ON ST. SALVIUS, MARTYR IN AFRICA.
CommentarySalvius, Martyr in Africa (S.)
[1] All Latin Martyrologies mention this saint: the old Roman, those of Ado, Bede, Usuard, Notker, Rabanus, Bellinus, Maurolycus, Galesinius, etc., and they add that on his feast day a sermon was delivered by St. Augustine to the people of Carthage; The feast of St. Salvius. Possidius mentions this in his Indiculus, chapter 3: "on the feast of St. Salvius the Martyr, against the aforesaid," etc. But in chapter 9 he mentions another: "a treatise on the feast of St. Salvius." His body, as Galesinius writes in his Notes, was once honorably and reverently deposited in a basilica at Carthage. Wandelbert writes of him:
"Salvius thence consecrates the third of the Ides at Carthage."
The manuscript of Cusa erroneously has "Salvimus." Bellinus, Maurolycus, and others call him Silvius; the Paris edition of Usuard from the year 1536 erroneously has "Salinius," and the Lübeck edition of the year 1475 has "Salinus." The manuscript Martyrology of the monastery of St. Maximin at Trier has "Sale." The same manuscript and Rabanus erroneously call him a Confessor, while the rest, following Possidius, report him to have been a Martyr. Nor is there sufficient proof for what the manuscript Martyrology of the monastery of St. Martin at Trier and the manuscript of the Church of St. Mary at Utrecht state -- namely, that he was a Bishop.
[2] Lest anyone be deceived, the Salvius who was a heretical Donatist of the Maximianist faction is a very different person from this one. Another Salvius, a heretic. He was a pseudo-bishop of Membresa in Africa, who, as St. Augustine recounts in book 4 of Against Cresconius the Grammarian, chapters 48 and 49, was accused by Restitutus, himself a Donatist but of a different faction, already advanced in age, before the proconsul Serranus, and was condemned by the proconsul on the basis of the Donatist synod of Bagai. But when, to defend his see, even after the proconsul's judgment, he attempted to resist, relying on the mob that supported him (namely the people of Membresa), he was at last overpowered and seized by the people of Abitina, The heretics cruel to their own. no longer to be brought to trial, where sentence had already been pronounced against his party, but to be paraded in a wretched triumphal procession. For they tied dead dogs around the neck of the captured old man, and danced around him as long as they pleased; and indeed, as Augustine himself says in book 3 of Against the Letter of Parmenian, chapter 6, they subjected him to foul words and songs, blows, and insults. However, Augustine does not narrate that he was killed by them, as Baronius claims in his Notes here, where he calls him a pseudo-martyr.