Afra

ON ST. AFRA, MARTYR,

AT AUGSBURG.

In the year 304.

PRELIMINARY COMMENTARY.

Afra, Martyr at Augsburg (S.)

BHL Number: 0115

BY THE AUTHOR P. B.

§ I. The Saint's cult, and feasts.

Augsburg, placed between the rivers Vindo or Virdo (now the Wertach) and the Lycus (commonly the Lech), where they meet; and once the capital of Second Rhaetia, now of Swabia, The celebrity and antiquity of her cult among the people of Augsburg: has been made illustrious both by many other things, which Velser, that great honor and ornament of his fatherland, set forth in eight books, and chiefly by the martyrdom, relics, and cult of St. Afra. This is testified not only by all the Martyrologists, ancient and recent; but even by Venantius Fortunatus himself in the sixth century in his poem on the Life of St. Martin, book 4, where, addressing his book and directing it to the churches most celebrated for the bones and prodigies of tutelary presiding Saints, he designates among them that of Augsburg in these verses, in the Brower edition, page 335:

If it is granted you to go through the barbarian streams, So that you may peacefully cross the Rhine and the Danube, You go on to Augsburg, which the Vindo and the Lycus water; There you shall venerate the bones of the holy martyr Afra.

Doubtless the author of the book had himself before venerated those same bones there in person; as is plain from Paul the deacon, On the Deeds of the Lombards, book 2, chapter 23.

[2] The people of Augsburg celebrate her birthday on the VII day of August; her birthday is chiefly venerated among the Germans on 7 Aug. as also do other churches throughout Germany — those of Mainz, Würzburg, Speyer, Osnabrück, etc., whose ancient Missals or Breviaries are preserved here. On the same day she is announced in the most ancient codices of the Hieronymian Martyrology; as in the Epternach one, in which is read: In the city of Augusta, of Afra, Veneria; the Corbie one, which corruptly (as we already said in the case of St. Afer) has: In the province of Rhaetia, in the city of Augusta, the birthday of St. Afer and of Veneria; the Fontanelle one, which is no whit less blotted than the Corbie: In the province of Rhaetia, in the city of Augusta, the birthday of Saints Africa and Valeria; the second Manuscript of the queen of Sweden in Holstenius, Animadversions on the Roman Martyrology: In the province of Rhaetia, in the city of Augusta, the birthday of Saints Afra and Veneria. But who could divine who that Valeria, or rather Veneria, is? Certainly she is joined to Afra neither in the Acts nor anywhere else, so far as I know; nor is she known to the people of Augsburg: I should therefore believe that she crept from the margin into the text and into this place, which is not her own, and that she is the same who on the same day is announced with others at Antioch. Without her our St. Afra is also reported on the VII day of August in nearly all the abridged Hieronymian ones: in Wandelbert in this verse:

The seventh day Donatus and Afra alike made blessed;

In Notker, with a eulogy; as also in certain supplements of our Bede and of Usuard; in the old German Calendar of Beck; in our ancient Molsheim codex, where her Acts are had; and finally in Walasser, or our Canisius, in the German Martyrology.

[3] but in the rest of the Church, on 5 Aug.; But it is by no means rashly, nevertheless, that in the Roman Martyrology there is reported at the V day of August: At Augsburg, the birthday of St. Afra, martyr; who, when she was a pagan, converted to Christ by the teaching of St. Narcissus the bishop, and baptized with all her household, was given to the fire for the confession of Christ: for on the same day she is thus announced (to pass over very many later writers) by Usuard, Ado, Raban, the little Roman, various Hieronymian copies, and in the title of her Acts according to our codices P Ms. 6 and P Ms. 19. Nay rather, this same birthday of hers seems to have been observed formerly in Germany, or at least among the Rhaetians; for this must be gathered not only from Raban's Martyrology (which nevertheless is here of the greatest authority), but also from these words of Notker at the V of August: At Augusta of Euphratensis, the nativity of St. Afer the martyr: by the similarity of which names (that is, of Augusta and Afer) OUR COUNTRYMEN, being led on, thought that on this day the passion of St. Afra was consummated at Augusta of Rhaetia, or of the Vindelici. By this admonition of Notker I should think it presently came about that among most Germans that opinion prevailed which refers St. Afra's martyrdom to the seventh day of August: although it cannot be denied that this same was received there in some places long before Notker, from the times of St. Willibrord; as is plain from his Epternach Martyrology: which adds no slight weight to this opinion.

[4] although in some places she is noted also on 6 Aug. Besides the days already mentioned, two others besides are found assigned to the same Saint's birthday or martyrdom; namely the VI day of August, and the IX of October. To the first the most ancient Epternach, or St. Willibrord's, runs thus: VIII of the Ides of Aug… The Passion of St. Afra: and several Hieronymian codices agree; as the Fontanelle one, and the Corbie one in Florentinius, entire; likewise the Corbie one among us, abridged, the Labbean, etc. Notker, as I noted before, because he did not approve that the birthday of the same Saint be assigned to various days (since indeed in reality it can be but one), believed another Afra should here be understood than the one of Augsburg; and accordingly he himself reported her thus on the same VI day of August: The Passion of St. Afra, virgin. But this appended "virgin" — I am mistaken if he found it anywhere: certainly in so many ancient copies of the Hieronymian Martyrology hitherto published it is read nowhere on this day. But not even so could Blessed Notker persuade anyone at all that on that day another Afra than the one of Augsburg is commemorated; as is plain from a certain supplement to Bede and Florus, where on the VI of Aug. it is thus reported: In the province of Rhaetia, in the city of Augusta, the passion of St. Afra, virgin. That the older codices speak expressly of our Afra on the same day, that Augsburg one interprets which we published among the abridged Hieronymian ones: for it does not have The Passion of St. Afra, as some do; or simply Of Afra, martyr, as others; but The Vigil of St. Afra, martyr; which necessarily looks to her of whom on the next day it is written in the same place: At Augsburg of the Vindelici, of St. Afra, martyr. See what was said above concerning St. Afer, numbers 8 and 9.

[5] On the IX day of October it is read thus in the entire Hieronymian ones in Florentinius: and on 9 October, In the province of Crete, in the city of Augusta, the birthday of St. Afra, martyr: on the same day in our Manuscript Florarium: In Crete, in the city of Augusta, the passion of blessed Afra: who under the emperor Julian, with Antiochus as judge, was burned with fire: and after the burning her body was found entire: and more correctly on the same day in the appendix to Ado in Rosweyde: In the province of Rhaetia, in the city of Augusta, of St. Afra, martyr. It cannot be doubted that all these must be expounded of this same St. Afra of ours, as Florentinius expounds them. Nor does it matter that "Crete" is read for "Rhaetia": for the Hieronymian codices swarm with blemishes of this kind on every page, and that word seems to have been long since variously dislocated in certain copies of the Acts, so that in some Equilio and St. Antoninus found "Crete"; in others Wicelius read "Regena"; in others, or in the same, St. Antoninus now "Crete," now "Rhaetia" (for he uses both): since the Acts are everywhere the same, and in most copies exhibit "Rhaetia." The fault appears both from the added word "province" and from the appended "city of Augusta": for although Crete was then a province, joined, according to Panvinio, with Cyrenaica, yet it was more often used under the name of an island than of a province; and there is no one of the ancient geographers who reckons a city Augusta in it. The author of the Florarium seems to have drawn the emperor Julian and the judge Antiochus from a corrupted codex of the Acts, such as our Molsheim one nearly is, in which the emperor is written "Dioclianus" (whence, the first letters being worn away and vanishing, "Julianus" could easily be forged) and the judge "Antiochus"; the province, however, not "Crete," but "Rezia." But whence, you say, so different birthdays of one and the same St. Afra? I believe that, because her Acts determine none, various churches chose at will for themselves that day which seemed more opportune, as Afra's birthday, and inserted it in their Calendars. The occasion of this thing may also once have been a translation of the body

or an elevation, one or several, now unknown; or even the dedication of a church.

[6] Further, the church of Augsburg attends the birthday of St. Afra, martyr and patroness of Augsburg, with a special devotion, as is fair; How great a solemnity her birthday is among the people of Augsburg, yet with a lower solemnity than the birthday of St. Udalric, likewise its bishop and patron: for it celebrates the latter on the IV day of July with a double rite of the first class with an octave; the former on the VII day of August without an octave, with a double rite of the second class; as it is in the proper Offices of the diocese of Augsburg, printed at Dillingen in the year 1638. But in her own basilica, consecrated for several centuries in her name alone, then also at the same time in that of St. Udalric, once the cathedral, now a most illustrious monastery of the Benedictine Order, to which it owes the exceptional magnificence of its structure, and most celebrated far and wide — in this, I say, basilica of Sts. Udalric and Afra, the solemnity of both is equal, and indeed of the highest order; as gather from the German Chronicle of Augsburg by Mark Stengel, subprior there, book 5, chapter 2: namely, both are reckoned the primary patrons of that church, on the testimony of the most learned Khamm, Hierarchy of Augsburg, part 3, page 204; who also establishes the equal splendor of both feasts from an old and still vigorous custom, when on another occasion, part 1, page 194, he writes in this manner:

[7] As regards present-day observance: on the eve of the festivity of Sts. Udalric and Afra, both the canons of the collegiate church of St. Maurice, and their choir-vicars and musicians, especially among the Benedictine Fathers; their Vespers in our church being completed; and likewise the cathedral canons with their choir-vicars and musicians, after their Vespers are finished in our church, are led to the hall, or, as we call it, the chapter; and there they are refreshed with a decent draught of Neckar wine, without bread added. But on the festivity of St. Udalric itself two urns of wine, together with sixty-two round loaves of mixed grain (such as are ordinarily set before the Religious at table), are bestowed to be distributed to the cathedral canons and choir-vicars. On the feast of St. Afra the same largesses are repeated without a distribution of bread. For adorning each of these solemnities equally with equal majesty along with the religious community, therefore, two colleges of the primary churches of the city, each with its own retinue and array, come together four times into one place.

[8] and elsewhere, especially in her own churches, Nor indeed can there be any doubt that this same feast is celebrated elsewhere with as much devotion and pomp as they can by all the churches which are consecrated under the title of St. Afra; since even without any reason of this sort whole dioceses everywhere in Germany venerate it with a double Office, or one of nine lessons; as those of Bamberg, Eichstätt, Salzburg, Freising, Constance, Würzburg, Worms, etc. And there are churches or oratories, both within the diocese of Augsburg and outside it, several marked with this Martyr's name: and outside it indeed is reckoned that church or chapel at Cologne, which St. Anno, archbishop of Cologne, is believed to have erected to lay away honorably the Saint's relics which he had obtained at Augsburg, in Gelenius, book 3, syntagma 107; where he teaches that three primary feasts are observed: of St. Afra, martyr, on the V of August; of the Dedication of the church, on the VII of August; and of St. Anno, on the IV of December: likewise the church, or if you prefer, the oratory of St. Afra founded by the emperor Henry IV at Speyer, and enriched by him with a small bone of this tutelary Patroness; as will be mentioned below. At Meissen also in Upper Saxony there was a notable monastery of Canons Regular, called the Afran, from St. Afra (ours without doubt, then alone known among the Germans). Reiner, bishop of that same city, had erected it in the year, as it is in Hertfelder in the Chronicle of the basilica of Sts. Udalric and Afra, and in Fabricius in the Annals of Meissen, at the year 1060: and it flourished until in the year 1543, the Canons being scattered and driven out along with the Catholic religion, it passed over into a rich seminary of Lutheran youth; concerning which, if you please, consult the same Fabricius both at that year and at 1546.

[9] some of which are enumerated. Within the dominion of Augsburg that church of hers is chiefly memorable which adorns the place, as will afterward be reported, which she herself once consecrated by her martyrdom: then another at Rottenbach, near Schrobenhausen upon the river Paar; in which (as also in the one just mentioned) Stengel narrates in the German Chronicle of Augsburg, book 1, chapter 8, that distinguished miracles occur by the patronage of St. Afra; which nevertheless in that district, for reasons not obscure, are by no means made public; by which words I do not know whether he charges the inhabitants with being disparagers of prodigies, as followers of Luther are wont to be: besides, the monastery of the Benedictine Order at Neresheim, which, likewise as the one at Augsburg, has its name from the holy presiding Saints of its church, Sts. Udalric and Afra: Khamm testifies this, Hierarchy of Augsburg, part 3, pages 302 and 324. To these add, with the same author, page 280, the sacred church of Sts. Udalric and Afra in the plain of Füssen; and, page 318, a chapel in Delingen, of the parish of Ummenheim, erected at the expense of the (Neresheim) monastery, with the inhabitants helping, and consecrated in honor of St. Udalric, St. Sebastian, the holy three kings, and St. Afra; and any others there may be, hitherto unknown to us.

[10] For the rest, the memory of this Martyr is more delightful and more sacred to the people of Augsburg than that they should hold it enough to renew it once a year. And so, besides the birthday feast of which we have already spoken, two other feasts of hers are religiously observed: one of her finding, which is celebrated in the Udalrician monastery (on the testimony of Stengel, German Chronicle, book 5, chapter 2) on the XXVII day of July; the other of her conversion, on the XXVI day of October, which the whole diocese attends with a proper semi-double Office: and this indeed is announced also by Greven at the VII of the Kalends of November; but neither is in the Martyrology which we praised above, the Augsburg one of the monastery of St. Udalric; namely the institution of both is attributed to the Udalrician abbot Egino after the year of Christ 1109 by Khamm, Hierarchy of Augsburg, part 2, page 228, and part 3, page 34; concerning the feast of the finding, Udalscalcus, most familiar with Egino, asserts the same in Canisius, volume 2 of the first edition, page 216. Whence it follows that that Martyrology is not later than Egino. But neither, being not content with those feasts, does the church of Augsburg fail to prefix to the diocesan Proper antiphons and a prayer, to be directed to St. Afra and her companions, Hilaria, Digna, Eunomia, and Eutropia, as often as in the Office the common Suffrages are recited at Lauds and Vespers: nay, that it might foster and extend a piety in a manner continual toward this its Patroness, even outside the diocese and the clergy, that same church instituted that most illustrious sodality, or, as they call it, confraternity, of Sts. Udalric and Afra, of which we spoke at the Acts of St. Udalric on the IV day of July, page 92.

§ II. The history of her conversion and martyrdom.

The Acts of St. Afra contain two parts, the Conversion and the Passion: The Acts of St. Afra consist of two parts, of which the first describes her conversion, the second her martyrdom; each inscribed separately with its own title in the most ancient Manuscript of the most distinguished Du Puy, and in our codices P Ms. 6, P Ms. 17, P Ms. 18, P Ms. 19, and P Ms. 20, that is, in all which contain these Acts entire: and indeed that those parts were long ago so divided Raban, a notable writer of the ninth century, hints, when in his Martyrology at this day he thus reports: On the Nones, in the city of Augusta, the passion of St. Afra, martyr; whose Conversion and Life, and also Passion, are had written: nay rather, even in Mombritius, and in Surius' earlier edition, although the Conversion is not separated from the Passion by an interposed heading, yet the very transition from the history of the conversion to that of the passion sufficiently indicates that things different from one another are being connected. Add that there is no lack of most ancient codices in which, without any mention of the Conversion, the Passion alone is found; as is clear from our copies from the most ancient Manuscript of St. Omer (with which another of Master Schenckinck agrees, as Henschen noted in the same place) and the Utrecht Manuscript. Wicelius also seems formerly to have found the Martyrdom alone, since he published that alone.

[12] But it is asked whether both parts are of the same author, or of different ones. That they are of the same, Velser judged in more than one place, who published both — yet also with distinct titles — and illustrated them with labor and erudition to which you would nowhere find an equal among men of that pursuit; Velser judged both to be of the same age and author, and at the beginning indeed of his commentary (according to the latest Nuremberg edition of his works), page 446, he confesses that he does not know that author; but that he probably suspects he was someone of the clergy of Augsburg, upon whom that duty was enjoined by a public decree of the church: for that this was once customarily done in various churches, he proves. But he judges that the man wrote some time after the Diocletian persecution; since once and again (in the Conversion, number 1, and the Passion, number 15) he mentions the persecution as now past. That I should not, however, he says, judge him later than Constantine the Great, the style moves me, neither purely Latin nor wholly barbarous with the dregs of later times. Besides, the simple and bare narration of the deeds, which without doubt smacks of the first autograph (which he holds was written under Diocletian himself, and perished through him), not yet smeared with any pigments of colors, and of the ingenuous spirit of ancient piety. The judgment of such and so great a man ought surely to have very great weight: and accordingly whoever shall think one must stand by it must confess that both parts (at least so far as it is pure) are, as of the same writer and age, so also of equal authority and credit.

[13] at least if certain additions be cut away. I said: At least so far as it is pure: for that it is everywhere interpolated Velser readily acknowledges: and first indeed in the words; for he says in the preface, page 440, that he followed the copy which seemed most trustworthy; then he subjoins: For from different transcribers we have now one thing and now another; yet in such a way that the words, and these but moderately, and not the substance, disagree. This very thing we too have found in our Manuscripts. For the rest, understand here by "substance" only those things which properly pertain to the history of the conversion and the passion: for the same author afterward acknowledges that even the substance disagrees; but he denies that these belong to the substance of the ancient narrative; as the inept Prologue, which he says on page 446, number 1, that he cut away (it is not in any of our copies; certain things from it Khamm reports, Hierarchy of Augsburg, part 1, page 178, number 13): then the things which are read at the end of the Conversion, below at number 14, from these words: But the bishop Narcissus himself, etc. Finally, whatever is narrated in him at the end of the Passion concerning Sts. Afer, Dionysius, and twenty-five other Martyrs. All of which, since Velser adjudges them away from their author, he not obscurely attributes the rest to him; and an equal

credit accordingly he judges these to demand in all respects.

[14] To us the Conversion seems later than the Passion, But not even so do those two parts seem to us the genuine work of one man or of one age; first, because, as has already been said, in the most ancient Manuscripts the Passion is found without the Conversion; but nowhere, so far as I have seen, the Conversion without the Passion; which is a great argument for thinking that for some time the Passion existed alone, and that afterward the Conversion was stitched to it: for no reason appears, if from the beginning they were one work of one author, why anyone should presently have torn one part of it from the other and wholly suppressed it; since both ought to seem equally to belong to a complete history of St. Afra. Second, because at the beginning of each part these things are repeated: In the province of Rhaetia, in the city of Augusta… at the time when the persecution of Diocletian was raging: In the province of Rhaetia, in the city of Augusta, when there was a glorious persecution of the Christians. For indeed one must imagine the writer notably inept and a babbler, if one and the same man set these down in the same treatise. Velser saw this on page 482, number 3; and answers that the cause of this repetition seems to be That the Conversion and the Passion were read in the church of Augsburg even then not in a continuous series, but on the distinct days on which each is celebrated. It does not please: for we have said that the feast of the conversion, unknown to the ancient Martyrologists, first began to be celebrated under Egino, in the twelfth century; whereas the history of the conversion, like that of the passion, existed before Raban in the ninth century, and, according to Velser, several centuries earlier. Nay, even now among the people of Augsburg, where both feasts are celebrated, the history of the conversion is not recited separately on the one, and that of the martyrdom on the other; but exactly the same proper lessons are read on both; except that on the feast of the passion a little is added about the place of the punishment and the relics of St. Afra. Third, because the Conversion has barbarisms by no means smacking of Constantine's times; as at number 12: Do a kindness upon me. Tell me before your God, that you give me, etc. Before my God, I will give you a soul… eating and drinking, etc. At number 13: Give me a soul whose body I may slay, and whose soul I may have with me, etc. But nothing of this kind is read in the Passion.

[15] What then? Do we cast away the narrative of the conversion? By no means: for we know that it is ancient; and the latter more sincere than the former; and as such we revere it; but because it seems both less ancient and far less simple than the history of the martyrdom, we think much more credit must be given to the latter than to the former. Nor indeed does Baronius seem to have thought otherwise before us, to whom, says Velser on page 481, in judging the histories of Christians I attribute most of all men: for indeed in his annotations to the Roman Martyrology at this day, discoursing of St. Afra, he says: Her Acts are extant, which Surius recites in volume 4 at this day: those seem to me more sincere which Wicelius copied out from the public Acts in the Hagiology. Why, I pray, more sincere? Certainly this very Wicelian beginning, In the province of Regena, in the city of Augusta, ought to have seemed to Baronius more corrupt and less sincere than anything Surius has in the Passion; who indeed most sincerely transcribes the latter, though with the style changed here and there very slightly; nor does he depart from Wicelius' narrative, if you look to the sense, by a nail's breadth; except that he both expunged the already mentioned fault of his, and omitted the little appendix subjoined by Wicelius to St. Afra's Passion and belonging to it in no way. Why, then, were Wicelius' Acts more sincere to Baronius than Surius'? Doubtless Wicelius' Acts contain Afra's Passion alone; Surius' Acts, the Conversion connected with the Passion; of which parts the last, inasmuch as it is, as we have just said, in agreement with Wicelius, cannot seem adulterated; it remains that Baronius judged the former to be less sincere.

[16] Less sincere, I say: which is a most mild censure, [yet we by no means assent to Tillemont, who crudely proscribes the history of the conversion] and does not necessarily fall upon the chief heads of the narrative, but upon certain of their adjuncts and episodes; such as are those which we shall observe in the annotations in their own place. Far be it from us, then, to say with Tillemont, note 24 on the Persecution of Diocletian, that that former part seems to us in no way probable: for his arguments do not prove this, which are, first, that Baronius did not much approve it. Second, that there St. Narcissus, who converts Afra, is made bishop of Gerona, and to have suffered at Gerona in that year which cannot be reconciled with sound chronology. Third, that there a demon is said to have been deceived by St. Narcissus, and sent to kill a dragon in the Alps. Fourth, finally, that the people of Augsburg themselves in the eleventh century do not seem to have been content with their Acts; and therefore asked Berengar, bishop of Gerona, whether he perhaps had anything more concerning St. Afra's deeds than was among themselves. These objections, I suppose, cannot seem weighty to any sensible man; since they did not so move even Baillet himself but that he adopted the whole history of Afra's conversion into his Legend at the V of August, only the apparition of the devil with its adjuncts being excluded, premising that so far it is not easy to convict it of complete forgery.

[17] we by no means assent. I answer therefore to the first: If my opponent makes so much here of Baronius' criticism, why does he not rest in it? It is surely one thing that the Passion should seem more sincere than the Conversion; another, that the Conversion should seem in no way probable. To the second we shall answer below, where Narcissus must be treated of, in such a way that we hope no difficulty will remain. To the third: We are not at all surprised that this displeased in this age, at least as it is narrated at length in the Acts. But are the rest to be befouled on that account, which are reported most sincerely and without any circumlocutions of that sort? Not so, as we have already seen, judged even Baillet, to whom nevertheless this passage equally displeased. And why can fables not be sprinkled in by the unskilled even into otherwise excellent Acts? But it belongs to a shrewd man to separate the genuine from the adventitious, not to condemn the former on account of the latter; since they are distinguished without difficulty either by their native simplicity or by their too exquisitely composed ornament and trappings. Whence I should not dare to charge even the demon's apparition itself with falsity; although I by no means approve all the things that are reported in detail in the description of it. To the fourth the answer is easy; since it is quite probable that, on the occasion of St. Afra's body being found some years before, many things began to be spread about her of which the people of Augsburg had thus far read nothing in their old history of her conversion; such as are those which Velser found and rejected in the prologue of their Acts, and which among others Sigismund, a writer of the fifteenth century, copiously hands down in the Ecclesiastical Chronicle of Augsburg, part 1, chapter 4, concerning the king of Cyprus, St. Afra's father; concerning the flight of Zosimas, Hilaria's brother, with his sister the queen and his niece and the royal treasure, from Cyprus to Rome, etc. Since therefore they did not know on what foundation these rested, it was easy to suspect that they flowed from the Acts of St. Narcissus, in which without doubt his expedition to Augsburg had been described, and in this perhaps more brilliantly the conversion of St. Afra than they themselves had hitherto had it. They must therefore be judged to have had recourse to Gerona, not because they doubted the credit of their own history, but because they distrusted those things which, lately noised abroad among the common people outside it, were being rashly and eagerly received by all.

[18] The history of the Passion is sincere and most ancient, As regards the other part of the Acts, or the description of the martyrdom, we readily and gladly subscribe to the opinion of the most distinguished Velser: for although it does not exhibit the public Acts as they had been written down by the judge's clerk, yet it is so abridged from them that by its most simple brightness it easily defends of itself both its sincerity and its age. And so Theodoric Ruinart did not hesitate to select this among the sincere Acts of the Martyrs, and to present it as corrected against several Manuscript codices, page 455 of the latest edition. Tillemont, just cited, also extols it with this eulogy: As regards the Passion of St. Afra, nothing is said in it about her martyrdom which is not quite sound; nay (I use his words) even very edifying. Yet presently, as though he repented of what he had said (such is the man's disposition), he subjoins that a difficulty is found in it: that Afra is there made a harlot, whereas Fortunatus called her a virgin. But although this could delay Baronius, Velser, and others older than Brower, it certainly ought not to have delayed Tillemont, after he had heard the same Brower, in his annotations to the edition of Fortunatus, professing on page 255 that that passage is corrupt, and that on the credit of all the older books, in place of what was read in the printed editions, "of the VIRGIN Afra," one reads "of the MARTYR Afra." But since he who proposed this knot has sufficiently untied it himself, let us come to others, upon which the same man insists in the same place a little more confidently, and which pertain not so much to Afra's martyrdom as to that of her maidservants and of her mother Hilaria.

[19] But there are, he says, some difficulties in the martyrdom also so far as it describes the martyrdom of Sts. Hilaria and her companions; which followed Afra's, namely that of her mother and her maidservants: for I do not sufficiently know whether it was lawful by Roman discipline for a judge to order persons to be visited with capital punishment who had neither been heard, nor interrogated, nor indeed even summoned. But he wonders that both Father Ruinart and Master Fleury were not deterred by this argument from admitting a narrative of this kind. But he himself is too fastidious, not to say ridiculous, who especially in those times requires judges so scrupulous in observing Roman discipline, and that against Christians; when not even against the heathen did the greatest outrages in the courts seem unlawful: as see in Lactantius, On the Deaths of the Persecutors, chapter 7: when under those same tyrants such was the license of the judges that the same author exclaims in chapter 16:

Not if I had a hundred tongues and a hundred mouths, A voice of iron, could I comprehend all the forms of crimes,

nor run through all the names of the punishments which judges through the various provinces inflicted upon the just and the innocent. Would they, forsooth, have cared for discipline, who trampled upon all laws, and knew that everything could be done with impunity, at least against Christians, concerning whom, on the testimony of the same Lactantius, chapter 13, it had been decreed by an imperial edict that every action against them should be valid; that they themselves could not bring suit for injury, nor for adultery, nor for goods taken away, and in short should have neither liberty nor a voice. Hear Arnobius, who was writing at this very time, what he professes that he lately, as a heathen, did, in book 8 against the nations: We, however, while we undertook to defend and protect certain sacrilegious and incestuous men, and even parricides, thought that these (Christians accused on account of their religion) were not to be heard at all: sometimes even, pitying them, we raged more cruelly, so as to torture those who confessed into denying; that is, lest they should perish, employing upon them a perverse inquiry, etc. He therefore reckoned it a matter of public equity then not to hear Christians

and to destroy them: but to hear them, lest they should perish, a matter of private compassion.

[20] But indeed did our judge order Hilaria and her companions to be killed unheard? although Tillemont gnaws at this same point, By no means; but delegating in a manner his own part to the soldiers or to their commander, he says: Go and hold them: and if they shall consent to sacrifice, bring them to me, that I may reward them… But if you shall see that they resist with obstinate mind, and by no means give consent to sacrifice, fill the tomb with faggots, etc. He wished them therefore not only to be heard, but also to be invited by every means away from their confession to the worship of the gods, before punishment should be inflicted: in nearly that manner — nay, even somewhat more hesitantly — than in the same persecution is said to have been done at Nicomedia with the many thousands of Martyrs gathered in the church, whom the Roman Martyrology celebrates with the Greeks on the XXV day of December; but also much more scrupulously (so to speak) than was done there by Diocletian himself after the fire was stirred up in the palace; of which, when public rumor by a false suspicion had put it about that our people were the authors, Eusebius says in book 8, chapter 6, by imperial command as many worshippers of God as were there perished in heaps with their households, some consumed by the sword, others by the flames, etc.; and that indeed without any proof; as Lactantius asserts in chapter 15. An excellent system of discipline indeed! But why do I linger on these things? Come then, assign the remaining difficulties in this Martyrdom.

[21] and with a credit indeed not accurate enough What is then narrated in it (you hear Tillemont in the same place) concerning Sts. Afer and Dionysius… altogether proves that this history was not written in the time of Constantine, as Velser will have it. I marvel indeed at this writer's disposition and itch, always intent on gnawing at anything whatever. Who, I pray, ever referred what is handed down about Afer and Dionysius to the Martyrdom of Hilaria and her companions? Boninus Mombritius published this; Wicelius published it; Surius published it in the first printing; Ruinart published it from several Manuscripts: where, tell me, is there one word in these concerning Sts. Afer or Dionysius? No more, surely, than in any Manuscripts of ours. But Velser found it in his codex, and published it. Be it so. Did he say that it belongs to the same history, and accordingly is of the same author and age? Why then did he separate it from the preceding text? Why in annotation 76, page 498, at the words with which the Martyrdom of Hilaria is concluded in Wicelius, did he most expressly profess this: Nor is there any doubt to me that the ancient narrative reaches only this far: the things which follow (in the codex which he was using) concerning St. Afer and St. Dionysius are of another author, of another age? By what good faith could the most learned man's judgment concerning the author and age of the aforesaid history be plucked at from shreds which he himself declares belong neither to that history nor to its writer or age? But indeed our censor could not have established Velser's opinion better than by thus attacking it.

[22] Which Acts of St. Afra are to be given here, and whence; We shall give both parts of the Acts of St. Afra, divided into two chapters, from the Velserian edition; but yet in such a way that we shall depart from it as often as the credit of the old copies mentioned above shall require it, agreeing among themselves as much as it disagrees with that edition. Wherefore, lest the annotations be fastidiously burdened with various readings, we wish the reader to be warned here once for all that not even a single little word has been changed here rashly, or on the authority of one or another codex, but by the agreement of several and older ones: for where our copies differed from one another, we have constantly adhered to the Velserian. Further, this variation of ours will for the most part not change the sense, but the phrasing; yet if anywhere it shall have been more notable, it will be observed in place. But let no one wonder if he sees here omitted the things which we have already noted Velser gave concerning Sts. Afer and Dionysius; since he himself confessed that they are altogether alien to the Acts of St. Afra, and they have nowhere else been found by us. Of the martyrdom of Sts. Hilaria and her companions the case is different: for however much it properly belongs to the XII day of this month, consecrated to those Martyrs, yet because in all copies (except our Manuscript of St. Omer) of Afra's Passion it is read with the text uninterrupted; nay, because it was so composed by the same author along with it, as a part and complement of it, inasmuch as it contains St. Afra's burial; no reason allows this to be torn away from that.

[23] others being rejected, which we have here: We have the same Acts of the conversion and martyrdom of St. Afra expressed faithfully enough in elegiac meter, but rude; and indeed copied out in the year 1489, as is noted, from a certain most ancient little book… in the monastery of St. Benedict of Lorch, in the diocese of Augsburg, and afterward preserved in the monastery of Sts. Udalric and Afra of Augsburg; whence our Gamans once gave a copy here written out by his own hand: likewise others abridged in Sapphic verse, and sent hither by the same man from the Manuscript codex of Master Leonard Würstin, together with a certain short Sermon and Hymns concerning the same Martyr, as also a Sequence concerning her by Notker, monk of St. Gall, the composer of Sequences, as the title has it; it is not, however, in his Book of Sequences, which Bernard Pez made public in volume 1 of the latest Treasury of Unpublished Works. The same Acts are variously recited on the VII day of August in the old Breviary of Constance, arranged into hymns, antiphons, and lessons: but since these and several of this kind are more recent than the copies which we have used, and bring no weight or light to the most ancient history, we have thought it superfluous to produce them, being content with the primitive source; to which, however, it will be useful to premise certain matters to be weighed.

§ III. Her distinction from others of the same name; likewise her family, fatherland, condition; when and by whom her conversion was made.

The name Afra common to several Saints. Velser, as we noted above, explained the Acts of St. Afra with a commentary as copious as it is most learned, and allowed almost nothing to be lacking in it which even the most curious person would care to know on this subject: but because he did this in scattered fashion, and not in a fixed order, but as the text of the Acts carried him, it has seemed good to set forth the chief heads of his disquisitions, together with our own and others' observations, reduced to a sequence and a compendium. But that we may take our beginning from the name, he judges on page 447, note 4, that it is derived from Africa; and that accordingly it is not rightly pronounced by some as "Affra" or "Aphra," but must be written "Afra." I do not add his reasons: it is enough that she is called Afra by Fortunatus and by the most ancient Martyrologists, even by the Germans Raban and Notker: and indeed the name so written was once common enough: for we ourselves have given an Afra of Brixen on the XXIV of May; an Afra of Spezia on the XIV of June; an Afra of Arezzo the Epternach Martyrology on the X of August; an Afra virgin other Hieronymian ones on the XVIII of December; an Afra among the companions of St. Ursula Gelenius reckons, page 444, and Raissius in the Gazophylacium, page 259; finally another Afra the Reverend Father Khamm commemorates, Hierarchy of Augsburg, part 1, page 177, number 11, whom he says was buried at Pavia in the church of St. Marolus: this one is wholly unknown to us from elsewhere. This, however, we can assert: that all these have nothing in common with ours except the name and sanctity.

[25] Beware, however, of thinking that she took her origin from where she took her name: Ours seems to have been born at Augsburg; for she does not seem to have been of African origin, but Cypriot. Certainly there is nothing in the Acts about Africa; but concerning Cyprus (which our Henschen does not seem to have observed, February, volume III, page 632, number 3) Afra's mother Hilaria professes at number 8: My parents were Cypriots by family. I said "by origin," not "by fatherland": for Hilaria adds in the same place: And thence they came with the rites of Venus. But whither did they come? Without doubt to the place where these things were said, namely Augsburg. Who came? My parents, she says. Nothing about herself; nothing about her husband; much less about her Daughter. She hints therefore that she was born after their arrival; and accordingly at Augsburg; where thereafter, grown up, she bore Afra. This is nearly Velser's inference on page 460, note 51; by which, however, he makes Hilaria of Augsburg more timidly than her Daughter, of whom he presently pronounces without hesitation: But we must altogether confess that she was born at Augsburg. Hence also he says that the absurdities of the prologue are most openly refuted which he had found prefixed to the Acts in his copy; by which, namely (on the testimony of Khamm already cited, page 178), it is handed down that Afra's native soil was Cyprus; that her father, king of Cyprus, having engaged unhappily with the king of Attica, fell in battle; that after this Afra, with her mother queen Hilaria and all her kindred, came to Rome either as a fugitive or an exile; and moreover that, certain estates having been acquired, Hilaria, to appease the wrath of the gods, prostituted Afra and dedicated her to Venus: that thereafter Afra, admonished three times by a heavenly oracle, having sold the estates which she had bought at Rome, in hope of receiving a certain earthly kingdom promised by a heavenly prophecy, left Rome again, and migrated to the city of Augsburg, where the Bavarians are divided from the Swabians by the river Lech. Not unlike things, as is observed in the same place, are had by Adilbert and others with Sigismund, of whom above at number 17.

[26] of Cypriot origin, however; but not of royal stock; These fictions concerning the royal condition either of Afra or of her parents are too absurd merely to conflict with her Acts alone: for grant that there were kings of Cyprus down to those times; grant that they were as devoted to Venus as you please; can they be believed to have prostituted their daughters to it for a harlot's gain, to the lust of any low buffoons whatever? But indeed who at all steeped in Roman history does not know that the last king of the Cypriots was that Ptolemy who, three hundred years and more before, forestalled the ignominy of being reduced to order by Cato by a voluntary death? Blockheads therefore they must have been, whoever first peddled these ravings; which Velser indeed thinks arose from the crowned images of Sts. Afra and Hilaria; which is credible; but since those images are said to bear also the insignia of the Lusignan kings of Cyprus, and accordingly the fable itself may seem more recent, he will perhaps not go far astray who refers it to the eleventh century, when the bodies of these Martyrs were found, decorated with crowns — the insignia of martyrdom, as is probable — long since, when they had been set forth for public veneration (which one may conjecture from Fortunatus). But from wherever it flowed, it is utterly trifling. But as to Velser's looking, on this occasion, to the very long posterity of Cinyras, the third king among the Cypriots, presiding by hereditary right over the rites of Venus there down to the times of the historian Tacitus, as though Afra could perhaps have sprung from it; that indeed

he does more learnedly than affirmatively: so that nothing is clear. Whence the same interpreter continues thus:

[27] a bondwoman of Venus rather than a priestess, But whatever of this may be, this is plain by no doubtful conjectures, that Hilaria and Afra were priestesses of the Cyprian Venus: for Hilaria's words signify that Venus was worshipped by them with a foreign rite, when she says that her parents came from Cyprus with the rites of Venus. There was need, then, of special priestesses. That they themselves were these, there is no reason to doubt. Hilaria explains expressly concerning her Daughter (number 8): And so I consecrated my Daughter to the rites of Venus, as one who should serve the goddess Venus. But I do not know whether by these words that priesthood of Afra's is designated clearly enough: for I should not believe that all were priestesses who had devoted themselves to Venus, so as to busy themselves with her imitations. Certainly Hilaria herself seems to distinguish herself and her Daughter from the priestesses, when she says in the same place: For the more lovers a woman who serves Venus can have, the more she can please Venus, is affirmed by the priestesses; by which words she hints that she obeyed not her own counsel, but the counsel and promises of the priestesses. Add that no mention is made in the Acts of a temple or shrine of Venus where they exercised a priesthood. But it matters little whether they were priestesses or bondwomen of Venus: each profession was equally impure; nay, the priesthood was much more wicked; as may be gathered both from our interpreter, page 462 and following, and from Tacitus, Histories, book 2, chapter 3.

[28] Afra was wallowing in these foulnesses, and indeed wretchedly blinded under the pretext of religion; until in the year 303 she was converted to Christ so that she recognized neither her own baseness nor the protesting law of nature; until, receiving the fugitive bishop Narcissus, and, at almost the first sight of him, being wondrously enlightened in mind by God, she at once began to think and to speak far otherwise than before about herself and that way of life of hers, and, being more fully taught, presently to embrace the true religion. But when at last did this happen; and then who was that bishop Narcissus who lent his labor to this? The first the Acts define in these words, number 1: At the time when the persecution of Diocletian was raging. This began to rage not in the year 302, as the learned judged before the publication of Lactantius' book On the Deaths of the Persecutors; but, as from that book it is now more certainly established, in the year of Christ 303, when the first edict of persecution came forth on the XXIV day of February, which others much more cruel followed at no long interval: and it raged most atrociously through all the provinces of Italy, to which both Rhaetias belonged, down to the year 305, in which on the Kalends of May Diocletian, and Maximian Herculius who ruled Italy, abdicated the empire and their tyranny. Narcissus must therefore be said to have come to Afra, and to have converted her with her household to Christ, when the year of Christ 303 was already advanced: for, according to the Acts, number 14, he did not depart from Afra until nine months at least had been spent there; but he departed before Afra's martyrdom, which, since it was most harsh, and was carried out in the month of August, cannot be referred to the year 305, in which long before August the persecution had been mitigated; but to 304; from whose month of August, if you count nine months and more backward, you will necessarily come to the year 303.

[29] Concerning Narcissus we have already written in March, volume 2, from page 621, by St. Narcissus the bishop, that he seems altogether the same as he who among the people of Gerona in Spain, where he watered with his glorious blood the faith which he preached, is venerated with the highest reverence as the father, pontiff, martyr, and wonder-worker of the city. Nor do we change what was said: for so our Acts hand down at number 14; so Notker toward the end of the ninth century at the VII of August; so the Acts of St. Narcissus himself, such as they are; so the letter of Berengar, bishop of Gerona, subjoined to them, given (as is there noted) in the year of the Lord's Incarnation 1087; but (according to the ancient Chronicle of Augsburg published by Freher, page 349) in the year 1066; so finally the sense and tradition of the churches of Gerona and Augsburg; against all which those who have devised here a bishop Narcissus different from him bring forward nothing of suitable authority or reason. And as to authority indeed Tillemont confesses this, note 25 on the Persecution of Diocletian; yet he does not assent to our assertion; first, because he judges it by no means probable either that a bishop of Gerona ran off to Augsburg to convert unbelievers, or that a bishop of Augsburg (such as Baronius makes him) underwent martyrdom at Gerona. Then, because bishop Narcissus, according to number 14 of our Acts, cannot be said to have accomplished martyrdom at Gerona before about the end of the year 306; and accordingly, he says, under the rule of Constantine, who was most averse to making martyrs: and this indeed is his chief argument.

[30] that man who afterward fell as a martyr at Gerona; To the first we answer that neither the Acts of St. Afra, nor we, affirm whence St. Narcissus came to Augsburg, or of what place he was bishop when he came thither; but we say nevertheless that he went thence to Gerona, and there consummated his apostolic labors by martyrdom. But why this could not have happened we do not see; since nothing occurs more frequently in the Acts of apostolic men than that change of places and nations (as either the times urged, or the hope of a richer harvest, or a mission, or divine inspiration). And so this objection is not worthy of refutation. The second appears no whit more solid: because Tillemont himself in the Persecution of Diocletian, article 21, is compelled to confess that after Diocletian's edicts down to his and Herculius' abdication, made on the Kalends of May of the year 305, many suffered martyrdom in Spain; nay, that there was a violent persecution there: and yet then Spain, as he himself contends, was under the rule of Constantius Chlorus, who was so averse to making martyrs that Lactantius in the book On the Deaths of the Persecutors, chapter 15, openly gave him this testimony: Constantius, lest he should seem to dissent from the precepts of his elders (Diocletian and Maximian), allowed the conventicles, that is, the walls, which could be restored, to be demolished: but he preserved unharmed the true temple of God, which is in men. Why then does he admit under him so many Spanish Martyrs; under Constantine, scarcely inaugurated, none? He himself indeed replies that concerning Constantius this could have happened, either because Spain was farther from Constantius and nearer to Maximian Herculius, who held Italy; or for other causes unknown to us. But indeed the same must be said of Constantine toward the end of the year 306; when Spain was equally then remote from him as it had before been from Constantius; and equally near to Severus, or, if you please, to Maxentius, who held Italy, as before to Herculius.

[31] whatever Tillemont may think otherwise, How much better, then, would he have said that there were many Martyrs in Spain through those times because Spain then obeyed neither Constantius nor Constantine, but first Maximian Herculius, and afterward Severus and Maxentius? For tell me, on whose authority is Spain adjudged to Constantius, and after his death to Constantine? Doubtless on that of Sextus Aurelius Victor, I suppose, and of Eutropius; the former of whom, concerning the first partition of the Roman empire made long before the persecution, writes thus in the little book On the Caesars: And since the mass of wars… was pressing more sharply; the empire being as it were divided, all the Gallic regions beyond the Alps were committed to Constantius: Africa and Italy to Herculius: and the coast of Illyricum as far as the strait of Pontus to Galerius: the rest Valerius (Diocletian) retained. The latter in the Breviary of Roman History, book 10, concerning the second partition of the year 305, has thus: Constantius and Galerius were created Augusti; and the Roman world was divided between them, so that Constantius should obtain Gaul, Italy, Africa; Galerius, Illyricum, Asia, the East; two Caesars being taken on: Constantius, however, content with the dignity of Augustus, refused the care of administering Italy and Africa. You see that in neither partition is Spain expressed as having fallen to Constantius. But it is sufficiently expressed, as Tillemont with the heterodox Dodwell judges, in these words: All the Gallic regions beyond the Alps. But I do not remember reading anywhere in the geographers that Spain was reckoned among the transalpine regions. Why say more? Even if Victor had named Spain and expressly assigned it to Constantius, not even so ought he to be heeded:

[32] For he is later, and much inferior in authority to Lactantius, carping at our Acts hence, who in the work so often praised, chapter 8, when he had said that Herculius was less avaricious than Diocletian, added this cause: For since he held Italy, the very seat of empire, and there lay beneath him the most opulent provinces of both Africa and Spain, he was not so diligent in guarding wealth, of which he had an abundance at hand. I do not know what darkness those who see so keenly in that obscure text of Victor imagine for themselves here. He assigns to Herculius, they say, the most opulent provinces besides Italy; and yet he subjoins only one, namely either Africa or Spain; not two: for he ought to have written thus: both Africa and Spain. O wisdom worthy of those who hold hateful the memory of nearly infinite Martyrs, celebrated with such solemnity now for so many centuries in the Catholic Church! Namely, if they grant Spain to Herculius, they will no longer be able with Dodwell to deny that very many Martyrs fell there through these times; which because they wish altogether to deny, they obstinately set Constantius over the Spaniards against so open a judgment of Lactantius. But hark you, Grammarians: have you never read the disjunctive particle, as you call it, "vel," used copulatively for "and"? For if you have not read it, we shall confess the text which we cited to be corrupt; but if you have read it anywhere, our adversaries will have nothing by which to escape the authority of Lactantius, who assigns Spain together with Africa to Herculius. And doubtless you have read it, used in this sense even in Virgil, Aeneid book 6, verse 769: Aeneas alike distinguished in piety "vel" in arms; in Suetonius, of the emperor Titus: Ready in the Latin and Greek tongue "vel" in pleading, "vel" in composing poems, etc.; in St. Jerome in the translation of 1 Kings, chapter 17, verse 34: And there came a lion "vel" a bear; in St. Ambrose, Letters, book 3, letter 21 to Anysius: We hold you therefore as long since the disciple of Acholius of holy memory, now his successor and heir "vel" of his honor "vel" of his grace; and (to pass over other more recent men of polished letters, to whom the same particle in the same sense was familiar) in Sidonius Apollinaris, book 1, letter 5: But all those streams "vel" neighboring "vel" met with, etc.; letter 8: Concerning whose birthday what you yourself also would feel as to its "vel" pleasantness "vel" advantage for you alone, etc.; letter 10 of the same book: I give great thanks to him, the greatest to you, that you determined "vel" to presume safe things "vel" to believe unharmed things concerning my friendship. It is indeed wearisome to heap up more examples in a matter so plain.

[33] This sense of Lactantius that great prelate of Cordova, Hosius, notably confirms, but wrongly; when concerning the torments once endured in Spain for the sake of the faith

he writes thus to the emperor Constantine, in St. Athanasius, History of the Arians to the Monks, latest edition, number 44: I long ago made confession, when under your grandfather Maximian (Herculius; who is called Constantine's grandfather because under him Chlorus had been Caesar) the persecution was raging; namely in Spain; over which accordingly not Constantius but Herculius then presided. And so the cited passage of Lactantius was interpreted before us in the same sense by Baluze in his Notes, page 365, by Pagi in the Critique at the year 303, number 12, and by others; and rightly, as even Basnage the Calvinist confesses and carps at Dodwell in the Politico-ecclesiastical Annals at the year 303, number 21. Nay, Lactantius himself explains himself again elsewhere: for he denies that Constantius raged; therefore he denies that Spain was subject to him, when he writes thus in chapter 16: The whole earth therefore was being harassed; and, except the Gauls, from the East even to the West three most bitter beasts were raging. "Not if I had a hundred tongues," etc.: for, exempting the Gauls alone from so deadly a tyranny, he attributes the Gauls alone to Constantius.

[34] as is plain Now if it is sufficiently established that in the first distribution of the Roman empire Spain did not fall to Constantius but to Herculius, no reason at all appears why we should think it fell to him in the second: for the Anonymous appended to Ammianus in Valois asserts that it was then given to Severus the Caesar: his words are these, page 472: Severus received Italy, and whatever Herculius held: but he, as we have already shown, held besides Italy also Spain and Africa. Nor does Eutropius, just brought forward, gainsay it; nay, he rather favors it: for however much he is silent about Spain, he nevertheless signifies plainly enough that no new dominion then accrued to Constantius, when he says that he was content with the dignity of Augustus conferred upon him at that same time. Constantius therefore never had Spain, nor accordingly, dying in the month of July of the year 306, did he hand it over to Constantine to be ruled; but it belonged to Severus, until he fell before Maxentius about April of the year 307; nor does it seem to have come to Constantine except through Maxentius' destruction in the year of Christ 312. Whence it follows that from the year 305 down to about the beginning of 307, when Maxentius, on Eusebius' testimony, book 8, chapter 14, commanded his subjects to desist from persecuting the Christians, the state of the persecution in the Spains was the same as it was in Italy; that is, that it was indeed somewhat milder, either because Severus did not sufficiently trust his own newness, or because he wished to yield something to Constantius' mildness and authority; yet not wholly removed, lest nothing should seem conceded to the bloody cruelty of Galerius, to whom that same Severus owed everything: in which sense Eusebius must be explained, lest he be set at odds with himself, when he asserts in the book On the Martyrs of Palestine, chapter 13, that Italy, Spain, Africa, etc., when they had experienced the fury of the war for scarcely the first two whole years of the persecution, shortly obtained peace: for if they had wholly obtained peace so soon, to what end should Maxentius (as the same author before affirmed) have commanded his subjects only about the fifth year of the persecution to desist from persecuting the Christians?

[35] from this refutation of him. Let Tillemont therefore now explain why in the advanced year of Christ 306 Narcissus could not have consummated martyrdom at Gerona; especially since he is said to have fallen by the sword, not by slow fire or by those tortures which the earlier and more fervid persecution had used. For the rest, we have wished to draw these matters out at some length so that it might appear to anyone on what slight arguments that rule of Constantius and Constantine over Spain rests, which the heretics most wickedly abuse in order, after their fashion, to relegate to fables martyrdoms that are true and most holily celebrated among Catholics: for, to satisfy Tillemont, there was no need at all of so great a circuit; since St. Narcissus is believed to have been killed for the faith not in judicial fashion and by a public sentence, but secretly and by ambush; which his very Acts, however otherwise recent and in certain adjuncts perhaps not sincere, indicate by these words, by no means suspect: On a certain day, therefore, while Blessed Narcissus, being prepared to celebrate the sacred Mysteries, was giving himself to prayer, the unbelievers, who had long been lying in wait for him, suddenly rushing into the church, dragged him from the sacred altar, and, having treated him with injuries, struck him with the sword, and left him bloodied with slow wounds. Nay, that his death was inflicted not by a lictor's hand, but by uncertain blows of the heathen and a tumultuous onset, the wounds left in his uncorrupted body many centuries afterward brilliantly testified: for one was seen inflicted on the throat, another on the shoulder, another on the calf; as see in our March, volume 2, page 624, number 3. And yet this kind of martyrdom could have happened at any time; even after the edicts of persecution were rescinded, even under Constantius, even under Constantine, and indeed one now, if you please, a Christian. There is no reason, therefore, why Tillemont should from this passage attack both the Acts of St. Afra and the ancient tradition of illustrious churches.

§ IV. The time and place of the martyrdom.

The year, month, day, The year and month in which Afra's contest occurred, although omitted in the Acts, seem nevertheless certain enough: and as to the month of August indeed, both the usage and perpetual tradition of the church of Augsburg and the Martyrologies, as was observed above, almost all agree, even those very few which afterward place her birthday again on the IX day of October. But from the month we have already at number 28 given the year of Christ 304 as deduced: for if she suffered in the month of August, she can be said to have suffered neither before nor after that year: not before, because from the proclaiming of the persecution down to August, or even, if you will, October of the year 303, there are not found nine months and more, which according to our Acts must have intervened between St. Narcissus' arrival and St. Afra's martyrdom: nor after, because since in the year of Christ 305 at the Kalends of May the persecution was very greatly mitigated in the West through Herculius' abdication, it is not credible that four months later both Afra and her companions could have been punished with that most atrocious kind of penalty which the Acts report. The day of the martyrdom is in doubt, whether it was the fifth of the month of August or the seventh; for that it was one or the other, the things which were brought forward in §1 prove.

[37] Concerning the place of St. Afra's martyrdom, if it could ever be disputed, it can no longer be; since the history of her passion, and the place of the martyrdom at Augsburg, examined against so many ancient codices by Velser, by Ruinart, and by us, and in the judgment of the most learned critics in monuments of this sort at once most ancient and most sincere, designates it so evidently at number 15: In the province of Rhaetia, in the city of Augusta… it happened that Afra… was seized by the persecutors. And at number 19: Immediately therefore she was carried off by the officers, and led to an island of the river Lycus, and there, etc. This authority would surely suffice, even if it could not be confirmed from elsewhere. It is confirmed nevertheless both from the most ancient possession of her body among the people of Augsburg, of which we produced above as an eyewitness Venantius Fortunatus, who flourished in the sixth century; and from all the Martyrologists who announce Afra in this month with the addition of province and city. In this month, I say: for above at number 5 we showed that in the Hieronymian Martyrology and our Manuscript Florarium Afra is also reported on the IX day of October with the setting, In the province of Crete, in the city of Augusta: but in the same place we added reasons why that passage must seem corrupt. If, however, it were sincere, from it there would only follow that two Afras must be admitted: one far most celebrated among all, and suffering in the month of August, according to those same Martyrologies, In the province of Rhaetia, in the city of Augusta; the other known to scarcely any, and suffering in the month of October In the province of Crete, in the city of Augusta.

[38] not on the island of Crete; See therefore the impudence of Achilles Pirminius Gassar of Lindau, a Lutheran physician, in Mencken, Writers of Germany, volume 1, column 1396; where in his Annals of Augsburg, composed in the year 1576, on the occasion of St. Afra's body being found among the Benedictines of Augsburg, he writes thus at the year 1062: But the very truth of the matter in this place most greatly demands testimony, and urges that it not be kept silent, that no Afra was ever burned either at Augsburg of the Vindelici, or at the Augustan camps on this side of the Lech; but that that Cretan Afra, whom they commonly venerate here as a holy martyr, after she had been converted by Narcissus, bishop of Jerusalem, in her native island, together with her mother Hilaria and her maidservants or little sisters Digna, Eunomia, and Eutropia, from the gain of Venus to the Christian faith, and would no longer sacrifice to the idols, suffered fire alive at the city of Augusta beside the river Lethe (which names, on account of their allusion to our common ones, greatly imposed upon the Cowled Men) about the year of salvation 304, on the Nones of August. Which all the sounder historians most certainly attest, especially foreigners too. Nor is the argument from the antiquity of the cult or of the shrine itself among us sufficient; since Mary the Virgin Mother of God, Mary Magdalene, Catherine, and Ursula also have their churches and feasts here; of whom nevertheless none either lived or died here. You might indeed doubt whether he wrote these things sufficiently sober, medically speaking.

[39] how he errs, For he errs 1, when by the Cretan Afra he excludes the Rhaetian; as if two could not stand at once. 2, when, wishing to strike out one, he does not rather strike out the Cretan, for whom no suitable authority is brought forward, than the Rhaetian, vouched for both by trustworthy Acts and by the testimonies and monuments of churches and of almost all ages. 3, when he says, or at least hints, that in her sincere Acts is read not the river Lech or Lycus, but Lethe; which is against the credit of all the codices. 4, when he places the city of Augusta beside the river Lethe in Crete, which no one of the Geographers has hitherto found either there or throughout that whole island. But these are less absurd than that he errs 5, when he asserts that Afra was converted from the gain of Venus to the Christian faith in her native island by Narcissus, bishop of Jerusalem, and suffered fire alive about the year of salvation 304. For that Narcissus (as is established from Eusebius) was in the year of Christ 212 so decrepit in age that, because he could no longer perform his office through weakness, he received St. Alexander as a helper in the episcopate divinely appointed. If therefore he ever saw Crete, it must have happened long before, say about the beginning of the third century or the end of the second. But if he then found Afra there living by the gain of Venus, he must certainly be said to have found her already then well grown; and accordingly about the year of salvation 304 she was an old woman not a little more than a hundred years old; and yet (as is plain from the Acts of the martyrdom) she could even then, at a great

price seem worth seeking by lovers. O most experienced physician! How prettily you sing of yourself under that most solemn likeness of yours prefixed to the Annals, after the Column:

I ought to have been called Chiron, I who am called Achilles, I who in the medical art was scarcely less than Chiron.

[40] The same man errs 6, nay lies splendidly, when he subjoins: not without a lie, Which all the sounder historians most certainly attest, especially foreigners too. All the sounder historians? Was Hermann Contractus then little sound in his Chronicle after the year of Christ 300? Do John Aventinus, Annals of the Bavarians, book 2, under Constantine, and Beatus Rhenanus, German Affairs, book 2, page 89 in the Basel edition of the year 1551, seem to you little sound (I will not say Regino, and several others, whom you in your courtesy and your everywhere obvious madness could easily call both cowled and insane)? And yet all these without circumlocution make Afra a martyr in Rhaetia; but of a Cretan one they do not even make mention. Where then are all those sounder historians of yours? You might at least have cited one: you would have won great favor from Martin Crusius, your fellow, who in the Annals of Swabia, part 1, book 5, chapter 9, exclaims concerning one of the paradoxes here so confidently asserted by you: What is this?… Let him reconcile it, if anyone can reconcile it.

[41] I know that mention is made of the Cretan St. Afra alone by Peter de Natalibus in the Catalogue, book 7, Gassar, chapters 28 and 54; I know that he places the city of Augusta in Crete beside the river Lethe; and there says Afra was converted by Narcissus, bishop of Jerusalem. But if you sincerely thought that this man should be numbered among the sounder historians, why did you not dare to name him? Doubtless you saw that the excellent man had been deluded by a not excellent codex: for he cites for himself in book 7, chapter 55 (where he puts an end to this narrative of his) Ado in these words: These things Ado from the Martyrology of Jerome: whereas in the true copies of Ado neither Mosander nor Rosweyde found anything of the kind. Even so, however, he was sounder than you in this, that he did not add either the persecution or the year of her martyrdom, which you in the same scheme so foolishly determine. He is therefore not here altogether yours either. Much less are the Magdeburg Centuriators yours (although otherwise they are very much yours), who indeed hold St. Afra to have suffered in Crete in the fourth century; but they dream neither of the river Lethe nor of Narcissus of Jerusalem; nay, they make that bishop the Augustan of that same island, that is, an imaginary prelate of an imaginary city; ineptly, I confess, but yet less insanely than you. Vincent of Beauvais, according to the most accurate edition of the year 1612, everywhere has Rhaetia; nowhere Crete. St. Antoninus, citing Vincent, part 1, title 8, chapter 1, §18, also retained Rhaetia; yet once there "Crete" is read, but by a manifest error, as is plain from the words following in the same place: And immediately, carried off by the officers, she was led to an island of the river which is called the Lech. Say then, shameless man, which of the sounder historians before you thought with you: I find none; you must show them all, in order to defend that highest good faith with which your most distinguished editor testifies that you gathered your materials; especially in this place, where you so pathetically preface that you bring the testimony of truth.

[42] But indeed why do we demand sounder historians here as witnesses; since they cannot be sound who resist the ancient traditions and records of so many churches, unless at the same time they be shown to be older than all of them, or at least to bring forward older witnesses for themselves? a Lutheran annalist. But this no one will ever do until he shall have produced that very autograph of the Martyrdom of St. Afra, which we said was written in the fourth century, and shall have demonstrated first that it is in truth an autograph; then that that same document conflicts in this matter with all the manuscript copies, of which very many survive. If this new Chiron — that is, a centaur monster — had accomplished this, then he could have borne testimony. But he was far from doing this, who in this very argument notably betrayed how ignorant he was even of the antiquities of his own country: for if he had read Fortunatus testifying not only concerning the cult or church of St. Afra among the Vindelici, but also concerning her sacred bones, once held in the greatest honor there, he would not have dared, I suppose, to defend himself with this shield: Nor is the argument from the antiquity of the cult, or of the shrine itself among us, sufficient; since Mary the Virgin Mother of God, etc. Then if he had known the state of his own Rhaetias under Diocletian, he would surely not have set Constantius Chlorus over them at that time, as a prince most mild toward Christians, when Afra is believed to have suffered; but Maximian Herculius, to whose monstrous tyranny Italy belonged: for both Rhaetias then looked to Italy, not to Germany or Gaul; as, besides others, Aventinus teaches, book 2, under Constantine; Velser, Affairs of Augsburg, book 7, at the year 304; Panvinio in the Roman Empire, Paris edition of the year 1588, page 238, likewise page 247 and elsewhere.

[43] A church preserves the sacredness of the place, Further, an ancient delineation of Second Rhaetia the same Velser gives at page 196, circumscribing it on the West by Lake Constance, on the North by the Danube, on the East by the river Inn, on the South by the Alps; and at the same time depicting the island of the river Lycus, once appointed for the punishments of the accused. This afterward, turned beyond the Lycus into the mainland, is now called the Lycian Field (commonly Lechfeld). Augsburg is distant toward the East, as our Acts indicate, by the second milestone; which I do not know whether Khamm, part 1, page 61, number 17, rightly enough interprets as an hour and a half: for that "mile" here must be taken in the Italian manner for a thousand paces only, Velser holds, page 496, note 64, and Pistorius in Sigismund's Ecclesiastical Chronicle of Augsburg, part 1, chapter 7, in the margin. The sacredness of that place has hitherto been preserved by a church founded afterward, which stood down to our own times, says Stengel, Affairs of Augsburg, part 1, chapter 15; but recently in the Swedish persecution it was miserably burned by the Gustavian heretics, rebels against the emperor, after one thousand three hundred and thirty years; even the stake or post to which the holy Martyr had been bound, and which was enclosed in a stone column, being lost. The chronology of that most eminent man errs: for since both he himself, part 2, chapter 73, number 28, and Corbinian Khamm, part 1, page 421, number 142, fix the destruction of this church in the year of Christ 1632, it follows that he believes it was founded in the year of Christ 302, that is, two years before St. Afra's martyrdom; which conflicts with these very words of his just recited: The sacredness of that place has hitherto been preserved by a church founded afterward (that is, after the Saint's martyrdom, and the peace of the Church).

[44] demolished by the Swedes; but in this century It rose at last from its ruins more nobly in this century, as Khamm relates, part 3, page 107, number 676; where he has thus: In the year 1701 (Wilibald, then Udalrician abbot) built the church of St. Afra in the Lycian Field from the foundations with two towers, and carried it up to the roof: but nevertheless, when, deadly War bursting into our fatherland, it had been to some extent destroyed amid the most mournful commotions of Bellona and plundered by the rapacious hands of despoilers, he, rebuilding it when the torches of war were quenched, and furnishing it with four altars, adorned the altars with plastered columns imitating marble, and with artful paintings. Moreover he placed on the chief altar an excellent wooden statue of St. Afra, exceeding the size of a human body, carved with singular industry by the most famous Bendel, with fires set beneath: in the two towers added he hung again two bells, already before the tumults of arms consecrated by him and hanging, but removed in good time for safety's sake; and in the year 1711 he happily completed the whole costly building together with its altars. On the first, upper altar of the choir is represented St. Afra as a sheep lost and found: on the second, lower altar of the choir, as the chief one, is represented St. Afra suffering martyrdom: on the altar at the side on the Gospel horn is exhibited St. Afra converted to the orthodox faith and baptized: on the fourth altar on the Epistle horn is exhibited St. Afra glorified.

[45] In the year 1712 (the same author continues) on the XVII day of May, restored more magnificently. the third day of Pentecost, by the most reverend Lord John Casimir Röls, bishop of Amyclae and suffragan of Augsburg, alongside the dedicated church of St. Afra, the first upper altar of the choir was consecrated in honor of Christ the Savior finding the lost sheep: the second, lower altar of the choir, and the principal one, in honor of St. Afra suffering martyrdom: the third altar in honor of Sts. Narcissus and Dionysius, Afra's maternal uncle, bishops and martyrs; chiefly of St. Narcissus, converting Afra to the faith: the fourth altar in honor of St. Hilaria, mother of St. Afra, and of her companion Martyrs, venerating St. Afra glorified. In the first altar, of Christ the Savior, were enclosed relics of Sts. Pastor and Felix, martyrs (from the cemetery of St. Calepodius), and of St. Donatus, M. (from the cemetery of St. Cyriaca, M.), sent from Rome, with other relics from the company of St. Afra, protomartyr of Augsburg: in the second altar, of St. Afra, were enclosed relics of Sts. Digna, Eunomia, and Eutropia, maidservants of St. Afra; of her stake, to which she was bound; and of the Saints of her company; to which were added sacred relics of the aforementioned holy Martyrs Donatus, Pastor, and Felix: in the third altar, of Sts. Narcissus and Dionysius, were enclosed sacred relics of the bones of St. Dionysius, and of the garments of St. Narcissus, with other sacred relics from the company of St. Afra; to which were added relics of Donatus, Pastor, and Felix. It has seemed good to transcribe these things a little more fully, that anyone may understand in how great esteem even now our Martyr's arena is held among her own people.

* read "ever"

* read "was unwilling"

§ V. The prodigious integrity of her body; the place of her first burial.

The Saint's body unharmed by the fire, The manner in which our Heroine put an end to her martyrdom the Acts so report that they assert indeed for certain that she gave up her spirit in the midst of the flames; but they do not sufficiently express whether she expired with body burned or unharmed: for these words at number 20 do not place it beyond all doubt: They found the body of St. Afra entire; since that may be called entire from which no part is lacking, although either several of them or all be damaged. That it was not, however, injured by the fire, Velser affirms on page 492, note 56, heaping up many similar examples bearing on this matter, and Stengel, part 1, chapter 16 and the following; nay, in her Office proper throughout the diocese of Augsburg, at the VII day of August, it is read every year: Her body, from the burning of the fire

in no way harmed, and famous for miracles, rests at Augsburg in the church of St. Udalric. This is surely a weighty authority; yet not a certain one: first, because neither Velser nor Stengel could see that body, inasmuch as it was shut up in a marble sarcophagus which from the eleventh century to this very time (as Khamm says, part 1, page 177, number 11) was never opened; then, because it does not appear that the text recited from the Office, or another equally clear, is very ancient, or received even by all the people of Augsburg. It seems therefore to have been snatched from tradition; but from one not constant enough: for that the body was scorched the ancient Chronicle of Augsburg in Freher hands down at the year 1064; scorched also, yet entire, Sigismund, in Pistorius, part 1, chapter 7, page 596, and chapter 11, page 601, and in the appendix to his Chronicle, page 612; and Khamm a few years ago followed him in the place just assigned, number 7: who nevertheless in part 3, page 2, writes that Afra was suffocated by the smoke, her body being preserved uncorrupted. Both opinions can be reconciled, if we say that by "scorching" those authors wished nothing else to be understood than the blackness of the smoke darkening the body.

[47] it was buried on the night next after the martyrdom; But when was that pledge buried, left to a mother's devotion and solace by so notable a prodigy? Without doubt on the same day on which Afra's mother flew to heaven with the maidservants: for this the Acts testify at number 21. But when did this very thing happen? If you weigh the same Acts, you will say that it altogether happened on the day after Afra suffered: for no one was hindering, since the soldiers had already departed; the maidservants were pressing the matter, sending a boy to Hilaria so hastily that he did not think a boat should even be waited for, but crossed the Lycus by swimming, so as to fly the more quickly to the mother — namely to hasten the obsequies, while the maidservants kept watch beside the Martyr: for these are not said to have withdrawn before the burial. But who would believe that Hilaria at this juncture of affairs hung back beyond what necessity demanded, from paying the due rites to a Daughter who had died so glorious a death? Since therefore it is immediately subjoined: And she came by night with the priests of God, and took her body, and placed it… in a tomb, etc., the night which immediately followed Afra's martyrdom must manifestly be understood. And this sense of the Acts shines out so evidently that in the Legend of the Saint at the VII day of August the word "next" is read added to the word "by night" in the Breviary of Speyer of the year 1478. And so we judge that Velser, page 494, note 62, and Stengel, part 1, chapter 18, altogether did violence to it when they put off this burial to the XII day of August; and that by an argument which we shall presently confute.

[48] not on the 12th day of August. Thus both those most learned men argue: St. Afra was buried on the same day on which Hilaria, with her maidservants, received the crown of martyrdom: but Hilaria received it on the XII day of August: on this day, therefore, Afra too was buried. The first proposition is certain from the Acts. The second they prove from this, that the birthday or martyrdom of Hilaria and her companions is celebrated on the XII day of August; whence they think it follows that they in fact once suffered martyrdom on the same day; and rightly enough indeed, if they had at the same time shown that that martyrdom was always celebrated in the Church on that day and no other: which since they neither did nor could do, the inference collapses. We deny, therefore, that the birthday of Sts. Hilaria and her companions was once honored with a separate Office or feast on the XII day of August; since Khamm testifies, part 3, page 34, number 120, that this was first instituted under Egino, the Udalrician abbot, who presided, as we noted before, from the year of Christ 1109 to 1122: before this time we judge that Hilaria and the maidservants, as Afra's companions in martyrdom, were honored at Augsburg only on the same day and with the same Office as Afra herself; which is plain (to say nothing of Raban) both from the old Martyrology of that same monastery, which we gave third among the abridged Hieronymian ones, and which we said was composed about the twelfth century, and in which at the XII of August there is not a word about St. Hilaria or the maidservants; and from the ancient Breviaries of other churches among the Germans, as that of Speyer of the year 1478, of Mainz of 1495, of Constance of 1575, of Worms of 1576, etc., in which on the VII day of August the martyrdoms of Sts. Afra, Hilaria, and her companions are celebrated together with one and the same Office, outside of which no mention at all is made there of Hilaria and her companions.

[49] You will ask what moved Egino, first, to separate the Office and feast of Sts. Hilaria and her companions from the feast and Office of St. Afra; as was believed before this. then, to fix it on the twelfth day of August. I answer that the occasion for instituting a special feast and Office of Sts. Hilaria and her companions was most probably furnished by the finding of St. Hilaria's body, which occurred under that same Egino: but that the XII day of August was chosen for both above others, because on that day Notker and Usuard, following Ado and using his words, had long before entered their memory in their Martyrologies. But Ado, you say, whom did he follow? In the eulogy nothing, so far as I know, but our Acts. Why then did he place that eulogy on the XII day of August rather than another? Unless a most obvious conjecture deceives me, he did it for no other reason than that on that day in some old Martyrology, as the Hieronymian in Florentinius, he found noted another Hilaria, wife of the tribune Claudius; whom he judged by no means to belong to the month of August, but to the third day of December, on which he himself announces her: but he knew from our Acts that the martyrdom of our Hilaria belonged to August: he therefore judged that this one should be put in that one's place. But lest he should seem to conflict with our Acts by deferring St. Afra's burial from the V to the XII of August, dissembling the words by which the Acts testify that on the same day on which Afra was buried Hilaria and her companions received the crown of martyrdom, he preferred to praise her thus: On the same day (XII Aug.), of St. Hilaria, mother of St. Afra; who, when she was keeping watch at her tomb, was there given to the fire by the persecutors for the faith of Christ, with Digna, and Eumenia, and Euprepia, who had been St. Afra's maidservants. He therefore avoided the difficulty; so that he might the more freely defer this Hilaria's birthday to that day on which he had found some Hilaria noted by an older Martyrologist; and so might seem rather to have corrected him than to have departed from him; since besides the Acts had not determined that day in express words, nor was it a sin to reduce an uncertain birthday by conjecture to a fixed day. However the matter may stand, the authority of Ado, so much younger, must yield to our Acts: for although these sufficiently insinuate that Hilaria with the maidservants was found only in the tomb, and accordingly kept watch there until daylight after the obsequies were performed and the priests had departed, yet they do not allow these vigils to be extended further.

[50] But it was not first laid away Concerning the place of that tomb, the Acts thus at number 20: And she (Hilaria) took her (St. Afra's) body, and placed it at the second milestone from the city of Augusta, in a tomb which she had built for herself and her own. On which words our commentator writes thus on page 497, note 65: The place, however diligent my investigation, I have thus far been unable to reach: nor is there hope for the future: for since the holy Martyr's body, long unknown, was found more than 600 years ago by St. Udalric the bishop in that church in which it is venerated today, we must necessarily confess that the translation from the first tomb happened much earlier, in ancient times long past; and that from that time the memory of it began to be neglected: which I should believe long since collapsed with age, and whatever of it stood above ground (if anything stood) cast down by an incursion of enemies (of which the territory of Augsburg has experienced very many). Truly, if I were helped by the reading of any ancient copy, I would gladly substitute for these words: "She placed it at the second milestone from the city of Augusta," these: "She placed it at the second milestone near the city of Augusta," or something similar. And we should understand "near the city of Augusta, at the second milestone from the place of her passion." That would fit the ground of the church in which Afra is today laid; nay, the very crypt which is famous for devotion in that church. For these places were outside the city in that century. But since all the manuscript books support the received edition, the correction is perhaps too bold. Yet it must be thought about.

[51] near the city, as some will have it; The most eminent Stengel did think about it, Affairs of Augsburg, part 1, chapter 18; and having at last obtained one codex, The matter is safe then, he says; a book has been found, transcribed in an elegant hand for the matins lessons a hundred and fifty years ago (that is, before the year of Christ 1497) from much older ones, which offers the reading which we set down at the beginning of this chapter: and he had set down this one: And she came by night with the priests of God; and took her body at the second milestone from the city of Augusta (so the corrected copies have); and placed it in a tomb which she had built for herself and her own. Where observe that the parenthesis also belongs to that reading, and was not inserted by Stengel; since it is marked by the same character as the rest. From this text the author thus infers: Whence we manifestly understand that she (St. Afra) was placed near the city of Augusta at the second milestone from the place of her passion, and was laid in that very place where she is today, and was never translated elsewhere. But first of all we do not see that that single codex, and so recent a one at that, is to be preferred to absolutely all the rest, which in such number lighted the way for the ancient Breviaries, for Vincent of Beauvais, Mombritius, Wicelius, Velser, Ruinart, and finally for us. Then grant for the moment, if you please, that that reading alone is trustworthy. How can Stengel's inference be hammered out of it? For it asserts indeed that Afra's body was taken up by Hilaria from the place of martyrdom, two miles distant from the city, and placed in a tomb which she had built for herself and her own; but it does not indicate in what place that tomb or monument was — nearer to or farther from the city than the Lycian Field. But the ancients were accustomed to build tombs not only at the second, but even at the fifth, nay at the ninth milestone from the city, and beyond, according as they had estates or lands: as may be seen in Kircher's Latium, and others.

[52] Stengel is more openly favored by the Catalogue of the bishops of Augsburg and abbots of St. Afra, but at the second milestone from it; written, as it appears, in the twelfth century, and published by John George Eccard in the Historical Corpus of the middle age, volume 2, column —, where St. Afra's body is said to have been brought back from the island of the Lycus, and, as was the ancient custom, on her own property beside the house

of her own, to have been laid away toward the southern quarter (of the suburb of Augsburg). Although what is this authority, that it could even be compared with our Acts? Although therefore this opinion has now grown strong among the people of Augsburg, we with Velser think that the place of that tomb has hitherto been unknown; but that it was nevertheless situated at the second milestone from the city: nor do we believe that our Martyr rested long in it, whether the building set over the tomb burned down or not. Certainly that place, now betrayed to the heathen, could be a safe receptacle neither for such precious deposits nor for the Christians, who were then accustomed both to flock and to keep vigil for the sake of prayer at the tombs of the Martyrs: which was cause enough for them to carry thence at once the bodies both of Afra, and of Hilaria, and of the others who perished there with Hilaria, to a hiding-place unknown to the heathen. But if anyone shall wish that that hiding-place was near the city — nay, situated in that very place where afterward the church of St. Afra was built — we shall not gainsay him.

[53] Further, who could understand this: that the anonymous author (Mabillon names Gerhard; and not rashly) of the Life of St. Udalric at the end of the tenth century, in the text to be recited presently at number 58, both retained these words of our Acts, by which St. Afra's first tomb, or the place of the laying of her body, is assigned at the second milestone from the city of Augusta, and could refer them to her church, then so near the city that in the following century it was enclosed within its walls? Retained, I say: for as to what Velser says, that in his autograph of the Udalrician Life, these words being set in the text, "from the city of Augusta," there are substituted in the margin these, "from the place where she suffered," this cannot belong to that biographer; first, because the editor confesses that that marginal note was noted in another hand; second, because those marginal words are not read in the Acts of St. Afra, which nevertheless that author alleges; third, because they are not read in any other Manuscript copies of that same Udalrician Life, which either we followed at the IV day of July, or Mabillon before us. What if, then, through the author's drowsiness one or another word was omitted, and he wished to write thus: And he showed the place of the laying of her body which had been the first, as is written in the writing of her Passion, at the second milestone from the city of Augusta, in the church? Certainly the Anonymous' passage can be thus restored; otherwise it is manifestly corrupt, and therefore, unless I am mistaken, was wholly expunged by abbot Berno, who in the eleventh century undertook to polish that Life; as see in Velser, chapter 15, page 609.

* perhaps "cast down"

§ VI. The revelation and finding of the tomb; relics; miracles.

The Saint's tomb, once most celebrated in her own church, It is established from what has been said of Venantius Fortunatus, bishop of Poitiers, that St. Afra's tomb was not only known among the people of Augsburg toward the close of the sixth century, but was also held by pilgrims among the more celebrated shrines of the Saints throughout the West and frequented. But on what occasion that piety afterward grew cold, and that sacred pledge was so hidden that in the tenth century not even any knowledge of its hiding-place remained among the people of Augsburg themselves, we cannot determine: yet we are not ignorant that that church was liable through those times to various dangers, calamities, plunderings, and ruins: for St. Wicterp, bishop of Augsburg (whether he flourished in the seventh century, as our Predecessors thought at the XVIII day of April, or in the eighth, as others contend), is said to have raised it from its ashes, in Khamm, part 1, page 81; in Stengel, part 2, chapter 5; and others. It is read to have burned again, says Hertfelder in the Basilica of Sts. Udalric and Afra, part 1, chapter 6, under the rule of Charlemagne… on the occasion of the warlike tumults which Tassilo, duke of the Bavarians, had stirred up. But he adds that it was restored by St. Simpert; which Adilbert also hands down in the latter's Life, in Bernard Pez, latest Treasury of Unpublished Works, volume 2, part 3, column 358 and following. But Simpert is believed to have sat at Augsburg from the year 788 to 818. Hertfelder continues in the same place: Then there was quiet for some time; but always uncertain, and not without threats of enemies. These were the Hungarians, etc. Surely amid so great a vicissitude of affairs it is not surprising that that happened to our Martyr's tomb, placed outside the city, which is known to have happened to very many others preserved even in a safer place: namely, that it gradually began to be unknown in what part of the church it had been laid and buried; especially if, the old ruins not being wholly removed, the mass of a new building was set upon them by the restorers; which is clear to have happened there several times about the year 1466, when Sigismund the Religious relates, part 2, chapter 6, that, the foundations of that same place being dug out, a threefold pavement was found through the whole church, one always higher than the other.

[57] began to be wholly unknown after the 6th century But whenever that treasure was hidden away, it certainly lay hidden from St. Udalric, who, being always wonderfully affectionate toward St. Afra, governed the church of Augsburg from the year 923 to 973, and in it moreover had for some time been chamberlain under Adalbero, fifteen years before he undertook the episcopate. A contemporary author testifies this in his Life, July, volume 2, page 111, number 50: for when, as is there reported, this Martyr's church had again burned down by Hungarian torches (in the year of Christ 955); and the most afflicted times did not allow it to be repaired so quickly, but that, the rubble being leveled with the ground and neglected, grass had now poured itself in everywhere; St. Udalric was admonished from heaven not to delay to rebuild the house of St. Afra. Concerning whose restoration, when he was very often treating how it might most fittingly be done; and how, by the placing of a crypt, he might most suitably adorn the eastern quarter of the church; and no effect of certainty had crept into his mind; with continual prayers and fastings, with his household and religious priests, he began most devoutly in secret to beseech the mercy of God, that there might be shown him the place in which the body of St. Afra had been laid; and whether it might remain lawful to build a crypt in that place, if his will were so pleased. You hear how unknown the place of the tomb then was: now hear by what means it was revealed: for the same author sets this forth in the same place, in the following number, thus:

[58] down to the advanced 10th century, That there was no doubt his prayer and fasting came to the ears of the Lord, according to the singing of the holy prophet David: Behold, the eyes of the Lord are upon the just, and his ears unto their prayers; on a certain night holy Afra appeared to him in a vision, and showed the place of the laying of her body, as is written in the writing of her Passion, at the second milestone from the city of Augusta, in the church. But she forbade a crypt to be made in the predestined place, because of the relics of the Saints, which in that place must await in rest the day of judgment. Fully taught by this revelation what he must do, he had the walls, for the greatest part cast down by the fires, rebuilt with great haste, and added to the former height the measure of one cubit, and adorned the western part of the church with a fitting crypt, and ordered with the utmost zeal that materials be cut and brought for the buildings, carefully measured in his presence, and did not delay until he covered it entirely with tiles, and within clothed the fabric of the church with paneled ceilings, adorned it with bright painting, and had restored the ornaments of the church which on account of the barbarians had been carried away into the city and preserved in the mother church. To these it is pleasing to subjoin what follows in the same place, for the sake of clarity:

[59] In how great observance of God that place of the eastern part of the church may always remain, when the place was revealed to St. Udalric, let it be manifested by sure indications; it seems fitting to me to weave this in here. A certain gardener, named Adelpold, walking there among the grasses, found a cave; entering which, he beheld a shapely little chamber walled underground; and coming, he announced it to the bishop, saying: In this place I can store my vegetables and other necessaries. To whom he answered, warning him and saying: If you do this, there is no doubt that you will lose your senses and the soundness of your limbs. But the gardener, not believing the bishop's words, without his knowledge began to gather the aforesaid things into that same cave. In doing this he lost his senses along with his hearing and sight. But when this had been announced to the bishop, he ordered the gardener to be brought to him, and said to him: Why did you wish to occupy that holy place, despising my command? To whom he, although he lacked his senses, said: I do not deny it; for I know that for that guilt, that I did not obey your commands, I incurred this tribulation. And the kindly bishop, grieving at his tribulations, granting him pardon with his blessing, with God's leave restored him to health. Wonderful to say! That gardener afterward could in no way find that cave. But afterward the bishop, having summoned undertakers, ordered a tomb to be dug for himself in the southern part of the outer wall of the church, and to be encircled outside with a wall, and, the wall of the church being broken through, an arch of masonry to be curved above, and a fitting chest to be made to cover the body in the tomb; and moreover he determined that a thick flooring, long imperishable, bound with careful jointing, be laid over it. These preparations for his own obsequies being accomplished, thenceforth every week on Friday he was accustomed to visit that place and there to offer the sacrifice, if some other occupation or absence did not make an impediment for him.

[60] These things thence a little more fully; that you may observe, first, that that church had been in ruins long enough before it was restored by Udalric; since indeed grasses had already grown up there when the gardener, walking among the ruins, found the aforesaid cave, and that under St. Afra's choir, but still lying prostrate; as Sigismund asserts, part 1, chapter 10: yet that what Gassar affirms in these words is false: Our same Udalric also restored the chapel of St. Afra, for more than a hundred years now bristling with briars and neglect outside the city: for that chapel, or rather church, had burned in the year of the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ 955 (that is, only about eighteen years before the death of that same prelate), as, before several others, the contemporary writer taught in the Life of St. Udalric of which we are now treating, page 110, number 46. Second, that St. Afra's tomb is said to have been found neither in that cave nor in the underground little chamber (although it was without doubt laid beneath that same eastern part of the church): for after that cave and little chamber were discovered, Udalric, being now just about to undertake the restoration of the place, did not yet know in what part of the church that buried thing lay hidden. Third, that St. Udalric is here said to have been taught by the apparition nothing other than what he had asked, as necessary for rightly ordering the new building; namely, where the place was under which St. Afra's tomb lay hidden; then, whether it was expedient

that a crypt be built where the choir had been, in the eastern part of the church: this therefore is said to have been forbidden by the Saint who appeared; that place was indeed shown, but not dug up, not opened; much less to be dug up. Udalric therefore did not see the tomb or the relics of St. Afra, but the place under which they lay; and these, no otherwise than the other remains of other Saints laid away in the same place, he was ordered to leave untouched. And so this was only a revelation of the sacred hiding-place, not a finding of the body or the tomb; and accordingly Khamm, a man otherwise diligent, asserts too much when in part 1 of his Hierarchy, page 133, number 36, he thus pronounces concerning St. Udalric: Her (Afra the Martyr's) sacred body, found by the revelation of the holy Martyr herself, he entombed with due honor and seemliness. Fourth, finally, that when St. Udalric is said afterward to have offered sacrifice in that place every week, this must be understood not of St. Afra's monument itself, but of the church or choir under which he now knew that it lay hidden among others.

[61] but it was dug up and opened here And indeed the bringing forth and public knowledge of so precious a deposit would have been untimely and very dangerous, so long as the church remained exposed to the same misfortunes to which it had already so often succumbed: and it so remained until, the walls being enlarged and drawn around, it was enclosed in the city; which Hertfelder relates happened, part 1, chapter 2, under Adalbero, its seventh abbot, who presided from the year of Christ 1050 to 1064, or rather to the following year, as Khamm holds. And so, after the boundary of Augsburg was enlarged on that side, and security for the aforesaid church was thereby procured for the future, the shrines hidden there began first to be uncovered; whether under Henry II or under Embrico, bishops of Augsburg; the first of whom is believed to have sat from the year 1047 to 1064, when the other succeeded and held the see for fourteen years. And under Henry indeed Sigismund holds that it so happened, part 1, chapter 11: Under him, while the church of St. Afra was being extended to a wider space, the body of St. Afra was found, entire in its members, in a stone sarcophagus of wonderful size, still having traces of scorching; and thus entire, enclosed, it is placed in that spot where it is now (in the year 1483) venerated, and where it had been found. For which cause a very great multitude flowed together to Augsburg. St. Udalric also shone with great miracles. But when notable offerings were made by the people, that same bishop Henry strove to appropriate them to himself; but he was compelled by the Apostolic Alexander to desist from what he had begun. Nay, when near death, as is subjoined in the same place, he left to that place, by way of satisfaction, a certain sum, to his successor Embrico…, under whom, of St. Afra's entire little body, one toe of the foot is given to the bishop of Cologne, and another to be carried to the emperor Henry at Speyer, etc.

[62] But writers not a little older than Sigismund affirm that under Embrico that church was at once renewed, under Embrico, bishop of Augsburg, in the year 1064, and the bodies of Sts. Afra and Eutropia at once found: for thus has the author of the catalogue of the bishops of Augsburg, which seems to have been compiled under Embrico, because it ends with him: for what follows was added by a second hand, says Mabillon in the Acts of the Saints of his Order, Century 5, page 477, where he exhibits it: thus, I say, that catalogue has concerning Embrico: He in the first year of his ordination, which is from the Incarnation of the Lord 1064, fifty talents having been given by his predecessor, destroyed the church of St. Afra from the foundations; and the body of St. Eutropia was discovered in a leaden sarcophagus on the day before the Kalends of May: but the body of St. Afra, entire in a stone sarcophagus of wonderful size, and covered over with a certain cement (consult the annotations below at chapter 2, letter k), was discovered on the IV of the Nones of the same month. Another catalogue of the twelfth century in Eccard, of which I made mention above, number 52, agrees in all respects. Concerning the finding of St. Afra's body Velser transcribed this from ancient codices, page 503:

[63] After these things (which we have narrated above from the very source, concerning the revelation of St. Afra's tomb made to St. Udalric), in the year of the Lord's Incarnation 1064, Embrico, as older monuments testify. bishop of Augsburg, fifty talents having been given by his predecessor, destroyed the church of blessed Afra from the foundations; and her body was found in a stone sarcophagus, of squared work, of wonderful size; and it was placed in that spot where it is still venerated. But in the year —, the archbishop of Cologne, of happy memory, had suppliantly asked the aforesaid prelate that he would deign to impart to him some gift of the ashes of so great a Martyr, believing his city would be happy if it were enriched with such relics. To whose prayers the bishop assented; and coming to Augsburg, he calls together the prelates of the churches and the brethren of the monastery of St. Afra, judging that it would be ill-advised to do anything without their counsel and will. Therefore, when with great fear the sarcophagus of Christ's Martyr was opened, her body was found entire, and covered over with a certain most white cement. Taking away, therefore, only the joint of the toe of the foot, the venerable pontiff, with the clergy and people as witnesses, directed it to Cologne with the highest reverence. Without delay the sarcophagus is closed, and in the place where it is now venerated, as we said before, is fittingly set up.

[64] After these things, some courses of years having rolled by, the emperor Henry built a church at Speyer, [Two joints of the foot are given, one to bishop Anno, the other to the emperor Henry.] which he had dedicated in honor of blessed Afra. He was therefore urging Hermann, bishop of Augsburg, with many prayers, that something of St. Afra's relics might be sent thither. For which matter, although the bishop was distressed with excessive fear, yet he called together the abbot of the monastery of St. Afra and the clergy, asking that they should determine what must be done. Who said that the imperial majesty indeed must not be gainsaid; but they profess in common that before a great portion of blessed Afra's body should be taken from them, they were willing to undergo death. At length they came to the Martyr's tomb: and the soldiers of the city guard the doors of the church in arms; and standing round about in the church, they attend diligently lest a great part of so great a Martyr's body be carried off by the bishop or by the priests. But the bishop, hearing from the elders of the monastery that long ago one joint of the toe of the foot had been taken away by his predecessor, determines that another joint in the same part of the foot must be taken away. And so, the stone by which the sarcophagus is closed being rolled back a little, another joint of the toe of the foot is taken away; and forthwith the stone is replaced and fastened together with iron bindings. And so the bishop, mounting a higher place, showed to all the little portion taken from the body of Christ's Martyr: and thus all returned to their own homes with glad mind. The greater part of it was sent to the emperor at Speyer; the other remained there. But from the day of the finding of blessed Afra's body, which is the VI of the Kalends of Aug., the sarcophagus has been unsealed only twice. And nothing more has been taken from it than what we have here recalled: which the elders handed down to our memory, who were also present at the deed.

[65] In what month and on what day this finding happened; To these things note first, with Velser, that this writer's age is gathered from the fact that he cites as witnesses the monks who were present at the deed under Henry IV toward the end of the eleventh century, in the ninety-sixth year of which Hermann obtained the mitres of Augsburg; or toward the beginning of the twelfth century, in the fifth year of which Henry lost his empire, in the sixth his life. We have here, then, three testimonies opposed to Sigismund alone, and older than he by three centuries at the least. Note second, that since these three testimonies agree concerning the year and the episcopate of Embrico, under whom our Martyr's body was found, those chronologists err who hold that Embrico's predecessor Henry sat down to the third day either of August or of December of that same year 1064: for thus this finding either would not have fallen in that year, or could not be ascribed to Embrico, who was inaugurated on the feast of the Purified Virgin; either of which conflicts with these most ancient witnesses of ours. Note third, that those same witnesses do not agree about the day and month of the finding: for both catalogues fix it on the sixth of the Nones of May; but the Velserian writer, on the sixth of the Kalends of August, on which day we have said it is now celebrated every year in the Udalrician-Afran monastery at Augsburg. Yet the authority of the earlier catalogue seems preferable, both because it is older, and because according to all this tomb was discovered while the old church was being destroyed to its foundations in order that a new one might be raised from the foundations; for which work early spring was certainly more opportune than midsummer. Or, if you prefer, reconcile both opinions, understanding the former of the finding of St. Afra's sarcophagus, which happened on the sixth of the Nones of May; the latter of the finding of the body in the sarcophagus, which perhaps was not opened before the sixth of the Kalends of August:

[66] and whether the chest was opened at the same time it was found For it must be noted, fourth, that the sarcophagus seems to have been found for some time before it was opened; since it is said to have been opened only twice before the thirteenth century: first, that satisfaction might be given to Anno asking for relics; and again, to the emperor Henry, likewise demanding them: but it is not credible that Anno asked for them except after he had learned that the sarcophagus had been found; the sarcophagus could therefore first have been unsealed for his sake, to take out relics for him, and thus the body be found, and that nearly three months after the finding of the chest, and accordingly on the sixth of the Kalends of August. It must be noted, fifth, that it is not surprising that the emperor Henry both sought and obtained relics from Hermann, inasmuch as he was a schismatic from a schismatic then most devoted to him and his. But whence had this devotion come upon that emperor, that he should build a church of St. Afra; and then that he should seek her relics? Had he drawn it from St. Anno, long his instructor and minister of the empire; or from this, that about the year 1084, having beyond hope gained possession of the city of Augsburg, he reckoned it received from St. Afra, because it had happened on her vigil? Further, that that church was a chapel in the cathedral church of Speyer Velser here judges, after William Eysengrein in the Chronicle of Speyer, folios 192 and 201; yet the latter, in the sacred treasury of that church, which he describes from folio 30, makes no mention of these relics of St. Afra.

[67] likewise how often it has been opened; and then what is thought It must be noted, sixth, that what the Velserian author asserts of his own time, this same thing Khamm asserts of his own age in the year 1709, Hierarchy of Augsburg, part 1, page 177, number 11; where, having spoken of the relics given to Henry, he subjoins this: After these things were accomplished, the sarcophagus of St. Afra was closed, and was never afterward unsealed down to our times, as an evident argument that sacred relics in other sacred places, as though torn from the body of this St. Afra, are to be venerated as relics of another St. Afra (for instance, of that one who

suffered martyrdom at Brescia under the emperor Hadrian; or of St. Afra buried at Pavia in the church of St. Marolus); or are to be venerated as relics of the Saints from the company of St. Afra, not as received from the very body of this local holy Martyr; since the holy body of the Augsburg St. Afra rests entire (except the two joints of the toe of the foot) in the church of St. Udalric. If this is as certain and evident as is here maintained, several relics must surely be adjudged away and attributed to another, which have hitherto been believed to be of this Martyr's body; as that bone of St. Afra which the same writer enumerates among the relics of the cathedral church of Augsburg in the same place, page 488, but adding this parenthesis: (Perhaps of one of the Saints from the Company of St. Afra): likewise the burned head of St. Afra, M., which Pessina reckons among the Karlstein relics of the metropolitan church of Prague, in the Phosphorus, page 413, and on page 426, of St. Afra, M., several large half-burned fragments of the head, and several other parts: likewise those (if however they are parts of the body) which the same author reports on page 115, relics of St. Afra; then those which are attributed by Gelenius at Cologne to the church of St. Maximin, of St. Afra martyr, and to the monastery of St. Vincent, relics of St. Afra: likewise those which are ascribed to the monastery of Andechs, in Beyerlinck at the word Relics, relics of St. Afra the martyr and of her mother Hilaria, etc.: as also the relics of St. Afra in the monastery of Muri among the Swiss, concerning which the Acts of its foundation in Ludewig, Writers on German affairs, volume 2, column 420; likewise those which are said to be at Paris at St. Magloire's among the Fathers of the Oratory; and any others there may be.

[68] For the rest, by this argument those relics of hers are not touched concerning certain relics attributed to this Martyr. which are not parts of the body; as what the people of Prague have, according to Pessina, page 471, of St. Afra's veil; what is in the cathedral of Augsburg, in Khamm above, of her column, to which, condemned to the pyre, she was bound; and what we have said, at number 45, still remains of that same column or stake in the Saint's church at the Lycian Field; then those which are preserved outside her tomb among the Udalricians themselves at Augsburg; as a notable part of that same tree or stake to which the Martyr, being bound, earned by fire the palm of martyrdom, on Hertfelder's testimony, page 75, where he exhibits a silver effigy of St. Afra, in which that part of the stake is enclosed: likewise a small quantity of her hair, which Stengel indicates in the German Chronicle, page 160: finally her girdle also, health-bringing to women with child, as Sigismund says in the appendix to his Chronicle, and Hertfelder, page 113, where he also sets forth a reliquary engraved in copper, in which some part of it is contained; but see the far greatest part in Khamm, part 1, page 139. Lastly I should wish this also to be noted with regard to the history recited above, that Sigismund erred in the appendix, when he says that both great toes of each foot were taken away from this sacred body; for our author records only two joints of the same toe, one of which fell entire to Anno, the other for the greater part to Henry, the lesser part remaining there, that is in the sarcophagus, unless I am mistaken: for nowhere do I remember reading of it as laid apart. Further, what place that sarcophagus now occupies in the most august church of the Benedictines may be seen in Hertfelder, so often praised, in a work neat enough if you look at the style, and quite sumptuous if you look at the copper plates, pages 36 and 53.

[69] Certain miracles of hers. This would be the place to treat of this Martyr's miracles, had not ungrateful oblivion removed the memory of almost all of them: for that very many happened at her tomb before the age of Venantius Fortunatus, the celebrity of the place then even among foreign nations proves. But of these there are now no traces: of the more recent ones very few; which accordingly I shall be content to have assigned here. And this first of all is memorable, that the Saint appeared to St. Udalric not only after the year of Christ 955, as has already been said, but also before the year 937, that is, while Henry the Fowler was still alive. This notable apparition may be read described in the Acts of St. Udalric, volume 2 of July, page 101, numbers 11 and 12. In the same place, page 82, numbers 44 and following, there is narrated from Udalscalcus the prodigious healing of a cripple, which occurred at the same Saint's tomb in the twelfth century under abbot Egino. To this the same Udalscalcus subjoins, in Canisius, volume 2, page 214, a possessed woman cured by the merits of blessed Afra; and on page 231 he reports that about the tenth year of Egino, of Christ 1119, in which he was unjustly compelled by the schismatics to depart from the monastery with his own, among other portents displayed to hasten the recall of the excellent abbot and the Religious, the tomb of blessed Afra, the metal being loosened, was seen to be opened; by which sign he believes this holy Patroness wished to threaten that she would desert the place and follow her exiled clients, unless they were bidden to return forthwith. Four others Stengel relates in the German Chronicle, book 1, chapter 8, but without a witness and without marks of times: the first of a captive freed from chains and prison by the Martyr invoked and appearing; the second and third of very great fires extinguished at her invocation, one in the city of Reims, the other at Augsburg in her own church; the fourth of a woman vexed by five demons, and freed indeed from two through the imploring of St. Afra's patronage; but from the rest after St. Udalric was entreated in the same church. After this the same author subjoins what we have said from him concerning the two chapels at number 9. But we pass over what Khamm relates concerning Henry IV, part 3, page 51, number 108, as proved by no testimony of antiquity and by no means probable; not to say openly false. Now to the Acts, of which we treated in §2.

* perhaps "und," by the word, by supposition

* that is, cathedral

THE ACTS

From Velser's edition collated with several Manuscript and printed copies.

Afra, Martyr at Augsburg (S.)

BHL Number: 0108

From Velser and Manuscripts.

CHAPTER I.

The conversion of St. Afra and of her maidens.

St. Narcissus the bishop, turning aside to Afra, In the province of Rhaetia, in the city of Augusta, Narcissus the bishop ^a, coming at the time when the persecution of Diocletian was raging, not knowing where he should enter as a fugitive, went in to a certain harlot named Afra, with his deacon named Felix. But she, seeing honorable men, thinking them unchaste visitors, prepares a supper and everything which she was accustomed after her usual manner to prepare with her three maidens. But the bishop, having come in to take food, began to pray and to sing psalms. But Afra, because she had never heard these things, being astonished, began to inquire who he was. And she learned that he was a bishop, and straightway fell before his feet, saying: Lord, I am unworthy, and in this city none more base than I can be found ^b.

[2] To whom Narcissus the bishop said: My Savior, touched by a most base woman, could not be defiled: for his holiness washed away and cleansed all filth. Filth could not defile the Lord's brightness: for the light too, coming from heaven, and the splendor of the sun, while it is poured about sewers and muddy streets, is poured clean from heaven, is lifted up clean to heaven. Whence you also, little daughter, receive into yourself the light of faith, that, purified from every sin, you may be able to rejoice from my entering with perpetual brightness. Afra says to him: How can I, who have committed sins more than the hairs of my head, be washed from such great filth? Narcissus the bishop answered: Only believe, and be baptized; and you shall be saved.

[3] Then Afra, calling together her maidens, said: This man who has come to us is a bishop of the Christians, she consults her maidservants; and all together pray to God: and he has said to me: If you shall believe in Christ, and shall be baptized, you shall be able to be cleansed from every sin. What seems good to you? And Digna, Eumenia, and Euprepia ^c, answering, said: You are our mistress, and we have followed you to the defilements of crimes; how shall we not follow you to the pardon of sins? You are our head; wherever the head shall go, the members must needs follow. Meanwhile, while they were saying these things, night took its beginning. And the bishop, beginning to sing hymns to God with his deacon, passed the whole night in praying and psalm-singing, having at the same time Afra with her maidens as sharers.

[4] But when morning came, bishop Narcissus began to be sought for from Afra; Afra hides her guest from the pursuers; and it was said to Afra: Where are they who came in to you? But she said to them: My guests, my lovers, stayed here, and have gone away to sacrifice. But they, hearing that they had gone to sacrifice, thought that they had gone to the Capitol ^d or to the temple. And so, as the others departed, one of them remained, who said to her: I recognized those who came in the evening, that they were Christians: for at every hour they signed their foreheads with the sign of the cross ^e, by which their Christ suffered. Afra says to him: Would they have been going to enter to me, a harlot, if they were Christians? None come to me but those who are like me. He went away, and announced all that she had said and what he had heard to those who were seeking them.

[5] she announces to her mother the miracle he wrought that night, Then Afra went to her mother Hilaria ^f, and said to her: A bishop of the Christians has come to me, not knowing where he should enter; and all night, stretching out his hands to his God and singing to him what he knows, he made us pray with him: but about cockcrow ^g the light of the candle ^h went out, and I began to hasten to kindle it, and I could not. Then his deacon said to me: Do not seek an extinguishable light; presently there shall be shown you a light which cannot be extinguished. And when the bishop had said: Come, my light, from heaven; show your face, and we shall be saved; there came a brightness from heaven like the sun, and like the flash that comes before the thunder, and it did not withdraw, but stood so long until the dawn began. And when he had finished his prayer, he bade us answer him and say: Amen. And the light of that brightness gradually withdrew from our eyes.

[6] and asks her to receive him with her, After this I cast myself at his feet, and said to him: Lord, you have done yourself a great injury in that you have entered in to me; for I am a sinful woman. And he said: Where my Lord bade me enter, I have entered. But in the morning about the third hour ⁱ there showed themselves to me those who before daylight had lain in wait for them

that they might seize and kill them as they came out. But since they did not come out, they accosted me. But I hid them where I keep the bundles of flax; and I fear lest they search that very place. But if you bid me, lady mother, I will make them cross over hither. For the bishop promised me, saying: I will make you a Christian, and all your sins shall be washed away. Hearing these things, her mother, filled with joy, said: May God grant that this befall me too. To whom Afra said: Then when night comes I will move him hither. Her mother answered: Even if he should be unwilling, ask him.

[7] there all are prepared for baptism, But when evening came, Afra asked holy Narcissus; and he moved to her mother's house. And when Narcissus the bishop had entered the house ^k, there was great joy; so that Hilaria for three hours ^l held his feet, and said: I beseech you, lord, that you make me too to be cleansed from my sins. Then holy Narcissus the bishop said to her: Blessed is your faith, who, before you learned the word of truth, have founded in your mind that very truth which men can scarcely recognize through the word. Yet because I see that you are capable of the word of God, begin this present day to fast together, and for seven days, fasting, hear the discourse of truth; but on the eighth day you shall be purified from every sin, and shall be such as you were as infants, having the guilt of no crime ^m. Hilaria said to him: If you bid us, we will tell what we worship; and so at last teach us what we should worship. Narcissus the bishop said to her: In this it appears that you will well be able to receive what you ought to worship, if you plainly set forth what you have worshipped. Tell, then, your worship.

[8] the vanity of superstition being recognized Hilaria answered: My parents were Cypriots by family, and thence they came with the rites of Venus. And Venus cannot be worshipped except by those women who have fornicated ⁿ. Therefore I consecrated my daughter to the rites of Venus, as one who should serve the goddess Venus, and I permitted her to remain in the brothel to please by the harlot's work, believing that Venus would be propitious to me if I had busied my daughter with her divine imitations. For the more lovers a woman who serves Venus can have, the more she can please Venus, is affirmed by the priestesses. Hearing these things, the man of God Narcissus the bishop groaned and poured out tears, and said to his Deacon: Rise, brother, and let us make lamentation over such a worship as this, and let us ask the Lord that where iniquity has abounded, grace also may superabound.

[9] But it came to pass, when they had prayed, a demon appeared like a certain Egyptian, from the apparition of a demon, blacker than a raven, naked, and his whole body full of the sores of elephantiasis, and he began to bellow, saying: O holy Narcissus, bishop, what have you to do with my cause? What have you to do with my handmaids, whom I have always had in my household? Your God loves clean souls and clean bodies. These are already mine; they cannot be another's. Do I enter where chastity reigns? Do I find a place where the spirit of chastity is? Why have you entered here, where bodies are defiled and souls are polluted? Then holy Narcissus the bishop said to him: I command you, unclean spirit, to give me an answer concerning what I shall ask you.

[10] Tell me, condemned one: do you know that Christ Jesus our Lord the Nazarene was seized, scourged, smeared with spittle on the face, confessing Christ's power and his own weakness, crowned with thorns, mocked, bound, given gall and vinegar to drink, fastened to the cross, dead, buried, and rose on the third day from the dead? Do you know that this was done? The demon answered and said: Would that it had been permitted me not to know this! For from that hour in which he was crucified, our prince fled from before his face [and cast himself into the temple of God; and therefore the veil of the temple was rent, ^o] because he could not bear the power of him who pursued. Then those solid rocks were split and the tombs were opened, and there rose up holy men who saw this done, when our prince was seized by him who was crucified and bound with chains. Holy Narcissus answered and said: What is the name of your prince? The demon says to him: Satan is his name, which is interpreted the beginning of death [p].

[11] Narcissus the bishop says to him: Tell me, what did the Lord Jesus Christ sin, and complaining that so many souls are snatched from him, that he should suffer so much? The demon says to him: He never sinned. Narcissus the bishop says to him: And he who never sinned, why did he endure so much? The demon answered: He suffered not for his own sins, but for those of others. Narcissus the bishop says to him: Out of your own mouth you are condemned, unclean spirit. Since therefore you know that my lord Jesus Christ was slain not for his own but for others' sins, depart from these women; because he suffered also for these, who have fled to his faith and grace. The demon says to him: Since the law teaches and commands that no one take away another's goods, why do you, who are holy, take away my goods? Why do you take from me the souls which I have gained? Narcissus the bishop says to him: Housebreaker and thief, condemned and grown old from the beginning, since you separated these souls from their God and from their creator, I now hold you as a thief, and restore to the creator his creature.

[12] The demon answered him: I too am his creature; and asking that at least one be given him; restore me then also to my creator. Narcissus says to him: You yourself have confessed this out of your own mouth, that Christ suffered for the sins of men [q]: if, in the manner in which he suffered for the sins of men, he had also suffered for the impieties of demons, I would restore you to your creator: but now, because he so suffered for the sins of men that he bound your prince, go you to your prince. The demon says to him: Do a kindness upon me [r], and give me at least one soul into my power. Narcissus the bishop says to him: If I shall give you a soul into your power, what will you do with it? The demon says to him: I kill it, and gain its soul. Narcissus says to him: Tomorrow at first light I will give you this power, that you may do it. The demon says to him: Tell me before your God, that you give me a soul enclosed within a body, which I may gain. Narcissus says to him: Before my God, I will give you a soul enclosed within a body, eating and drinking and sleeping and waking again. The demon says to him: Now bid me remain here this night. Narcissus says to him: If you can remain with us, remain. The demon says to him: If you do not stretch out your hands to the heavens and do not sing psalms to your God, I can remain here. Narcissus says to him: May it never be well with you, unclean spirit. And not only I, but all these women with me, shall bend their knees to our God through the whole night, and shall sing his praises with us. Then the demon sent forth a most foul howl of dreadful voice, and appeared nowhere.

[13] but, being tricked, he is driven off But the holy bishop had Afra with her mother and with her maidens take refreshment after the fast. And they, trembling at what they had heard and seen, were strengthened by his admonitions. But he himself with Felix his deacon did not refresh himself, knowing that in the morning he would again have a struggle with the demon. And so the whole night passed, full of prayers and the singing of psalms. But when day arose, the demon was present, saying: Be mindful, holy bishop, of your oath, which you spoke before your God. Give me a soul whose body I may slay, and whose soul I may have with me. Holy Narcissus the bishop answered and said: Do you also swear to me in the name of my God that you will straightway kill him whom I shall give into your power; and if you do not kill him, may God bid you go into the abyss. And the demon said to him: By him who conquered us with our prince, so may he not bid me go into the abyss, for I will straightway kill him whom you shall give into my power. And Narcissus the bishop said to him: Go to the spring of the Julian Alps [s], whence no one can drink water, neither man, nor beast, nor any wild animal; because a Dragon dwells there, and from his breath all who approach the spring die: go and kill this dragon, and bring his soul into your power. Then the demon cried out, saying: O lying bishop! Moreover he has bound me by an oath to kill my friend [t]: and if I do not kill him, he will compel me to go into the abyss. Then the demon consented; and killed the dragon: and the spring was freed for the use of all, even to this present day [u].

[14] But for very many days holy Narcissus the bishop taught the word of God. And Hilaria was baptized with her daughter Afra and with her maidens and with all her kindred and with all her friends [x]. And he made Hilaria's house a church, But Afra is baptized with her mother and maidservants. and ordained for them as priest Dionysius, Afra's maternal uncle.

But the bishop Narcissus himself [y], all things being accomplished in order, after nine months set out for Spain, to the city of Gerona. In which he gained much people for God over three years. And so at last he attained the palm of martyrdom with his deacon Felix [z]: the glory of whose passion we shall tell in what follows. But now we pursue the fruit of his teaching in Afra.

ANNOTATIONS.

had; but afterward other cities throughout the provinces, imitating it, built their own Capitols also, rivals of the Roman; as Velser learnedly shows here, note 32. In it the temple was more august than the others placed elsewhere.

p. Nor did Velser find this interpretation with much sweat, note 68. And this too, then, marks the interpolator as with a finger.

q. And yet he had not said above, "For the sins of men," but, "For the sins of others." Here too, then, the quibble is inept, and not the offspring of a suitable author.

r. On account of similar phrases we denied in the Commentary, §2, that this author — or rather interpolator — seems to us as ancient as he seemed to Velser.

s. The Julian Alps… are threefold…; one among the Taurini; the second in Rhaetia; the third among the Veneti… Which of these Narcissus spoke of, one may doubt. Sure conjectures draw me to the Rhaetian ones, which stretch widely from Septimer to Mount Braulio, and in which the river Inn rises: for these are nearer than the rest; etc. Velser, note 89. The same author in the following notes employs much erudition to make credible what follows concerning the dragon; although he was well aware that very many things of this kind are everywhere bandied about as fabulous. And indeed these things would somehow persuade us, if he had also been able to persuade us of what he himself held for certain, namely that the writer of this history was the same as the writer of the Martyrdom. But see the Commentary in the place cited.

t. Are these things not trifling? For if this dull demon had taken Narcissus' words in another sense, in another sense also without doubt he had sworn; and accordingly he was not bound by his oath either to kill the dragon or to go into the abyss.

u. "Even to this present day." Hence also it appears, says Velser, note 96, that the history was not written at the time of the event; unless we say that these words were added afterward. But if we say that these were added afterward, by what argument shall we deny that many other things were added afterward? Then, if this history was not written at the time of the event, whence will it be established that it was written in the fourth century rather than in the sixth or seventh?

x. "With all her kindred," etc. To this Velser, note 98: Their names have perished; except those of Afer, who was Afra's paternal uncle, and of Dionysius, who was her maternal uncle. We have treated of St. Afer on this day; of St. Dionysius, on the 26th day of February from page 631.

y. "But the bishop himself," etc. Velser, note 101, says that he separated these things from the thread of the history, because they seemed of another author and age; but he rightly adds: Nor, however, do I prejudge anyone's opinion: for we see no reason for so judging; and accordingly we hold that they belong altogether to the thread of the same narrative, since they are read in the same run in all the copies.

z. What follows, all the copies we have seen have, except the Velserian. Do these things not then manifestly indicate that the author of the Conversion and of the Passion which follows is the same? By no means: for a modern author of the Conversion can take a Passion, however ancient and written by another, and stitch it to the Conversion recently composed by himself, and that by this very transition: But now we pursue the fruit of his teaching (Narcissus') in Afra; namely by subjoining to the Conversion narrated by us the old history of her passion, once written by another most weighty author.

* 3 codices: "of wood"

* commonly "of leprosy"

* Three codices: "cottage"

* 4 codices: "these"

* others: "departed," "approached," "went up"

CHAPTER II.

The Passion of St. Afra, martyr.

Afra, seized by the persecutors, In the province of Rhaetia, in the city of Augusta, when there was a glorious persecution of the Christians, and all were afflicted with various punishments for Christ's name and dragged to the sacrifices, it happened that Afra, whom her public face made known as being a woman of the brothel ^a, was seized by the persecutors. And when she had been presented to the judge, when the judge had questioned and had learned who she was, he said to her: Sacrifice to the gods, because it is more to your advantage to live than to perish amid torments. Afra answered: My sins suffice me, which I committed in ignorance of God; but this which you bid me do, I shall never do. Gaius the judge said: Approach the Capitol and sacrifice. Afra answered: My Capitol is Christ, whom I have before my eyes; to him daily I confess my crimes and my sins: and because I am unworthy to offer him a sacrifice, I desire that I myself be sacrificed for his name; that the body in which I sinned may, when it has endured punishment, be washed clean.

[16] Gaius the judge said: As I hear, you are a harlot; she is pressed with various arguments sacrifice, since you are a stranger to the God of the Christians ^b. Afra answered: My Lord Jesus Christ said that he came down from heaven for sinners: for his Gospels too tell that a harlot watered his feet with tears and received pardon: and he never despised harlots and publicans; nay, he even allowed them to eat with him. The judge said: Sacrifice, that you may be loved by your lovers, as you were always loved by them; that much money may be brought to you by them. Afra answered: Accursed money I shall now never receive: for what I had, I spent; because it was not of a good conscience: for when some of my poor brothers ^c were unwilling to receive it, I even asked with prayers that they would deign to receive it from me, and would pray for my sins. If, then, I cast away from me what I had, how can it be that I should seek to receive what I cast away as filth?

[17] Gaius the judge said: Christ now does not hold you worthy; without cause you wish to call him your God, who recognizes that you are not his: to sacrifice to idols; for she who is a harlot cannot be called a Christian. Afra answered: I indeed do not deserve to be called or named a Christian; but the mercy of God, who judges not from merit but from his own goodness, has himself admitted me to this name. Gaius the judge said: Whence do you know that he has admitted you to this name? Afra answered: In this I recognize that I have not been cast out from the face of God, because I am permitted to approach the glorious confession of his holy name, through which I believe I shall receive pardon for all my crimes. The judge said: These are fables: rather sacrifice to the gods, through whom you may obtain salvation. Afra answered: My salvation is Christ; who, hanging on the cross, promised the goods of paradise to the thief who confessed.

[18] Gaius the judge said: Sacrifice, then, lest in the sight of your lovers who lived basely with you ^d until the judge, wearied by her constancy, I order you to be beaten with cudgels ^e. Afra answered: I have no shame except for my sins. The judge said: Sacrifice to the gods; since it is an injury to me to contend with you for so many hours ^f: but if you refuse, you shall be killed. Afra said: This is what I desire; if only I may deserve that through this confession I be made worthy to find rest. Gaius the judge said: Sacrifice: for I will have you tortured, and afterward burned alive. Afra answered: Let the body which sinned receive divers torments: for I will not defile my soul with the sacrifices of demons. Then the most wicked judge dictated the sentence, saying: Afra, a public harlot, who has professed herself a Christian and refused to share in the sacrifices, we order to be burned alive.

[19] he ordered her to be burned alive. Immediately therefore she was carried off by the officers, and led to an island of the river Lycus; and there, stripping her, they bound her to a stake. And she, lifting her eyes to the heavens, prayed with tears, saying: Lord God almighty, Jesus Christ, who came not to call the just but sinners to repentance; whose promise is true and manifest, because you deigned to say that in the hour in which a sinner shall be converted from his iniquities, in that same hour you will not remember his sins: receive in this hour of my passion my repentance; and through this temporal fire, which is prepared for my body, free me from that eternal fire which burns up soul and body together. And when these words were finished, being surrounded with faggots ^g, the fire being set beneath, a voice was heard, saying: I give you thanks, Lord Jesus Christ, who have deigned to have me as a victim for your name — you who alone were offered as a victim for the whole world upon the cross, the just for the unjust, the good for the evil, the blessed for the accursed, the sweet for the bitter, the clean from sin for all sinners; to you I offer my sacrifice, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit live and reign, God, unto the ages of ages, Amen. And saying this, she gave up her spirit.

[20] Her mother and companions, burying the unharmed body, Now there were standing beside the bank of the river ^h Digna, Eumenia, and Euprepia, who had been her maidservants, and had been together in sin, and were together baptized by holy Narcissus the bishop. These asked the soldiers coming down from the boat ⁱ to carry them across thither. And when they had carried them across, they found the body of St. Afra entire. But a boy who was with them swam across and announced it to her mother Hilaria. And she came by night with the priests of God and took her body ^k; and placed it at the second milestone from the city of Augusta in a tomb which she had built for herself and her own. But it was announced to Gaius the judge. Who sent to that tomb, saying: Go and hold them; and if they shall consent to sacrifice, bring them to me with honor, that I may reward them with a most worthy sum; but if you shall see that they resist with obstinate mind, and by no means give consent to sacrifice, fill the tomb with faggots, and close that tomb upon them, and then at last set fire beneath, so that none of them may escape alive.

[21] in the very tomb they obtained the palm of martyrdom. The soldiers, going, first challenged them with soft speech; after this they urged them with terrors. But when they saw that all alike despised the sacrifices, they filled the tomb with faggots and hay and dry thorns, and closed it upon them, and, the fire being set beneath, went away. And so it came to pass that on the same day on which Afra was buried, at the same time also her mother Hilaria, and likewise her handmaids according to the flesh, but now sisters in Christ, Digna, Eumenia, and Euprepia, together received the crown of martyrdom ^l; and they who together with one mind believed in Christ Jesus, came to him alike with the palm of martyrdom; he granting it who reigns with the Father and the Holy Spirit, God, unto the ages of ages. Amen ^m.

ANNOTATIONS.

* Velser: "fame"

* others: "had been"

* others: "Caius"