ON ST. CORNELIUS, ROMAN MARTYR, AT GHENT IN BELGIUM.
Commentary
Cornelius, Roman Martyr, at Ghent in Belgium (St.)
I. B.
[1] The relics of a great many Martyrs have been brought from Rome to Belgium in these last fifty years — namely so that from the same city from which our ancestors received the doctrine of the faith, we might also obtain the remains of champions of that same faith, no vain defense against the monstrous heresies rampant nearby, but a pledge of heavenly protection. We indicate that certain relics of this kind came to Ghent, the principal city of Flanders, on the twelfth and thirteenth of February in the appendix of this volume. On the sixteenth and seventeenth of February, Sts. Cornelius and Eusebius, Roman Martyrs, are venerated there with public devotion. Their relics were excavated from the cemetery of St. Priscilla on the Via Salaria and presented by the Most Eminent Cardinal Marzio Ginetti, Vicar of the Pope, to Balthasar Ballonus, a religious of the Society of Jesus, who for several years had labored with great faith and industry in excavating the bodies of Saints from that cemetery and others. Since he had obtained a considerable number of such relics, including the bones of entire bodies, and had received the authority to donate them to others in the City and to send them beyond it so they might be exposed for the public veneration of the people, he had already distributed some and still kept others when the pious old man departed this life.
[2] At that time the Vicar General presiding over our entire Society was the Reverend Father Florentius de Montmorency. Having obtained the authority to distribute that treasure, he donated to Father Ferdinand del Plano, Rector of the Brussels college (who was then in the City, sent from the Flandro-Belgian province to the assembly of our Order), an elongated bone and two fragments of other bones of St. Cornelius the Martyr, as well as two tibia bones of St. Eusebius the Martyr, to be placed in the chapel of St. Ignatius, which the most illustrious Georgius de la Faille, founder of that college, had erected at Ghent in the church of St. Livinus, Bishop and Martyr, which belongs to our Society.
[3] It is established from the official acts drawn up on the eighth day of the month of December, in the year 1649, the sixth year of the pontificate of Innocent X, Indiction II, by Leonardus de Leonardis, a Roman citizen and public notary of the same Most Eminent Cardinal Vicar of the sacred City, that these bones were legitimately excavated from the crypts and donated as we have related. The same Cardinal also signed these acts on the following day and sealed them with his seal.
[4] These relics, having been placed in a cypress casket, bound round with a linen ribbon and sealed in two places with the seal of the same Cardinal Vicar, were at last brought to Belgium. Since, however, according to the decrees of the Council of Trent, it is not lawful to expose the relics of Saints for public veneration without the approval of the Ordinary, the Lord Maximilian de la Faille, Canon of the Cathedral Church of St. Bavo at Ghent, presented the casket we have described to the Most Illustrious and Most Reverend Antonius Triestius, Bishop of Ghent, for inspection and approval. The Bishop carefully examined the casket and seals, opened it, read through the acts drawn up at Rome as we described, together with the separate testimony of Father Florentius de Montmorency the Vicar, and pronounced that everything had been legitimately executed through all the proceedings and observances, and decreed that these relics should be publicly exposed for veneration in the said chapel, at Ghent in his episcopal palace, on the sixth day of December in the year 1650. The Acts drawn up at that time are preserved at Ghent in the college of the Society of Jesus.
[5] These relics, together with the body of St. Valentine and the heads of Sts. Benignus and Caelestinus the Martyrs, were brought into the church of the Society of Jesus which we said was dedicated to St. Livinus, Bishop and Martyr, and Apostle of the people of Ghent, on the Saturday before Quinquagesima Sunday in the year 1651, after vespers, with notable pomp and procession, with innumerable torches shining before them, and placed on a magnificent platform. On the following day, namely Quinquagesima Sunday itself, which in that year fell on the nineteenth of February, the solemnity of the Translation was accomplished with remarkable splendor and a concourse of the most ample city. It was decreed that the anniversary feast of St. Cornelius would thenceforth be celebrated on the sixteenth of February, and that of St. Eusebius on the following day. Their bones are enclosed in silver caskets which are preserved in the sacristy, but on the more solemn days throughout the year, and especially on those dedicated to them, they are displayed on the altar of the chapel of St. Ignatius. What this Cornelius did, at what time he lived, and by what manner of death he perished, is unknown; only this is established: that his body was interred in the cemetery of St. Priscilla on the Via Salaria. No Cornelius who suffered martyrdom at Rome, apart from Pope Cornelius (of whom we treat on the fourteenth of September), is recorded in the Martyrologies.