ON SAINT BLASIUS, BISHOP OF ORETUM, MARTYR, AT CIFUENTES IN SPAIN.
UNDER NERO.
CommentaryBlasius, Bishop of Oretum, Martyr, at Cifuentes in Spain (Saint)
I. B.
[1] Oretum was a city of Spain, mentioned by the ancients, afterwards adorned with a bishopric; but destroyed by the Moors, certainly in their times. That its traces are extant is testified by Ambrosio de Morales in the description of the Antiquities of Spain, at Oretum, an old city, between the convent of Calatrava and the village of Granátula, about half a league from either place: that a small shrine is still to be seen there, and a bridge laid over the little river Jabalón, both of Roman work, as he proves from an inscription which was read on a marble that in his memory was torn from that bridge and carried to Almagro, (whose traces are extant) a town two leagues distant from there. That the old name, moreover, now remains to that shrine, Nuestra Señora de Oreto; and also Açuqueca, for this is thought to have been imposed by the Arabs in place of the former. Julian the Archpriest, edited by Ramírez, mentions both names thus in the Adversaria, number 148: In the division of the Sees, chiefly of the diocese of Toledo, the first See subject to it is Orerum; not Calatrava, but S. Mary of Oreto, or Aegueca, beyond the river Sabalon, etc. There is now a Priory there of the Order of Calatrava. The same place was treated on the 1st of February in the acts of Blessed Raymond, chapter 2.
[2] Many Bishops of Oretum are read of before the incursion of the Moors, S. Blasius was Bishop, who suffered martyrdom under Nero especially in the Councils of Toledo. The most ancient was (if the same Julian writes truly in the Chronicle, number 434, at the Era 886) S. Blasius, who at the town called Centumfontes in Celtiberia, in the persecution of Nero, suffers as a Martyr in Spain. Created Bishop of Oretum by S. Anastasius, a disciple of S. James the Apostle, son of Zebedee, while he was preaching in Spain, he is held in esteem, and, God honoring it, his sacred body is visited. Luitprand too has this at the same Era: S. Blasius, Bishop and Martyr, in the town of Cifuentes, who suffered in Spain at Centumfontes, a town of Celtiberia, in the time of the Neronian persecution, in the year 67; he shines, renowned for miracles.
[3] There is a town, Centumfontes, commonly called Cifuentes, on the borders of the kingdom of Toledo, in the province of Alcarria, toward the sources of the river Tajuña, not far from the city of Sigüenza, adorned with the title of a County, belonging to the illustrious family of the Silvas. There, outside the walls of the town, a cenobium of nuns of the Dominican institute is to be seen: where his sepulchre is: in whose church there is extant a sepulchre skilfully worked of alabaster, in which the body of S. Blasius, Bishop and Martyr, is said to be laid. The people of Cifuentes and other inhabitants say that he is the one of Sebaste, of whom we shall treat below, and show the rubble of I know not what buildings on the river Tagus, where they will have the city of Sebaste to have stood. and he is believed to have been the Bishop of Sebaste, Indeed, they assign also a province of Cappadocia, and a cave hallowed by the hiding-places of the holy Bishop, and other things relating to this. These, however, are approved by no learned man: since it is established that Agricolaus, under whom Blasius of Sebaste suffered martyrdom, held the governorship in Asiatic Cappadocia and Lesser Armenia, as we shall show below, yet in the same tract; and that many others completed their martyrdom there under him.
[11] The same Greeks add that he ὑποστρέψαι ἐξ Ἰσραὴλ τὴν αἰχμαλωσίαν Ἰούδα, brought back from Israel the captivity of Judah, that is, the captive Jews. For in that same year, the fifteenth of Asa, and the following, a grievous war pressed upon him from Baasa, King of Israel. He, as is said in 3 Kings 15:33, in the third year of Asa, King of Judah, the thirty-third from the rebellion of the ten tribes, Baasa fortifying Ramah, reigned over all Israel in Thersa twenty-four years. Then in the twenty-sixth year of Asa, King of Judah, Ela the son of Baasa reigned over Israel in Thersa two years. What is said, therefore, in 2 Chronicles 16:1, that in the thirty-sixth year of the reign of Asa Baasa, King of Israel, went up against Judah, must be taken of the thirty-sixth year from the division of the kingdom: for Baasa, who died in the twenty-sixth year of Asa, could not have made war on him ten years later. So much for the time of the war, which was indeed fierce. For Baasa took Ramah (Josephus calls it Ῥαμαθῶνα), a city of the tribe of Benjamin, situated on a high place, as the name indicates, on the road which almost alone led to Jerusalem from the North, from most of the provinces of Israel. Baasa began to fortify the captured city, conveniently situated so that no one could safely go out or come in from the kingdom of Asa: while Baasa himself meanwhile could harass that same kingdom repeatedly with raids, and recover with less trouble the cities of Mount Ephraim which Asa had snatched from him. New triumphs were being prepared for Asa by the propitious Deity (if he had been willing to use its favor), not only over the Israelites, but also over the Syrians themselves, as is said in 3 Kings 16:7.
[10] Azarias imposes silence on the Pythoness: What Azarias did afterwards, Scripture does not disclose. The Greeks say that he imposed silence on the Pythia. How this came about they do not explain: whether by procuring from the King severe edicts against impious seers of that kind and those who consulted them, according to what had been enacted in Leviticus 20:27 and Deuteronomy 18:11; or by casting out the unclean spirit from some little woman of that kind, as Paul did, Acts 16:16; or by merely imposing silence on her, whether by words and for ever, or by his presence; or finally, by giving sure responses, he turned away the people devoted to the lawful rites from those uncertain oracles of demons, and compelled those prophesying old women, exposed to ridicule, to fall silent of their own accord, no one consulting them.
[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.