ON SS. MINERVIUS OR MINERVUS AND ELEAZAR WITH THEIR EIGHT SONS MARTYRS.
AT LYONS IN GAUL.
At the beginning of the third century.
HISTORICAL-CRITICAL SYLLOGE.
Minervius or Minervus, martyr at Lyons in Gaul (St.)
Eleazar, martyr at Lyons in Gaul (St.)
The eight Sons, martyrs at Lyons in Gaul (SS.)
BY G. C.
§ I. The ancient memory of these Saints in the Martyrologies; the age and the arena of their martyrdom.
As certain as is the cultus of these Martyrs, so uncertain are their deeds, their age, and the rest of the things which are handed down concerning them in the Spanish Martyrology. The yearly memory of these Martyrs is celebrated Their immemorial cultus is indicated by various copies of the Hieronymian Martyrology, among which the Corbie copy in Florentinius has thus on this day: At Lyons in Gaul, the birthday of Saints Minervius, Eleazar, with their eight sons, martyrs. With this announcement nearly all the other ancient codices reported in the same place agree, if you except one, in which the name of Eleazar is corrupted and the number of the Martyrs is diminished in this manner: In Gaul, the birthday of Saints Minervus, Eliaga, with VII sons. But the copies of the preceding day are more corrupted, as we noted then among the Omitted or those deferred to another day, in which the same Saints with the eight sons seem to be announced thus: In Gaul, the birthday of Saints Medardus and Aemilianus with VIII sons. The arena of the martyrdom too is changed in two codices, of which the Antwerp copy on the XXII day of August thus commemorates them: At Autun in Gaul, of Minervus and Aemilianus with VIII sons, and of St. Symphorian. Since St. Symphorian suffered at Autun, as we saw on the preceding day, we suspect not altogether rashly that the name of this city was transposed, which ought to have been placed immediately before St. Symphorian, or that Autun crept into the text in place of Lyons through the drowsiness of the copyist.
[2] Further, Florentinius in his notes on the XXII day of August discusses those corruptions thus: in different copies Ninervius, not Medardus, with Aemilianus and the eight sons, the Gallic antiquary adds, both in the Antwerp and in the Corbie Martyrology; but the scribe of our codices, deceived by the more famous renown of St. Medard in Gaul, corrupted the name of Minervius; whence also he passed over in silence the name of Autun, because Medard was bishop of Noyon, or of Soissons, as was said on the eighth day of June, and because he recalls the memory of Minervius on the following day. From the credit therefore of the other codices it seems that we must restore: In Gaul, of Saints Minervius and Aemilianus with VIII sons, even as the Antwerp and Corbie Martyrologies retain the words marking Autun as the place of veneration. These, however, Saussay passes over on this day. Let what we note on the following day be seen.
[3] Florentinius, moreover, on the XXIII day of August observes the following in his notes: St. Minervius with of the Hieronymian Martyrology, Aemilianus and eight sons the most ancient Antwerp Martyrology and the Corbie one set forth as venerated not at Lyons but at Autun, on the immediately preceding day, where our codices exhibited Medardus for Minervius, and we judged them worthy of emendation. In the calendars of this day, in nearly all the Martyrologies, is marked the memory of the Lyonnese Martyrs Minervius and Eleazar with the eight sons likewise. That they are the same, the same name of Minervius and the eight sons assigned to the succeeding Martyr seem not hard to persuade, only Eleazar being changed into Aemilianus, and Lyons into Autun. Concerning Minervius of Lyons, Raynaud in the Hagiology of Lyons confesses that nearly all things are obscure; and although he treats more diffusely of Eleazar with the eight sons, and adduces certain indulgences anciently granted for the veneration of the same holy Martyr and of the sons, yet, besides the authority of Ado, who affirms that Saints Minervius and Eleazar with the eight sons are preserved in the crypt which overhangs the city from the West, and which is called that of St. Irenaeus, he does not altogether approve the rest of the things adduced by Saussay concerning the time of the passion, just as he altogether disapproves what Julianus Petri adduces in the Chronicle. In the ancient Hagiology of Franco-Gallia of Labbe, on the XI Kalends only St. Symphorian is assigned to Autun, and on the X Kalends it registers the memory of Saints Minervius and Eleazar with eight others at Lyons in Gaul; and in this it is unique, that it seems to name not the sons of Eleazar but only companions, as does Usuard. Galesinius too, in his written books, reads Eleazar, not Aemilianus.
[4] by Usuard and Ado When Florentinius in this place signifies that the Hagiology of Labbe and Usuard agree, and that it is peculiar to them that they wrote with eight others for with eight sons, he probably understands the Usuard of Molanus, who in the edition of the year 1568 has thus on this day: At Lyons in Gaul, of the holy martyrs Minervius and Eleazar with eight others. But in the later editions of Molanus, and in the genuine Usuard, that announcement is thus expressly worded: At Lyons in Gaul, of the holy martyrs Minervius and Eleazar with their eight sons. Doubtless Usuard excerpted this announcement from Ado, the place of burial being omitted, which Ado designated in his Martyrology on the XXIII day of August in these words: At Lyons in Gaul, the birthday of the holy martyrs Minervus and Eleazar with their eight sons, whose bodies are held to be laid up in the crypt which overhangs the city from the West. We here omit the compiler of the present Roman Martyrology and the other more recent hagiologists, for the reason that they drew their announcements from what has already been said, and that these things suffice more than enough for proving the ancient cultus of these Martyrs.
[5] On occasion of the aforesaid variation which occurs in the Usuard of Molanus, (the name Eleazar is perhaps a woman's) where is read others for sons, our Sollier in his observations on his Usuard on the XXIII day of August proposes a new opinion concerning St. Eleazar in these words: Greven and Molanus, against the common reading of all the codices, write not WITH SONS, but WITH EIGHT OTHERS, not noticing that the name Eleazarius is a woman's name, from Eleazarium, as Glycerii from Glycerium, Eustochii from Eustochium, etc. I am not ignorant that Castellanus in the margin of his universal Martyrology noted that Eleazar is to be taken in the feminine gender. I know also that in the index of the Paris Martyrology, which the most eminent Cardinal de Noailles caused to be printed in the year 1727, St. Eleazar is called the wife of St. Minervius. But I want more ancient testimonies for this assertion, since our Elders in volume 1 of June, page 676, number 32, and other writers everywhere have commemorated both those Martyrs as men and as companions of the same combat, with the eight sons. Wherefore we would have that observation of our Sollier held for a conjecture only, until from some quarter greater light shall have shone forth to illustrate this uncertain opinion.
[6] Let us meanwhile hear our Theophilus Raynaud, and all seem to have undergone martyrdom who in the Hagiology of Lyons among us, page 45, reasons thus concerning the same Martyrs: St. Eleazar the martyr suffered at Lyons on the XXIII of August with St. Minervius and eight sons, as all the Martyrologies have. But whether those eight sons belonged, all or some of them, to St. Eleazar, or whether
they belonged to St. Minervius, I do not find; although that they pertained to St. Eleazar alone is conjectured from this, that in the Martyrologies of Rome, of Bede, of Usuard, and of Ado, Minervius being always set first, Eleazar is subjoined with the eight sons. And in an ancient writing of the church of St. Irenaeus, in which are recorded the indulgences granted to that church by various supreme Pontiffs, it is said that those heavenly treasures were distributed in honor of Saints Irenaeus, Epipodius, Eleazar with the eight sons (Minervius being passed over in silence), and of the nineteen thousand martyrs: for that the bodies of St. Eleazar and his companions were laid up in the crypt of St. Irenaeus, Ado testifies. Our Dominique de Colonia, in the History of the city of Lyons, which he published in French in two volumes in the years 1728 and 1730, in volume 1 of that work, part 2, page 106 and following, makes mention of the great multitude of the martyrs of Lyons, and defends this vast number with arguments not to be despised.
[7] But there remains a chronological question, whether our Saints suffered with that vast multitude of the martyrs of Lyons and with St. Irenaeus, at Lyons of the Celts in Gaul or whether they underwent martyrdom in another persecution or in some popular tumult of the heathen. Raynaud, in the place just cited, proceeds thus to reason concerning this obscure controversy: Yet because it is established that in the same crypt, as time went on, the bodies of Saints Epipodius and Alexander were laid up, who had suffered before St. Irenaeus, it cannot be established from that burial of St. Eleazar and his companions in the same place whether they suffered with St. Irenaeus, or at some earlier or later time; on which matter there is deep silence among all. Whence the author of the Gallican Martyrology cautiously (which comes forth after these things first published by us) says that these holy Martyrs suffered in that monstrous persecution which consumed so many pious men, designating no persecution — except that, when he says that they pressed on by the salutary warnings of their holy prelates Photinus and Irenaeus, he seems to signify that they perished in the later persecution made by Severus, St. Irenaeus sitting at the helm of the church of Lyons.
[8] about the beginning of the third century, Without doubt Raynaud here designates, by the author of the Gallican Martyrology, Andreas Saussay, who in his Gallican Martyrology, on the XXIII day of August, writes thus concerning our Martyrs: At Lyons, the birthday of the holy martyrs Minervius and Eleazar, and of the eight sons of the latter, who in that fierce persecution which consumed so many pious inhabitants of that city, following the salutary teachings and examples of Photinus and Irenaeus, their prelates in succession, undauntedly laid their necks for Christ beneath the deadly sword; whose sacred bodies were buried in the same place, where, having been interred, they are honored and venerated under the patronage of St. Irenaeus, together with the venerable bodies of the nineteen thousand martyrs slain in this storm for the testimony of the faith. Since we cannot draw out the certain time of these Martyrs from ancient monuments, and since the Paris Martyrology alleged above, after other writers, adds in the margin to their announcement the year of Christ 202 or 211, we have followed this more common opinion without laborious discussion, and at the beginning of this Sylloge we have placed their martyrdom in the margin at the beginning of the third century.
[9] although the place and the time of the martyrdom have been changed But from this chronology and from the very arena of the martyrdom some more recent Spaniards depart greatly, even as Raynaud in the same place reports in these words: But Julianus Petri, archpriest of Toledo, in his Chronicle at the year of the Lord LXVI, marks the death of these holy Martyrs much earlier, and asserts that they suffered elsewhere than at Lyons of the Celts. For thus he writes: At Lyons among the Convenae, on the XXIII of August, in the year of the Lord LXVI, Eleazar with eight sons, a disciple of St. Peter, formerly ruler of the synagogue at Toledo, converted by him at Jerusalem, was a martyr. Lyons of the Convenae, from whose overthrow was raised the city which today has its name from St. Bertrand, is situated at the roots of the Pyrenees; so that Julianus accordingly numbers Eleazar among the Spanish saints. This being supposed, the time of the martyrdom of St. Eleazar is clear, and that the eight sons of whom the sacred registers treat belonged to him becomes beyond doubt. Yet St. Eleazar himself with the eight sons is withdrawn from Lyons of the Celts; which nevertheless, since besides Julianus no one whom I have seen — and not even Flavius Dexter himself, however most solicitous for the increase of the glories of Spain — transfers St. Eleazar and the sons to a Lyons once Spanish, but all assign these heavenly ones to Lyons simply so called, that is the Celtic Lyons, and there they long since obtain a peculiar cultus as natives, I still hesitate.
[10] by certain Spanish fabulists. Not without reason does Raynaud here hesitate, and doubt of the truth of the testimony mentioned. But he would not have hesitated long, had he known the impostor and his helpers, who under the name of Julianus and of other ancient authors thrust innumerable fables upon incautious readers. He would not have hesitated long, I say, had he been able to read the Old Spanish Library of Nicolás Antonio, who in book 7 of that work, chapter 9, that is, volume 2, page 29, besides other manifest arguments of forgery, by name and justly fastens upon this pseudo-Julianus the following accusations: To Saints whose birthplace is unknown he rashly asserts Spanish birth; and likewise, using ambiguity, he makes the places of martyrdom assigned to them in the Martyrologies the same with others in Spain. Playing the same game of equivocation with places, he writes with ridiculous boldness that whatever was done abroad happened in Spain. It seems therefore that Raynaud was ignorant of these frauds of the impostors, or at least did not have them sufficiently in view. It is scarcely worth the labor to refute these and like fables of pseudo-Julianus, which the learned now everywhere know and despise. Yet lest anyone should hesitate in doubt along with that man of much knowledge because of the shameless confidence of the fabulists, in the following paragraph we shall lay bare this very deception out of Spanish writers themselves.
§ II. Some things which the Spanish pseudo-writers have feigned concerning these Martyrs, and how they have altered the time and the arena of the martyrdom.
Lyons of the Convenae is distinguished We have already reported above from Raynaud that these Martyrs are announced by pseudo-Julianus on this day at Lyons among the Convenae. Baudrand, in volume 1 of his Geography, describes the situation and the vicissitude of this city in this manner: Lugdunum Convenarum, a city of Gaul in Aquitaine at the roots of the Pyrenees, in the tract of the Convenae; whence it is also called Convenae. It was destroyed by the Franks under king Guntram in the year DLXXXIV, and upon its ruins a city was raised by St. Bertrand in the year MC; whence the recent name S. Bertrand, the shrine of St. Bertrand; and it is episcopal, under the archbishop of Auch. It sits on a hill by the river Garonne on the border of Aragon, as Pierre de Marca testifies. It is also called by some Saint-Bertrand-de-Comminges, and it is distant sixteen thousand paces from Aquae Convenarum, as is established from the Itinerary of Antoninus; fifteen leagues from Toulouse toward the winter sunset, eleven from Auch toward the south, and five from Couserans toward the west. By others it is called Lugdunum of Aquitaine. More concerning this city may be seen in Valois, Notitia Galliarum, page 157, and in the latest editors of Gallia Christiana, volume 1, column [ ] and following.
[12] But Baudrand describes in the same place another Lyons of Gaul, which is sometimes surnamed Lugdunum of the Segusiani or of the Celts for distinction, from Lyons of the Celts, in these words: Lugdunum, a city of the Segusiani in Celtic Gaul, which from it was called Lugdunensis by Strabo, Pliny, Antoninus, and others; founded by Munatius Plancus under Augustus, and so named in the old tongue of the Gauls, as it were THE RAVEN OF THE HILL, as they think. It was also called Lugdunum of the Celts, and Lugdunum of the Segusiani, for distinction from other cities of this name; now commonly Lyon among the inhabitants… a most celebrated and most ample city of Gaul, archiepiscopal and strongly fortified, the head of the Lugdunensian province named from it, and a most illustrious mart, at the roots of the hills on the very boundary of the provinces of Bresse and Dauphiné, from which last it is separated only by the river Rhone, which is crossed at the city itself by a long stone bridge; and beside and below it receives the river Saône, which flows through this city and is joined within it by three bridges, etc. From these things the difference between both those Gallic cities is sufficiently manifest.
[13] and Tamayo, placing these Martyrs in the former city, When pseudo-Julianus noticed that in the Martyrologies St. Eleazar with the eight sons is everywhere announced at Lyons simply, he seized from this ambiguous arena of martyrdom the occasion of placing those Saints at Lyons of the Convenae, that he might render them at least nearer to Spain. Moreover he feigned that the same were sprung from the city of Toledo, that he might illustrate his own fatherland with this counterfeit splendor. Hence his faithful follower Juan Tamayo de Salazar, in his Spanish Martyrology on the XXIII day of August, having prefixed a magnificent announcement of these Martyrs, thus begins his notes: Celebrated in all ages was their name in Gaul; but it will be more celebrated hereafter in Spain. There, because at Lyons, the far-famed city of the Convenae, situated among the Celtic peoples, was the passion of so great Martyrs; here, because at Toledo, the royal city, the head of the Carpetani, was their most happy origin. Their memory is repeated by nearly all the Martyrologies, of Bede, of Usuard, of Ado, and of the more recent writers. Then he confidently cites very many hagiologists as favoring his opinion, whereas nevertheless not one of them makes mention of Lyons of the Convenae and of a Toledan origin of these Martyrs, if you except a few more recent Spaniards deceived by impostors of this kind.
[14] is not consistent with himself, But this imprudent disciple of pseudo-Julianus afterwards fights with himself, and incautiously betrays his master, when he ends the Acts of St. Eleazar with these words: Hence Eleazar, having returned to Spain and to Toledo, because the storm of the Pharisaic persecution was still breathing, dipped in the sacred waters the eight sons whom he had; and desiring to make for Rome with his offspring to see Peter, passing through the Gauls and entering Lyons of the Celts, when he declared Christ to be the true God, was seized by the gentiles and exposed to various torments; at length, constant in the faith, together with his sons the famous and strenuous Combatant attained to the crown of martyrdom on the X Kalends of September, in the year of the Lord LXVI: whose bodies, found after some centuries in the crypt of St. Irenaeus, are still preserved in the same place, and are honored with the due observance of veneration. Tamayo in this place now surnames Lyons of the Celts that arena of the martyrdom which before he had called Lyons of the Convenae, and consequently asserts that St. Eleazar with his sons suffered in that most celebrated city of Gaul which we assigned above at number 12 out of Baudrand. Therefore he here shamefully contradicts himself, or unskillfully confounds two different cities of Gaul.
[15] as is proved by certain arguments. Besides, Tamayo here makes mention of the crypt of St. Irenaeus, which is certainly near to Lyons of the Celts or of the Segusiani, and in which he affirms that the bodies of these Martyrs were found and are even now preserved. It seems therefore that the shrew has here perished by its own betrayal, as the proverb is wont to say. Whence the learned Nicolás Antonio, in the posthumous manuscripts which the very reverend and most ample Dom Adrian Connink, a kinsman of the author, kindly caused to be transcribed for us at Madrid about the end of the year 1721
granted, discusses thus against pseudo-Julianus and Tamayo: Plainly this Eleazar, on the XXIII of August, together with Minervius and eight sons, the ancient and more recent writers collected by Juan Tamayo praise as a martyr at Lyons in Gaul; who nevertheless, though they moreover acknowledge the difference between Lugdunum of the Segusiani or of the Celts, the head of Gallia Lugdunensis (today Lyon) on the Rhone, and Lugdunum of the Convenae in Aquitaine and near Spain and the Pyrenean mountains, today called Saint-Bertrand-de-Comminges, all ascribe the martyr to Lyons of the Celts, not of the Convenae, against Julianus's will; and that Lyons, the most ample city Lyon, acknowledges him among many others as her own, those conspiring in it who affirm that the Martyrs suffered at Lyons in Gaul (which must be understood of the chief city of this name): Ado, Usuard, the author of the Martyrology of Franco-Gallia, Equilinus, Galesinius, Maurolycus, Lubin, foreigners and Gauls, and those who have written of the Saints — Saussay in his Gallia, Raynaud in the Saints of Lyons or the Little Index of the Saints of Lyons. And in Ado we read it expressly noted: Whose bodies are held to be laid up in the crypt which overhangs [ ] from the west. Which Raynaud and Florentinius understand of the crypt called that of St. Irenaeus; to whom I have above joined Tamayo himself.
[16] Now let us patiently hear the fictitious Acts of the same Martyrs, Moreover he ascribes to St. Eleazar a Spanish origin, which pseudo-Julianus inserted here and there in his Adversaria, from which Tamayo reports them all together in this manner: Eleazar, sprung from that Hebrew race which Nabuzardan, or Pyrrhus, the general of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, had drawn into the Spains, whose forefathers, settling at Toledo, a famous city of Spain and the chief city of Carpetania, there built the greatest synagogue of Iberia, which, as the custom was, continually had at Jerusalem a proctor, who should send forth all things decreed and ordained by the pontiffs of that law for the government of the other synagogues: Eleazar therefore, born in the city of Toledo, and a priest of its synagogue, raised by the counsel of all the Hebrews to the summit of ruler of the synagogue, or proctor residing at Jerusalem, began to discharge the burden of his office at that time in which Christ the Lord was unbarring through Judaea and Samaria the gates of eternal salvation; whose blameless life knowing, whose wonderful works applauding, whose prodigies pondering and whose saving words admiring, he began without doubt to conceive in his mind that He would be the high priest of truth and the savior of the whole race. Hence also he meditated how great was the envy of his own princes, wherewith they had determined to persecute Christ, to begrudge His works, and to drag Him even to death.
[17] When therefore Eleazar knew of the counsel concerning Christ's death taken by the scribes and Pharisees, supposititious letters, lest the synagogue of Toledo, whose place he held, should unadvisedly sin in their decree, he sent it beforehand this letter: "Eleazar, ruler of the synagogue of the Spanish nation in Jerusalem, and its elders, to Levi, ruler of the synagogue of Toledo, to Samuel and Joseph, elders, greeting in the Lord of Israel. Brethren, know that there preaches here a good man, by name Jesus Christ, the Nazarene, who works many miracles, raises the dead, cleanses lepers, gives sight to the blind, gait to the lame, the use of their limbs to the paralytic. He is a man doing good, humble, kindly, merciful and grave; fairer than the sons of men, and gracious in speech, mighty in work, above other men in all things; and by many he is held to be the Messiah. John the son of Zachary pointed to him with his finger, saying: Behold the lamb of God. We would not consent to his death, which Annas and Caiaphas, the chief priests, have contrived against him; and we admonish you that neither you nor any others of the Spaniards of the twelve tribes, which indeed are there alone, consent thereto; being mindful that, when Haman commanded our forefathers already carried into Spain, and other Jews of other provinces, to be hanged, he himself, by God's ordering, was hanged upon the gibbet which he had prepared for our father Mordecai."
[18] and other deeds he fastens upon St. Eleazar, When the synagogue of Toledo received this epistle, they forthwith decreed to direct an answer to Samuel, Annas, and Caiaphas, the chief agents in the death of Christ, in which they endeavor to dissuade them from the error begun, many circumstances being recounted by which they interpreted Jesus to be the true Messiah. But since envy had hardened their hearts, the particular contradiction of the men of Toledo availed nothing at all with those rivals. At length, after the death of Christ the Lord, another persecution against His disciples arose at Jerusalem, by which all, fleeing from the city, determined to enter as a refuge the cities of Samaria, Judaea, Palestine, and of other provinces of the world. But the fury of the chief priests of Jerusalem so blazed against them that it sent forth letters to all the synagogues of the world, in which it is enjoined that they in no wise receive the disciples of the Crucified; nay, that they more fiercely expel them from the fellowship of their own. When Eleazar had learned of their decree, he again wrote back to his own that they should by no means obey the canon of the synagogue of Jerusalem, but argued that the disciples of Christ were to be admitted and honored, and especially James, as an apostle destined for the preaching of that province.
[19] following pseudo-Julianus, After these things, when blessed Peter, the prince of the Apostles, was framing his discourse concerning the divinity of Christ before peoples and nations, among others whom he drew to the confession of the faith Eleazar is registered, who, taught the faith by the Apostle himself, was also forthwith washed in the saving waters, and, cleaving to him, was deservedly registered among his disciples. Then Tamayo relates how St. Eleazar with his sons returned into Spain, and thence, when about to set out for Rome, was seized by the heathen at Lyons in Gaul, and there underwent martyrdom for Christ, as we reported above. All these fictions, however, he furbished up out of his own pseudo-Julianus, who in the Adversaria, numbers 9 and 10, among other things fables thus: The synagogue of the Spanish Jews, which was at Jerusalem, did not consent to the death of Christ, nor was it with those who asked Pilate that he should be slain; nay rather it had defended Jesus, as is plain from the gospel of Nicodemus. The same asked of Peter that he would send James to their own people. Of this nation and synagogue I have translated into Latin and Arabic the epistle which it had sent from Jerusalem to the Jews of Toledo, which begins: Eleazar, ruler of the synagogue of the Spanish nation.
[20] relying on whose empty authority, Tamayo, relying on this oracle, boasts thus in the same notes: Many and altogether illustrious monuments of Spanish antiquity are wrapped up in these Acts, the elucidation of which nearly all the erudition both of our own countrymen and of foreigners demands. But Nicolás Antonio somewhat diminishes this glorying, when in the above-mentioned posthumous manuscripts he answers in this manner: Juan Tamayo boasts that many glories of Spain proceed from these places; namely, the most ancient coming of the Hebrews into Spain, whose asserters of old, and those deceived by Julianus, the most excellent Marquis of Mondéjar has already confounded by a most solid commentary on this matter, where he confirms that their settlement, both at Toledo (which I know not why the lovers of Toledo pretend to have been fixed in that city by roots so ancient) and in other places, from the tongue of the same Hebrews they derive the naming of which, can be brought down only from the time of Hadrian, or perhaps from the entrance of the Moors into the Spains; and that the rest concerning these mutual epistles of the men of Toledo and of Jerusalem, written in letters about the time of Christ's triumph, are fig-wood dreams. Let him therefore consult the commentary of the Marquis of Mondéjar, if anyone should desire to read these dreams more laboriously exploded.
[21] For the rest, this whole little fable rests upon the mere name of a certain Eleazar, and resting on a slight likeness of name, whom pseudo-Julianus had read to be numbered among the disciples of St. Peter in Clement, book 3 of the Recognitions, number 68. But on the same foundation he might have asserted that others, whose names are read in the same place, were sprung from Spain, if he had added — or rather feigned — a history to suit their name. But if the name of Eleazar was required for the weaving of this fable, it was only needful to look into the Jewish Antiquities of Flavius Josephus or the Ecclesiastical Annals of the most eminent Baronius, where there are to be found divers Eleazars who flourished in the first century of Christ, and whom pseudo-Julianus might also have declared to be sprung from Spain and to be martyrs, if he had adorned their name with like historical episodes. Let therefore the obstinate defenders of pseudo-Julianus and of like fabulists show us where they have ever found in any genuine instrument of antiquity those fictitious circumstances of the history concerning St. Eleazar and his eight sons, martyrs of Lyons, which we have already reported.
[22] Nevertheless Tamayo, trusting to the mere likeness of the name (for all the other adjuncts he could find nowhere but in pseudo-Julianus), in the same notes arrogantly rebukes the Gallic writers in these words: he arrogantly insults the Gallic writers, Hence also you will perceive the year of the combat of the holy Martyr and of his sons from the very text of Julianus, and will recognize how cunningly the Gallic writers err, who say that Eleazar and his sons contended in the times of Photinus and Irenaeus, as Saussay says in the Gallican Martyrology, folio 541, as Theophilus Raynaud also noted in the Little Index of the Saints of Lyons, folio 214; nay, he himself is deceived, who throws back the passion of the Martyrs to the year of the Lord CLXXIX. These divergences being exploded, the men of Lyons will henceforth perceive the year of the passion of their Martyrs. He also confidently thrusts upon foreigners the letter of reply of the synagogue of Toledo to the chiefs of the synagogue of Jerusalem, which some fabulist composed in corrupt Spanish idiom and fabricated out of his own brain.
[23] while meanwhile he is exploded by the learned Spaniards. It neither pleases us nor is there leisure to refute more laboriously these several trifles, in the reporting of which we have now dwelt too long already, especially since the most eminent Cardinal Aguirre has sufficiently repressed that rash confidence of Tamayo, when in the Greatest Collection of the Councils of Spain, volume 1, page 322, he passed such a judgment upon his writings: Out of those turbid and filthy pools Juan Tamayo de Salazar, with excessive credulity and with no criticism, sipped, or rather heaped up, innumerable fictions, and with them filled those six volumes of his Spanish Martyrology, received by the vulgar and the half-learned with vast applause, but moving the stomach and the bile of all the most erudite Spaniards and foreigners. Nor content to insert other men's inventions into his writings, Tamayo added very many of his own at every third word, and especially most insipid verses, observing the laws neither of grammar nor of poetry, as though written of old by Maximus and by other most grave men, which nevertheless were composed partly by Tamayo himself, partly by other members of his household in the house of the most illustrious Dom Diego de Arce Reinoso, Inquisitor General of the Spains, without any genius or salt. I would not have undertaken so long a digression, had I not observed above that our Theophilus Raynaud, a learned man and by no means credulous, stood astonished and hesitating at these bold fictions of pseudo-Julianus, and as it were doubted of the true arena of our Martyrs.