ON SAINT GAUDENTIUS, BISHOP OF VERONA IN ITALY.
CommentaryGaudentius, Bishop of Verona in Italy (Saint)
Author: I. B.
[1] Augustine Valerio, Bishop of Verona and afterwards Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church, in his book On the Holy Bishops of Verona, adorns Saint Gaudentius with this eulogy: Eulogy of Saint Gaudentius, "Gaudentius, Bishop of Verona, nourished with his word and example the souls entrusted to him by the Lord. His sermons were wonderfully consonant with the holiness of his life; and in them, while an immense ardor of charity was apparent, there was also a great efficacy for persuasion. He won innumerable souls for Christ. He died on the day before the Ides of February; his body was deposited in the church of Saint Stephen." Ferrarius says much the same in his Catalogue of the Saints of Italy, and Ferdinand Ughelli in volume 5 of Sacred Italy.
[2] Relics The same Valerio reports that his relics are preserved within an ancient marble chest in the church of Saint Stephen, together with the remains of four other Bishops, and that this is established from a double inscription. He also treats of those same relics elsewhere in the cited book. The name of Saint Gaudentius, inscribed in the Roman Martyrology on this day, appears also in Galesin. The basilica of Saint Stephen at Verona, as Onuphrius Panvinius writes in Antiquities of Verona, book 4, chapter 4, is among the most ancient churches of that city, In the most ancient church of Saint Stephen, having been built in the earliest Christian times, a little outside the city gate, at a place called "ad Fonticulos," on the Tridentine road; and it is said to have once been the Cathedral. He then adds that the bodies of many holy Bishops of Verona are deposited there ... and that the body of Saint Gaudentius, with four others, rests in a marble chest behind the altar itself.
[3] The same Panvinius, in chapter 7 of the cited book, having listed eleven ancient Bishops of Verona, His era is uncertain. adds many others from the Calendar, of uncertain date and order; and among these, Saint Gaudentius is the seventh. Baptista Perettus, in his Catalogue of the Bishops of Verona, places Saint Gaudentius in the thirty-ninth position, after Paternus, who is said to have lived around the year 1220. Ughelli places him much earlier, namely in the fifteenth position, although he writes "fourteenth."