Rome in the past century to the church of our College at Luxembourg, is venerated together with the body of St. Chrysanthus M. on the IVth Sunday after Easter, we say nothing here: we gave a sufficiently long commentary about him in volume 2 of May, page 558, and whoever reads it will easily perceive that that Tertullinus is different from this one of ours; whatever Saussay thought otherwise in the Gallican Martyrology at the day IV of August, page 490.