ON ST. RUSTICIANUS, BISHOP OF BRESCIA.
CommentaryRusticianus, Bishop of Brescia (St.)
Galesinius, January 5: "At Brescia, St. Rusticianus the Bishop." Since he succeeded the blessed Honorius as bishop of the same city, The commemoration of St. Rusticianus in the martyrology. he instructed the people of Brescia in the religion of Christian piety with all his pastoral duties; and flourishing in every episcopal virtue and holiness, he rested in the Lord. Ferrarius in his General Catalogue of Saints: "At Brescia, St. Rusticianus the Bishop." More fully in the Catalogue of the Saints of Italy: "Rusticianus, Bishop of Brescia, governed the Church of Brescia in the twenty-first place. He succeeds St. Honorius. Called to the episcopal office after St. Honorius, he flourished in every episcopal virtue and holiness, and instructed the people of Brescia not so much by his word as by the uprightness and example of his life; and after some years he rested in the Lord with a holy end. St. Dominator was appointed as his successor. His body is in the church of St. Zeno. His body rests, buried in the parish church of St. Zeno. The rest is unknown, so that neither his homeland nor the time during which he presided over the Church of Brescia could be ascertained." So it reads there. In the General Catalogue he reports that under Constantius the Arian he was exiled for the faith.
Ascanius Martinengus also mentions Rusticianus in discourse 1, On the Nobility of the Church of Brescia. But since St. Philastrius and St. Gaudentius lived in the time of St. Ambrose, how could Rusticianus, far younger than they, have been proscribed by the Emperor Constantius? We shall treat of St. Philastrius on the 18th of July, of St. Gaudentius on the 25th of October, of St. Honorius on the 24th of April, and of St. Zeno on the 12th of April.