ON ST. SAMUEL, PRIEST OF EDESSA,
AT CONSTANTINOPLE.
Fifth or sixth century.
His cult, eulogies, the time of his life; whether he is to be distinguished from a namesake.
Samuel, priest of Edessa, at Constantinople (S.)
BY THE AUTHOR J. P.
Ferrari, in the Catalogue of the Saints who are not in the Roman Martyrology, thus announces that Saint on this day: The sanctity of his life from immemorial time: At Edessa in Syria, of St. Samuel the priest, under Anastasius, a most learned man. In the notes is added: From the Menology of the Greeks on this day. But since it is not indicated there from what sort of Menology of the Greeks Ferrari received him, nor has he hitherto occurred to us elsewhere in their sacred Calendars, we should have made it a matter of religious scruple to set forth this Samuel to be venerated with public cult among the other Saints on the authority of Ferrari alone, had there not been at hand from elsewhere a testimony by which the holiness of his life is asserted: for in the most illustrious Peter de Natalibus in the Catalogue of the Saints, book 7, chapter 83, he is said to have been sublime in holy life; and presently in the same place it follows: Who also in that very city (the discourse is of Constantinople) rested in Christ in peace. Add that to the small eulogy of the Saint, from which we have skimmed these things, this title is prefixed in the same place: On holy Samuel the priest. Now the praised compiler of the Catalogue was writing these things in the fourteenth century; and accordingly our Samuel possessed the title of Saint from immemorial time before the decree of Pope Urban VIII. But that we might be able to favor that possession, so far at least as lay in us, it seemed to us that, that decree being saved and entire, a place could here be given to the Man; especially since we knew nothing from elsewhere which stood in the way of his public cult.
[2] For the rest, Gennadius thus excellently praises him for his writings against the heretics in the Catalogue of illustrious men: Samuel, priest of the church of Edessa, is said to have composed many things in the Syriac tongue against the enemies of the Church: a eulogy concerning his writings against the heretics, yet with special intention against the Nestorians and the Eutychians and the new Timotheans, or against divers heretics. Whence also he frequently strikes the three-formed beast, and one removed more than once by an ecclesiastical judgment with the authority of the holy Scriptures, showing to the Nestorians God in man, and not a mere man born of the Virgin; to the Eutychians the true flesh of the human race assumed by God, and not brought forth from heaven, nor the substance of thick air formed into flesh; to the Timotheans that the Word was so made flesh that, the Word remaining in its own substance and the man in his own nature, they rendered by fellowship, not by commingling, one person of the Son of God. He is said still to be living at Constantinople: for at the beginning of the empire conferred upon Anthemius, I came to know both his writings and that he was in the flesh. Further, that Catalogue has been reprinted among the Works of St. Jerome, published at Paris in the year 1693 and following, volume 5, column 25 and following.
[3] and on that occasion he is examined, Joseph Simon Assemani, that illustrious man, in volume 1 of the Clementine-Vatican Oriental Library, chapter 25, page 259, treating of Samuel, from the last words of Gennadius with which he just now closed his eulogy, says: And yet, since to Anthemius the Roman Patrician, son of Procopius, the empire by Leo Augustus
was conferred, Pusæus and John being consuls, in the year of Christ 467, as Pagi shows from Marcellinus, Cassiodorus, and others at the aforesaid year, number 2. In the year 467 therefore Samuel was writing, and Gennadius knew that he was in the flesh. For this Samuel, of whom Gennadius speaks, I think to be the man who held the first place among the priests who accused Ibas of Edessa in the councils of Antioch, of Tyre, and of Berytus: and this seems to be gathered from his name, his dignity, his place, his zeal, and his age; since each was a priest of the church of Edessa, and a most bitter enemy of the Nestorians about the time of the synod of Chalcedon. Wherefore it is probable that after the death of Ibas, with whom he had already been reconciled, he left Edessa and went to Constantinople, and there applied his mind to assailing the errors of Nestorius, Eutyches, and Timothy of Alexandria.
[4] But before we give our vote to the opinion of that most learned Man concerning that identity, whether Samuel of Edessa, who accused Ibas, we set before him certain difficulties to be weighed. The praised author in the place cited, chapter 15, writes thus: Ibas succeeded Rabbula of Edessa in the year of Christ 435, as the author of the Edessene Chronicle teaches, whose words we reported above (chapter 14). Pagi in the Baronian Critique at the already named year of Christ 435, after he had treated of the legates sent to the emperor Theodosius that Theodore and his chapters might be condemned, says at number XXIX: At the same time certain clerics and monks of the church of Edessa came to the royal city, and before the emperor and Proclus the patriarch accused their bishop Ibas, that he was the first author of these disturbances and their most pertinacious favorer, etc. And afterwards he concludes that that long chain of accusation lasted down to the synod of Chalcedon. In Labbe, volume 4 of the Councils, column 644 and following, into the acts of that synod, celebrated in the year of Christ 451, is inserted the petition of Samuel and of other priests of Edessa to Photius and to the remaining bishops against Ibas: where at column 653 Samuel is asked by the bishops: How long ago do you profess that the most reverend bishop Ibas said these things? Samuel said: It is three years, more or less. And in the same place Ibas, recalling to memory a certain saying of Samuel, adds: And from that time you have communicated with me for ten years. Thus therefore stood the beginnings and progress of Samuel's accusation of Ibas. Whence it follows that the accusation seems to have been raised by Samuel against him in about the first years of the episcopate of Ibas, that is, in the year 435 or in those next following. But since in an accuser of this kind a mature age seems to be required, let us suppose that Samuel brought the said accusation in the thirtieth year of his age or in the times next following, and accordingly that he was born about the beginning of the fifth century.
[5] Now indeed, since Samuel, of whom Gennadius speaks, had not yet departed this life in the year of Christ 491, and this our Saint, are the same. as will presently be proved, if he be the same who accused Ibas, it follows that he was about ninety years old when Gennadius was writing of him. For in the Catalogue alleged above he says: He is said still to be living at Constantinople. But at what time Gennadius was giving his labor to completing that Catalogue, Pagi teaches at the year 490, number XX, where he thus corrects Baronius: Baronius, in order to prove that Gennadius, priest of Marseilles, wrote his book on Illustrious Writers in this year, says: In this year dies Theodulus, a famous writer in Coele-Syria; concerning whom Gennadius has this: Theodulus, a priest in Coele-Syria, is said to have written many things, etc. This writer dies three years ago, Zeno reigning. This Gennadius, writing these things after three years, says Baronius (at the year 490), number IX, who therefore believed that Gennadius published that book in this year. But, as the Eminent Cardinal Noris observes in book 2 of the History of Pelagianism, chapter 16, it is uncertain whether the death of Theodulus happened in this year: since Marcellinus in the Chronicle, at the consulship of Illus held in the year 478, only says that he then became famous, and wrote many things. From the praised words of Gennadius therefore only this is gathered, that Theodulus did not live after the year 491, in which Zeno died, and that the book on Illustrious Writers was not elaborated after the year 494: since Gennadius would not say, Three years ago, Zeno reigning. But in which of those three years that book was published is unascertained.
[6] Which appears to us not improbable. These things therefore being thus set forth, that we may return to Assemani: since, first, many things concur, as he showed above, for the identity of Samuel here in controversy; secondly, since that great age certainly does not overturn it; thirdly, since men are not here to be doubled without sufficient reason: it appears to us not improbable that our St. Samuel and the accuser of Ibas are one and the same, even though he extended his life to ninety years, and perhaps a hundred, according to what is presently to be said (which could have happened; nor is it shown that it did not happen), whatever a recent French collector of Ecclesiastical Monuments in volume 16, page 308, may distinguish the one from the other. Further, that he was among the living in the year 495, in which Gennadius closed his Catalogue, Cave the heterodox observes in his literary History of ecclesiastical Writers, page 257; but this is not made out from the said Catalogue, since it was completed before that year, as has just been shown. But how long St. Samuel was among the living cannot be defined from the fact that he flourished in the time of Anastasius the first emperor, on the witness of Peter de Natalibus: since he began to reign in the year 491, and ceased in the year 518, according to what Pagi has at those years in the Baronian Critique. And for that reason we have above woven in his death as of the fifth or sixth century.
[7] A eulogy concerning his sanctity etc., with our observations. To these it is well to subjoin the eulogy of the Man which was cited above from Peter de Natalibus: Samuel, priest of the church of Edessa, flourished in the time of Anastasius the first emperor: who, sublime in holy life and famous for the wisdom of his doctrine, wrote many things in the Syriac tongue against the enemies of the Church, yet with special intention against the Nestorians and the Timotheans: whom the illustrious Gennadius testifies to be still living in the flesh at Constantinople in his own time, and that he knew his writings: who also in that very city rested in Christ in peace, and was entombed there. On the occasion of those things by which, both here and above in Gennadius, he is recorded to have written in the Syriac tongue, observe that Trithemius, On Ecclesiastical writers, which are had in part 1 of his historical Works, page 234 of the Frankfurt edition of the year 1601, asserts that he wrote almost innumerable opuscules both in the Greek and in the Syriac tongue: the credit of which matter be with him who asserts it. In Peter de Natalibus, as we have just now seen, he is called a priest of the church of Edessa; Ferrari above at number 1 announces him at Edessa in Syria; but the collector of Ecclesiastical Monuments in the place cited indicates that he was a priest of the church of Edessa in Mesopotamia; but Gennadius, contemporary with Samuel, does not determine it, as is established from what has been said.