ON ST. LUPUS OR LUPPUS MARTYR
OF UNCERTAIN PLACE AND TIME,
CRITICAL DISQUISITION.
Whether there were one, two, three, or four Martyrs of this name, and which of them is honored today.
Lupus or Luppus, M. (St.)
BY G. C.
Although the Latins, the Greeks, the Muscovites, the Syrians, and the Copts celebrate on the XXII or XXIII day of August St. Lupus or Luppus (for his name is indifferently expressed in either way), yet from so many divers Martyrologies of those various nations we have not yet certainly learned in what place or at what time This Martyr, a slave by condition, that Saint lived or underwent martyrdom. The Roman Martyrology thus announces him on this day: Likewise of St. Luppus the martyr, who, from a servile condition being endowed with the liberty of Christ, was deemed worthy also of the crown of martyrdom. The most eminent Baronius in his notes upon this announcement observes that the Greeks make mention of that Saint of today in the Menology. Probably the Menology of the Greeks is here designated which Henry Canisius published in Latin among the Ancient Readings from the translation of Cardinal Sirleto, and in which on the XXIII day of August we read the following: The birthday of the holy martyr Luppus, who, since he had before been a slave, being endowed with liberty by the dignity of martyrdom, which he attained being struck with the sword, was made the friend of Christ.
[2] With the Menology of Sirleto agree the Greeks in the printed Menaea, is honored today by Greeks and Latins; where on the XXIII day of August they recite an Office of that holy Martyr, and on the following day repeat the announcement of the same in these words: Τῷ αὐτῷ μηνὶ κγ᾽. Μνήμη τοῦ ἁγίου μάρτυρος Λούππου. That is: In the same month, on the XXIII day. The memory of the holy martyr Luppus. Then they subjoin, after their manner, some little verses, in which they thus allude to his servile condition:
Ὑπῆρχε Λοῦππος δοῦλος· ἐκ δὲ τοῦ ξίφου Ἐλεύθερος προσῆλθε τῷ Χριστῷ φίλος. Εἰκάδι ἐν τριτάτῃ πεφνε Λοῦππον φασγάνου ἄκμη.
This Luppus was a slave; but by the sword He was made at once a freedman and a friend of God. On the twenty-third the edge of the cruel sword slays Lupus.
In the Greek-Muscovite Ephemerides also, among us before volume one of May, page XXXVIII, this last hexameter verse is reported, of which it will be well to remember below, since the Greek compilers of the Menaea attribute this also to St. Luppus the slave, as we have already seen. Maximus Margunius of Cythera transcribes the announcement of the Menaea after his manner; but he expresses neither the servile nor any other condition of this Martyr.
[3] But the Muscovites seem to add to today's Martyr the episcopal dignity, but the Russians seem on the same day which certainly does not sufficiently agree with the announcement of the Menaea and with the servile condition of the said Saint: for in their pictured August they thus represent him clothed in episcopal vestments after the Oriental manner. Nay more, in the explanation of the pictured August on the XXIII day of that month, among us before volume one of May, page XL, his name is thus noted: Lupus ✠ bishop, martyr. Hence perhaps our Papebroch in the metrical August, after the aforesaid hexameter verse, subjoined these words: In the Menaea and in the present Roman Martyrology, Λοῦππος, Luppus. He was martyr and bishop of Sirmium in Pannonia; his Acts have not yet appeared. We know not whence Papebroch drew out this notice of the episcopate of Sirmium. Did he perhaps hastily take this Saint for St. Irenaeus, martyr and bishop of Sirmium, who is celebrated today in several Menologies of the Greeks, as was said among the Omitted of this day? Not altogether rashly do we suspect that Castellanus was led by these words of Papebroch to place today's St. Luppus at Sirmium in the margin of his universal Martyrology. Whatever be the case concerning these surmises, we at least have thus far found no Martyr of this name among the bishops of Sirmium.
[4] to announce another bishop of the same name, In the Slavo-Russian Menology, which the most noble Dom Baron von Sparwenfeld translated into Latin for us, St. Luppus is not expressly called a bishop; but he is said to have been an ecclesiastical writer, as is gathered on the XXIII day of August from these words of the same Menology: Of the holy martyr Luppius, a contemporary of the holy Apostles, whom many say to have left books to the Church. He suffered in the year CCV under Severus; being shut up beneath the foundation of a wall by the command of Justinian, he died after forty days. Now some things occur to be noted upon this announcement of the Slavo-Russian Menology. In the first place, to this St. Luppus of today, whom the Greeks and Latins surname a slave, there is in this eulogy attributed, with little probability, such learning that he left books to the Church. That erudition would rather suit Lupus or Luppus, a prelate in Cilicia, whom St. Athanasius in the Epistle to the bishops of Egypt and Libya, that is, in volume 1 of the latest Paris edition, part 1, page 278, enumerates among the excellent defenders of the Catholic faith. But the age of this prelate does not agree with the eulogy just reported: for Lupus, bishop of Tarsus in Cilicia, subscribed after the beginning of the fourth century to the councils of Ancyra and Neocaesarea, as we read in our Harduin, volume 1 of the Councils, columns 280 and 285; and today's holy Martyr is said in the Slavo-Russian Menology to have been a contemporary of the Apostles.
[5] Nay more, that said Menology cannot be reconciled with itself: which dignity little suits today's Martyr, for if that Saint lived contemporary with the Apostles, how did he first suffer in the year of Christ 205 under the emperor Severus, as is there asserted? But who that Justinian was, or at what time he lived, who ordered the Saint to be shut up beneath the foundation of a wall, we know not. Further, that kind of death by which this Saint, being shut up beneath the foundation of a wall by the command of Justinian, died after forty days, cannot easily be fitted to St. Luppus, whom the Greeks celebrate on the same day, and whom they affirm, being struck with the sword, to have passed from a servile condition to the true and noble liberty of martyrdom, as we saw above. From these discrepant circumstances of the martyrdom and of the servile condition we conclude, not improbably, that the Saint announced today by the Muscovites differs from today's St. Luppus, whom the Greeks and Latins honor; unless perhaps the more recent Muscovites have fastened upon the same St. Luppus the slave an episcopal dignity, an improbable erudition, and another kind of martyrdom. Certainly other Russian Menologies (add to these the Coptic and the Syriac) adorn today's Saint of the same name with the title of Martyr alone, and are deeply silent about the other circumstances of the Slavo-Russian Menology. For the rest, we leave these shadows to be dispelled by learned men more skilled in Russian matters.
[6] Meanwhile the identity of today's St. Luppus with the servant or slave of St. Demetrius the martyr appears to us more probable, who might more easily be the same with the servant of St. Demetrius, in whose Acts in Surius, on the VIII day of October, chapter 10, the following is narrated: A certain one of the Saint's servants, standing near him,
when he underwent that blessed slaughter, having, as best he could, gathered that divine blood in the sacred shoulder-cloth of the Martyr, and having taken the ring which he carried on his hand and dipped it in the Martyr's blood, wrought by these things very many miracles. Nor was there any disease, nor any evil demon so strong, but that straightway, if he made trial of it, he overcame it; so that the whole city of the Thessalonians was filled with such a report of miracles. Wherefore it was not to be expected that these things should lie hid from Maximian, nor that he could bear his envy; and therefore the servant, the steward of these good things, is straightway seized and slain. The Tribunal was the place in which he was killed; and that excellent servant was called Lupus.
[7] The Greeks in their Synaxaries honor the renowned martyr Demetrius on the XXVI day of October, concerning whom the Greeks made mention on another day. and his servant or attendant already mentioned is named in Greek Λοῦπος or Λοῦππος, both in the printed Menaea and in the manuscript copies of the Acts. We have therefore the servile or attendant condition, the title of martyrdom, and the same name common to these two Saints; on account of which it might not undeservedly be doubted whether these two Martyrs are to be distinguished, and whether perhaps the Greeks and Latins do not celebrate on this day St. Luppus, servant or attendant of the great martyr Demetrius, who in the Acts of his master is only mentioned in passing, and is honored with no peculiar festival. Whence our Rosweyde in the manuscript Index to the Menaea of the Greeks noted both these St. Luppuses, and in a few words indicates that they are thought by him to be one and the same. If that confusion of two Martyrs of the same name were certain, we should most easily assign the time and place of the martyrdom to today's St. Luppus, since we know from the Acts where and when his holy master Demetrius underwent martyrdom. But these things may be examined more accurately on the VIII day of October with the Roman Martyrology, if any light shall meanwhile have shone forth.
[8] Certain Spanish writers, After all these doubts we do not yet certainly know whether there was one, or a twofold, or a threefold Martyr of this name. But if three of the same name are to be distinguished, certain Spanish fabulists would willingly add a fourth to them, if they found readers credulous and incautious enough: for when they had seen that today's St. Luppus or Lupus the slave is announced in the Roman Martyrology without any note of place or time, they seized a convenient occasion of transferring this Martyr into Spain by a manifest theft, which nevertheless they hoped would remain hidden. Hence Juan Tamayo de Salazar on this day in his Spanish Martyrology announces him in these magnificent and at the same time obscure words: At Forum Flavicanum in Galicia in Spain, of St. Lupus the martyr, who, being the slave of a man, came to the most sweet service of God and Man, in which he so persevered as a freeborn man that as a martyr he did not repent even when his head was lost.
[9] relying on the fictions of certain impostors, Tamayo in his notes alleges the Menology of the Greeks and the Roman Martyrology, in which the arena of the martyrdom is passed over in silence; and for placing it in Spain he cites the testimony of pseudo-Julianus, who in his fabulous Chronicle at the year of Christ 300, number 138, thus designates the place of the martyrdom: At Forum Flavicanum, which town in Galicia is now called Pons Vedrus, of St. Lupus the martyr, who from a slave being made a freedman of Christ, endured many torments for the confession of Christ. Aulus Halus comes up as a reserve in the ambush — or rather Tamayo himself, who invented this poet of Bordeaux for the propping up of his own little fables, and in this place thus commends and produces his authority: In my manuscript codex of the poems of Aulus Halus there is found a sextain, written in the manner of an epitaph, with this heading:
This stone contains the bones of Luppus, now a martyr, By condition δοῦλος, who by faith was free. And the Flavican Forum beheld him steadfastly set His throat beneath the blade, whereby he gains the stars. He utterly despised the barbarous decrees of the Spanish Governor, and, a slave, clung to Christ in love.
This poem of Aulus Halus, or more truly his own, Tamayo illustrates with this explanation, which hear and laugh at: The Greek δοῦλος, he says, which to Latins sounds SLAVE; and because the blessed Martyr was of this condition, therefore the Poet uses that word for the prosody of the verse. But we do not see how the Poet, or rather Tamayo himself, used the Greek word δοῦλος for the prosody of the verse, since the first syllable of this word is long, and accordingly corrupts the pentameter verse and renders it faulty.
[10] Then Tamayo exhibits the Acts of the same Martyr in this manner: ascribe the same Martyr of today Lupus, a slave by condition, in the times of the Diocletian persecution, being seized for the faith of Christ, to which he had given his name, at a town of Galicia in Spain, whose name was Forum Flavicanum, and being brought before the governor, with a most valiant spirit of heart professes himself a Christian. But he, inquiring into and learning his condition, most abject in law, driven by fury against the Martyr promulgated divers decrees of torments. But holy Lupus, supported by the promise of Christ, despising all those commands of the judge, resolved with steadfast liberty to submit his neck. Then the governor, after various torments, commanded his attendants to separate his head from his body. So it was done, and his spirit hastened to the eternal summits of heaven on the X Kalends of September, in the year of the Lord CCC, Diocletian and Maximian reigning. His body, buried in the same town, rested there.
[11] Who, even the least skilled in ancient history, does not see to their own fatherland, that Tamayo gathered these Acts partly from the Menology of the Greeks or from the present Roman Martyrology, and partly fabricated them from pseudo-Julianus and from his own brain? Yet that Spanish Martyrologist subjoins to those Acts this serious annotation: Behold the Acts which we have been able to gather from our own writers; the rest God knows, who perhaps will give them in his own time to the greater honor of his Martyr. Nor have we been able to find anything concerning the town Forum Flavicanum in the ancient geographical writers. The same Julianus at the said number CXXXVIII asserts that it [] is numbered among the towns of Galicia, and is called Pons Vedrus, which even today is called Pontevedra. In it we too were once, when we passed from Tuy to Compostella to visit the threshold of the holy Apostle. It is a town of the diocese of Compostella, populous enough, conspicuous for nobility, and illustrious for the concourse of peoples.* Tamayo in this place prudently kept silence concerning any surviving memory of that holy Martyr or his sacred relics, which never existed among the inhabitants of Pontevedra.
[12] Since pseudo-Julianus had adorned this martyrdom prettily enough and distinctly, and also feign two Saints of the same name pseudo-Dexter makes no express mention of the same martyrdom, since he judged that the authority of pseudo-Julianus would suffice for this St. Lupus or Luppus to be ascribed to Spain by incautious readers. But the same impostor, under the feigned name of Flavius Lucius Dexter, records another martyr of this name in Spain, and thus obscurely inserts him into his Chronicle of Universal History at the year of Christ one hundred, number 9: M. Lupus Philippus, Lucius the husband of Candida, attained the palm of martyrdom. From this obscure or ambiguous announcement the crafty man hoped that matter of dispute would arise among his followers, and that by some commentators two martyrs of the same name would be placed in Spain, or that on account of the different names those martyrs would be multiplied for his own fatherland.
[13] Nor did his hope deceive him, since Francisco de Bivar in his Commentaries on this text of pseudo-Dexter thus discourses: It is hard to believe that these four names, Marcus, Luppus, Philippus, Lucius, from the Chronicle of pseudo-Dexter belong to one and the same man; namely to Lucius the husband of Candida. I should rather have believed that there are three notable martyrs, disciples of Paul; namely M. Luppus, of whom the Greeks in the Menology on the XXIII of August, and with them the Roman Martyrology on the same day; Philip Philotheus, who, returning from the Spains into Italy, whence he was sprung, being at length made bishop of Fermo in Picenum, offered his throat for Christ on the XXII of October, on which day his feast is honored there, his memory being preserved in the Roman Martyrology; and finally Lucius, the husband of Claudia Candida of Paphos, whose name is read with his wife's name in the Roman Martyrology on the 1st of December. To omit here others of whom it may be treated in their own time — where in the Menology of the Greeks or in the Roman Martyrology is that St. Luppus of today called a disciple of St. Paul, or said to have suffered in Spain? Whence did Bivar know that our St. Luppus was called by the forename of Marcus? We are of opinion, more probably, that by the initial letter M. in the hagiologies martyr is signified.
[14] and of pseudo-Julianus, But although Tamayo does not admit that explanation of Bivar, yet he satisfies the aforesaid desire of pseudo-Dexter, and on occasion of today's St. Luppus assigns two martyrs of the same name in these words: Who that Lupus was, I do not yet divine. Nor should I have believed him to be the very same of whom Flavius Dexter makes mention in his Chronicle at the year one hundred, in Bivar, Commentary 2, number 9, folio 204, and Rodrigo Caro, folio 56, letter X; because that one was a disciple of St. Paul the Apostle; this one, from a servile condition, was endowed with Christian liberty. Nor did Paul receive under the rod of faith any other save Onesimus, known in this [] quality. Therefore ours is distinct from that one. Without doubt Bivar erred at the said number 9, folio 204, in confounding the disciple of Paul with this Martyr of Forum Flavianum, because, as is drawn from Julianus's reckoning, it must be believed that this one fell in the persecution of the emperors Diocletian and Maximian, by the command of Datianus, governor of the Spains, in the year three hundred, in which Julianus registers him. But that one, if a martyr, in the year one hundred, in the time of Trajan.*
[15] whose fables are exploded. Since these two expositors of pseudo-Dexter deserve equal — or rather no — credit, let us leave them to fight it out among themselves as long as they will: for Nicolás Antonio, a judicious Spaniard, in the posthumous manuscripts which were most courteously communicated to us at Madrid in the year 1721 by the very Rev. Dom Adrian Connink, the author's near kinsman, deservedly and justly explodes both those followers of pseudo-Dexter, and shows by various reasons that today's St. Luppus was slyly excerpted from the Menology of the Greeks and the Roman Martyrology, and that before the times of pseudo-Dexter or of the fictitious Julianus no memory of this Martyr is found in Spain. We think it therefore more probable that the servant of St. Demetrius, or another Martyr of the same name and condition, suffered in the East, since the Oriental Martyrologists in their Menaea and synaxaries commemorate both these St. Luppuses. But since that theft of pseudo-Julianus is evident, we do not wish here more laboriously to refute the fictions added by his followers, in the reporting of which we have now dwelt too long already.
AnnotationsRead it*.
Perhaps in this*.