Ursus

ON ST. URSUS, PRIEST, AT AOSTA.

ABOUT THE YEAR 500.

Ursus, Priest, at Aosta in Piedmont (St.)

By I. B.

[1] Aosta, the city of the Salassi on the river Dora, among the passes of the Alps, is, or rather was, a Roman colony, established under the auspices of Augustus after the Salassi had been conquered and sold under the spear, to cultivate their lands and to secure those gates of Italy. St. Ursus is venerated at Aosta on February 1. It received its name from Augustus and the Praetorian soldiers, three thousand of whom were sent there. Here on the Kalends of February St. Ursus the Priest is venerated; concerning whom Philip Ferrari in his General Catalogue of Saints: "At Aosta, of St. Ursus the Priest." The manuscript of the monastery of St. Martin of Tournai and the one from Liessies: "In the city of Augusta, of St. Ursus, Bishop and Confessor." Galesius has the same. Molanus in his second edition: "In the city of Augusta, of St. Ursus, Bishop of the same city."

[2] It is a frequent occurrence in the Lives of the Saints -- especially those which, the ancient Acts having been destroyed, unpolished writers later patched together from rumor or torn fragments -- that several persons of the same name, however distant from one another in time, place, or even condition and rank, are conflated into one, or their deeds are confused. This appears to have happened in the case of St. Ursus also, In the manuscript Acts of St. Theonestus the Bishop as will soon become clear. There survive in various manuscripts the Acts of St. Theonestus, or Theognestus, a Bishop, which we shall give on October 30 or November 22 (for he is venerated on one of those days in different places), unless we find others that are more authentic. In those Acts, St. Theonestus the Bishop is recorded to have come to Rome, together with his disciples Alban, Ursus, Tabra, and Tabrata, having been expelled from his see of Artana, and thence to have traveled through Etruria into Liguria, and having crossed the Alps, to have made for Augusta. Here Ursus, because he was defending the Catholic doctrine with great zeal, was killed by the impious; as was Alban at Mainz. Theonestus then returned to Italy with his two remaining companions, and he too finally obtained the laurel of martyrdom with them at Altino.

[3] Most authorities interpret the city in which St. Ursus is said to have been killed as Augsburg,

the Augusta of the Vindelici; and so the Breviary of Mainz printed in 1611 expressly states. But the older editions printed in 1495 and 1505, when they narrate that Theonestus, having left Ursus at Augusta, he is said to have been killed at Augusta where he was seized by the infidels and crowned with martyrdom, crossed the Alps and came to King Sigismund and was sent by him to the Bishop of Trier, and thence to Mainz -- not obscurely indicate Aosta. Indeed, Adelmar Welser himself in book 8 of his History of Augsburg, under the year 425, acknowledges that Ursus has nothing to do with the Vindelici. "To this era," he says, "Sigebert assigns Theonestus and his fellow Martyrs, though I know that others follow a different chronological reckoning. Of these, it is sufficiently agreed that Ursus, traveling from Milan to Mainz, was killed at Augusta by the Arians, however much certain details in the rest of the story may waver." Not the Augusta of the Vindelici "But I fear that some of our countrymen, led by an error in the name, wrongly interpret as referring to the city of the Vindelici what pertains to the Aosta of the Salassi." For in favor of Aosta the arguments are not obscure: but Aosta. "The registers of the Church of Burano, which is under the Bishop of Torcello near Venice, and which venerates these Saints with solemn worship because most of their bodies are deposited there, plainly state 'the city of Augusta, which is situated at the foot of the mountain called Jove' the Great St. Bernard; then the eminent authority Antoninus, in his Itinerary, describing the route from Milan to Mainz, placed Augusta Praetoria at the fifth station; moreover, I hear that a very ancient monastery bearing the title of St. Ursus still exists there. Against this, neither the route of the journey supports us, nor does our Church retain any memory of Ursus. Wherefore (as we have been careful to do up to this point) we refrain from claiming a foreign ornament."

[4] These are Welser's words, characterized by equal erudition and candor. But as to what he writes about the monastery of St. Ursus at Aosta, I doubt whether it took its name from the Ursus who was a companion of St. Theonestus; and perhaps whether any companion of this Theonestus named Ursus ever existed. For the Acts of St. Theonestus and of St. Alban of Mainz, Martyr, which are in our hands, teem with many and serious errors, but those Acts are faulty which no one fails to perceive. They are reported to have been banished by Huneric, King of the Vandals, who, as Marcellinus Comes writes, proscribed the orthodox Bishops under the consulship of Theodoric and Venantius, that is, in the year of Christ 484, the sixth year of his reign, as the Notitia of Africa published by Sirmond has it. Expelled by him, Theonestus and his companions came to Rome to Pope St. Leo the Great, who died in the year of Christ 461; thence to St. Ambrose of Milan, who died in 398; then to Sigismund, the Catholic King of the Burgundians, who was not converted to the Catholic faith until after the year 500 of Christ; and then to St. Paulinus of Trier, who, as St. Jerome testifies in his Chronicle, died in exile in Phrygia in the twenty-first year of Constantius, which was the year of Christ 358. How poorly all these things agree needs no insistence. We pass over here many other things of the same kind -- such as the claim in the Acts of St. Alban that St. Ambrose went on behalf of those Saints to the "Emperor of august memory," Theodosius the Younger, who was not born until the fourth year after the death of Ambrose.

[5] Philip Ferrari, in his Catalogue of the Saints of Italy, considers that St. Theonestus the Bishop came to Italy with only his two deacons Tabra and Tabrata, Another Ursus killed at Solothurn. in the time of Theodosius the Elder and St. Ambrose, and that all were crowned with martyrdom at Altino. But since another Theonestus, a soldier of the Theban Legion and then a preacher of Christ and Martyr, is venerated at Vercelli on November 20, and his fellow soldiers and companions in defending the faith of Christ -- Ursus and Victor -- were slain at Solothurn among the Swiss on September 30, and Alban at Mainz on June 21, it was from that source that the companions Ursus and Alban were added by error to Theonestus the Bishop, who had been companions of the elder Theonestus, the soldier killed under Diocletian. These things are indeed probable; yet Peter of Equilio, in book 5, chapter 133, testifies that the body of some Ursus -- distinct from that Solothurn one, yet a martyr -- is preserved in Venetian territory, writing thus: "The bodies of these two martyrs (Ursus of Augusta and Alban of Mainz) were translated to the province of Venetia and are preserved, buried in the place called Burano, the one or the other rests at Burano situated near the sea, in the diocese of Torcello; and there also lies the body of a third martyr, the monk Dominicus, who, although he is not found specially named in the passion of these men, is nevertheless said by the inhabitants of that place to have been a companion of Alban and Ursus, and is believed to have been crowned with martyrdom together with them for the name of Christ. The passion of these martyrs is celebrated there on the eleventh before the Kalends of July." So says Peter.

[6] Whether, therefore, some Ursus suffered martyrdom at Aosta, whose body was carried elsewhere and whose memory was effaced in that city; or whether the relics of the Ursus who was crowned among the Swiss were carried to Burano, just as those of his companion Victor were to Genoa, and he was believed there to be of Augusta because that was a famous name, though unknown; at any rate the Ursus who is now venerated at Aosta is not called a Martyr, but is recorded to have been a Priest of that Church, a disciple of St. Gratus, or Gradus, the Bishop. St. Gratus the Bishop is venerated on September 7. Charles, Bishop of Novara, in book 1 of his work On the Church of Novara, considers him Another Ursus, a Confessor at Aosta, disciple of St. Gratus to be the one who subscribed to the synodal letter of Eusebius, Bishop of Milan, to Pope St. Leo (among the latter's Epistles) as follows: "I, Gratus, a Priest, directed by my Bishop Eustasius of the Church of Augusta, in his place consented to and subscribed to all the above, pronouncing anathema upon those who have held impious views about the sacrament of the Lord's Incarnation." As for Eustasius, whom Gratus the Priest here calls his Bishop, Bishop Charles considers him to be one of the two men named Eustasius St. Gratus lived in the fifth century who subscribed to the synodal letter of St. Ambrose to Pope Siricius. The Eustasius who subscribed last is called Eutasius in the penultimate entry of volume 1 of the Councils. Eustasius must have sat in the episcopate for over sixty years, if this conjecture of Bishop Charles is well-founded -- a conjecture he thinks is strengthened by the argument that Jocundus, Bishop of Aosta, is said to have been a disciple of Gratus, and the same Jocundus is read to have subscribed to the third Roman synod under Pope Symmachus, under the consulship of Rufus Magnus and Faustus Avienus, most illustrious men, in the year of Christ 501, and thereafter also to the sixth.

[7] Ferrari cites a manuscript Life of St. Gratus, in which he is said to have been born at Sparta not in the age of Charlemagne and to have been sent from Greece to the Emperor Charlemagne by the Fathers of a certain council, and then to have been appointed Bishop of Aosta by Pope Leo III; and to have, together with St. Theodulus, Bishop of Sion, placed the relics of St. Maurice and his companions, which had been found, in a more honorable location, and to have done other things which we shall discuss in their proper place. The chronology of Ferrari, or rather of that manuscript Life, is supported by what Simler writes in book 2 of his work on the Swiss Republic: "The Annals of the Vallesians record," he says, "that the Emperor Charlemagne gave to Bishop Theodulus of Sion -- because the latter, informed by an angel, had indicated to him the remission of some secret sin -- the county and prefecture of the Valais, to him and his successors," etc.; yet he afterward acknowledges that there are certain things that render this account suspect. with whom St. Theodulus of Sion was not a contemporary Belforest also refutes it in his Cosmography. Guilliman, in his work on Swiss affairs, book 4, chapter 3, records that the people of Sion obey their Bishop and are subject to him: "By whose gift, I know not, unless of Charlemagne." But shortly after, concerning Theodulus or Theodore: "Theodore, Bishop of Octodurus, attended the Council of Aquileia under the consulship of Siagrius and Eucherius... Under Sigismund, King of Burgundy, Theodore, or as others write, Theodulus, Bishop of Sion, consecrated and dedicated the church of St. Maurice at Agaunum." It is not, however, as we think, one and the same Theodore who attended the Council of Aquileia was he one or two? under the consulship of Siagrius and Eucherius in the year of Christ 381 and who dedicated the basilica of the Theban Martyrs, if indeed this is said to have occurred in the time of King St. Sigismund; otherwise one would have to admit that he held the see for at least 130 years. But this matter we leave for another time.

[8] Gratus, who was a Priest in the time of St. Leo and the Legate of Eustadius, was afterwards made Bishop, and was present at the Translation of St. Innocentius of the Theban Legion, as Eucherius (or whoever is the author of that work) narrates in chapter 11 of the History of the Martyrdom of St. Maurice: "Recalling that his translation," he says, St. Gratus finds the body of St. Innocentius the Martyr "was celebrated by Domitianus of Geneva, of holy memory, and by Gratus, Bishop of the city of Augusta, or by Protasius, who was at that time Bishop of that place, we attend it daily with devotion and praises." What he says about Protasius as Bishop of "that place," understand as meaning the Bishop of Octodurus, to whom (as can be gathered from the ancient catalogues of provinces) Sion also belonged, now the seat of the Bishop, after Octodurus was destroyed or abandoned. In the same phrase, in chapter 12, Theodore (the predecessor of Protasius, if there were two Theodores, or his successor, if there was only one) is called Bishop of "that place." He died about the year 500.

[9] Gratus therefore died toward the end of the fifth Christian century;

and St. Ursus at the same time, or somewhat later, under Bishop Jocundus. Ferrari relates the following small details about Ursus from the manuscript Chronicle of the same city and other records: St. Ursus was his disciple "He was a disciple of St. Gratus, Bishop of Aosta, and Prior of the Church which is now called St. Ursus from his name, of that Order or confraternity which in the Piedmontese region is called the Order of St. Bernard. He was illustrious for miracles during his life, and continues to be illustrious to the present day. Illustrious for miracles; he still obtains rain and fair weather for his people. For whenever the city suffers from excessive dryness of the air, the inhabitants carry in procession the chest in which his body is preserved, and they usually obtain timely rain. Whenever, too, the rains are excessive, when the same sacred body is carried through the city, the desired fair weather follows. This also is related as wondrous about St. Gratus: that on his account moles are nowhere to be found in the territory of Aosta for a radius of three miles." So says Ferrari.

[10] That church of St. Ursus, as Gabriel Pennottus writes in his History of the Canons Regular, book 2, chapter 33, number 6, is notable for many things and is the first after the Cathedral in the whole diocese of Aosta. Its twelve Canons, on the appointed more solemn days, assemble in the Cathedral together with the Canons of that church for the celebration of the sacred offices and walk together in public processions. It has a Prior, who holds the first rank of dignity after the Bishop and uses pontifical insignia, although for many years now the holder of this office has customarily been not a professed regular but a secular benefice-holder. Was he Prior of the church of St. Ursus? Nevertheless, several professed Canons, distinguished and illustrious both for the holiness of their lives and for their rank, have presided over the same monastery; among whom was Blessed Ursus himself, first Prior of the said monastery (which was previously called after St. Peter the Apostle), and afterward Bishop of the city of Aosta itself, honorably buried in the same monastery or in its church, to which he subsequently gave his name; near whose sepulchre lies the body of Blessed Gallus, Bishop of Aosta. So says Pennottus; but these details seem to apply to another, later Ursus. For Giacomo Filippo of Bergamo, also cited by Pennottus himself, writes in book 12 that the monastery of St. Ursus was founded by the Marquises of Montferrat, whose first he makes to be Alaramus, son-in-law of Otto II. We are not entirely free from doubt, however, whether this church, ennobled by the tomb of St. Ursus, was perhaps restored by those Princes, with the addition of a convent of Canons Regular, and later generations then believed that Ursus, whose monument was visible there, had presided over it.

[11] But others too posit a later Ursus. For the Offices of the Congregation of Canons Regular of the Holy Saviour, printed at Rome in 1613, state under June 15 that St. Bernard, when renouncing the world, received the canonical habit from Ursus, Bishop of that city was there another, later Ursus, who became Bishop? (that is, of Augusta -- not, however, the Augusta of the Vindelici, as is incorrectly stated there, but Aosta). Charles of Novara likewise writes in book 1 that the same Bernard was made Archdeacon of Aosta in the year 966, when Blessed Ursus, as some write, was Bishop of the city. Ferrari, however, in the tables of the Church of Turin, records that St. Ursus the Bishop is listed under the Kalends of February, and wonders whether he is perhaps different from that ancient Ursus of Aosta, who was only a Priest. We shall treat his era again in connection with the Life of St. Gratus the Bishop on September 7.