ON ST. SERENA
AT ROME,
AT THE END OF THE THIRD CENTURY OR THE BEGINNING OF THE FOURTH.
HISTORICO-CRITICAL COMMENTARY.
The ancient memory of this Saint in the Martyrologies, and the various opinions concerning her condition and deeds.
Serena at Rome (St.)
BY G. C.
[1] Although on this day no mention of this Saint occurs in the most ancient Hieronymian Martyrologies, nevertheless she is celebrated in various later calendars of the Church as the wife of the emperor Diocletian. [This Saint is said in the ancient Martyrologies to have been the wife of Diocletian,] For in the Little Roman Martyrology, which our Rosweyde published, the following announcement is read today: At Rome, of Serena, wife of Diocletian Augustus. Ado on the same day in his Martyrology adds the title of saint thus: At Rome, of St. Serena, formerly the wife of Diocletian Augustus. Usuard followed this announcement of Ado, to which the Usuardine codex of Hagenau added the following: At Rome, the deposition of St. Serena the empress, wife of Diocletian, who in her time was of much service to the Christians, and prolonged this life for many Christians, that they might not be punished. This title of empress, or of wife of Diocletian, doubtless first came forth from the Acts of St. Susanna the Martyr, which Ado had before his eyes, and upon which we passed judgment on the eleventh day of August; and it will be useful in this place to recall that judgment. From those announcements of the old Martyrologies it is indeed plain that the cult of this Saint is immemorial; but among the learned there is no small controversy whether the name of wife of Diocletian can truly be assigned to her, as we shall now report in their own words.
[2] The most eminent Baronius in his Ecclesiastical Annals, at the year of Christ 295, on the occasion of the Acts of St. Susanna, contends which title the most eminent Baronius that St. Serena was the wife of the emperor Diocletian, and in the same place, at number 3 and following, he strives to prove his opinion by these arguments: But before we pursue what remains of the Acts, he says, we must treat of the Augusta, the consort of Diocletian, of whom mention has fallen. For that she was called Serena, not only do the Acts of Susanna which are in our hands testify, but the deeds of Pope Marcellus also, and moreover the Roman and all the other Martyrologies anciently written, agree with the same truth. For that she was a Christian and had deserved excellently well of the Christians, and rested with a holy end, all the records of the Western church preserve her memory anciently written: for on the seventeenth of the Kalends of September her natal day is set down.
[3] These things perhaps the petty men of letters will deride, he strives to vindicate for her; who after the manner of the heathen are wont to jeer at the candid simplicity of Christians, because among pagan writers, or in ancient inscriptions, there is absolutely no mention of a Serena Augusta, wife of Diocletian. But let them say by what other name the Augusta, the consort of Diocletian, is found to be called by the more ancient writers. And if anyone could find her called by another name, the name of Serena would not on that account have to be exploded: for what absurdity is there in supposing that an emperor who lived so many years had several wives at different times, or that that very woman was also surnamed Serena? But since there is no mention among pagan writers, nor does any trace exist in the monuments of ancient inscriptions concerning the name of that consort, by what right will anyone be able to deny that she was called by that name by which she is found inscribed in the Acts of the holy martyrs and named in the ecclesiastical records? Let those to whom the name of Serena Augusta is displeasing produce another name; but since they find none, there is no reason for them to raise a controversy about the name. Perhaps it happened (for the conjecture is not idle) that, since without parallel among so many consorts of different emperors it is found that the name of the wife of Diocletian alone has fallen away, this was done in hatred of the Christian religion by decree of the prince or by decree of the Senate (which we know to have often befallen emperors in other cases), so that her name was utterly abolished and erased, and remained entire only in the writings of the Christians: for once the commentaries of Claudius Eusthenius on the affairs of Diocletian were lost, both the name of the Augusta fell out of the books of the heathen, and many other things were altogether blotted out by oblivion. Thus Baronius, before the book of Cecilius or Lactantius On the Deaths of the Persecutors had appeared; and if that writer, most devoted to truth, had seen it published in his own age, he would probably have changed his opinion.
[4] but Stephen Baluze shows, Stephen Baluze, in book 2 of his Miscellanies, in his notes on Lactantius, whose ancient little work he was the first happily to discover, at pages 379 and 380 replies thus to the arguments of the most eminent Baronius: Here a great difficulty presents itself; for in the ancient Acts of St. Susanna the virgin, who is written to have consummated her martyrdom at Rome under the rule of Diocletian, there is mention of Serena Augusta, the wife of that same prince, who was secretly a Christian, and is called holy in the ancient Martyrologies, where her natal day is set down on the XVII of the Kalends of September. A serious difficulty indeed, if the truth and authority of those Acts were established. But since they bear many and great marks of forgery, they are proved to be false from this head above all, that they wish Serena to have been the wife of Diocletian. For I shall show that Diocletian had no other wife during the whole time of his principate than Prisca. For if she was the mother of Valeria, as indeed she was, it is necessary that she married Diocletian before he became emperor, that is, before the year of Christ 284, since Valeria was joined in marriage to Galerius Maximian in the year 293, in at least the twelfth year of her age. And that Prisca her mother was then living is certainly gathered from this, that she survived long afterwards, and was put to death only in the year 313, after the victory which Licinius won over Maximinus.
[5] These monuments the most illustrious founder of the Ecclesiastical Annals, Cardinal Baronius, had not perceived; and yet he suspected that there would be those who would call into doubt that history concerning Serena Augusta, that the wife of Diocletian was called Prisca, because absolutely no mention of her is found elsewhere, neither among pagan writers nor in ancient inscriptions; and as though he had put an end to that most difficult question, he asks the petty men of letters, if the name of Serena Augusta displeases them, to say by what other name the Augusta, the consort of Diocletian, is found to be called by the more ancient writers, and, since they have not found one, not to raise a controversy about the name. His question, then, has been most abundantly satisfied. That supposititious wife of Diocletian being therefore rejected, let us see whether Eleutheria, whom the most distinguished Hadrian Valesius, in the defense of his dissertation on Basilicas, gathered to have been the wife of Diocletian from the Life of Pope Vigilius, which stands in the Pontifical Deeds commonly attributed to Anastasius the Librarian, was truly the wife of Diocletian.
[6] Vigilius had come to Constantinople at the command of Justinian and Theodora, and he proves this from a contemporary author, and when he was being compelled to those things which he was unwilling to do, he said: As I see, it was not Justinian and Theodora, most pious princes, who made me come to them; but today I know that I have found Diocletian and Eleutheria. From this passage, then, that most distinguished man gathered that Eleutheria was the wife of Diocletian, since it is certain that a comparison is there set up between Justinian and Diocletian, and between Theodora the consort of Justinian and Eleutheria, and therefore the wife of Diocletian. But from the arguments which have been brought against Serena it also follows that Eleutheria, or Lutheria, as it stands in the most ancient manuscript codex 417 of the Colbertine library, or Leuter, as it is read written in codex 733 of the Royal library, was not the wife of Diocletian, since it is certain, as I said before, that he had no other wife than Prisca during the whole time of his principate.
[7] Vigilius therefore erred in his history, or the book of the Pontifical Deeds is corrupt in this place. whose book was first discovered after the age of Baronius, Indeed in codex 736 of the same Colbertine library it stands thus: But today I know that I have found Diocletian and Decius, or Leutherius. Now therefore that woman has been changed into a man. Further, from what has been said thus far concerning Serena and Eleutheria anyone can easily gather what credit is to be given to the history of St. George the martyr, in which it is written that the empress Alexandra, the consort of Diocletian, having seen a certain remarkable miracle wrought in the person of the martyr, acknowledged the truth, that is, embraced the faith of Christ. This, forsooth, is that Alexandra, the consort of Diocletian, mother of the wife of Maximian, as is related in the Life of the same George, a fragment of which Godfrey Henschen published in the third volume of April, page 103. Nicephorus Callistus, book VII, chapter XV, relates that the same woman, when dead, was recalled from the shades by the prayer alone of the same George. Thus far Baluze, with whom agree Tillemont, Antony Pagi, and Nicholas le Nourry the Benedictine, whom I cited in the Acts of St. Susanna on the eleventh day of this month.
[8] The evasion does not please me which perhaps some will seek by saying on account of which testimony the evasions are shut off, that the consort of Diocletian was called by several names: for from Lactantius, or Cecilius, it is established that Prisca, the wife of Diocletian (whatever other surname she may besides have had), together with her daughter Valeria sacrificed to the gods. But if these women were ever Christians — a matter about which many authors doubt — nowhere do we read that they expiated that crime by penance, which Lactantius or Cecilius, a Christian writer and a contemporary, would doubtless have made known to posterity for the glory of the Christian faith, as I have shown more fully in the Acts of St. Susanna. Nor does the conjecture of those please me who suspect that St. Alexandra and St. Serena were concubines of Diocletian, and were afterwards converted to the Christian faith: for that seems altogether improbable, for the reasons which I have alleged in the deeds of St. Cyriacus and his fellow martyrs, and in the aforesaid Acts of St. Susanna, in volume 2 of August, pages 331 and 630.
[9] and various writers agree with Baluze. The most illustrious Francis Maria de Aste,
archbishop of Otranto, on this day in his notes to the Roman Martyrology, after reporting the arguments of Baluze, at last agrees that in the Roman Martyrology she should henceforth be announced only thus: At Rome, of St. Serena. I readily embrace this opinion of that most illustrious man; and on account of the authority of the ancient Martyrologies I altogether judge that in the time of Diocletian there existed a certain illustrious Christian matron, perhaps also familiar at the emperor's court, by the name of Serena, who on account of her profession of the Christian faith was punished with exile or crowned with martyrdom, and thus deserved the true title of saint. But at the same time I judge that the Acts of that holy Serena were interpolated by some writer of later times, when the deeds of this holy Matron were already unknown, or the knowledge of them had perished in the very persecution of Diocletian. Furthermore, from these later Acts, which Ado had before his eyes, the title of wife of Diocletian probably crept into certain of the old Martyrologies; yet older than all of these is Lactantius or Cecilius, who lived in the time of the emperor Diocletian, and who expressly names the consort of that emperor Prisca. Now we must briefly touch upon some uncertain matters which several more recent authors have handed down concerning St. Serena.
[10] Concerning the Saint's native country, John Tamayo Salazar, at this day in his Spanish Martyrology, contends that St. Serena was Spanish by origin. On the contrary, John Tomco Marnavich assigns to her Dalmatia or Illyricum as her native country, when in his work On the Fruitfulness of Royal Illyrian Sanctity, page 58, he doubts whether this wife of Diocletian adhered to Christian piety in her native land at Salona, or rather at Rome. I shall seem to the learned to be trifling if I discuss too scrupulously the differing opinion of each of those authors, and laboriously dispute about the uncertain native country of St. Serena, when the very person of this Saint is in dispute, as is clear from what has been said above.
[11] the manner of her death I said above that perhaps in the time of the emperor Diocletian a certain noble Christian matron was punished with exile or crowned with martyrdom: for Antony Pagi, in his Historico-Chronological Critique of the Annals of the most eminent Baronius, at the year of Christ 295, number 2, reckons this Saint among the Martyrs thus: Susanna, therefore, Serena, Maximus the Count of the private treasury, and the others presently mentioned, were indeed punished with death by Diocletian in hatred of the Christian faith; but what later writers have related concerning them is either wholly or partly fabulous. But Bartholomew Piazza, on this day in his Sacred Hemerology, asserts that St. Serena, the wife of Diocletian, was driven into exile for the public profession of the Christian faith, and died in the castle commonly named Foglia, which is situated in the Italian province of Sabina, and that her sacred body is honored in that same place. I suspect that Leander Alberti makes mention of this castle when, in his Description of Italy, at page 109 in our copy, he speaks thus through his Latin translator: At the third milestone hence, along the bank of the Tiber, there is a very ancient tower where there is a crossing of the Tiber; they call it Folianum, opposite Magliano in the Sabine country, of which more will be said afterwards in Umbria.
[12] I do not know whence Pagi drew the martyrdom of St. Serena, and Piazza the exile of the same Saint, the place of her burial since Peter of Equilino in his Catalogue of the Saints, book 7, chapter 69, writes of her thus: Serena the queen, formerly the wife of Diocletian Augustus, was converted and baptized by St. Cyriacus the martyr, because he freed her daughter Artemia from a demon, as was said above in the Passion of Cyriacus on the VI Ides of August. She, seeing the dire persecution of the Christians which her husband was carrying on, which had lasted for ten years, so that within thirty days seventeen thousand were crowned with martyrdom throughout the various provinces, and in Phrygia one city of Christians, shut in on every side that none might escape, was burned with fire together with all its people. Seeing also Susanna her niece put to death, and the other evils that were being done, tormented with grief and seized by a fever, she passed to Christ in the confession of the Lord on the XVII of the Kalends of September, and was buried by the Christians beside the body of Susanna in a crypt. Here you hear that St. Serena died at Rome of sickness, and was buried in that same place beside the body of St. Susanna in a crypt. Hence we do not sufficiently understand how the body of St. Serena is honored in the castle of Folianum, unless it was afterwards translated thither, or Peter of Equilino erred in assigning the place of burial — both of which we thus far do not know. If further anyone should desire to know more concerning those things which are here related by Peter of Equilino about St. Cyriacus and St. Artemia, let him consult the Acts of SS. Cyriacus, Largus, and Smaragdus and their fellow martyrs, which we discussed on the VIII day of August, where also in volume 11 of that month, page 331, we said certain things about that Artemia.
[13] and the time of her death: various uncertain opinions are reported. Nor is the time at which St. Serena departed from among the living any more certain than the manner and place of her death: for the aforesaid John Tomco Marnavich, in the work cited above, page 60, refutes Peter de Natalibus, or of Equilino, in these words: It is far from the truth, what Peter de Natalibus writes, that she died a little afterwards of the grief conceived from the unworthy slaying of St. Susanna: for it is established from many things that followed thereafter that the Augusta survived the martyrdom of Susanna by many years, and was most zealous for the advancement of the Christian cause, even from the Acts of Pope Marcellus alone. Then Marnavich in the same place, page 63, from a slight conjecture defers the death of St. Serena as far as the reign of Constantine the Great, thus: But Serena with Artemia, intent upon the offices of piety, remained in the City, and there, with an end worthy of a most holy life, paid the debt of human necessity on that day which next follows the passage of the supreme Queen of heaven to the throne of immortality; but in what year is held uncertain. I think it likely, and worthy of her surpassing piety, that she who had beheld so many butcheries of the pious, and especially of her own, prolonged her life by the divine kindness so far, until she knew Constantine — born for the good of the human race, and given by God as emperor to vindicate the Christian religion into liberty from an unworthy oppression. But this conjecture of Marnavich, and the interpolated Acts of St. Marcellus, are not of such authority with me that on their account I should dare to assign a certain time of death. Wherefore at the beginning of this commentary I doubtfully fixed the death of St. Serena at the end of the third century or the beginning of the fourth. These are all the things which I have been able to discover concerning this Saint.