ON ST. ANTONY MONK AND PERHAPS ON BLESSED NICODEMUS OF THE ORDER OF ST. BASIL MONKS AND CONFESSORS AT HIERACIUM IN CALABRIA,
10th or 11th century.
A collection on the cult and the age.
Antony, monk of Hieracium in Calabria (St.)
Nicodemus, monk of Hieracium in Calabria (Bl.)
BY J. P.
In Ferrari, in the Catalogue of the Saints of Italy, on this day there is treated St. Antony the monk, The cult of St. Antony is established and confessor of Locri, and there he is praised thus: Antony, of Locri by country (which city is now named Hieracium in Further Calabria), having become a monk of St. Basil in a monastery near Locri together with Bl. Nicodemus, a monk of the same institute, led a most holy life, alien from all care of human affairs: for indeed in abstinences, prayers, meditations, and macerations of the flesh he deserved worthily to serve God. Who, laden with many merits, and famous for miracles, on the tenth of the Kalends of September fell asleep in the Lord, being buried in the same monastery in which he had lived. The same hagiologist in the General Catalogue of the Saints who are not in the Roman Martyrology announces both whom he had just recorded in these words: At Hieracium in Calabria, of SS. Antony and Nicodemus, monks of the Order of St. Basil. And in his notes he cites the records of that church. Castellanus in his universal Martyrology does not support Ferrari as to both: for he sets down only St. Antony of Hieracium; but in the table of the names of the Saints which is had at the end of the praised Martyrology, page 1151, he indicates that Nicodemus of Hieracium, monk, was omitted on the twenty-third of August.
[2] from various writers, who is better proved than Nicodemus. David Romeo in the Index of the Saints who were born or buried in the kingdom of Naples, page 404, says: At Hieracium, which some say was Locri, Antony on the tenth of the Kalends of September, Jejunius on the eighth of the Kalends of June (on which day he is had among us, page 101), Nicodemus, all of the society of St. Basil. Jerome Marafioti of Polistena in the Chronicle of Calabria, book 2, chapter 12, folio 108 verso, affirms that blessed Nicodemus, a monk of the Order of St. Basil, was of Locri, and blessed Antony, a monk of the same Order; whose festivity is celebrated on the twenty-third of August. Ughelli, in the ninth volume of Sacred Italy, among the things which he prefixes to the catalogue of the bishops of Hieracium, column 393 of the latest Venetian edition, writes these words: From the city of Hieracium was St. Antony, monk of St. Basil, whose feast is kept on the tenth of the Kalends of September. From these things it is clear that there is a concordant consent of writers in asserting a public cult on this day for St. Antony; which is not so in the case of Nicodemus. If the records of the church of Hieracium, indicated by Ferrari above, were at hand, I might perhaps elicit from them something more ascertained about the public veneration of Nicodemus. Meanwhile, even though I should wish to be a little more certainly assured of it, yet because I see that he is named with the title of blessed by most of those whom I have assigned, I have judged that he should be set down above with that title, restricted by the adverb perhaps, not unaware that it is our part to favor the Saints so far as we can.
[3] Ferrari, after that brief eulogy which I transcribed before from the Catalogue of the Saints of Italy, The time of his life and death. subjoins in an annotation these marks of the time in which St. Antony lived: He is reported, he says, to have lived about those times in which so many monks throughout Calabria flourished in sanctity: among whom were SS. Nilus, Bartholomew, Fantinus, Zacharias, Elias, Jejunius, and others. On the twenty-fifth day of May, in volume 6 of that month, page 101, on the occasion of St. Jejunius, we said that St. Nilus lived in the tenth century of Christ, and is honored on the twenty-sixth of September. St. Elias the younger, a monk in Calabria, we assigned to the same century in volume 3 of August, on the seventeenth day, page 479; in the same place, page 487, there is treated his namesake the elder. St. Fantinus of Tauriana in the same Calabria, of whom among us on the twenty-fourth day of July, does not belong here; concerning his namesake one may see the thirtieth day of August, on which he is announced in the Roman Martyrology, and whom Castellanus in the table of the names of the Saints after his universal Martyrology, page 1157, marks in Calabria toward the year 900. Bartholomew the abbot, of the Order of St. Basil (whether the same as the one above, or another?), assigned to Messina, stands among the Passed Over on the nineteenth day of August; Ferrari in the General Catalogue of the Saints who are not in the Roman Martyrology, on that day in his notes, writes that he died about the year of the Lord 1126. But the deeds of that Zacharias who was indicated along with the aforesaid, although I do not have them ascertained; yet in Marafioti, whom I assigned before, book 1, chapter 32, folio 70, I find that Bl. Nilus made his monastic profession in the monastery of St. Fantinus of the Order of St. Basil, and that among many other fathers conspicuous for holiness of life St. Zacharias then dwelt there. Which things being so, it follows that both our monks lived in the tenth century of the Christian era. But because it is hidden from me whether they died in the same century or in the next following, I have therefore marked them above in the tenth or eleventh century.