Emygdius

ON ST. EMYGDIUS, BISHOP AND MARTYR, AT ASCOLI

IN PICENO.

In the year 303 or 304.

PRELIMINARY COMMENTARY.

Emygdius, Bishop and Martyr, at Ascoli in Piceno (S.)

BHL Number: 2536

§ I. His cult among the people of Ascoli and elsewhere.

BY THE AUTHOR P. B.

There is a twofold Asculum in Italy;

each conspicuous by the seat of a bishop: one in the Capitanata of Apulia; the other, which alone concerns us here, His ancient cult as patron upon the rivers Tronto and Castellano in Piceno, or the March of Ancona. Of this Blaeu exhibits an elegant delineation and at the same time a description in the Theatre of the cities of Italy from page 46; but its history, both sacred and profane, Sebastian Andreantonelli in a posthumous work, first published at Padua in the year 1673. This author says, on page 204, that its church is the most ancient of all the rest in suburbicarian Piceno; and that without any controversy, as our Appiani adds in the Life to be praised below, page 7 of the second edition of the year 1704, which we shall here always cite, unless we give notice otherwise. It owes these its beginnings to St. Emygdius (whom others call Migdius, Emidius, Emicidius), inasmuch as he, sent by the Roman Pontiff, undertook to gather and form it; and made it illustrious not only by his doctrine and miracles while living, but also, dying, by his blood, and, dead, by his relics and his singular protection even to our own age. And so that same church has from all memory past constantly attended him with an exceptional devotion as its apostle, its first prelate, and its tutelary president.

[2] This is testified first of all by the cathedral building itself, exceedingly ancient; in the church of Ascoli, nay, founded by the emperor Constantine the Great, and dedicated at first in the name of St. Emygdius alone as patron; if, however, that old tradition and constant report of the learned is true which Appiani appeals to on page 379: which I add, because that tradition seems to rest upon a certain Vallicellian manuscript Legend, which below we shall call the second Vallicellian; for in it, toward the end, a certain woman is said to have gathered our Martyr's fresh blood into three glass vessels; of which she sent one as a gift to St. Marcellus the Pope; the second she buried in a church at the river Tenna; but the third she kept by her until another king came (he had just been treating of king Polymius); and she presented it to him, that he might build a church in the name of St. Migdius, bishop and martyr. Namely, by that other king there seems to be understood either the emperor Constantine himself, or some Christian magistrate under him who, substituted in Polymius' place, is likewise called king, as he was, by this Legend-writer; for it is probable enough that that woman either did not outlive Constantine, or did not wait for times happier and kinder to sacred buildings than were those under him. But that no other church of St. Migdius is here designated than the cathedral of Ascoli can be urged from this, that in Peter de Natalibus, from some other Legend, it is written in book 7, chapter 24: But his (Emygdius') blood, gathered by a certain Christian woman, is preserved at Esculum (or Asculum) in his church. But indeed how great the credit of those Legends is, we shall indicate afterward.

[3] dedicated long ago in his name, But the antiquity and title of that same basilica, and accordingly also the cult of St. Emygdius through it and in it, can in some fashion be proved from elsewhere: and its antiquity indeed shines out from the restoration of it, when it was falling to pieces, which in the eleventh century Bernard II, bishop of Ascoli, carried out at his own expense; as the History of that same church has in Andreantonelli, page 240; although this may have been the first repair of that fabric — which, however, because of the scarcity of ancient monuments of the place, is not established; just as it is established that it was not the last, from the same History, pages 274, 308, 315. The title is reported by two diplomas of the eleventh century exhibited in the same place; one of the emperor Henry III, page 243, where the church of Esculum is said to be dedicated in honor of St. Mary and St. Emygdius; the other of St. Leo IX, Pope, page 245, whose beginning is this: To Bernard II, bishop of the church and bishopric of the holy Mother of God the Virgin Mary, and of the most blessed martyr Emygdius, placed in the county of Esculum, within the city, etc. Nor would you say that that naming was then recent, since the emperor Otto II in the preceding century, in a diploma reported in the same place, page 235, calls the canons of that same church simply those of holy Mary the Mother of God of the city of Ascoli, with no mention made of St. Emygdius: for not always in diplomas are all the patrons of churches expressed; but often none, often only the most worthy, such as here is the Virgin Mother of God. So also in the above diploma of Henry III the same church is said to have been built in honor of holy Mary the Mother of God; and in the diploma of Pope Leo IX: Which is dedicated to the honor of the Mother of God and ever Virgin Mary: for in both places the patron Emygdius is omitted; but by no means is he excluded, since in other places of the same diplomas, as we have already seen, he is expressly mentioned. We do not doubt, therefore, that that basilica was both erected and consecrated in his name; although we cannot demonstrate what Appiani asserts, that it was for some time marked with the title of Emygdius alone, before it was named for the Mother of God; nay, the already mentioned diplomas seem to gainsay it.

[4] and observing three feasts of his every year, There grew there without doubt the piety and devotion of the people of Ascoli toward their President, after his body was found and brought into that same basilica: for thereafter, besides his primary feast and birthday, which was kept on the V day of August, two others besides were instituted, to celebrate every year the memory of that treasure found and translated; and the former indeed on the XXI day of March (as, after Giovanetti in the Saint's Life, page 95, Appiani notes on pages 248 and 249) or on the following day (on which it is noted in Ferrarius in the General Catalogue, from the records, as he advises, of Ascoli); but the latter, according to the same authors, on the XII day of April. In what year, nay in what century, either that finding or the translation happened, is unknown. Appiani on page 248 refers both to Claudius, who in the year 359, in Baronius number 30, was present at the council of Rimini as bishop of the province of Piceno, under which name he is reckoned by Ughelli and others as the second among the bishops of Ascoli after St. Emygdius: but no foundation for this chronology appears; unless perhaps in the Saint's proper Office, which he himself, if I mistake not, hints belongs to the beginnings of the church of Ascoli; but we gather that, as it now stands, it was composed many centuries afterward, from the Hymns at Vespers, Matins, and Lauds: for they all consist of rhythmic or homoeoteleutic verses, whose origin Du Cange, Martini in their Lexicons, and others refer to the twelfth century. Certainly no one will say that the Legend of this Martyr which the bishop of Equilio gave was composed in the same century in which Emygdius lived: and yet it asserts that his sacred body lay hidden in its earlier tomb when the author wrote; and that in the church of Ascoli there was then only the blood.

[5] This therefore alone can we here affirm for certain, from the time it obtained his body when found: that both happened many centuries back. This is gathered both from the praised Office, and from the diploma of the emperor Henry III, given on the VI of the Kalends of June, in the year of the Lord's Incarnation 1056, which we assigned in Andreantonelli a little before, and which can also be read in Ughelli, volume 1, among the bishops of Ascoli, where he treats of Bernard II: for in both places the Saint's body is said to rest in the cathedral church of Ascoli. Nay rather, if the authority which Appiani cites among the miracles on page 306 is safe enough, the finding of the body must be said to have preceded the year of Christ 540, in which it is related that at Ascoli St. Emygdius' arm, already then enclosed in silver, was employed, and not without a miracle, to avert a calamity of the citizens. However that may be, the place which it has long occupied in that basilica Andreantonelli thus describes on page 209: Beneath that church (he had been treating of the upper part of the cathedral church) lies a church which, though underground, is nevertheless well-lighted. To it, both on the right and on the left, there is an easy descent by fifteen steps. It is supported by sixty-seven solid columns, both of stone and of marble. It is likewise adorned with three altars; in the more celebrated of which, dedicated to the divine Emygdius, beneath a marble and silver chest, fenced about with gilded iron gratings, are laid away the bodies of that same Emygdius and of his Companions. There is read in the same place the little verse:

With his other Companions Emigdius (on page 105 he reads Emindius) rests here.

Now his other companions were Euplus, Germanus, and Valentinus. That these have their cult, as well as their tomb, in common with St. Emygdius, Appiani teaches on page 262. We have found them entered in no Calendars, nor have we any other notice of them than what occurs here and in the Emygdian Acts.

[6] But with how great solemnity the anniversary memory of his birthday has long been accustomed to be honored there, the most solemn of these is the feast of his birthday, one may conjecture from the proper Office, of which I have just made mention: for it extends from first Vespers, on the IV day of August, through the whole Octave. The Antiphons, Chapters, Hymns, Responsories, Versicles — all, in short, are proper; and there are indeed nine different Lessons for each day (except the feast of St. Lawrence, on which nothing is recited concerning St. Emygdius). The first nine, which are set forth on the feast itself, contain an epitome of the Acts, but not a complete one: all the rest are the Acts themselves with the prologue of St. Valentinus, as they will be subjoined to our Commentary. This Office, in the year 1522, Jerome Tuber, a priest of Ascoli, first published in the press of Ancona, dying in the eighth year afterward not without a reputation for sanctity: as Andreantonelli teaches on pages 112 and 314. It is indeed, as is plain from what was said in number 4, later than the eleventh century; yet not a little older than its editor; as in the same place he himself testifies in the dedication prefixed, inscribed to Filo Roverella, at once bishop and prince of Ascoli, in these words: Since among us the exceedingly beautiful Office of St. Migdius, our martyr and bishop, and his lovable Legend, HAVE MUCH AND LONG lain hidden, most reverend bishop and prince of Ascoli, it has seemed good at this time especially to my lords the canons and fathers that they should be restored wholly uncorrupted to the Christian commonwealth…: for it seemed absurd that the divine deeds of so great a Man, both Martyr and Bishop, and the grace of miracles which the Lord had bestowed upon him abundantly, should exist among us alone; etc.

[7] long accustomed to be celebrated through an octave with a proper Office Of that same Office (because now another is in use, approved in the year 1659 by the Congregation of Sacred Rites) our Appiani knew that a single copy survived in the Vatican library, codex, among the printed books, 2894; and he most kindly sent it to us first, transcribed twice and legitimately collated, in the year 1697; but afterward in his first edition of the Emygdian Life he himself restored it to public right in the year 1702; but both mutilated, and corrected to suit his own opinion; as is clear from the copy which he had before shared with us, and from Tuber's own edition of the year 1522, of which lately we received on loan a copy different from the Vatican one, and accordingly unknown to Appiani, by the kindness of the most illustrious and most reverend Master Paul Thomas Marana,

bishop and prince of Ascoli. Of the correction we shall speak in its own place: but the mutilation regards the first nine Lessons, of which he wished to give only the beginnings, lest he be compelled to narrate the same things twice. Since, however, they are brief, it is no trouble to supplement Appiani's little work with them here. Thus, then, they run:

Lesson I. Blessed Emigdius, therefore, drawing his origin from a noble stock of the Gauls, was born in the province of Germany, on this side of the river Rhine; he was baptized by believing forebears, and was reared in the Southern part of that same Germany, in the city of Trier. II. Who, when he was seven years old, was handed over by his parents to be instructed in the disciplines of the seven liberal arts. For he was of bright wit, of comely countenance, exceedingly gentle and humble, eloquent and composed, and gracious in every acceptance of manners and in the praise of all virtues. III. And not only to his parents, companions, and friends, but also to all who had seen or heard him, he was held most dear; and when he had come to depth of heart and excellence of knowledge, he transcended the praise of all philosophers. IV. Then, reading and re-reading the volumes of the sacred books, he came to such wisdom, and to such grace of preaching, that it was openly given to be understood, and was proclaimed with one mouth by all the orthodox, that Migdius was a vessel of election and a dwelling-place of the Holy Spirit.

[8] in the same cathedral church, V. Blessed Emigdius, therefore, admonished by an angelic vision, rising in the night with his three disciples, Euplus, Valentinus, and Germanus, went to Pope Marcellus, to entreat him in this fashion: O universal Father, O mediator of God and men, whose tongue opens and shuts the gate of heaven, come to our aid, bring help to us strangers, worshipping and invoking Christ, and suffering persecution for his name. VI. But on the next day, with great favor and the celebrated praise of the clergy and people of the faithful, blessed Pope Marcellus ordained St. Emigdius bishop of the people of Ascoli, and Euplus his disciple deacon; and, license to preach having been given him, admonishing and strengthening him, he directed him to the city of Ascoli. VII. For Ascoli was the metropolitan city from Ravenna as far as Reggio, after the city of Rome, on the whole Adriatic shore rich beyond the other cities, flourishing and exceedingly powerful. Which, fortified by nature and wondrously adorned by human labor, graced by a noble throng of citizens, delightful in the pleasantness of its groves and rivers, and by the fertility and beauty of its trees and places both delectable and famous, seemed most like to the holy paradise of God. VIII. When blessed Emigdius the bishop had come to it, he was received by certain citizens with great honor. But when morning came, a sedition arises among the people, and by Polymius' command blessed Emigdius the bishop is led to the royal tribunal in the presence of all the people. Of what condition he is, or for the sake of what business he has come, he is more diligently interrogated by Polymius. IX. Then he ordered him to be brought in to his daughter. For Polysia, daughter of Polymius, was notable in birth and beauty, distinguished in eloquence, and admirable in the knowledge of letters both Greek and Latin; and when she heard very many things from the blessed Man, Polysia at once believed, and ardently demanded to be more fully instructed in the sacred mysteries. Then, in Polymius' absence, blessed Emigdius with his disciples led the girl to the river Tronto and baptized her. Thus the Tuberian edition. But let us return to the solemnity of that same feast.

[9] For the people of Ascoli adorn this in very many other ways by the decrees of their laws, the whole city bringing its efforts to the greatest splendor, established in the year 1387, either instituted, or rather restored and confirmed; concerning which consult Appiani from page 267; where he teaches, first, that from the XXII day of July two cloths or hangings are set out from the windows of the public palace of the city, as also several banners from the top tower of the cathedral church, as heralds of the approaching solemnity: second, that from the XXVIII day of July to the XII of August free and safe markets are permitted in the city even to those who, whether for debt or for another civil offense, are at any other time liable to the actions and judgments of their adversaries: third, that on the eve of the feast toward evening, with illustrious pomp and the attendance of all the orders of the city, thirteen candles of great weight are carried to the Saint's tomb; and twelve indeed by as many guilds of the crafts; but the thirteenth, which must be of greater bulk, in the name of the city, professing by this ceremony that he is its primary Protector: fourth, on the solemnity itself, so far as I gather, that is on the V day of August, that one of the prisoners is presented with liberty: fifth, that several honorary hangings or cloths of silk are brought to the chief church, not only by the city and dominion of Ascoli themselves, but also by eleven confederate small towns, which, unless they observe this, are to be held as rebels: sixth, that, prizes being offered from the public treasury, various games are exhibited, even equestrian ones, but outside the time appointed for the divine Offices in the chief church, which are performed with the greatest concourse and piety of the people, refreshed then with the Eucharistic food: seventh, that not even the prescribed exercises of wit and of the more polished literature, both Latin and vernacular, are then wanting, for celebrating the Martyr's praises through the Octave in prose and in verse.

[10] These are indeed exceptional proofs of the singular affection of the people of Ascoli toward their most holy President; but they are not the only ones: for that they might spread his cult and devotion through their whole dominion, in accordance with their singular affection toward their Patron. they erected various churches through it; as the same Appiani writes on page 275: then, that he might be constantly, so to speak, before the eyes and in the hands of all, while they were under their own jurisdiction and struck their own money, they wished the effigy of their St. Emygdius to be stamped upon it; as also now it is worn fixed to the breast on a golden medal, as a badge of the primary dignity, by that magistrate whom they call the Head of the Elders. What of this, that the people of Ascoli delight so much in the name Emygdius that the same author affirms on page 276 that there is perhaps in the Catholic world no city in which the name of its tutelary Saint has been given to so many men as there are called Emygdius at the sacred font in the city and dominion of Ascoli? And so the things which St. John Chrysostom discourses concerning the wonderful love of the Antiochenes toward St. Meletius their bishop, in his encomiastic Homily upon him, all these same things prove the love of the people of Ascoli toward St. Emygdius; namely the concourse on his birthday to his tomb, the frequent imposition of his name, the most frequent use of his image expressed in bronze, silver, and gold; to say nothing of the paintings and statues representing him, among which stands out, in the treasury of the cathedral church, according to Andreantonelli page 208, a silver likeness of St. Emygdius, expressing to a nicety his living image and stature. More concerning the piety of the people of Ascoli toward him will be able to be gathered below from the miracles.

[11] [The ancient propagation of his cult; and the late notice of him among the Martyrologists.] Nor indeed did the cult and love of this Martyr so flourish within the bounds of Ascoli but that they long ago flowed out to others also: for Appiani on page 275 enumerates various churches in the neighboring regions consecrated under the title of Emygdius; and from page 379 he extols at length the most favorable and most liberal will of princes, emperors, and supreme Pontiffs toward his church of Ascoli, beginning with Constantine the Great himself. Many documents bearing on this matter may be read here and there in Andreantonelli, and in Ughelli among the bishops of Ascoli, under Tustolphus (who flourished in the reign of Charlemagne) and a good many others later. Whence it is remarkable enough that the cult of so distinguished a Martyr was utterly unknown to all the Martyrologists, at least down to the advanced fourteenth century, in which Peter de Natalibus entered him in his Catalogue of Saints on this day, whom afterwards very many others followed at the same day; as Maurolycus, Canisius in the German Martyrology, Galesinius, and those who are reported among the Supplements to our Usuard, and at last also the Roman Martyrology, where this is his announcement: At Ascoli in Piceno, of St. Emygdius, bishop and martyr, who, ordained bishop by Pope Marcellus, and sent thither to preach the Gospel, in the confession of Christ under the emperor Diocletian received the crown of martyrdom. I pass over the other more recent writers, and hasten to discuss the Acts.

§ II. His various Acts; their authority; the year of his martyrdom.

The Saint's Acts, both published and Manuscript. It is far from the case that the Acts of St. Emygdius were either written or preserved as entirely as his cult was. One may first conjecture this from the compendia of them long ago published in Peter de Natalibus, book 7, chapter 24; in Ferrarius (whom Bzovius follows in the Ecclesiastical History, book 4, at the year of Christ 309, number 9) in the Catalogue of the Saints of Italy at this day; where he carps at and corrects the compendium of Peter of Equilio, citing for himself the Manuscript monuments of the church of Ascoli; in Ughelli, Italia Sacra, volume 1, among the bishops of Ascoli; where he omits certain things which Ferrarius had approved, and asserts something which the latter had not written. The epitomes, therefore, of preceding authors, and accordingly also their sources, seem to have been of quite suspect authority to those that followed; and indeed not undeservedly: since not even the old Manuscript copies of the Acts, of which out of many few now survive, agree either among themselves or with the received histories in such a way that Baronius judged they should even be named, whether in the Annals at the year 309, number 4, where, making passing mention of his ordination and martyrdom, he keeps deep silence about the Acts; or in the annotations to the Roman Martyrology at this day, where he observes only this: Peter in the Catalogue, book VII, chapter XXIV, reports his (St. Emygdius') Acts; but of such a kind as need censure. And yet he himself had others at hand both in his own and in the Vatican Library. Why, then, did he not mention these, if he thought them altogether sincere and not in need of censure?

[13] Certainly our Henschen and Papebroch, when in the sixty-first year of the past century they were staying at Rome to seek out monuments concerning the Saints, differ so among themselves, and conflict, that they are of very suspect credit: and when opportunity had most courteously been given them there by the Reverend Fathers of the Oratory of searching and copying in their library whatever should seem in any way to serve this our work, brought back thence to us two copies of the Acts of St. Emygdius, excerpted from the ancient Manuscript codex of the most Eminent Cardinal Baronius, which they called the third volume; of which one has prefixed the prologue of Blessed Valentinus, disciple of St. Migdius; the other is anonymous: this one we shall hereafter call the second Vallicellian Manuscript; the former, simply the Vallicellian Manuscript. Among the ancient manuscripts may also be numbered that proper Office which Jerome Tuber first published from Manuscripts, together with the twofold Legend; namely the shorter anonymous one, and the longer Valentinian one, of which we treated in the preceding paragraph, number 6 and following. A Vatican copy also (I know not which) is cited in Puricelli in the Nazarian Dissertation, chapter 36, number 2. But all these vary so among themselves,

and are so opposed to approved histories, that none ought not to seem suspect to an attentive and learned reader.

[14] And the second Vallicellian Manuscript indeed, perhaps of equal age with the first, nay, of the 2 Vallicellian Manuscripts one is most inept and self-contradictory, certainly drawn from the same codex, conflicts not only with the others, but even with itself; so that whoever composed it must have been a blockhead, or of unsound mind. Here is the beginning: It came to pass, while king Polymius was staying in the province of Germany, namely in the region of Austri-Francia, he sent throughout all Italy, that if anyone should find any Christian, or one who invoked the name of the Lord, he should bring him bound to the city of Ascoli. Good heavens! Polymius residing in the region of Austri-Francia, and a king at that; and a king ruling all Italy at the same time, and this in the time of Pope Marcellus, as is gathered there from what follows: bah, delirium! For nothing at all like this is read anywhere else, not even in the same Manuscript: for where Polymius recurs there toward the end, he is not said to be staying in the region of Austri-Francia, but in the city of Ascoli; nor to rule all Italy, but not even all Piceno. Although this too is foolish, that the inept fable-monger should have invented a king of any sort in Italy at that time. What of this, that within two pages he more than once brings in a certain blind man, and a soldier who led him, professing that they had come to Rome from the remote provinces of Italy to seek St. Emygdius there; but presently he says that the same men, having found the Saint in the city of Rome, addressed him thus: Lord Father, I come from the city of Rome, hearing that your God heals all infirmities through you? And lest you suppose this to be a copyist's error, the same thing is asserted twice in the same place. How prettily do these agree: "From provinces remote from Rome," and, "From the city of Rome"? How ridiculous that someone is represented as saying within the city of Rome: I come from the city of Rome! There are, however, very many other things no whit sounder, and proper to this Manuscript copy, and handed down nowhere else; by which this Legend must more often move the reader's stomach or his laughter than his belief.

[15] [the other is attributed to St. Valentinus, as also another copy in the Office of Ascoli; but one or the other falsely;] The other Vallicellian Manuscript, written out, as I said, from the same codex, has the same preface of Blessed Valentinus the martyr which the Acts bear that were once accustomed to be recited in the proper Office among the people of Ascoli, according to Tuber's edition, on the VI day of August and following. It appears certain, however, that that prologue cannot fit both in all respects: for however much both copies agree in most things, in many they nevertheless also differ, and are indeed mutually contrary. The Vallicellian at number 1 says St. Emygdius was baptized before he was handed over to be trained in letters; but the Ascoli one makes him a pagan when the course of the liberal arts was already run through. The Vallicellian in the same place asserts that Emygdius' parents were believers before the Son was born; but the Ascoli one makes them heathen for a long time afterward as well; and indeed so obstinate that his father is said to have burst out thus against Emygdius, now a Christian, when he was discoursing about his religion: Remember, son, to tell this fable to those who would lend you an ear, who would also accommodate their mind to trifles of this sort: for unless you give me your assent at present, unless you adore great Jupiter, I will (by the gods and goddesses!) appease the wrath of the gods with various, novel, and exquisite torments, without any delay. I pass over the other differences of the two copies, and refer to the annotations: for these alone abundantly suffice for adjudging one or the other away from Valentinus, at least as his genuine work. But which? you ask.

[16] or rather both falsely; I answer, that I doubt about both: for although I judge the Vallicellian to be less corrupt than the Ascoli one, yet the faults common to both copies do not seem able by any sufficient reason to be reconciled with the age of Blessed Valentinus; just as neither can be shown to be older than the twelfth century: not the Ascoli one, as is clear from what was said in number 4; nor either, for the same reason, the Vallicellian, since with the Acts in the same codex there are read subjoined two little Leonine poems, which Appiani prefixes to the old Office of St. Emygdius in his first edition, page 302 and following, attributing the first to Felix, bishop of Ascoli, who flourished in the year 680 after the birth of Christ, the second to Instulphus, prelate of Ascoli, about the year 800; but wrongly without doubt: for neither in Tuber's edition, where the first is read at the end of the little book, nor in the Vallicellian Manuscript Codex, where both are reported, is any author assigned to either: and Leo, whom noble lovers of antiquity make the founder of rhythmic poetry, flourished first in the twelfth century, and that when it was well advanced. Consult Du Cange, and those whom he himself cites in the Glossary at the words "Leonine verses." Further, among those faults which I mentioned as common, most evident is this, that in both copies St. Emygdius is asserted to have been consecrated bishop by St. Marcellus the Pontiff; and then to have obtained the palm of martyrdom on the V day of August, while Diocletian and Maximian Herculius, Augusti, were even then reigning: for these things, whichever way you turn, must seem absurd and incoherent; as I shall make plain after I have proved each point.

[17] The first is had in the Acts below at number 16 in these words: as is plain from the faults, Blessed Pope Marcellus ordained St. Migdius bishop of the people of Ascoli. The second is read equally expressly at number 32: But blessed Migdius, metropolitan bishop and martyr of the city of Ascoli, suffered on the Nones of August. The third is gathered from number 23, where Polymius thus addresses the Saint from the tribunal: Sacrifice, therefore, to the immortal gods; and you will be enriched with great and distinguished honors, and will always be dear and acceptable in the sight of the most invincible emperors Diocletian and Maximian: the same is repeated at number 28 and the following; but this could not have been said except by one who at the same time affirmed that both were then in fact reigning and were able to do all things toward those who deserved well and were pleasing to them. Come now, reconcile these three things among themselves, if you can. But, I know, you will not be able: for Marcellus (whom sounder chronologists deny to have sat before the year of Christ 308) could not, by the reckonings of absolutely all the learned, have been raised to Peter's Chair before the month of May of the year 304: let us suppose then, for the moment, that he was then in fact raised: it will follow that St. Emygdius could not have been ordained bishop by him before the month of December of that same year (for in no Pontifical, that I know of, is he read to have consecrated bishops in another month). Let him, then, have been ordained in that month, as Vignoli after Baronius holds; and in that year 304 (since the following years are much more inconvenient for the passages of the Acts set forth): it will again be consequent that Emygdius cannot have been crowned with martyrdom before the V day of August of the year 305, that is, three months and more after the empire was abdicated by Diocletian at Nicomedia, and by Herculius at Milan; which openly contradicts the Acts; which accordingly must so far seem unworthy of Valentinus, the disciple of our Martyr.

[18] One escape here remains: if you shall say that Marcellus was wrongly put by the copyists for Marcellinus, to both as it is established was often otherwise done not only among the Greeks but also among the Latins. This way of escaping pleases me altogether (although it is new, and contrary to the opinion of more recent writers), since it can more easily be believed that copyists erred in a single name, once perhaps written in contracted form by the ancients, as is usual, than in whole sentences, such as we assigned in the preceding number. Of this error, so far as I know, there are no examples in approved monuments; of the former, very many. But here another difficulty remains, by which the credit of the Acts is most strongly shaken: for if anyone should wish that what is narrated in them was done under Marcellinus, it is also necessary that he confess that all those things happened under the emperors Diocletian and Maximian, already cruelly persecuting the Christians; as is concluded from number 22; where the Saint is said to have come to the city of the people of Ascoli, and presently it is subjoined: In which Polymius, procurator of Bruttium and of the whole Adriatic shore, residing, BY ORDER of Diocletian AND Maximian raged cruelly against the Christians. But indeed who is so ignorant of that persecution — the most savage of all that the Church ever suffered — as to believe that any of those things could then have been done which we here subjoin from the Acts as common to both the aforesaid copies, and absolutely displeasing to us?

[19] copy Thus no one will believe, I suppose, that under any heathen emperor, much less under Diocletian and Maximian most bitterly harassing the Christian religion, it could have been done with impunity, what is narrated at number 11: that the altar of Aesculapius was openly demolished, and the idol torn away with Emygdius' own hands and cast headlong into the Tiber, with the sacrificing priests looking on idly, and snarling indeed, but yet by no means daring then to resist; nay, when they carried the matter at once to the pagan prefect of the City, being repulsed by him not without fury. Still less will he believe that St. Emygdius, after that same prefect of the City had conspired with the whole senate for his destruction and that of all Christians (as is had at number 12), so failed to take precaution either for himself or for others that he would not even wish to seek hiding-places while he was at Rome; but let innumerable crowds of peoples flock to him from near and distant places (as is read at number 16); nay, did not depart thence (as is presently added) but with choirs of rejoicing Christians going before and following his steps as far as another city, which is there called, not without manifest error, Pictavis: for no Pictavis was ever known between Rome and Ascoli; but whatever it finally was, it was situated on the road by which the Saint was making for Ascoli from Rome, and not so very far removed from the City: whence it is utterly incredible, what is subjoined about it in the same place: It had as yet known or heard no sign at all of the Christian faith unto its salvation — down to the fourth century, that is.

[20] common We do not touch upon the hundred and fifty incurable sick gathered there, restored to health in one place, at one time, by one prodigy, and these converted with the others, as many as were present, to the faith of Christ; but whose belief would that not surpass which is subjoined about them at number 21: And, reborn of water and the Holy Spirit, they fly swiftly, destroy the temples, and kindle a copious fire, and cast all the idols into the midst of the seething flames. And so, the city being purified, all uncleanness eliminated…, the holy Man dedicated three basilicas? Were these things indeed done with such uproar and in broad daylight, in the sight, so to speak, of the city of Rome, in the most atrocious persecution; while the neighboring Christians, like moles and rabbits, scarcely thought either their religion or their life safe enough from tyrannical shrewdness in the underground labyrinths of the catacombs? Bah, how timid then were the emperors — otherwise the greatest and bravest — Constantine and several others, who, when all the tyrants had long since been removed, though they were formidable to the whole world, yet did not dare, except very slowly and timidly, that which here private men, in the bloody

madness of a reigning idolatry, trampling upon the edicts, amid tribunals streaming with the blood of Martyrs, accomplished in the shortest time! For how many shrines did those emperors leave untouched everywhere throughout the whole empire, for fear of sedition, in the highest and long-lasting peace of the Church; while these men in their own city, with the war raging most atrociously, did not suffer even one to survive for a moment, but by a sudden onset — not by prayer, not by miracle, but with their own hands — flung everything down; nay, hurried through three basilicas besides, so that they were dedicated before the crowds which had followed St. Emygdius that far from Rome had thought of returning?

[21] and occurring everywhere. But if it cannot be believed that before the destruction of the tyrants the shrines were overthrown by force and with impunity, then who, pray, unless rashly, will let himself be persuaded of what is narrated at number 26, concerning a certain temple of Apollo, consecrated as a Christian church by St. Emygdius after the altar was demolished and its idol crushed; when examples of consecration of this kind in genuine monuments are brought forward much later than those of overthrow? Give me, indeed, even one before the times of the emperor Honorius, or the year of Christ 398. And as regards the Roman Pontiffs, to whom even now the prelates of Ascoli are immediately subject, the first among them who is known, after long deliberation, to have granted and urged the purgation and consecration of shrines in England was St. Gregory the Great; nay, Baronius at the year 607, when he reports that the most celebrated Pantheon at Rome was obtained by St. Boniface IV, Pope, and dedicated to Christian rites, observes that none of the Roman Pontiffs had hitherto attempted this. And is Emygdius to have attempted it in the persecution mentioned?

But truly I should be long, if I pursued each fault of our Acts; as the Baptisms conferred on the heathen openly and in the midst of cities at one time — at Rome upon six hundred and fifty, number 9; again in the same place upon another thousand and thirty, number 11; on the journey to Ascoli upon innumerable persons, number 21; as also in a certain city of Piceno, number 27; at Ascoli upon a thousand and sixty and more, number 29 and following; and all these, as I said, publicly, and in the most atrocious persecution. Add the seed-picking chatter unworthy of an ancient hagiographer, expressed thus at number 14: Meanwhile the day departed, and night embraces the immense spaces of the lands with black wings; and while sleep, the lifter of cares and labors, most welcome to all mortals, presses down the limbs, etc. Add that at number 8 the heathen are called "pagans," by which name they first began to be called under Christian emperors, after superstition, eliminated from the cities, could be practiced only in the fields and villages. See Du Cange in the Glossary at the word "Paganus." It is wearisome to review other things: as that, though the Martyr himself is recorded to have overthrown so many shrines of the heathen, yet the Heathen are not narrated to have touched any of the churches which the same man is then said to have erected to Christ; etc.

[22] And were these things written by St. Valentinus, carried off by martyrdom before the peace of the Church? Why not, you say; The Prologue itself either does not belong to these Acts, or is pseudonymous. since he himself asserts it in the prologue? I answer, first, that that prologue is found prefixed to copies contrary to one another: as therefore it is certain that it is falsely ascribed to one or the other, so it is certain that it could have been falsely sewn on to both. Second, I deny that it is a prologue: for it is not the dedication of a work done; but a promise of doing it after tranquillity should be restored to the church of Ascoli, which Valentinus never reached, inasmuch as he was a martyr, as the people of Ascoli will have it. Here are the words: Do you think I shall see that day, on which rest and security may be restored to the Church? Do you think I shall see that day on which it may be permitted me… to mark out by the service of the pen the Acts of St. Migdius the martyr, and commit them to the memory of posterity? But presently, you say, these things follow: Of whom, as briefly as I shall be able, I shall strive to set in order for you a few things out of many. Farewell. What then? For "I shall strive" is also the word of one promising. Nay, this last sentence cannot be referred to the Acts subjoined; since they are written not most briefly, but exceedingly verbosely. Third, that letter itself, rather than a preface, can seem to be foisted upon Valentinus; both because the address, so far as one may observe from other letters given to the supreme Pontiffs about those times in Constantius, does not smack of St. Valentinus' age; and because it appears too flattering and hyperbolical in these words: For you both know the discipline of all the philosophers, and… you surpass the wits, names, dignities, and merits of all mortals; and finally, because he writes thus to St. Melchiades, Pope: Or what tongue can set forth the losses, exiles, insults, proscriptions, slaughters, prisons, capital sentences, and other kinds of torments which the worshippers of the Christian faith suffer among us? Why do I linger? Among trackless rocks and the lairs of wild beasts we lead our life, destitute of the protection of almost all mortals: for we are perplexed, and afflicted in every way. What? Did this happen in a province so near to Rome in the same year in which Maxentius, according to Tillemont, Monuments of the Church, volume 5, page 103, both wholly removed the storm from the African Church, and at Rome granted mandates to St. Melchiades the Pope, signed in his own name and that of the prefect of the praetorium, and directed to the prefect of the City, by which he commanded that the places which had been snatched from the churches of the Christians be restored? Indeed these things do not cohere well enough.

[23] Two other copies different from the rest. Concerning the shorter Life, which I gave above at numbers 7 and 8, there is scarcely anything for me to note, since it is a bare epitome of the Acts, and indeed so mutilated that it does not report the Saint's martyrdom. Observe, however, that its beginning, down to the angelic vision about the journey to Rome, is taken word for word from the Vallicellian Manuscript; and accordingly conflicts none the less with the Valentinian Acts, which will be reprinted below from the same Office: which Appiani, noticing, cleverly omitted that compendium; just as he seems for the same reason to have altered the first Antiphon of the first nocturn: for thus it is read in the Tuberian edition of the year 1522: Blessed Emigdius, therefore, is truly believed to have been born of good parents, and himself honored his name by good morals; but thus he himself published it: Blessed Emygdius, therefore, born in a noble station, honored his name by good morals. Thus of course he removed a manifest contradiction from the Office; but by his own industry, not by the authority of the codices. There remains the Vatican copy, of which we spoke before. Whether it still survives or not, we do not know; but that it differs much from all the others you will learn even from this brief text of it in Puricelli: The most blessed Emigdius, metropolitan bishop and martyr of the city of Ascoli, a Gaul by nation, most distinguished in birth, conspicuous in wisdom and life, chaste and angelic, in the thirtieth year of his age (in which, according to other accounts, he fell a martyr) was ordained a priest by the holy man of God Mirocles, a citizen of Milan, in that same city of Milan, in the oratory of the holy martyrs Nazarius and Celsus; because that most blessed Emigdius converted an innumerable multitude of that people by word and example to the faith of Christ.

[24] The judgments of others on the Acts; ours on the Italian editions; So many faults in the Acts of that same Saint, and so great discord in the Manuscript and printed copies, wrung this verdict from Andreantonelli, a citizen and historiographer of Ascoli, on page 225: Before Peter (de Natalibus, whom he carps at) Valentinus the levite wrote of St. Emygdius to Pope Melchiades; but the history is befouled with six hundred errors. Tillemont, who had seen only two compendia of that same history — Monuments of the Church, volume 5, page 134 — one of Equilio, the other of Ferrarius, rejects the first with Baronius; but of the second he pronounces thus: Ferrarius adds (to Equilio's Legend) the monuments of the church of Ascoli; and although he altered in it what pleased him, he could nevertheless hammer nothing out of it but a fabric of prodigies, nay rather of fables. How much less would we suppose he would have made of these Acts, if he had either seen more copies, or had known that a history almost in all respects most similar is narrated of St. Septimius, Martyr and first bishop of Jesi in Umbria, as may be seen in this Work on the XXII day of September? From this, further, determine what is to be judged of the Italian Acts, both those published by Marcello Giovanetti at Ronciglione in the year 1631, and those by Paul Anthony Appiani, priest of the Society of Jesus, at Rome in the year 1702, and again, but a little differently, in the year 1704: for both indeed keep to the Valentinian narrative, as it is in the old Office of Ascoli; but nevertheless, as if it were too meager and nerveless, they stuff it everywhere with by no means solid fragments of the other monuments also which we have enumerated in this paragraph. But in this Appiani seems to excel both Giovanetti and all the rest, that, to inflame piety toward St. Emygdius, he expended excellent labor in bringing to light his posthumous miracles, before unknown, of which we shall treat when we have here noted a very few things about the chronology of the Acts.

[25] Cardinal Baronius in the Annals reports his martyrdom in the year of Christ 309; and the year in which the Saint fell, 303 or 304 of Christ. not as though it really happened in that year, but because he believed the death of St. Marcellus the Pope then occurred; on whose occasion he recites the eulogy of that same Pontiff from Anastasius, in which, since among other things these are read: He ordained twenty-five priests in the city of Rome, and two deacons, in the month of December, and twenty-one bishops in various places — the Father of the Annals opportunely subjoins: Among whom is numbered Emygdius, bishop of Ascoli, who under the same persecution of Diocletian received the crown of martyrdom on the Nones of August. It is surely one thing "under the same persecution of Diocletian," another "in the same year": Baronius does not have the latter, but the former: just as neither does he determine the year of the ordination performed by Marcellus, but only the month of December — not indeed of the year 309, since Marcellus, by the reckoning of that most Eminent man, did not reach the December of that year, but of any other preceding year under the same Pontificate (to which he assigns several years). The moderns therefore err when they fix this Martyr's death on the authority of Baronius in the year of Christ 309, and thence arrange the chronology of our Acts: for if the Acts themselves deserve any credit, Emygdius must altogether be said to have fallen before the empire was abdicated by Diocletian and Maximian, as I showed at number 17; and after the edict of the Diocletian persecution, as was said in the same place at number 18; that is, in the year of Christ 303 or 304. But if anyone shall here refuse the authority of the Acts, I shall not refuse a weightier one, if it can be produced; but if this cannot be produced, I should prefer that that one stand rather than none.

§ III. Certain select miracles of his down to the fourteenth century.

Out of his innumerable ancient miracles That St. Emygdius shone after his death with very many miracles the old copies of the Acts testify; as both Vallicellian ones, and the one we shall give below from the Office of the church of Ascoli, in which at number 30 God is said to grant many and infinite benefits to his faithful at his prayers. But that this testimony is true you will draw even from those things which were mentioned above concerning the increase and propagation of his cult; since without other prodigies repeatedly

and repeatedly, the devotion of peoples toward the Saints, so favorable and fervid, is neither wont to be kindled nor fostered, much less to grow. We wonder meanwhile that none of these were published in detail, save one, as commended to the memory of posterity before the beginning of the century in which we now live; especially if in certain Manuscripts of Ascoli they were gathered as copiously as our Father Paul Anthony Appiani hints in the Italian Life of the Saint, both in chapter 24 of the first edition, page 273 and following, and in the second, book 4, chapter 5, page 375; where he concludes certain prodigies of Emygdius, first published by him from the monuments of Ascoli, with this sentiment: Now it is enough for me to have selected from his so many miracles those which seemed fitter for feeding the curious mind of the reader with variety and pleasantness of events: for if it had pleased me to embrace them all, the history of the prodigies alone would perhaps by its bulk have been not unlike a monster. He adds, experience being witness, that it is a greater miracle in St. Emygdius if he denies miracles to those who beseech him, than if he works them.

[27] Father Appiani reports certain ones in detail He, meanwhile, is the first who rescued at least some of these from neglect and darkness, and indeed with great splendor to Emygdius' glory and profit to his readers. Two things, however, in this matter he allowed to be very much missed in him: first, that although he professes to have excerpted most of the old miracles from the Ascoli History of bishop Transmundus, abridged by Linus the deacon, likewise from the Ascoli History of Antonio Bonfini, reduced to a compendium by a certain Quintus De Quintodecimo, and finally from some Manuscript codices, yet in neither of his editions did he inform the reader where at last he found those authors and writings, or where he left them, if perchance they should at some time be required to establish credit. The other is that he did not insert their genuine texts in place in his work, everywhere diffused with rhetorical art; or at least did not present them, like certain other things, at its end: for a Man distinguished no less by erudition in our Roman province, and especially in the City itself, than by zeal for souls, could not be ignorant that he was here adducing obscure monuments and obscure authors; inasmuch as before him no one of the writers had cited them, no one had seen them, not even Sebastian Andreantonelli, jurisconsult and canon of Ascoli, after he had, for fifteen years in all, as he testifies in his History of Ascoli page 152, left no stone unturned, by himself and by friends, at home and abroad, to clear away the old and more recent monuments of a fatherland so often devastated.

[28] from Manuscripts unknown before this century. And they are the following: These things indeed moved us, not indeed to call into doubt the most sincere good faith of an excellent man; but to wish vehemently that his sources might be inspected, after our manner, fearing lest, as he believed our Acts were to be attributed too easily — in our judgment at least — to St. Valentinus, the Leonine epitaph to bishop Felix, and the rhythmic hymn to the prelate Instulphus, so likewise he judged that there was in these monuments of his something more of age or of weight than, if they were sifted by a somewhat severer criticism, could perhaps be detected to be in them. We had recourse therefore by letters to Rome, and thence to Ascoli; but in both places the outcome baffled our hope, and the industry of our friends, and indeed of the most illustrious and most reverend prelate and prince of Ascoli himself, who had this request of ours especially at heart: for nothing of those things which were chiefly sought was found, however great the sagacity applied; whether they never were there, and Appiani once sought them out for himself from elsewhere, whither he afterward sent them back; or whether, though preserved among his papers for a longer time, they slipped away by some mishap (alas, too frequent) now unknown. That Appiani certainly had them before his eyes when he wrote, the people of Ascoli show in recent replies, from his observations written by his own hand, where he discourses of Linus the deacon and of Quintus De Quintodecimo: for there, concerning Linus, whom he makes a citizen and noble of Ascoli, and says flourished in the year of Christ 1242, he subjoins this: He abridged into a compendium the Chronicle of Ascoli, written by bishop Transimundus in the preceding century. But this Epitome came into our hands far more diminished than the author himself; namely not only lacking its head, but also a not inconsiderable part of its chest, and its feet. But Quintus, named De Quintodecimo from the castle of his birth in the dominion of Ascoli, he teaches was a priest, and publicly professed the laws of Grammar at Ascoli in the year 1497: that his work is an autograph volume divided into three parts, of which the first embraces the precepts of grammar, the second some letters of his own, the third (to use Appiani's own words) an Epitome, or a fat, so to speak, index, or rather the headings of the History of Ascoli woven by Bonfini, then living (and most cleverly sought long ago, never found). Although all these are so mutilated, and for the greater part gnawed by moths, that you would say the very few things which survive have almost perished. Concerning the other Manuscript codices we have received nothing noted there.

[29] Use must therefore be made, since nothing else remains, of Appiani's own labor and good faith, The Saint, appearing, frees Ascoli from a siege; and the miracles must be brought forward from him; but arranged in the order of the time in which they are narrated to have happened; then stripped of the ornaments of Italian eloquence, and reduced to a most simple and at the same time briefest compendium, with our little observations interposed where the matter shall require. Let us begin.

In the year of Christ 409, when Alaric, king of the Visigoths, with an army increased by Vandal forces, was pressing Ascoli, St. Emygdius, and other Martyrs with him, presented themselves to be seen by him from the gate of the city opposite; who, each brandishing a flaming sword, scattered the enemy into so headlong a flight that the Vandals, separated from the rest of the army and destroyed not far thence by the arms of the country people, gave a name to the place (between Paganello, Poggio, and Pedana), the Plain of the Vandals (la Costa de' Vandali). So, but more fully, Appiani on page 303, citing in the margin only Linus the deacon and Quintus De Quintodecimo. The learned, I suppose, will not be pleased here with the year 409, in which Alaric did not cross Piceno, which from the History of Zosimus the Count, book 5, page 813, he is known only to have done when he first went that way to besiege Rome, that is, in the year of Christ 408; as Pagi against Baronius demonstrates in the Critique at the year 409, numbers 2 and 3, and others. There will also be, unless I am mistaken, someone who will demand for so singular and public a prodigy witnesses older than Linus by about eight centuries, and older than Quintus by more.

[30] In the year of Christ about 418 the foundations were laid at Ascoli of the church of St. Mary, he most bountifully repays a client's alms; called Among the Vines; whose fabric he who then was preaching in the cathedral church, commending it to the bounty of the citizens, asserted that all who should contribute some share to it would without doubt shortly receive a hundredfold from the Virgin Mother, and would besides wondrously bind St. Emygdius to themselves. Moved by this word, a certain one of the common people named Cristantianus offered a small coin, equivalent to the modern Baiocco; which same he continued daily for a whole year; when, having enjoyed prosperous markets and gained a hundred scudi, he returned to the chief church, to greet the Virgin Mother of God and St. Emygdius with thanksgiving. Here an Iscariot, a cut-purse exceedingly crafty, stripped the man by stealth of his year's little gain, which, having slipped out of the city into the nearest wood, he presently hid within the lofty hollow of a tree. But Cristantianus, when he discovered his loss, first raged, then assailed the Virgin Mother and Emygdius with curses, and at last in despair of mind turned over every sort of plan. In the midst of this Emygdius, appearing to the unhappy man, while he more sharply reproached the blasphemies just poured out, seemed in other words to say this to the madman: Go into the wood, and hang yourself. The wretch therefore seizes a rope; flies to the grove; climbs into a tree (it was that one which the Iscariot had gone to); puts on a noose fastened to a strong branch; when, behold, as he was now about to leap down, he sees something of linen gleaming white in the hollow of the trunk; and, straightway unwinding himself from the rope and grasping it, he draws out along with it his own purse; heavy now not, as before, with a hundred scudi, but with three hundred and sixty-five; namely as many as the Baiocchi, that is, hundredth parts of one scudo, that he had hitherto offered to the fabric. Then indeed, the manifest help both of the most kindly Virgin and of the propitious Martyr being extolled, he flies home, as glad at the treasure found as forgetful of the noose which he had left tied in the tree. Presently the Iscariot returns thither to carry off his deposit; but seeing it snatched away, he choked his own throat with the noose he found there. So the same Appiani from page 337, alleging Linus the deacon and other Manuscripts, perhaps more recent than Linus, certainly no less obscure. A quite similar matter, received from the Greeks, Ausonius adorned in the fourth century in his twenty-first and twenty-second epigrams. For the rest, unless "scudo" is here put for some other coin, say a gold one (whose hundredth parts, as the Roman empire declined, were bronze sesterces), this history cannot be referred to the fifth century, in which we know there was no use of scudi in coinage.

[31] he prodigiously averts an unavoidable famine; When in the year of Christ 539, the hope of harvest in the territory of Ascoli having been consumed by locusts, a dire famine had been stirred up; and a long drought threatened something still more unhappy for the following year, the people of Ascoli, turning to their St. Emygdius, decreed a public procession; in which, while St. Epiphanius, then bishop there, was carrying our Martyr's arm about, and, stretching it upward, was praying good things upon the bystanders, St. Emygdius, standing upon a little cloud in an otherwise clear sky, showed himself visible to all, and, having expressly uttered these words, May God give you of the dew of heaven and of the fatness of the earth abundance, at once shook the aspergillum which he held in his hand and at once gave a beginning to the rain: for the cloud which he pressed with his feet, spreading out and thickening, as it withdrew him from the gaze of the beholders, so it besprinkled and made fruitful the soil of Ascoli and of Piceno with so copious a shower that the fields poured forth there a most abundant harvest, which elsewhere was none. This benefit others reported as received from another Saint; but the people of Fermo soon restored his little shrine near the river Tenna, which was falling to pieces. Appiani page 306 and following, from Linus and the Quintodecimans; who would more rightly have assigned this prodigy to the year 539; since indeed they narrate that in the year immediately following there occurred that deadly famine of Italy which Procopius of Caesarea, himself a spectator and witness, brilliantly describes in the Gothic War, book 2, chapter 20: for that this fell in the year 538 a more accurate chronology demonstrates. In the same place we are also taught that the cause of that scarcity was other than that which is sought by Linus and Quintus from locusts, of which Procopius does not even make mention. We fear, therefore, also that their authority is not safe enough for the finding and translation of Emygdius' arm, and accordingly of his body, to be believed so ancient; which we have already touched upon above at numbers 4 and 5.

[32] He twice frees the people of Ascoli from plague, In the year 566 of the same century, when the bubonic plague, having ranged through almost the whole world, was depopulating Italy, the people of Ascoli held nothing more important than to flee to St. Emygdius; as many as

were able either to touch his altar or to go around it, if they were already infected, at once grew well; if they were not yet, they remained perpetually free of it. Which thing stirred up all the neighboring townsmen, as those of Teramo and others, to the same course, and indeed all with an altogether like outcome.

Again a dire pestilence seized those same people in the year of Christ 1038; again they invoked their Patron as propitious by a common procession, and felt him so: for scarcely had Bernard, then bishop there, lifted his arm to bless the people, when he himself appeared aloft in the air, as though purging it by swinging a censer around the city. Certainly, as he completed the circuit, the epidemic so ceased that thereafter it did not even breathe upon a single citizen, much less extinguish him. Hence Bernard, the first among the prelates of Ascoli of this name, decreed that his church should thereafter add this to the public prayers: Through the intercession and merits of St. Emygdius, deliver us, O Lord, from plague, famine, and war. Appiani reports both these miracles from page 306 out of the same authors whom we noted in the preceding number; but Sigonius, who commemorates both plagues, is silent about both, On the Kingdom of Italy, book 1 at the year 567, and book 8 at the year 1038.

[33] In the year of Christ 1096, after Stephen, who governed the church of Ascoli as bishop and thereafter also from civil war; and its dominion as count, had attempted many things to compose the murderous dissensions of his nobles, and had not let a single day pass without commending this matter at St. Emygdius' tomb, sometimes even spending whole nights there in prayers and tears; at last, that he might offer a certain violence to heaven, he instituted a procession through the crossroads of the town, at which, besides the whole clergy and the monks, none of the laity should assist except little children, who, clothed in sackcloth, and wearing a noose on the neck and a crown of thorns on the head, should at appointed places bring out scourges upon their tender and bared shoulders, and repeatedly cry out with mournful voice: Holy Father Emygdius, intercede for us — the clergy singing in answer: That peace may be made in your strength, and abundance in your towers. He himself closed the procession, covered with a long hair-shirt, bare of foot, sprinkled with ashes, and carrying in his hands the image of Christ fastened to the cross, famous there for miracles. The novelty and piety of the spectacle struck the whole city, most of all when a halt was made at the church of St. Peter in the Castle, which was the term of the suppliants: for there the prelate, having handed the cross for the time to Alberic the archdeacon while he himself should speak, mounted the grim platform; whence, being about to speak to the people concerning peace and discord, he first began to ply the scourges upon himself so unmercifully that he had to be restrained both by the weeping, sobbing, and outcry of the surrounding multitude, and at last by the hands of the clergy running to help. But then, after an address as vehement as it was brief, turning to St. Emygdius, he besought him that those whom he had once purified with the faith he would now endow with peace obtained from God. Scarcely had he so ceased, when, behold, visible to all from a cloud, in episcopal habit as always, and not without a retinue of many Martyrs, St. Emygdius, with a most distinct voice, said to the people of Ascoli, Peace be to you; and vanished. The movement of their spirits was equal to the miracle: all redoubled the cry of peace, and all the most hostile rushed vying into mutual embraces; nay, they swore to expiate thereafter among the Crusaders, in war against the Turk, arms hitherto defiled with civil blood. Appiani from page 323, out of Linus, Quintus, and other ancient Manuscript codices.

[34] he restores his step to a lame man, his sight to a blind man; In the year 1153 a certain one of the more powerful among the people of Ascoli hired assassins against an innocent citizen; who, perceiving these bursting into his chamber, having invoked the patronage of St. Emygdius, threw himself headlong from the window. Wonderful thing! The fall profited the man — otherwise most rash — not only for escaping death, but also for obtaining a health of which he had not even thought: for he who had before been lame, after the fall escaped upright and whole, and so remained; which he wished to be attested by a silver leg hung at the Saint's tomb, through this engraved inscription: You have enlarged my steps under me, and my footsteps have not been weakened. Appiani page 361, from Linus the deacon alone.

But in the year 1201 from the birth of Christ St. Emygdius restored to Daniel the extinguished light of his eyes. This priest, from the village of Ceresia in the Praetutian country, restored, in memory of the benefit received, a church dedicated to Emygdius himself, but ruined; as is established from writings in the archive of St. Angelo Magno. Thus Sebastian Andreantonelli in the History of the church of Ascoli, page 225, who has this one prodigy alone among the posthumous ones in common with Appiani, page 362, and yet not common in all respects: for instead of the year 1201 the latter notes the year 1200, citing nevertheless the same writings and Andreantonelli himself; not, as is his custom, Linus (whose epitome, if it does not run beyond Transmundus' history, cannot reach these times) or Quintus De Quintodecimo.

[35] he saves a girl in the water; he extinguishes lust. In the year 1254 a certain merchant's young maidservant, when in her sleep she seemed to see St. Emygdius, as though imbuing one of her hands with an aromatic scent, and saying: If ever you incur the danger of drowning, put this hand to your nostrils, and doubt not of your safety so long as the fragrance shall last — waking at once, she smelled the odor, an argument surely of a heavenly vision, not of an empty dream. She therefore tells the matter to her mistress, who then indeed was little credulous. Presently, being ordered to draw water, she fell into a well; where she remained, until her mistress, blaming her slowness, ran up and found her sunk. But while she is drawn out as quickly as possible, and indeed beyond hope alive, cheerful, and smiling, she made the vision, by so notable a miracle, of undoubted credit among the astonished bystanders.

What of this, that a little afterward she extinguished fire by the same scent? Certainly, when her master was perishing with a most impure burning of love for the innocent girl, and was urging her to the crime, she, by putting her fragrant hand before his mouth, so shook out the flames of his seething that, forgetful of his lust, he thereafter constantly looked up both to the prodigy in the maidservant and to Emygdius the author of the prodigy. Appiani from page 363, out of an anonymous Manuscript codex.

§ IV. Continuation of the miracles from the fourteenth century down to the year 1703.

He heals a dying man; In the year of Christ 1310 a certain nobleman, Linus, lord of Rocca Casaragnana, both from an anthrax of his right hand and from a putrefying wound of his breast, after the industry of the physicians was utterly exhausted, being brought to the last crisis alike of this and of eternal life (because he was unwilling to pardon the enemy who caused the wound), is visited by a pious priest, and is raised to a sure hope of recovering health; if only he would implore St. Emygdius, dispense alms to the poor in his honor, anoint his hand and breast with the oil of his lamp, and lastly return into favor with his adversary. He put off the last; the rest he performed that same day. Therefore waking on the morrow, he found his hand indeed altogether sound; but his breast no better than before. He wonders, and summoning the same priest to him at once, complains of the Saint's benefit as halved; and being taught by him that the cause was that he had not yet made reconciliation with his adversary, he wished this to be accomplished at once, with the priest himself as both author and go-between; at the same time he repeated the other things which he had performed the day before; and on the next day in the morning he felt himself wholly safe and whole, only a very slight scar being left on his breast for confirmation of the miracle, and a great quantity of purulent matter on the bandages laid over the wound. Appiani from page 365, out of an anonymous Manuscript codex.

[37] In the decline of the same century John Maxius Tibaldeschi, he breaks anger; he frees a soul from purgatory; prince of the Guelphs against the Ghibellines at Ascoli, and devoted as few are to the Virgin Mother of God and St. Emygdius, was already preparing the nuptial pomp of the only son he had, Tibalduccio, when he learns that he had been slain from ambush by a certain Phantasia, an assassin suborned by the Ghibellines. The father rages exceedingly, and, seized by a soldier's ferocity, marks out with mouth and mind every most dire punishment against the utterly abandoned man, if only he could be caught. Meanwhile the fugitive Phantasia, ignorant whose they were, runs to his house as to an asylum; he is recognized by one of the servants; he is held; he is shut up. Tibaldeschi, being informed at once, and asked what he would have done with the monster of a man, at first hesitates: then says to the servant, Stand here for a while, until I call you. Presently he enters his chamber alone; there he falls down before the effigies of the Virgin and of Emygdius; he demands the counsel of both in the present matter; then, money having been taken from the cupboard, calling the servant, Here, he says, is a purse for you; carry this quickly to the parricide, and along with it a chosen horse of mine, which you know to be swiftest, that the unhappy man may flee as speedily as he can. To the servant hanging back, and suspecting his master's mind moved by excessive grief, he says, Hasten; I have never done anything more deliberately; it is the counsel of the Mother of God and of St. Emygdius. The man obeys: Tibaldeschi returns to his prayers; and, behold, he finds a letter left there meanwhile, written in Tibalduccio's own hand in nearly these words: "The mercy, most beloved father, which out of love for the Mother of God and for our patron Bishop and Martyr you have just now shown to my slayer, has so greatly pleased the divine Clemency that it at once ordered me to be led out by St. Emygdius from the expiatory prison, to which I was otherwise consigned for several years more. Now under his guidance I fly to heaven; and at his bidding, with thanksgiving, I foretell that another son will shortly be granted you in my place. Continue meanwhile to live to God here, while I shall assiduously entreat him to be propitious to you in the heavens." With what feeling the father read these things, who could express? For the rest, a son born of his wife, then barren for nineteen years, on that very day on which he had before dismissed the assassin, confirmed the prediction after a year. Appiani from page 346, citing Andreantonelli and ancient Manuscript codices treating more fully of Tibaldeschi.

[38] And Andreantonelli indeed on page 187 and following notes certain things about this hero, he reconciles enemies; and subjoins: More about him in the Annals of Ascoli, and also on a stone at Ascoli in the house of Cardinal Felix Centini. Concerning whom moreover this has been handed down to memory, that he preserved in his house a certain man of Cupra (there are two Cupras in Piceno), the slayer of his son, and, the funeral rites of his only son having been performed, dismissed him unharmed: for the homicide had unknowingly fled to John's house, that he might be safe there. We do not so much wonder here at the detention of the assassin until the funeral rites were performed (although it does not agree well enough with Appiani's narrative) as at Andreantonelli's silence concerning the son's deliverance, concerning his prodigious letter, etc. There is added that our John Osorio relates, in his Sermons, volume 1, on the Friday after Ash Wednesday, that in the sixteenth century he received from men worthy of credit a story so like ours that, unless the one were referred to an illustrious widow, and this to an illustrious man, you would believe them very nearly the same. But indeed although these things are wonderful, they by no means suffice to brand Appiani's good faith. This certainly availed very much in the year 1703, which was next after Appiani's first edition

with our Father Jerome Caraffa, then at Palermo in Sicily celebrated for singular virtue and especially for an ardent zeal for the salvation of others: for he was so moved by this example that, being about to reconcile two nobles, for the mitigating of whose hatreds nothing had thus far sufficed in any way, he began by invoking the patronage of the Mother of God and of St. Emygdius, and exhorted the enemies separately, each of them, to do the same several times, without indicating, however, why he urged this. They obeyed; and shortly, they who had thirsted for one another's blood, besprinkled with one another's tears in Father Caraffa's presence, pardon having been suppliantly asked and given on both sides, returned into perpetual concord. Appiani from page 355.

[39] he suddenly enriches a family unjustly stripped of its goods; In the year 1457 a certain Emygdius, of illustrious family at Ascoli, and father of numerous offspring, likewise pious and affectionate toward St. Emygdius beyond the rest; but, by what misfortune is not known, hateful to his kinsfolk, had been reduced, both by other adversities and chiefly by these men's lawsuits, to such a state that he had nothing left for sustaining his family except one single suburban farm out of all his property; concerning which itself, however, as well as concerning the town house in which he dwelt, the most powerful of his blood-relations had long since brought suit against him — when the good man, hurrying out to that same farm, turned aside from the road, as he had always been accustomed, to the church of St. Emygdius, which from its form they call the round one, near the city, for the sake of praying. Thence further, as soon as he had reached the estate, a messenger came up from the city reporting that the case had been judged in favor of his adversary, and that accordingly he would without doubt shortly have to quit both farm and house. Despair, of course, invades the man, so vehement that with quickened step he made for the city, resolved to leap from the Solestan bridge into the Tronto, and to smother in the waters, together with his life, the misery announced to him. Turning these things over with a disturbed mind, he was now passing the round church of St. Emygdius, when, terrified by its doors flying open with a spontaneous force, he is at once held back both by an unknown power and by this voice: "Stop. For whither do you rush, unhappy man, past me without your customary greeting? Return now at once: for the hand of the Lord is not shortened toward you: very soon you will be enriched to satiety. If fortune had not thus far been adverse, you would already be a criminal." He acquiesces; he returns. Meanwhile that man fell into a mortal sickness who by the utmost wickedness had cast him out of all his substance by the last lawsuit; and with conscience tormenting him, spurred to compensate the injury by which he had oppressed his kinsman, he writes that very man his sole heir, and dies. Appiani from page 367, out of Quintus De Quintodecimo and other monuments of Ascoli.

[40] he punishes a blasphemer; he extinguishes a fire; In the year 1507, when a certain impious gambler, because his game was going unhappily, was unbridledly rending the name of St. Emygdius with constant taunts, his servant, more religious than his master, said: Insult, if you please, your masters the heretics; not the Saints. But do you, the other retorts, get out of this house of mine at once; and report to that Saint Emygdius of yours that he should look out for you henceforth. He has already looked out, I think, said the servant, when he freed me from your house. But scarcely had he gone out when the floor, suddenly falling in, crushed the master, yet in such a way that, being drawn out thence alive, and mulcted of only one leg, with a wooden one afterward put under him, he limped until, his house having been sold out of poverty, he passed a wretched old age.

In the year 1573, when the people of Ascoli were everywhere celebrating their Patron's birthday with festive fire, a firework, having by chance fallen into a storehouse of wood and straw, stirred up a huge and unexpected conflagration, which the wind so drove toward the nearest house that it gave no hope at all of that house being rescued from destruction by any help or industry whatever. Therefore its occupant, lifting hands to heaven along with his voice, cries out: Do you, O St. Emygdius, help me (for you can). At this word the wind is straightway checked and a shower follows; which, when it had extinguished the whole fire, then at last immediately ceased. Appiani from the Manuscript monuments of Ascoli, from page 369 to page 372; where he subjoins that how many miracles the same Saint performed in the following century may be estimated from the votive offerings then hung at his tomb.

[41] And among the silver ones he says there is one which Judith Falconieri had hung up, he obtains life for a dying woman, his step for one who has fallen; a nun of noble stock in the convent of St. Margaret at Ascoli, after she, having been duly prepared for eternity with the Church's last helps, had so recovered through the invoked patronage of Emygdius that Appiani knew her to be still alive when he wrote this.

Another is of iron and more recently affixed: namely, the son of Francis Froscione had shattered his leg by an unforeseen fall; and when his parents learned this, both turned their vows to St. Emygdius: but when he had got the better of this by an early and most complete healing, all together flew to his basilica to render thanks to their Wonder-worker, and there, their minds purged by confession, all were refreshed with the Eucharistic banquet. And the parents left the greave, which they had ordered to be made of iron plates to strengthen their son's leg, there as a perpetual monument of the prodigy.

[42] In the year 1703, in which the same author was preparing the second edition of the Emygdian Life, which we have said we follow here, he takes away fevers and other diseases; Rome herself felt, as he asserts on page 374, the benefits of our Martyr, both many and prodigious; which one may conjecture even from those things which Constance Nardini, a most noble young lady, testified in a twofold writing to have then happened to herself alone: and in the former indeed she affirms that, when she was laboring with a most burning fever and an intolerable pain of the head, as soon as she had implored St. Emygdius, she was at once freed from both ailments: of the other this is the sense: I, Constance Nardini, relying on the patronage of St. Emygdius, and accustomed through these thirty years that I have lived to salute him daily thirty times with the Lord's Prayer, though recited tepidly, have received several favors from his notable beneficence; and this among others, that, when in the evening I had put to the head of my brother, burning with violent fevers, the sacred effigy of this Martyr stamped on a medal, I found him on the following morning perfectly restored to his former health. A girl also of my household and dear to me, direly vexed for easily forty days already with a most acute torment of the teeth, when she touched but a single tooth with the same medal, which I myself had brought to the poor thing, marveled that at that very moment all pain whatever vanished.

[43] he preserves Ascoli from earthquakes, Now what shall we say of earthquakes? As Italy has nothing more terrible than these, nothing more frequent; so, if we listen to Appiani, the people of Ascoli have nothing readier and more present against them than the protection of this Prelate and martyr of theirs. Nor indeed have they experienced this once, or only lately; but, as the same author reports from Linus, Quintus, and Manuscript codices on page 312, in the years of Christ 800, 1116, 1300, 1456, and several others, in which the earth, shaken by an internal motion, can scarcely be told how many and how great ruins it produced within Italy alone, with Ascoli terrifying its own people less than rousing them by harmless shocks to invoke repeatedly the help of their Defender. But the aforesaid author holds it enough to have touched these old matters in passing; since he judges that for demonstrating brilliantly the point proposed those things suffice which happened in that very year of Christ 1703 in which he wrote: for then that subterranean tempest raged so atrociously, for three months at the least, far and wide, but chiefly in Umbria and the Abruzzi, that certain towns throughout both provinces could not thereafter be safely inhabited, certain ones collapsed for the greater part, certain ones entirely overthrown. Cascia, Norcia, Campli, Amatrice, Montereale, Cittareale, and Aquila testify to this, besides two hundred and more villages, hamlets, and small forts. But Ascoli stood in the middle amid so many disasters on both sides; and so stood that, on Appiani's testimony, page 313, not even the trace of the least damage appeared anywhere in it: and whoever shall deny that this must be attributed to a manifest miracle, he must surely deny (what the same writer asserts in the same place) that within Rome itself, so much firmer and farther distant, to repair the damages of the convulsions which she then suffered, above five hundred thousand scudi were spent on iron chains and nails alone. Doubtless the people of Ascoli and Emygdius had striven throughout all that three months' space; they by fastings, prayers, alms, processions of all orders and ages, and by most exquisite, voluntary, public, and daily afflictions of their bodies in them, that they might constantly have him propitious; and he, by a continued and daily more manifest protection, that he might be so. Please read our author through the whole ninth chapter of the third book; and, if you can, restrain your tears: I certainly could not.

[44] nay, also the people of Ascoli Nor indeed did he then prodigiously preserve his people of Ascoli safe only in their own city, but also those living elsewhere. Examples are brought forward in the same place from page 316, confirmed by oath and published by the authority of the prelate of Ascoli in Italian print in the same year; of which here is a summary for you.

At Porchiano, which is a small fortified town of the dominion of Ascoli, upon a certain Joanna, daughter of Celsus Augustinus, who had gone out from her house into another to fetch oil, there came so sudden and vehement a shaking of the earth that the upper story of the house, springing apart and now falling, threatened the girl with unavoidable destruction. Falling therefore at once upon her knees, she calls upon St. Emygdius; when, behold, the thick beams, driven crosswise one over another in their fall, and suspended over her head by some hidden power, she indeed slips out, covered with the dust of the ruins, but nevertheless wholly unharmed.

Victoria Ferretti, likewise of Ascoli, while at Aquila, where she had long been living joined in noble marriage, she was washing away her offenses by confession in the church of St. Philip Neri, the church suddenly collapsing entombed all the people who were then there — including Victoria's little son with the maidservant, and also the priest separated from the penitent only by a thin panel. She alone (as she alone of all had been born at Ascoli, and on that account had been committed to the guardianship of St. Emygdius), although buried up to the neck in the rubble, nevertheless came forth thence alive and vigorous; accustomed afterward, especially at Ascoli, both often to acknowledge and proclaim this benefit, and St. Emygdius as its author.

[45] Joseph Ronchetti and Seraphinus Rustici, both of Ascoli, coming into that same city of Aquila from the suburb, and then far from his city and dominion were going to the church of St. Dominic for the sake of what we call the general Communion; when on the way, their purpose being changed by a sudden and urgent impulse, they turn aside to the church of the Most Blessed Virgin; where they remained safe at that time in which at St. Dominic's they would without doubt have perished with eight hundred others, whom the whole church, shaken from its lowest foundations, crushed as they were praying there. But that impulse, so salutary, was ascribed to the patronage of St. Emygdius, who was then protecting the people of Ascoli everywhere.

To Cascia, overthrown in many places from the fourteenth day of January, a company of soldiers was assigned, among whom were certain men of Ascoli, and ordered, until the wrath of the earth, or rather of God the avenger, should grow quiet, to keep watch to ward off thieves from every quarter. But this could in no way be done unless the soldiers, distributed in many directions, ran about day and night through the streets, narrow and obstructed as they were, and amid the threatening leanings of the buildings which here and there survived either half-ruined or shattered:

and that this could be continued for a long time amid so many repeated shocks without any injury to any of them, as they themselves could not sufficiently wonder at, so neither could they doubt that they owed it to St. Emygdius; inasmuch as they had always implored his help both daily with a set prayer, and, as often as the crash of a falling mass sounded around them, with knees at once bent, by the counsel of their fellow-soldiers of Ascoli.

[46] At Norcia on the XIV day of January, the night being not yet far advanced, living there. Felix Crocetti, and others of Ascoli, with cattle to be offered there for sale, being covered over as their lodging was at once shaken and collapsed, all emerged from the ruins safe and whole, under which their hostess herself lay suffocated with three sons.

On the same night Felicianus, born in the dominion of Ascoli but then a priest and schoolmaster at Arquata, enjoyed a benefit no less: for the floor, giving way under his feet, drew both itself, and the upper walls, and the roof of the house into the same ruin. So unforeseen a calamity struck the man and for a while put him out of his mind: then, gradually returning to himself, he began first to wonder that he was alive; then, that he was in no part of his body hurt or bruised; last, that he stood outside the household ruins in an open and safe place; which last indeed seemed to him much more wonderful on the next morning, when, looking around at everything, he found the exit blocked on every side, and even the door itself — which he presently learned had not then been opened either by himself or by another — when he found the man crushed and dead within who alone had had the key of the door, and, being killed, was keeping it.

These things Appiani says of the miracles; unless perhaps that also deserves to be added which on page 285 he says was attested at Ascoli, at the same time of earthquakes of which we have just treated, concerning a suckling infant, that beyond his age he distinctly pronounced the name of St. Emygdius, then constantly resounding through the whole city. But how greatly so many benefits of that same year enlarged the fame and cult of this Prelate and Martyr, it will be easy to conjecture from book 3, chapter 9, of the work which we are praising.

§ V. Their continuation down to the year 1730.

In the year 1727, in the general ruin of a monastery I had long since made an end of this Commentary, when there was brought hither from Ascoli an Italian pamphlet, printed there, and dedicated by its most distinguished author, Domenico Tullio Lazzari, doctor of both laws and advocate, to the most illustrious and most reverend lord Paul Thomas Marana, at once prelate and prince of Ascoli, on the XIII day of June, in the year 1731. The title is: Il protettore ne' tremuoti ravvisato in S. Emidio, primo vescovo d'Ascoli, etc., that is: The Protector in earthquakes recognized in St. Emygdius, first bishop of Ascoli, etc. At the end of the little book, besides the legitimate approbation expressed in print, two public Manuscript instruments are subjoined, both fortified with their seals, to procure for the writer that undoubted credit which otherwise he certainly deserves of himself. Further, from the beginning down to page 32 are narrated whatever things were published by Appiani in the year 1704 concerning that same Saint's patronage against earthquakes, and have thus far been tasted by us: then from page 33 to the end, or page 41, more recent ones are brought forward, which happened partly in the year of Christ 1727, partly in 1730, and which accordingly seem not undeservedly to demand their place here also, at least with that brevity which may suffice for a knowledge of each miracle.

[48] a cell is preserved untouched by a little image of the Saint. In the year of Christ 1727, therefore, a certain Religious man of the Olivetan congregation, ordered to move from the monastery of St. Angelo Magno at Ascoli to the monastery of St. Michael the archangel in the diocese of Urbino, had hung up in his cell there a little image of St. Emygdius, whom he greatly venerated, brought with him from thence; when in the same year, on the XV day of December, in the third quarter after the first hour of the night, the earth began there so to be in tumult and to leap up that, while the whole monastery fell in ruin round about, that cell alone, which kept the image of St. Emygdius hung up as I have said, remained unharmed and untouched; and that by so evident a miracle that abbot Angelo Maria Camassei, once received there, as though already delivered from all danger, laying aside all care of a safer refuge, passed that whole night, formidable with so many repeated shocks, there as safe as he was free from care. Nor indeed, when the storm had grown quiet, could he be forgetful of so notable a benefit; but immediately, by his own judgment and the common judgment of all his people, he chose Emygdius as the first protector of the monastery; then he honored him with a new altar in the church, upon which he raised his effigy newly painted; then with the assent of the Apostolic See he decrees that he be celebrated every year in perpetuity on the V day of August with a double Office of the first class with an octave, exactly as he is venerated at Ascoli, a stricter fast being set before the vigil; finally, lest the invocation of him could ever thereafter be interrupted there, he sanctions by a perpetual law a twofold proper commemoration of St. Emygdius in the daily Office: one before Prime, the other after Compline.

[49] In the year 1730, in a most grievous earthquake The rest belong to the year 1730, the XII day of May, fatal chiefly to Norcia through the sudden tumults of the earth stirred up from about the tenth and a half hour, or, if you prefer, nearly the second after sunrise, and are narrated in this order. Emygdius Nicolaus Pacifici, of Amatrice, likewise a cleric and a candidate in rhetoric at Norcia, while he was preparing himself at home for school, being struck by an unexpected shock and by the (nevertheless harmless) fall of an overhanging architrave, at once calls upon St. Emygdius and at once hastens to slip out of the house. But behold, as he flies to the kitchen, through which he necessarily had to pass, the door opens of its own accord, although at that time barred with a bolt. When thence he reached the outermost doors, finding them just then free on that side alone on which the bar could be drawn back (for ruins were blocking the other part of them right up to the doorpost), he at last escaped safe into the street, at that very moment at which, if he had been within, he would never have come out alive, save by a greater prodigy; for then there were falling stones with beams, which stopped up the whole doorway. The whole matter he himself afterward openly asserted at Ascoli upon oath at the tomb of our holy Martyr, whither he had come to render thanks.

[50] More wonderful is what happened at the same time to Antonio Conti, his prodigious protection born indeed in the dominion of Ascoli, but dwelling in that of Norcia since he had entered into marriage. He happened then to be sleeping with his family, when, waking at the most violent shocks, he saw everything falling before his eyes except that corner which he himself with his wife occupied in the bedchamber. He therefore invokes St. Emygdius, and at the same time, mindful of his sons, leaps out half-naked. But the ruin had already carried these off with their room and little bed. As the one thing that seemed left to his grief, the wretched father, with strained and mournful voice, calls out the names of both (for they were two: the elder seven years old, the younger five) toward the collapsed rubble, once and again; when, behold, from where he had least expected, he receives an answer from both. Namely, both had been most prodigiously carried to the tenth pace from the house, and were lying together in the same little bed, just as they had been laid the day before, covered indeed with lime and broken roofing material, but marked nowhere with even the slightest bruise, much less a wound; nay (what is more wonderful), sheltered even then by beams hanging over their heads; as Antonio, hastening presently to Ascoli with those very boys and with his wife, testified by solemn oath before the tomb of his preserving Patron.

[51] Less indeed is that, yet great, which not only the report of the common people, experienced but also not a few testimonies of weighty men have related concerning a certain woman of Norcia. She, while she was drawing wine from a cask in the cellar, perceiving the house to be shaken up and down and to be giving way, cries out: O holy Patron of Ascoli (for in so great trembling his name did not occur to her), help me. As she prayed thus, the falling beams built a most firm hiding-place; since they so fell together upon one another that they did not touch her, but, like a rampart and a roof, defended her from the masses of the collapsing building which immediately followed and were shaken down, until the storm subsided. Happier could Caesar Buonamici seem, a farmer of the dominion of Ascoli, but then hired in the territory of Norcia; when in his master's house, shaken by the same shock, by imploring Emygdius he rescued both himself, and the household, and the house itself from a most imminent destruction, as indeed he himself afterward swore.

[52] To these last is added Peter Paul Ricci of Ascoli, who fled to it; then professing grammar at Norcia; who, at the same hour and by the same shock noticing the walls of his chamber so torn apart and loosened that through the not infrequent fissures the sun was already letting in its rays, sprang forth to beseech the help of St. Emygdius, whose image he kept there, that by it he might safely escape so unavoidable a destruction; and indeed he obtained something more than he had prayed for: namely, that neither for him nor for his household was the plan of flight necessary for safety: for this dwelling of his stood, and remained standing in the general havoc then of the whole city, however much it had been greatly dislocated since the year 1703, and was now, from the very beginning of the most vehement shocks there, torn on every side and all but wholly dissolved; as Ricci himself wished to be attested to all by the subscription of his own hand.

[53] not without an increase of his cult. But since he was of Ascoli, it is worth observing here what Lazzari noted on page 32: namely, that there is no memory, no monuments of writers however ancient, from which it could hitherto be drawn that even a single man of Ascoli was ever yet harmed by any earthquake. Which indeed, unless I am mistaken, moved that man whom the same author mentions on page 39 to seek that it be granted him to be enrolled in the number of the citizens of Ascoli, and so — since it could not be otherwise — to be made such at least by the favor and privilege of the magistracy. But to others it has seemed better, that they may hereafter be endowed through Emygdius with the same immunity as the people of Ascoli, to earn him by an equal homage and cult toward him. That this has already now been excellently practiced not only by private families, like the Olivetan above, but also by whole cities and peoples, liable beyond others to shocks and ruins of this sort, and that by solemn decrees established in perpetuity, the cited author narrates from page 39 to the end.

Now we proceed to the Acts, concerning which what we think should be judged has already been sufficiently set forth in §2. They are taken from his Office once proper among the people of Ascoli, concerning which see what was said in §1, numbers 6 and 7: but collated with the Vallicellian Manuscript Acts, likewise mentioned above in §2, numbers 13 and following; yet in such a way that we have thought the differences of each should be neglected where they change nothing in the matter and the sense.

THE ACTS

Customarily attributed to St. Valentinus, disciple of St. Emygdius; from the very ancient Office of the church of Ascoli, according to the edition of the year 1522, collated with an old Manuscript of the Vallicellian library among the Reverend Fathers of the Roman Oratory.

Emygdius, Bishop and Martyr, at Ascoli in Piceno (S.)

BHL Number: 2535

From the Office of Ascoli.

THE AUTHOR'S PROLOGUE.

To Melchiades, Bishop of the first See, the city of Rome, Valentinus the levite ^a, to live and rejoice always with Christ.

You bid me undertake a most arduous work, and one beyond my strength, The writer's obedience, and the state of the church of Ascoli when he wrote. O best Father; but trusting in God, who by wondrous power brought water from the rock for a thirsting people, and relying upon your prayers, I shall begin what you urge; I shall obey your command, and satisfy your desire. I ask, therefore, that if it should happen that I err after the manner of human wit, it may be defended by your authority and corrected by your skill: for you both know the discipline of all the philosophers, and, watered from the nectarous fount of the divine Books, and filled in your inmost parts with the radiance of divine grace, you surpass the wits, names, dignities, and merits of all mortals. But who of mortals can today be found of such wit and such eloquence as to be able to write in full the things which have been done in these days in the city of Ascoli? Or what tongue can set forth the losses, exiles, insults, proscriptions, slaughters, prisons, capital sentences, and other kinds of torments which the worshippers of the Christian faith suffer among us? Why do I linger? Among trackless rocks and the lairs of wild beasts we lead our life, destitute of the protection of almost all mortals; for we are perplexed, and afflicted in every way. But praise to the Almighty: the multitude of Christians has resolved to die sooner than to obey the precepts of cruel tyrants; for it is founded upon a firm rock, which can be moved neither by the violence of the raging north wind nor by any onrush of overflowing torrents. And although the church of Ascoli seems desolate of its pastor, St. Emigdius, bishop and martyr, nevertheless by the divine goodness and by your holy prayers it hopes to come to the harbor of sure rest. Do you think I shall see that day on which rest and security may be restored to the Church? Do you think I shall see that day on which it may be permitted me to sing praises to Almighty God according to custom, and to mark out by the service of the pen the acts of St. Migdius the martyr, and to commit them to the memory of posterity? Of whom, as briefly as I shall be able, I shall strive to set in order for you a few things out of many. Farewell.

ANNOTATIONS.

CHAPTER I.

The Saint's fatherland, conversion, miracles, and journey to Rome.

The Saint's birth, education, conversion, Blessed Emigdius, therefore, drawing his origin from a noble stock of the Gauls, was born ^a in the province of Germany on this side of the river Rhine, and was reared in the southern part of that same Germany, in the city of Trier ^b; who, when he was seven years old, was handed over by his parents to be instructed in the disciplines of the seven liberal arts: for he was of bright wit, of comely countenance, exceedingly gentle and humble, eloquent and composed, and gracious in every acceptance of manners and in all praise of the virtues: and not only to his parents, companions, and friends, but to all who had seen or heard him, he was held most dear; yet still a heathen, and not having yet obtained the grace of sacred Baptism [c.] But when he had come to depth of heart and excellence of knowledge, and had transcended the praise of all philosophers ^d, [when he was thirty-seven years old, he is asked by his parents and friends that, according to the dignity of his ancestors, he be girded with the military belt, and strive to sweat in the service of the Commonwealth, and take a wife freeborn according to his birth. As he was turning these and very many other things over in his breast, it happened that on a certain day he disputed with most Christian men concerning God and the Catholic faith and the wretched error of the heathen. To whom, when the way of truth was made clear, and after many thousands of words he was persuaded to leave the murky night of heathenism, to set aside the old-womanish and empty sects of Plato and Aristotle, and to cleave to the Christian faith, he gave his assent, and demanded to be made a catechumen.

[3] Then, shunning the fellowship of the pagans and the deceitful teachings of the philosophers, Baptism, instruction, was all superstition of idolatry being despised, he sought the church, and gave himself wholly to the teaching authority of the Christians to be formed. But after a little while, reborn of water and the Holy Spirit, he who had first been a master of error was made a disciple of truth; and he confesses himself to be a disciple not of Plato or of Pythagoras, but of Christ.] Then, reading and re-reading the volumes of the sacred books, he came to such wisdom and to such grace of preaching that it was openly given to be understood, and was proclaimed with one mouth by all the Orthodox, that Migdius was a vessel of election and a dwelling-place of the Holy Spirit ^e.

[4] by which he vainly tries to convert his heathen parents; [When these things were discovered by his father and mother, they fly swiftly, and, with very many friends standing by, they assail holy Migdius with this cry: O most beloved son Migdius, successor and heir of our goods, who has bewitched you? O son Migdius, the solace of our old age, who has turned your mind by magic arts? With what mind, with what eyes do you look upon your parents? As they were saying these things and very many others which mourning, grief, and anger are wont to supply to sorrowing minds, holy Migdius is reported to have given this answer: I do not, as you suppose, behold and address you being carried away with an alien mind or by magic arts; nay, with sound mind I admonish you to withdraw from the worship of idols, to come to the knowledge of truth, and to adore the most good God, and his Son our Lord Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit the Paraclete, one deity in three persons, and to fear him with sincere heart and devoted mind; who made all things from nothing, visible and invisible; who shuts, and none opens; who opens, and none shuts; through whom all things subsist and all things are ruled, heavenly, earthly, and infernal; in whose hand is the breath and life of man, and the number of his days, his beginning and his end: to serve whom is to reign, and to obey whom is life; whom the angels adore, whom the archangels venerate; at whose command the whole universe of things trembles, unceasingly praises him, and loves him. To him, as he was preparing to say much more, his father said: Remember, Son, to tell this fable to those who would lend you an ear, who would also accommodate their mind to trifles of this sort: for unless you give me your assent at present, unless you adore great Jupiter, I will (by the gods and goddesses!) appease the wrath of the gods with various, novel, and exquisite torments, without any delay.

[5] nay, he stirs up a sedition of the heathen against himself; These things being said, holy Migdius is seized, and violently led away by the multitude of the heathen into the temple of Jupiter. Standing there before the altar of Jupiter, in the hearing of all, he is reported to have said with a clear voice: Lord God, Father almighty, king of heaven and earth, to whom all things are known, past, present, and future, glorify your name today, and give honor and victory to the Christian people, and do not despise me your servant; but hear me graciously from your high dwelling-place of the heavens as I call upon you, as you heard Moses your servant before the face of Pharaoh in Egypt. Scarcely had he well finished, and behold, a great earthquake shook the temple and the image of Jupiter; and the altar was crushed in the sight of all who were present. When these things were done, stupor and amazement, fear and trembling together seized the priests of the temples and all the inhabitants of that region.

[6] But holy Migdius, having slipped away from the sight of his parents and from the multitude of the pagans, with crowds of Christians accompanying him, returned to his lodging:] and there in his sleep he is thus admonished by a voice fallen from heaven, that he should flee: Migdius, Migdius, work urgently at what you are working; cry out, lift up your voice; leave your parents and your fatherland; make for Italy: for there rewards and an everlasting crown are due to you. [having escaped through the ruin of the idol, he makes for Milan; thence for Rome;] But when morning came, holy Migdius, rising for his accustomed prayer and the morning hymns, calls together his three disciples, Euplus, Germanus, and Valentinus ^f. And when he had disclosed to them in order the angelic vision, casting his thought upon the Lord, and rising in the night, with those three ^g accompanying him [he seized upon a hasty journey. And the roughness of the Alps, by which Italy is closed in, being overcome, the fertile and abundant land of Liguria, like a mother her most beloved son, received him rejoicing into her bountiful bosom; where, giving himself for three continuous years to prayers and fastings, and staying at Milan in the oratory of St. Nazarius, he took up the office of holy preaching ^h: at whose successes the enemy of the human race, the devil, envying, stirred up through his members Diocletian and Maximian a most savage persecution against him, as against the other faithful. Being driven out of the city, having received many insults for Christ's name,] the divine mercy guiding him, with his three disciples he came to Rome, and first sought the thresholds of the blessed Apostles Peter and Paul; and, his prayer being completed, and the day now declining, he was received into hospitality by a certain soldier named Gratian, abounding in all temporal goods ⁱ; whose daughter had suffered for five years from a flux of blood, and had spent much expense and much labor upon physicians in vain, and, being bowed down and enfeebled ^k, was utterly unable to walk.

[7] Now the soldier, in whose lodging holy Migdius was received, where he heals his host's daughter by Baptism, after the refreshment of food and drink, began to question him and his disciples carefully in these words: Of what fatherland are you sprung, brothers; and of what condition? Do you know the art of medicine? To whom holy Migdius said: In the province of Germany we were born and reared, and we worship and defend the Christian religion, and we know the art of medicine fully, and without any medicine and any expense we heal various kinds of diseases. I have, said the soldier, an only daughter, who for five years has suffered a flux of blood, to whom none of the physicians or enchanters is able to bring a remedy; and if you can heal her, you will be able to have much money from me, and beyond all the physicians who are in this city of Rome you will be rich, dear, and glorious. To whom holy Migdius: We are physicians, as we told you above, and we can heal her without any delay; this one thing remains, that she become a Christian, and, reborn in the water of sacred Baptism, believe in one God the Father almighty, and in Jesus Christ his Son, and in the Holy Spirit the Paraclete. No delay comes between: the soldier, his wife, and his daughter with all his household hastened to the grace of sacred Baptism. Which being duly performed, the soldier's daughter, coming up from the washing of regeneration, was so restored to health as if there had never been in her any sign of infirmity.

[8] But when morning came, and day was restored to the earth, as also a blind man divinely directed to him: a certain blind man from the far borders of Italy, seeking blessed Migdius, had come to Rome: he stood before the doors, and, falling at his knees, began to entreat him with these words: O holy Father, O most skilled of all physicians, drive away the continual night of blindness from my eyes; give me back the light which, my deserts requiring it, I have lost, and which, with the expense of much money and many physicians laboring in vain, I have been unable to recover. When the blind man had said these things, holy Migdius said: If you shall believe with your whole heart in God the Father almighty, and in Jesus Christ his Son, and in the Holy Spirit

the Paraclete, what you ask shall wholly be done, and you shall be given light. To whom the blind man answered: I believe, and I am prepared to do all things, whatsoever you shall command: for I was admonished by a divine voice to come to you, and going about many places, I have come to implore your remedy for my lamentable and incurable infirmity. Then, with a multitude of Christians and pagans standing by, and with all marveling at the things that were being done, blessed Migdius, prostrate on the ground, poured out this prayer to God: Lord God, who are three and one ^l, and in whose dominion all things are placed, who made heaven and earth and all things that are in them; look upon me your servant, and give glory to your name; and, that all nations may know your power, fulfill this man's desire, and grant him health of body and of soul. Lord, who opened the eyes of one born blind, hear me a sinner, as you deigned to hear Tobias and Sarah, and give light to this man both in soul and in body, who live and reign through all ages of ages. And when the faithful had answered, Amen, suddenly rising from prayer, he made the sign of the cross upon the blind man's eyes, and said: May Christ the Son of the living God give you light: and his eyes were opened, and he saw the light, and at once he began to cry out: There is one God, whom blessed Migdius preaches, and there is no other besides him.

ANNOTATIONS.

CHAPTER II.

Prodigies wrought at Rome, conversions of heathen, the Saint's promotion to the bishopric of Ascoli.

by which prodigies 650 heathen are converted; Then those who were present, seeing the miracles which God had done through him in the girl, the soldier's daughter, and how God had given light to the blind man, all struck with stupor and ecstasy, said with one mouth and one mind: Baptize us, Father, in the name of God Jesus Christ. And holy Migdius, made glad, blessed the water and baptized them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, to the number of six hundred and fifty of both sexes ^a. Which being done, a manifold and various report at once occupied the ears of the Roman people, and with all turned to amazement, Christians and heathen alike, each spoke according to his own bent: the Christians rejoiced that God had visited them and had bestowed so great a grace upon his faithful; but the heathen, supposing holy Migdius to be Asclepius himself, the god of medicine, or that some one of the great gods lay hid under a human form, and had come from the heavens to the earth for the salvation of the Roman people, wishing to offer incense and victims, vying with one another lead him into the temple of Asclepius ^b. But when, hedged about by the multitude of the people, holy Migdius stood before the statue of Asclepius, he delivered this brief address, suited to the time, to the surrounding people:

[10] Men of Rome, powerful by land and sea from the rising of the sun to its setting, what does it profit to have conquered so many and so great barbarian nations, to have overcome them with so many and so great labors, if you submit your freeborn necks to the superstitious error of idols and to a lamentable vanity? others think him to be Aesculapius; but, the idol being sunk, What does it profit to have subdued kings mighty in war, if idols and the empty teachings of the poets drag you captive to perpetual punishments and to the bristling shadows of pallid Erebus? Take counsel therefore for yourselves, and provide for the future, and spew out the deaf and mute idols, which confer no help either on themselves or on you; and, reborn of water and the Holy Spirit, adore God the Father almighty, king of things heavenly, earthly, and infernal: for through him kings reign and princes bear rule; and at his command the sun and moon and the brightness of the stars serve by day and by night. But I am a poor little man, the least servant of the servants of God; neither am I Asclepius, nor sent by him, as you suppose; nor do I seek any favor or friendship of his, nor do I wish to have anything in common with him. As he was saying this, a multitude of the sick began to ask him that he would deign to confer healing on them also in the name of his God.

[11] being taught of Christ, 1030 of them are baptized; Then blessed Migdius added this, saying: And that I may be proved to speak truth, this multitude of the sick, oppressed by divers kinds of diseases, whom neither Asclepius nor any of your gods could heal, I will, in your presence, beyond all ambiguity, restore to their former health in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. He had spoken, and, making his words good, at once he prostrated himself in prayer, and drove the demons from the bodies they possessed, and healed divers kinds of ailments. At the sight of which miracle a very great acclamation of the people arises, and, turned to the praise and favor of the holy Man, they spew out the idols, and with tears springing up and every mist of doubt wiped away, they demanded with ardent zeal to be made Christians. No delay is made; for at that same hour and in the same place there were baptized of the people with glory one thousand and thirty, besides children and women. And when these who had seen the miracle were baptized, and the altar of Asclepius had been demolished, the holy Man seized its idol with his own hands and cast it headlong into the river Tiber.

[12] together with the priests of Aesculapius But while the Christians rejoiced together and celebrated the victory, and sang immense praises to the almighty King for the benefits conferred upon them, the priests of Asclepius, filled with indignation and anger, go to the Prefect of the City, and report to him in order the injuries done to themselves and to their god Asclepius: how the people had destroyed the altar, and how a certain foreign physician had thrown his image into the river, and how by his magic arts and Christian doctrine he was making sport of the people. Hearing these things, the Prefect, inflamed with indignation and fury, said to the priests: You gave your consent, you who wished to honor before the people a man who is a magician and who deludes them with Christian arts; but, if my welfare, if great Aesculapius shall aid me, you shall pay a like penalty, and shall lie under a like sentence. When the priests had heard this, being exceedingly terrified, and turning their counsel to something better, they fled to the blessed man Migdius; and when the Saint had seen them, kindly of countenance as he was, he said: Justly does that befall you which Solomon says: He who prepares a pit for his neighbor shall himself fall first into it. While blessed Migdius says this, the priests, carrying water in a pitcher, with clean heart and one mouth said: Baptize us, Father, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ; for our gods, erring and lying under the vanity of vanities, are able to profit neither themselves nor us. And holy Migdius, having received the water, baptized them, and admonished them what they should do thereafter, as the time required.

[13] But when the next day came, when the Prefect of the City had heard more certainly that a multitude of the people had been converted to Christ by holy Migdius' preaching and by the wonders which they had seen, and that the priests of Asclepius too had been baptized, a persecution being thence stirred at Rome, the Saint encourages his own; he summoned to the Capitol the Roman people of all the senatorial order, and stirred up a most cruel sedition against the Christians. And so, the city being disturbed, and the people urging honorable and dishonorable causes on either side, and the tumult of the raging growing hotter and hotter, blessed Migdius, a little terrified, was pondering what he should best do; but, strengthened by the Lord, he thus admonished himself and his disciples, and the other Christians who were with him, saying: Do not fear, most beloved brothers, do not fear the torments of worldly princes; for they are momentary, and to be compared to a leaf which is snatched by the wind, as the Psalmist testifies: I have seen the wicked highly exalted and lifted up above the cedars of Lebanon; I passed by, and behold he was not; I sought, and his place was not found. For God is able to free us from the hand of those who seek our souls, who freed the sons of Israel from the hand of Pharaoh, and cast him headlong with his army into the sea; for God is able to free us, who

freed the three boys from the furnace of burning fire, and Daniel from the lions' den, and Susanna from a false charge; for he alone, when he wills and how he wills, puts to death and gives life; for he alone, when he wills and how he wills, casts down the mighty from their seat and exalts the humble; since indeed in his hand are all the ends of the earth, and not only of the earth, but also all the poles of the heavens. Him, therefore, neither living nor dead can we escape, as the Prophet says: Whither shall I go from your sight, and whither shall I flee from your face? If I ascend into heaven, you are there; and if I descend into hell, you are present. Whether we live, brothers, or whether we die, we are God's: let his will therefore be done: for if we have received good things from the hand of God, why should we not endure evil things? For the sufferings of this age are not worthy to be compared with the future glory which shall be revealed in us.

[14] But the discourse being ended, and the minds of all confirmed and lifted up to God, presently by a heavenly admonition his disciples said: Let us rest today, Father, and at earliest dawn let us depart from the city, according to the words of the holy Gospel: If they persecute you in one city, flee into another. Meanwhile, while they confer these things with one another, the day departed, and night embraces the immense spaces of the lands with black wings. And while sleep, the lifter of cares and labors, most welcome to all mortals, presses down the limbs, an angel of God roused blessed Migdius and his disciples, and spoke to them with a clear voice: Do not fear the torments of executioners, for the Lord is with you; rise therefore in haste; go to Pope Marcellus; he will teach you what you ought to do.

[15] Blessed Migdius therefore, rising in the night, secure and glad at the angelic vision, he goes to St. Marcellus the Pope; went with his disciples to the Pope, to entreat him in this fashion: O universal Father, O mediator of God and men, whose tongue shuts and opens the gate of heaven; come to our aid and bring help to us strangers, worshipping and invoking Christ, and suffering persecution for his name. To whom Pope Marcellus said: Whence are you; or for the sake of what matter have you come hither; or what office do you discharge? Holy Migdius answered: In the province of Germany we were born and reared; hither we have come for the sake of prayer, admonished by a divine vision. But I, your sinful and unworthy servant, Migdius by name, discharge a priestly office ^c, [ordained at Milan in the oratory of the holy martyrs Nazarius and Celsus; where, staying three years, I gained for God no small number of the citizens of Milan; but, not being able to bear the persecution of the emperors Diocletian and Maximian, I was compelled, Father, to flee to you; but yesterday and the day before I could not see and address you, being preoccupied with many affairs.] To whom holy Marcellus said: I have heard very many things of you, and of what you have done in this city of Rome; stay with me today, I pray; for tomorrow I shall tell you what you ought to do.

[16] being made bishop of the people of Ascoli by him, he departs from Rome. On the next day, therefore, with great favor and the celebrated praise of the clergy and people of the faithful, blessed Pope Marcellus ordained holy Migdius bishop of the people of Ascoli ^d, and Euplus his disciple his deacon; and, license to preach having been given him, admonishing and strengthening him, he directed him to the city of Ascoli. And so, the episcopal benediction having been received, and license of holy preaching given, blessed Migdius the bishop seized upon a hasty journey. Very many of the Romans, following him, earnestly besought that he would stay among them for some little time, and that he would confer some remedies upon their sick. To whom he said: I cannot indeed, brothers, waste leisure in these parts, since it befits me to obey the words of my Pastor, the lord Pope Marcellus; since it is written: It is better to obey than to sacrifice: for we know what happened to Jonah the prophet, who, when he was being sent by the Lord to Nineveh to preach, was fleeing to Tarshish, neglecting the Lord's command. As he said these things, and the people persevered in their intent, innumerable crowds of peoples run together from near and from distant places, desiring to see the wonders which God was doing through him: and offering the blessed Man gold and silver and precious garments, with bended knee they kept asking to share in his holy prayers.

ANNOTATIONS.

CHAPTER III.

His apostolic labors and miracles among the people of Pictavis and of Ascoli.

He comes to Pictavis, the earth trembling, the demons howling: Meanwhile, with choirs of rejoicing people going before and following his steps ^a, they came to the borders of the city of Pictavis ^b, which, given over to the worship of idols, was serving the manifold error of demons ^c, and had as yet known or heard no sign at all of the Christian faith unto its salvation ^d. But after blessed Migdius the bishop came to the places near the city, it was shaken with a huge earthquake; and the demons, which lay hidden in the idols, began to bellow and to cry out with a horrible and confused voice: Behold the end, behold the end; behold Migdius, the exceptional worshipper of Christ: this is for us a lamentable day, this is for us a hateful day. The priests of the temples, therefore, and the people of the city being struck with terror and stupefied, and awaiting the outcome of the matter, blessed Migdius, with crowds of Christians and heathen accompanying him, enters the gates of the city. And after he stood before the temple of Jupiter, hedged about by a multitude of innumerable people, he is questioned in such words by the elders of that same place: Of what country are you, Father; whence, or whither do you make your way; or for what cause you have come hither, declare to us: for at your entrance our city has been shaken with a huge earthquake, and our gods, fearing your coming, have all cried out as with one mouth with mournful bellowing and terrifying howling.

[18] To whom holy Migdius, the crowd being quieted and the tumult checked, where he preaches Christ the savior said: I am a Gaul by nation, from the province of Germany, the least servant of the servants of Christ, bidden by the divine will to come to Rome; but, having been ordained bishop by blessed Pope Marcellus, I have been bidden to direct my steps to the city of the people of Ascoli; but I have also entered here to you for the sake of your salvation, so that you may know the living and true God, the Father almighty, and may believe in Jesus Christ his Son, who for the salvation of the human race and for the redemption of our sins deigned to take on our flesh; whose nativity the angels announced to the shepherds; to whose cradle a star, glowing red with wondrous brightness, led the Magi offering three gifts; at whose rising peace was announced to the earth, and grace to the Saints; who, after he was baptized in the river Jordan, fasted forty days and forty nights, and was tempted by the devil; who, that he might be believed truly the Son of God, raised the dead, cured or healed lepers, and with five loaves and two fishes satisfied five thousand men; but he deigned also to do many other and infinite wonders, which no mortal can more fully enumerate; but at last he was seized and bound by the impious Jews, beaten with scourges, buffeted, crowned with a crown of thorns, and suffered a most savage death on the altar of the cross; at whose death the earth trembled, and the rocks were split, the sun was darkened, and the moon withdrew her light.

[19] Who also, descending into the lower regions, freed the souls of the captives, and judge; and set them in the seat of eternal glory; after this he rose again on the third day, and, having conversed with his disciples for forty days, in the sight of all ascended into the heavens; whence he is to come at the end of the world, and with him thousands of Saints, to judge the living and the dead. Then the heavens and the earth shall be shaken with a great trembling; then in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet (for the trumpet shall sound) the dead too shall rise incorrupt; then, the seats being set, the books of our deeds shall be opened. That day is a day of wrath, a day of calamity and misery, a day great and exceedingly bitter ^e, when the Lord shall rise up in judgment. But who shall stand before his face? For the angels and archangels shall tremble, and scarcely shall the just man be saved. Then with what brow, with what mind, with what eyes shall the impious and sinners look upon their Judge? What shall they say, or what shall they answer, who, presenting nothing of good works before the face of God, worshipped the creature for the Creator; who adored mute and senseless idols? O how great shall the mourning be, O how great the trembling, when they are to hear that cruel sentence: Go, accursed ones, into the eternal fire, which is prepared for the devil and his angels! O how great shall be the gladness, and how great the exultation of mind, to those to whom the divine clemency shall say: Come, blessed of my Father, receive the kingdom which has been prepared for you from the origin of the world!

[20] and by Baptism he heals 150 sick; When blessed Migdius the bishop said these things, the people of the city, marveling at his words, and desiring to be instructed by his teaching and to behold in person the wonders they had heard of him, said: You speak in due order, Father; and, as it seems to us, your words sound of truth: but we have also heard that you are the most skilled of physicians, and that without any expense or medicine you are able in an hour, in a moment, to heal even incurable ailments. We ask you, therefore, that here too you would confer remedies of health upon our sick, oppressed with innumerable diseases. They had spoken; and, a multitude of sick persons having been gathered to the number of one hundred and fifty, both of the city and of those who had come with him, holy Migdius, with knees bent to the earth and eyes and hands lifted to heaven, prayed in this manner: Lord God almighty, who wish no one to perish, but to come to the knowledge of truth: open the treasure of your goodness, and from your high dwelling-place of the heavens pour out grace and blessing upon this people, and confer upon it health of body and of soul. And rising from prayer, he baptized all the sick in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. No delay is made: paralysis, leprosy, and the other kinds of incurable diseases, through the invocation of the Holy Spirit, leave the bodies they possessed and flee, as shadows before the face of the morning sun.

[21] [thus many others there are baptized; the shrines are demolished; 3 churches are raised.] At the sight of which miracle, all who were present, citizens and strangers, with tears springing up and beating their breasts with their palms, kissing the feet and knees of holy Migdius, confessed that they believed with clean conscience and with all their heart in the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit: and, reborn of water and the Holy Spirit,

they fly swiftly; they destroy the temples, and kindle a copious fire, and cast all the idols into the midst of the seething flames. And so, the city being purified, all uncleanness eliminated, and it being freed from the ancient and wretched error of the heathen, the holy Man dedicated three basilicas: the first in honor of the holy Savior, the second of holy Mary and of St. Peter the Apostle and prince of the Apostles, the third in honor of St. Lawrence the martyr and levite. Then, all things being duly performed which pertained to his office, and priests and deacons having been ordained in that same place who should rule the people after the manner of Catholics, having stayed some days, weeping and kissing them all, he left the city. And so, the journey being begun, the people who had come with him from the city of Rome, and very many others, being more fully instructed by the holy Man's honey-flowing preaching, praising and glorifying almighty God, returned to their own homes.

[22] Scarcely has he entered Ascoli, when he is set before the judge; And so holy Migdius, full of heavenly grace, drenched with the dew and unction of the Holy Spirit, and doing many and innumerable miracles, came to the City of the people of Ascoli, in which Polymius, Procurator of Bruttium ^f and of the whole Adriatic shore, residing, by order of Diocletian and Maximian raged cruelly against the Christians. For Ascoli was ^g the metropolitan city from Ravenna as far as Reggio, after the city of Rome, on the whole Adriatic shore rich beyond the other cities, flourishing and exceedingly powerful; which, fortified by nature and wondrously adorned by human labor, graced by a noble throng of citizens, delightful in the pleasantness of its groves and rivers, and by the fertility and beauty of its fields and places both delectable and famous, seemed most like to the holy paradise of God; and, to enumerate briefly all its endowments, it was proclaimed most worthy of all praise, except that, made a bondslave to the service of demons, it offered victims to the error of the heathen. When blessed Migdius the bishop had come to it, he was received with great honor by certain citizens who had heard his most distinguished fame ^h. But when morning came, a sedition arises among the people, and by Polymius' command blessed Emigdius the bishop is led to the royal tribunal, and in the presence of all the people is more diligently interrogated by Polymius as to what his condition is, or for the sake of what business he has come. Holy Migdius said: I am a Christian, and ordained bishop by holy Pope Marcellus; but I have also been sent hither for the sake of your salvation, that you may know the true and living * God, and may leave the worship of idols, vain and superstitious and wrapped in the lamentable mist of error.

[23] To this Polymius said: I see you a well-composed young man, but, a space for deliberation being obtained, comely of countenance, charming and eloquent, and adorned with the flower of first youth: sacrifice therefore to the immortal gods, and you will be enriched with great and distinguished honors, and will always be dear and acceptable in the sight of the most invincible emperors Diocletian and Maximian. Holy Migdius said: I must obey and serve that Emperor at whose nod the clouds thicken with dew, who governs at once things heavenly and earthly, who encloses all things in his palm, who made all things from nothing, at whose command all things present and future obey, whose kingdom remains without end through infinite ages of ages, from whom all things proceed, and through whom visible and invisible goods subsist, whom to serve is to reign, and whom to obey is life. To whom Polymius said: Since you are exceedingly gracious, as I said to you above, and draw your origin from a noble stock, that you may know both the clemency and the discretion of the Roman princes, and may better provide for yourself hereafter, I give you a respite of four or five days to take counsel for yourself and your affairs.

[24] But on the next day, while Polymius the procurator was engaged in one business after another, and was going to one place after another, preaching, and healing a paralytic, the people of the city and of the other regions lying round about flock in troops to blessed Migdius the metropolitan ⁱ bishop, desiring to see the mighty works of God which they had heard of him. And when he saw the multitude standing round about, with glad and angelic countenance he opens to them the fountain of the divine Scriptures, and watered the minds of his hearers, like parched meadows, with the heavenly dew of his honey-flowing mouth; and, a brilliant sermon having been made, which on account of the length of the discourse is left out of the writing, he restored to health, in the sight of all who were present, by the sign of the holy cross and the invocation of the name of Jesus Christ, a paralytic man, undone in all his limbs.

[25] But the people, seeing what had been done and said by blessed Migdius, there he converts many, and founds a secret oratory. with all mist of doubt far away, with all delay far away, praising and glorifying almighty God the Father and Jesus Christ his Son, cried out three times: Cursed is he who adores idols; cursed is he who adores the gods of the nations; cursed is he who trusts in them, who have a mouth and do not speak; who have ears and do not hear: for neither is there breath in their mouth, nor do they confer any help upon their worshippers. Again it was acclaimed three times: Blessed be the God of the Christians, who saves those who hope in him, and by wondrous power disposes all things; blessed be blessed Migdius, through whom we all have been saved; blessed is this day, on which we have deserved to see the light and to withdraw from the worship of idols. After this, reborn in the font of sacred Baptism and instructed by the holy Man's preaching, each returned to his own. And among all the believers there was as it were one heart and one soul, and from day to day their number increased. Then, making collections at the command of holy Migdius their pastor, they build an oratory, as it were in secret, outside the city toward the northern quarter, under the base of a certain middling mountain ^k: where a threefold cave is shown not far from the city, made partly by nature and partly adorned by human labor.

ANNOTATIONS.

* The Vallicellian Manuscript: "one"

CHAPTER IV.

Conversions of the heathen in Piceno, and especially at Ascoli; and the admirable martyrdom of St. Emygdius.

Elsewhere in Piceno, the idol and altar of Apollo being cast down, Meanwhile blessed Migdius, compelled by the prayers of certain faithful men, went to the city of the Piceni ^a; and staying there some days, he did what belonged to his office; he destroyed the altars of the gods, and, strengthening the hearts of the faithful by his preaching, directed them to the hope of the heavenly fatherland. He was received into hospitality by a certain widow, noble, rich, and cultivating the faith of Christians with all her heart and a sincere mind. Which I judge happened by the disposition of the divine clemency: for he who sent Elijah the prophet to a widow at Sarepta of the Sidonians for the refreshment of very many, the same, one might say, sent blessed Migdius to a widow in the city of the Piceni for the salvation of many: for while he was enjoying her excellent hospitality, it was reported to the holy Man by that same widow and by very many other faithful that there was a shrine in the neighborhood beside the river Tenna, to which none of the Christians or preachers dared approach; in which a deceiving demon, lurking, giving doubtful and uncertain answers, made sport of the minds of men. When the blessed Man heard this, he grieved for human misery; and drawing sighs from the depth of his breast, with many accompanying him, he directed his step thither. The demon, perceiving his coming beforehand, now with confused, now with clear voice, uttering terrifying bellowings and mournful howlings, kept crying out: This is the day of wrath, this is the day of sorrow: behold the persecutor Migdius; behold the excellent worshipper of Christ! While the malignant spirit was crying such things, the blessed

Migdius entered the temple, and, the name of Jesus Christ being invoked, destroyed the altar of Apollo, and threw the idol, broken into pieces, into the river Tenna.

[27] And so, the malignant spirit being driven from its dwelling, he commanded the multitude of men and women to cut down the grove and together with him to implore the clemency of almighty God; he turns his shrine into a church. and, celebrating in that same place the solemnities of Masses, all the filth of the sacrilegious worship of idolatry being eliminated, he dedicated an altar to the praise of almighty God and of all the blessed Spirits ^b, where, a custodian having been appointed and all things which pertain to divine worship, he calls together into one the people of that region, admonishes, instructs them, that they should hold almighty God and Jesus Christ his Son in mind, fear him, love him, and keep both themselves and that place in all holiness. These and very many other things having been justly and holily determined and ordered in the parts of Piceno, with all speed he returned to the city of Ascoli.

[28] [To him, returned to Ascoli, the judge offers his own daughter, if he will sacrifice to the gods:] Polymius, envying his successes and his glory, ordered him to come to him, and said to him: Approach, and sacrifice to the great gods. Holy Migdius said: You admonish excellently: for I assiduously sacrifice a sacrifice of praise to the great God, that is, to the almighty Father, who through his Son Jesus Christ made heaven and earth and all things that are in them. To whom Polymius: Are not Jupiter, Juno, Venus, Aesculapius great gods? Holy Migdius answered: They are not gods, but effigies of demons, which confer everlasting burning upon their worshippers. But Polymius said: We take counsel for you, although you speak imprudently, and we still defer you from torments. Nevertheless take my counsel, and adore the great Gods, and I will give you my daughter; and you will be dear and acceptable to the most invincible emperors Diocletian and Maximian; and you will become the chief priest of the immortal gods. Then he ordered him to be brought in to his daughter. For Polysia ^c, Polymius' daughter, was notable in birth and beauty, distinguished in eloquence, and admirable in knowledge of letters both Greek and Latin *: and when she saw the Bishop entering to her, receiving him most honorably and most zealously, she addresses him in these words, saying: I give thanks to the immortal gods, since I see present you whom I had most greatly desired: for I have heard what wonders you did at Rome, and what at Pictavis; and how also in this city you restored to health by wondrous power a paralytic undone in all his limbs. Either surely you are a god hidden under human form, unless my thought deceives me; or begotten of the stock of the gods.

[29] whom the Saint, converted, baptizes with many others; It is fitting, therefore, that you be joined to us in familiarity and friendship, and cleave to the unconquered augustus Maximian in military service and by the favor of his benevolence. To whom the holy Man gave this answer: I am neither a god hidden under human form, as you suppose, nor have I descended from the progeny of the gods: for I am a Christian, and ordained bishop by blessed Pope Marcellus: for he sent me to you, the divine clemency disposing it, that you may leave the empty and void worship of idols, and may believe in one living and true God, the Father almighty, king of heaven and earth; to whom the angels and archangels sing together with untiring voice by day and by night: Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of hosts: the heavens and the earth are full of your glory: Hosanna in the highest. Who, binding the elements with an indissoluble knot, preserves the frame of the world unshaken: he, disposing day and night and the various vicissitudes of the seasons, bridles * and tempers the swift course of the firmament with ineffable and rational power; and by his just judgment evils are prepared for the evil, and goods for the good, hell for sinners, and paradise for the just. Hearing these and very many other things from the blessed Man, Polysia at once believed; and ardently demanded to be more fully instructed in the sacred mysteries. Then, Polymius being absent, some days having passed, blessed Emigdius, having got the time and hour, led the Girl with his disciples to the river Tronto, and baptized her with very many other men and women in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

[30] And when he had done this, he bent his knees beside the arch of the tent ^d, and poured out prayers to the Lord, and said: Lord God, who commanded your servant Moses to bring water out of the rock for the sons of Israel; and presently, a fountain being raised by his prayers, he washes another 1,060: open this stone before this your adopted people, that they may glorify your holy name, and that all, heathen and Christians, may know and understand that you are the true God, blessed unto the ages of ages. And when all the people had said, Amen, at once the stone was opened, and waters came forth most abundant and clear, even to this present day. And so, with all who were present marveling at the miracle which God had done through holy Migdius the bishop, all with one mouth, Christians and heathen, blessed almighty God; and he baptized there of the people one thousand and sixty ^e.

[31] But Polymius, hearing that his daughter had been made a Christian, beheaded for these things, he himself carries his head elsewhere; and is buried. and that the people of the city had been converted to Christ and baptized, and that by the prayers of holy Migdius a stone had been opened and clear and most abundant waters flowed forth, was greatly moved; and, filled with wrath and indignation, and taking less counsel for himself hereafter, sending an executioner, he ordered the head of blessed Migdius the bishop to be cut off in that same place in which he had done the miracle, where it is called the Peace of the Saints ^f. And so blessed Migdius, taking up his head in his birrus ^g, walked ^h about the third part of a mile as far as the mountain where he had built the oratory ⁱ. When this was heard among the people, report announcing it, a manifold rumor, tumult, outcry, and mourning are lifted to the stars; and all alike, greater and lesser, celebrate the funeral of so great a Father with great obsequies, and, his body being embalmed with spices, deliver it to honorable burial ^k.

[32] Then the people, bearing the death of so great a Man with no moderate feeling, [Sedition against the judge; the gathering of the sacred blood; the time of the martyrdom.] invade, demolish, and level to the ground a great and lofty palace, wondrously built of squared stones, decorated with various paintings and with Parian marble, having one hundred and fifty doors ^l. Meanwhile a certain matron, religious and fearing God, noble and rich, gathering the Martyr's blood, filled three glass vessels from it, and seasoned it with spices: of which she afterward presented one to holy Pope Marcellus; the second she hid in the church beside the river Tenna, where blessed Migdius had dedicated an altar; but the third she kept by her in a most clean place with great veneration ^m. But blessed Migdius, metropolitan bishop and martyr of the city of Ascoli, suffered on the Nones of August ⁿ, a Gaul by nation, most distinguished in birth, conspicuous in wisdom and life, chaste and angelic, in the thirtieth year of his age, while Polymius the procurator was acting in the city of Ascoli; where God grants at his prayers many and infinite benefits to his faithful, our Lord Jesus Christ reigning, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns unto the ages of ages. Amen.

ANNOTATIONS.

* The Vallicellian Manuscript: "Greek than Latin"

* The Vallicellian Manuscript: "makes firm"