ON ST. JULIANA, VIRGIN AND MARTYR, AT VERONA IN ITALY.
Commentary
Juliana, Virgin and Martyr, at Verona in Italy (St.)
I. B.
[1] Verona, a city of the Venetian territory in Italy, glories both in other relics of Saints and in the body of St. Juliana, Virgin and Martyr. That body is said to have been brought there from parts beyond the sea in the year 1174. Whence it follows that she is different from the Juliana of Nicomedia, although Augustine Valerius, Bishop of Verona and afterward Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church, writes on folio 53 of his book entitled Ancient Monuments of the Holy Bishops of Verona and of Other Saints Whose Bodies Are at Verona that she is the same. But the Juliana of Nicomedia was then at Cumae, where she had been for at least six hundred years, and was translated to Naples in the year 1207, as narrated above. She could not therefore have been brought to Verona at that time from parts beyond the sea. But other Julianas are found in the Martyrologies who obtained the crown of martyrdom in parts beyond the sea: one at Amisus in Paphlagonia with six other women, on the twentieth of March; another with her brother Paul at Ptolemais in Palestine on the seventeenth of August; another on the eighteenth of August at Myra in Lycia with Leo; furthermore, another on the first of November at Tarsus in Cilicia, or more truly at Rhossus, with Cyrenia or Cyriana, as in the Menaea; and finally another also at Nicomedia with St. Barbara on the fourth of December. One of these could have been brought to Verona in that year, or some other. Whoever she may be, we have discovered nothing about her except what the same Valerius transmits in these words:
[2] "The bodies of St. Blasius the Bishop and of his two disciple Martyrs and of St. Juliana, Virgin and Martyr, rest in the church of St. Nazarius, translated from parts beyond the sea to Verona in the year of the Lord 1174. Concerning which translation there is a full account on an old parchment tablet which hangs on the wall in the church of St. Nazarius in the chapel of St. Blasius toward the East." Franciscus Corna asserts the same in the book mentioned above; and in the said church there is an epitaph carved in stone in verses, which was near the chest in the main chapel before the chapel of St. Blasius was built.
"Here rests the Martyr Blasius, a nourishing Bishop, And the bodies of his two nourishing disciples, And here truly lies the body of Saint Juliana. Alexander then presided over the Roman See, And then the Augustus King Frederick was reigning, And Omnibonus was then Bishop of all good at Verona, And then the clergy rejoiced in their patron Omnibonus. Let me record that Adam was then Abbot of the monastery. While these are placed, the years of the Lord are counted: One thousand, once a hundred, seven tens, and four."
On a marble tablet on the wall on the left side of the main altar of the said church toward the hill are these verses:
"One thousand four hundred, six and sixty Decembers Had wandered, and the fifteenth day drew March along, When the holy Blasius, Martyr and venerable Bishop, And Juliana, together with two boys, enclosed in marble, Had this new temple by divine gift. Then powerful Rome, Queen and glory of the eternal world, Applauded Pope Paul the Second; Frederick the Third held the scepter of empire; And Hermolaus Barbarus, ornament and shining star of Venice, As Bishop adorned the city of Verona; William was the illustrious Pastor and builder of the church, Whose honor, name, and praises shall long endure."
Dedicated to the Holy Martyrs.
[3] In the same church of St. Nazarius, on a certain tablet at the confraternity of St. Blasius, there is transcribed an Apostolic bull, or Brief, of Pope Innocent VIII, dated the twenty-third of December 1489, in which among other things the following is contained: "Recently you have had it explained to us that you have begun to build a certain chapel in honor of St. Blasius in the church of Sts. Nazarius and Celsus at Verona, in which you intend to place and deposit fittingly and with honor the bodies of the same Saint and of his two disciples and of St. Juliana the Martyr, which are preserved in a certain stone chest in the said church," etc. So far Valerius.
[4] A twofold translation of St. Juliana is here recorded: the first from the East to Verona, to the church of Sts. Nazarius and Celsus, which belongs to the Cassinian monks. This was made by Bishop Omnibonus of Verona in the year of Christ 1174, the fifteenth of Pope Alexander III, and the twenty-second of the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, who are named in the first inscription, and is also related by Ughelli in volume 5 of his Italia Sacra. He expressly acknowledges that in the abbey of St. Nazarius lie the bodies of St. Blasius, Bishop and Martyr, and of his two disciples, of St. Juliana, Virgin and Martyr, and other venerable relics without a name. The second translation occurred under Hermolaus Barbaro, Bishop of Verona, in the second year of Pope Paul II and the twenty-seventh of the Emperor Frederick III.
[5] The same Augustine Valerius attests that certain relics of St. Juliana are preserved in other churches of the same city as well (evidently taken from the body which is in the church of St. Nazarius): "In the consecration," he says, "of the altar of St. James and St. Helena in the church of the Holy Apostles, relics of St. Juliana were deposited. In the main altar of the church of St. Mary in Organis, relics of St. Juliana are preserved." Ughelli writes that certain relics are also preserved in the abbey of St. Zeno the Greater, and the head in the abbey of Sts. Firmus and Rusticus the Lesser in Brayda.