ON SAINT CONSTANTIUS AT BRESCIA IN ITALY.
CommentaryConstantius, Confessor, at Brescia in Italy (Saint)
I. B.
[1] That the feast of Saint Constantius the Confessor is celebrated on this day at Conche in the territory of Brescia is attested by Philip Ferrarius in his general Catalogue of Saints and in his Catalogue of the Saints of Italy, The feast of Saint Constantius, where, from the ancient Breviary of the Humiliati and from the records of the Church of Brescia, he reports these things concerning him:
[2] Conversion upon hearing the Gospel, "Constantius, a Count, first devoted himself to military service; but when he abounded in riches and, hearing and pondering those words of the Redeemer, 'If you wish to be perfect, go, sell all that you have and give to the poor,' as though they had been spoken to him, he began to turn his mind to spiritual riches. And in the place called Conche, distant ten miles from the city of Brescia among the Trumplini (which is a valley), A church built at Conche, he built a church dedicated to the Mother of God, together with a convent of virgins, upon a mountain. In which construction the following memorable thing occurred: while the carpenters were cutting and smoothing timber, a dove, taking up the tiniest splinters of wood in its beak, By divine designation, would deposit them in those places where the foundations of the future church were to be laid. He also built as many as twenty-four other churches in various places. Others elsewhere: Distinguished by these and other works, he at last rested in a holy end. His body, buried in the same place, was afterwards translated to Brescia and deposited in the church of Saint Catherine."
[3] So says Ferrarius, who then notes from the cited Breviary that the time in which Saint Constantius lived is not established; His era is uncertain: but that Elias Capreolus in the annals of the city of Brescia writes that he lived around the year of Salvation 1150, at which time Saint Honorius the Bishop presided over the Church of Brescia. I was unable to find this in Capreolus. Nor do the era of Saint Honorius and the year 1150 of the Christian Era agree with each other; for Capreolus, in book 3, says that Saint Honorius, Bishop of Brescia, was the son of the Emperor Constans, grandson of Constantine the Great, and that he presided over that Church in the time of Valentinian and Gratian. This Martinengus rightly refutes on page 228, and shows that Constantius lived much later. Ughelli in volume 4 of Sacred Italy reports that he was substituted for Saint Herculanus in the year 1076, yet he produces no chronological evidence. We shall treat of him more fully on April 24.
[4] Arnold Wion, and from him Hugh Ménard, say that Saint Constantius was taken from the Order of the Humiliati to the episcopal dignity of Brescia; for they write thus: Was he of the Order of the Humiliati, and Bishop of Brescia? "At Brescia, of Saint Constantius, Bishop of Brescia, of the Order of the Humiliati, a man of admirable sanctity." Wion cites in his notes a Catalogue of Saints of that Order, sent to him from Brescia. Silvester Maurolycus in the Ocean of the Religious Orders, book 3, page 182, thus mentions him, enumerating the Saints of that Order: "Saint Constantinus, Bishop of Brescia, is venerated on February 12." But there is no Constantius or Constantinus in the very extensive Catalogue of the Bishops of Brescia in Ughelli -- much less after the year of Christ 1152, when Frederick Barbarossa assumed the Empire, in whose time the Order of the Humiliati is said by the same Maurolycus to have come together.
[5] Elias Capreolus writes in book 12 that, under the year 1483, the body of Saint Constantius was translated from Conche to Brescia Relics translated in 1483. and placed within a precious chest in the church of Saint Catherine. Ferrarius narrates the same from Capreolus. This was therefore done under Bishop Paul Zane, though before his inauguration; by whom other noteworthy works were also constructed, as Ughelli narrates.