ON S. AZARIAS THE PROPHET AT SYMBATHA, A DISTRICT OF JUDEA.
[8] The King obeyed the Prophet's admonitions. Thus 2 Chronicles 15:8: Encouraged by his words, the King thoroughly uprooted idolatry. When Asa heard these words, that is, the words and the prophecy of Azarias the son of Obed the Prophet, he took courage, and removed the idols from all the land of Judah and Benjamin, and from the cities which he had taken of Mount Ephraim. And he dedicated the altar of the Lord which was before the porch of the Lord: and he gathered all Judah and Benjamin and the strangers with them out of Ephraim and Manasseh and Simeon: for many had fled to him out of Israel, seeing that the Lord his God was with him. And when they had come to Jerusalem in the third month, in the fifteenth year of the reign of Asa, they sacrificed to the Lord on that day, from the spoils and booty which they had brought, seven hundred oxen and seven thousand rams. And he entered according to custom into a covenant to strengthen it, that they should seek the Lord, the God of their fathers, with all their heart and with all their soul. With capital punishment imposed, the peoples bound by oath. And whoever, he said, does not seek the Lord God of Israel, let him die, from the least to the greatest, from man to woman. And they swore to the Lord with a loud voice in jubilation, and with the sound of trumpets and the blast of horns — all who were in Judah, with an oath of execration: for with all their heart they swore, and with all their will they sought Him and found Him: and the Lord gave them rest on every side. Moreover, his mother reduced to a common station, he removed Maacha, the mother of King Asa, from the imperial dignity, because she had made in a grove a statue of Priapus: all of which he broke to pieces and, crushing it into fragments, burned it in the torrent of Cedron.
[9] But these things appear to have been done already earlier by King Asa in the first years of his reign. Thus 3 Kings 15:11: And Asa did what was right in the sight of the Lord, as David his father had done: and he removed the effeminate from the land, and purged away all the filth of the idols which his fathers had made. Moreover, he removed his mother Maacha from being princess in the rites of Priapus and in his grove, because the rites of Priapus, previously forbidden, and he broke her most shameful image and burned it in the torrent of Cedron. But the writer of that book, who nowhere mentions the Ethiopian war, related together what was done first and what later. And indeed first the idols were broken, the defilements of the effeminate removed, and the rites of Priapus, of which the Queen was priestess, cut out. But afterward, encouraged both by the most celebrated victory and by the words of the Prophet, the King thoroughly uprooted all the remnants of idolatry, which were repeatedly sprouting anew, with capital punishment imposed and the people driven to take an oath: she had worshipped again. and he reduced his mother to a common station, stripped of all the splendor of royal dignity, since she, with womanly obstinacy, had perhaps restored the image of Priapus. He does not appear to have punished her previously with this penalty, since she had adopted that foreign and infamous worship with the connivance of her husband, and perhaps of her father-in-law Rehoboam; but when she persisted in worshipping the most filthy idol contrary to the King's edicts, and what follows
[4] But because the Acts of this Spanish Blasius were unknown, those which had been handed down about the other were ascribed to this one, through the pious simplicity of the provincials. Among them he is certainly held in the greatest veneration: so that there is no saint's name which they more frequently give to their children in that region. Very celebrated there; Many churches are also everywhere dedicated to his name. There is no reason, however, why anyone should think this one distinct from the Sebastene saint and suspect that his relics were translated into Spain: but distinct from that one. since there is such an abundance of them elsewhere that they could scarcely have belonged to one man. Spanish writers certainly judged him to be distinct, even before those Chronicles of Julian and Luitprand appeared: Thomas de Trugillo in his Thesaurus of the Preacher, volume 2, part 2; Alfonsus Villegas in the Flower of the Saints; Franciscus Padilla, century 4, chapter 30; Joannes Marietta on the Saints of Spain, book 2, chapter 37; and after them Martinus Carilius, book 2 of the Annals at the year of Christ 306. Joannes Tamayus de Salazar in the History of S. Epitacius, chapter 5, mentions this S. Blasius: but he gives more about him in the Spanish Martyrology on this day, consistent with what we have said. Sanctius D'Avila, Bishop of Jaen, also mentions him in book 3 On the Veneration of Sacred Relics, chapter 8, number 4. And more fully Franciscus de Ruspuerta in the Ecclesiastical History of the Bishopric of Jaen, century 12, chapter 6, number 2.
[5] The head of that holy Blasius was recently translated to Lerma from the Centum Fontes convent, when the Dominican Virgins migrated there from Centum Fontes at the suggestion of the Duke of Lerma. His head is at Lerma.
[6] Our Hieronymus Higuera in Note 293 on the Chronicle of Luitprand writes thus: The celebrated memory of S. Blasius the Spanish Martyr, who suffered under Decius, exists among the Spaniards. Also at Toledo? At Toledo his sacred skull is kept in the monastery of the Holy Trinity. Whether he is the same as or different from that one of Centum Fontes, whom he himself also mentions in the same place together with Luitprand, he does not state. For if the same, why is he assigned to the times of Decius? How is his head at Lerma and his skull at Toledo? Unless perhaps only a portion exists at each place.