Sebastian the Martyr

ON ST. SEBASTIAN THE MARTYR, DEFENDER OF THE ROMAN CHURCH.

About the year 287.

Section I. The feast of St. Sebastian.

[1] The illustrious office of Defender of the Church was once held at Rome, as is clear from the letters of St. Gregory the Great; it was sometimes even conferred upon kings by the Pontiffs as a mark of honor, although some strive more ambitiously to obtain such honorable titles than to fulfill them by their merits. What the functions of this dignity were, Baronius sets forth in volume 6, at the year 598, section 16, and our Gretserus in Book 1, chapter 5 of his Observations on George Codinus. St. Sebastian, Defender of the Church. St. Sebastian was the first to bear this honorable title, and not an empty one, since it was earned by his virtue and afterward adorned by the glory of his steadfastness and martyrdom.

[2] He is celebrated in the most ancient registers of the saints — St. Jerome's, the Roman, and others — killed on the thirteenth day before the Kalends of February. Usuard: "On the same day, at the Catacombs, St. Sebastian the Martyr, who, holding the command of the first cohort, was ordered by the Emperor Diocletian, under the title of Christianity, to be bound in the middle of a field and shot with arrows by the soldiers, and finally to be beaten with clubs until he expired." Bellinus and the modern Roman Martyrology proclaim the same. Under the title of Christianity: Baronius explains this title of Christianity from Eusebius, Book 5, chapter 1, where this is stated: "When he was led around through the Amphitheatre, a tablet preceded him on which was inscribed in Latin letters: THIS IS ATTALUS THE CHRISTIAN," etc. He adduces the brutal act of Caligula — an instance at once of Roman custom, of bestial savagery, and of a practice frequently inflicted upon our people by the impious — which Suetonius narrates in chapter 32: "At Rome, at a public banquet, he immediately handed over a slave who had removed a silver strip from a couch to the executioner, to have his hands cut off and hung from his neck in front of his breast, and to be led around through the groups of diners, preceded by a placard indicating the cause of the punishment." Nor do we think that the custom of carrying such a title before the condemned was omitted in the execution of St. Sebastian — not so much to excuse the tyrants' cruelty to the people as to avoid provoking the spirits of the soldiers, whose favor the Martyr's virtue had won for him.

[3] Venerated by the Latins on January 20. Bede's published text, Ado, Rabanus, Notker, and very many manuscripts adorn his feast with a more extensive eulogy: "On the same day, of St. Sebastian the Martyr, who was so dear to the Emperors Diocletian and Maximian that they entrusted to him the command of the first cohort. When Diocletian learned he was a Christian and could not be recalled from the faith, he ordered him to be bound in the middle of a field as a target for arrows and to be shot at by the soldiers. When he stood full of arrows like a hedgehog, thinking him dead, they departed. But during the night a certain woman named Irene came to remove the body, found him alive, and brought him to her home and took care of him. When he had recovered, he strengthened many in the faith. And without delay, appearing before the very Emperors, he rebuked them as they deserved. Then Diocletian ordered him to be led to the hippodrome of the palace and beaten with clubs until he expired; and they cast him dead into the greatest sewer. But he appeared in dreams to the holy matron Lucina, saying: 'Near the Circus you will find my body hanging on a hook; the filth has not touched it; and when you have raised it, you will bring it to the Catacombs and bury me in the crypt near the footprints of the Apostles.' She came that very night with her servants and carried out everything just so."

[4] Maurolycus, Galesinius, Felicius, Wandelbert, and the remaining Latin writers also celebrate him on this day. By the Greeks on December 18. But the Greeks on December 18 venerate him together with most of those mentioned in his Acts — each individually assigned to different days in the tables of the Roman Martyrology — as is clear from the Menologium, the Menaea, Maximus of Cythera, and the Anthologium. He is venerated in very many Latin churches with a solemn holiday from profane works and legal proceedings, either to consecrate the memory of a plague once repelled through his patronage, or to strengthen the hope of a perpetual defense against it.

Section II. The Acts of St. Sebastian.

[5] Baronius, at the year 286, section 2, judges that the Acts of Sebastian and his companions are genuine and worthy to be woven into the Annals. John Hessels of Louvain, the teacher of Molanus, His Acts are worthy of trust, in his censure of certain histories of the saints — a censure otherwise severe enough, as we have indicated elsewhere — writes: "The entire passion of St. Sebastian pleases in every respect, in which the passion of many others is contained."

[6] Written by a Notary of the Holy Roman Church? Those Acts, says Galesinnius, are thought to have been written by the Notaries of the holy Roman Church. This indeed seems to us by no means doubtful; but perhaps not in the form in which they are now in our hands. For the author of these has been considered to be St. Ambrose, about 800 years ago. So writes the anonymous monk, not unlearned, who described the translation of the relics of St. Sebastian into Gaul, Or by St. Ambrose? of which presently, chapter 6, number 22: "They go together eagerly to the place no longer unknown; for from the sequence of his passion, brilliantly published by St. Ambrose, they had learned that at the third milestone from the City, in a place called Catacumbas because of the stationing of ships, the same most blessed Martyr had commanded through a vision a certain matron named Lucina that he should be buried at the footsteps of the Apostles Peter and Paul." And in the Epilogue, number 100: "Whoever you are, fastidious reader, desiring to be filled with a more sumptuous dish, setting aside this bran of ours, and seeking the work of the most holy Father Ambrose, which he published on the triumph of this heavenly one, in it you will find a platter most richly filled; having tasted its quite delicious fine flour with the palate of the mind, you will be able to be delightfully fattened."

[7] Nor is it surprising that, just as of other Saints, so of Sebastian, who was of Milanese origin, This is probable. Ambrose first committed his illustrious struggles to writing, from the speech or commentaries of the ancestors, or interpolated what had been recorded by others, in order to inflame the minds of the Milanese with an equal ardor of virtue. Nor does the style diverge much from the elegance and gravity of Ambrose.

[8] Those Acts, transcribed by our Rosweyde from the manuscripts of Rebdorf near Eichstatt, Whence published here. of the Dominican Fathers of Eichstatt, of Marcus Welser, and of St. Martin at Trier; we have collated with the manuscripts of St. Ghislain, St. Omer, St. Maximin, Ripatorio, and others, and with the edition of Boninus Mombritius. The same formerly polished by Livinus Brecht. Livinus Brecht of Antwerp, a Franciscan, from a Mechelen manuscript (with the style somewhat altered, however, as Molanus attests and is evident to the reader) published it at Louvain and dedicated it to Viglius Zuichemus, President of the Imperial Council, with this title prefixed: "A memorable history comprising the conversion and struggles of certain illustrious Martyrs, together with a golden exhortation to contempt of the present life and desire for the eternal, a work of an uncertain author, but recently revised and purged by Brother Livinus Brecht." In his dedicatory epistle he has these words: "We have thought it right to share with the Christian reader the illustrious struggles of the Martyrs, most diligently written more than twelve hundred years ago (if I am not mistaken)."

[9] The same Acts were translated from the Greek of Simeon Metaphrastes into Latin by Gentian Hervet, published by Aloysius Lippomanus, and from him by Surius. They were also written up by James of Voragine, Described in various ways by others. Francis Haraeus, Zacharias Lippelous, Ferrarius in his Catalogue of Saints of Italy, Baronius in volume 2 of the Annals, M. Antonius Georgius, John Basilius Sanctorius, Ribadeneira and our Rosweyde, Peter of Natali, Book 2, chapter 106, Gabriel Flamma, and innumerable others. The hundredth sermon of St. Augustine on diverse topics was preached on his feast day and that of St. Fabian; St. Gregory's Homily 37 was delivered in the basilica of St. Sebastian. Sermons of many other authors on him survive. We have also read his martyrdom in the manuscript of Nicholas Belfort, a Canon Regular of Soissons, described in verse by Oliver Conrad, a Franciscan.

Section III. The Roman basilicas of St. Sebastian.

[10] On the Appian Way, at the cemetery of Callixtus, is to be visited the basilica of St. Sebastian, one of the seven churches, known not only to the City, as Baronius says, The church of St. Sebastian near the City. but also to the entire Christian world. The gate through which those going to it pass, the Porta Capena, is now called the Gate of St. Sebastian. Furthermore, Pope St. Damasus either built or restored that church in the time of Valentinian. So the Book of the Roman Pontiffs reads: "He built two basilicas, one near the Theater to St. Lawrence, and another at the Catacumbs, where the holy bodies of the Apostles Peter and Paul lay; in which place he adorned the very platonia, where the holy bodies lay, with verses." Baronius, volume 4, at the year 384, number 17, interprets "platonias" as marble tablets arranged for ornament; and because other codices have that Damasus not adorned the platonia, as the St. Bertin manuscript that we have used reads, What "platonia" means. but built it, he himself interprets this as having encrusted the walls with marble tablets. Thus what is commonly read in the same book, "Liberius adorned the sepulcher of St. Agnes the martyr with marble tablets," he reads: "He adorned the sepulcher of St. Agnes with marble platoniae." The St. Bertin codex agrees, except that instead of "platoniis" it has "platomis"; and in the entry on Damasus, "platomam." Baronius admits that in his manuscript the reading is "placoton," by which he thinks is meant the pavement of the church, elegantly laid with marble tiles of various figures. To us the word, whatever the genuine form may be, seems to be derived from breadth, since it was a plateia pinax — a broad and flat tablet. Or if anyone should prefer Baronius's "placoton," it is derived from plax (plakos), which signifies a broad slab or stone tablet.

[11] Octavius Pancirolus and Onuphrius Panvinius, in their book on the churches of the City, attest that a marble tablet survives, whose inscription proves that in the time of Pope Innocent I, who lived at the beginning of the fifth century, this basilica was dedicated to St. Sebastian the Martyr by the Priests Proclinus and Ursus in fulfillment of a vow. Restored. Pope Adrian restored it toward the end of the eighth century. So Anastasius writes in his Life: "He also restored from its foundations the church of the Apostles, outside the Appian Gate at the third milestone, in the place called Catacumbs, where the body of Blessed Sebastian the Martyr rests with others, which had fallen into ruin."

[12] That church was then handed over by Alexander III around the year 1259 to the Lateran Canons Regular, and nine years later passed to the Cistercians; in 1431 it was restored by Eugene IV, writes the same Pancirolus: but finally, since it lacked possessions and threatened ruin, the monks departing from there in 1584, it was made a simple benefice. But when in 1612 it fell to Scipione Borghese, nephew of Pope Paul V, he began to repair it from the foundations, Adorned. and much more elegantly and gracefully than before, with the pavement leveled to the public road, a splendid ceiling, twin entrances to the ancient cemetery, and other features aptly constructed for the adornment of the building and its altars.

[13] That this piety was pleasing to the holy Martyr was attested by a heavenly prodigy. Honorius III, around the year 1218, had placed the sacred body within an immense marble chest that was to serve as an altar, and had set it near the very entrance of the basilica on the left side, in a low and humble place, opposite the door that opened access to the cemetery. Now that the entire basilica had been restored, Not without the appearance of a miracle. the Cardinal thought to move the chest not from its place, but to raise it somewhat, so that the base might be leveled with the pavement of the basilica, and to enclose it in a chapel. But as soon as the chest began to be moved by machines and raised from the ground, the entire building seemed to be shaken with trembling. The workers therefore turning to flight, Laurence de Paulis, a Priest of the Society of Jesus, whom the Cardinal had wished to preside over this work, exhorted the craftsmen first to pour out prayers before the venerable Eucharist: then he ordered the work to proceed, which would without doubt be pleasing to Heaven, since it had been commanded by the very Vicar of Christ. Returning, therefore, they raised that mass to a greater height without much difficulty and enclosed it within the precinct of a chapel. The Martyr seemed to have demanded such an auspice for the work. Thereafter, through the same Borghese's agency, that church was handed over to the Feuillant monks of the Cistercian institute, by whom it is maintained with outstanding cleanliness. There are five altars in it, adorned with great indulgences.

[14] Other chapels of his in the City. Another church in the City is dedicated to Saints Martin and Sebastian, erected by the authority of Pius V. Another small chapel had been placed to St. Sebastian near the Cloaca Maxima: but when the palace in the City of Constantia Piccolomini, Duchess of Amalfi, at the place called Piazza di Siena in the 13th region, was handed over to the Theatine Fathers, and the church of St. Andrew was dedicated there by the will of the same Constantia; in place of the former chapel, a chapel was decreed in the name of St. Sebastian — and a very elegant one, writes Pancirolus; indeed, in the chapel of the Assumption of the Virgin built by Urban VIII, a monument was ordered erected in his honor by the same pope. Concerning which Abraham Bzovius, in the book entitled "The Roman Pontiff," reports the following: "To the chapel is adjoined a chamber sacred to St. Sebastian, whose image depicts his removal from the sewer into which he was cast by order of Diocletian, and on a dark, or Lucullan, stone placed there the following eulogy may be read" — which, lest I be too prolix, it suffices to transcribe: "Saint Sebastian, most brave soldier of Christ, is pierced with arrows by order of Diocletian, beaten with rods, cast into a sewer, thence rescued by Lucina, a Roman matron, and laid to rest in the cemetery of Callixtus. The people, once worshipping, erected a small chapel as a memorial of the deed: whose main altar with its apse formerly stood here. Sixtus V, Supreme Pontiff, permitted it to be leveled to the ground on the condition that a part of it should be enclosed within the circuit of the new building. To preserve the sanctity of the place and the memory of the event, Maffeo, Cardinal Priest of the Holy Roman Church, of the Barberini family, wished this monument to stand, in the year of salvation 1616."

Section IV. Relics of St. Sebastian at Rome.

[15] Although the body of St. Sebastian was placed at the Catacumbs, where his relics still rest in the marble chest we mentioned, and as the opinion of the Roman people holds and Pancirolus writes, Relics in his basilica. the body itself of the Martyr, or its principal parts, are there; nevertheless some relics were sent both to other churches of the City and to foreign nations as well — truly august gifts. Pancirolus also writes that one of the arrows with which he was pierced and the column to which he was bound while being struck with arrows are preserved there.

[16] In the time of St. Gregory, an oratory dedicated to St. Sebastian was established in Tuscany, and relics of his were brought there, Some brought to Tuscany; as Gregory himself attests, Book 1 of the Dialogues, chapter 10, writing thus: "A certain noble matron in the neighboring parts of Tuscany had a daughter-in-law who, within a short time after she had married her son, had been invited along with her mother-in-law to the dedication of the oratory of Blessed Sebastian the Martyr. On the very night before the following day when she was to go in procession to the dedication of the aforesaid oratory, overcome by carnal pleasure, she was unable to abstain from her husband. When morning came, though the carnal pleasure she had committed tormented her conscience, yet shame compelled the procession; blushing more at the face of men than fearing the judgment of God, she went with her mother-in-law to the dedication of the oratory. She who irreverently attended the solemnity was seized by a demon. But as soon as the relics of Blessed Sebastian the Martyr entered the oratory, an evil spirit seized that same daughter-in-law of the aforesaid matron and began to torment her before all the people. When the Priest of that same oratory saw her being most violently tormented, he immediately took the altar cloth and covered her: but the devil immediately invaded him as well. And because he wished to presume something beyond his powers, he was compelled to learn in his own torment what he was."

[17] Those who were present, however, lifted the girl in their hands from the oratory Thence more grievously tormented by magical spells. and carried her back to her own house. And when the ancient enemy was violently afflicting her with continual torment, her relatives, loving her carnally and persecuting her by their love, in order to obtain the remedy of health, handed her over to sorcerers: so that they might utterly extinguish the soul of one whose flesh they attempted to help temporarily by magical arts. She was therefore led to a river and plunged into the water; and there the sorcerers labored for a long time with incantations to drive out the devil who had invaded her. But by the wondrous judgment of almighty God, while one was repelled from her by the perverse art, a legion suddenly entered into her. From that hour she began to be agitated with as many movements and to resound with as many voices and cries as the number of spirits by which she was held. Then her parents, taking counsel and confessing the fault of their treachery, brought her to the venerable man Fortunatus the Bishop and left her with him. She is cured by St. Fortunatus the Bishop. He, having received her, gave himself to prayer for many days and nights; and he devoted himself to prayers with as great an effort as the battle line of the legion that he found arrayed against him in one body. After not many days he restored her so healthy and unharmed, as if the devil had never had any power over her.

[18] So St. Gregory writes; which James of Voragine and others reported from him. Lest anyone, however, call into doubt whether these were truly relics of St. Sebastian, or of some other Saint, but placed there for the consecration of the chapel of St. Sebastian; Pope Zacharias translates thus: Those relics were truly St. Sebastian's. "As soon as the relics of the holy Martyr Sebastian entered the oratory." Concerning St. Fortunatus, Bishop of Todi, by whose prayers the legion of demons was driven from this matron, we shall treat on October 14.

[19] What the same St. Gregory writes, Book 3 of the Dialogues, chapter 30 — that a church in the Suburra district, which had been the Arians', was purified two years before he wrote the Dialogues and, with the relics of Blessed Stephen and St. Martha the Martyrs introduced, was dedicated, Others brought to Rome. as we also noted on January 19 in the Life of St. Martha — the same Pope St. Zacharias reads as the relics of St. Sebastian and the holy Martyr Agatha. Accordingly John the Deacon reads the same, who in his Life of St. Gregory, Book 2, chapter 31, writes thus: "Moreover, since the basilica of the Arians in the region of the City called the Suburra had remained closed until the time of Gregory's pontificate, For the dedication of the church that was formerly the Arians'. he determined that it should be dedicated in the Catholic faith, with the relics of Blessed Sebastian and St. Agatha the Martyrs introduced there, which was done. For Gregory, coming with a great multitude of the people singing praises, entered the aforesaid basilica. When the venerable Pontiff was already celebrating the solemnities of the Mass, and the crowd of people was pressing together because of the narrow confines of the place, certain of those who were standing outside the sanctuary suddenly felt a pig running here and there between their feet. While each one felt it and pointed it out to those standing nearby, the same pig headed for the doors of the church, and converted all those through whom it passed to wonder; but it could not be seen, although it could be felt. This divine mercy revealed so that it might be clear to all that, with Gregory coming with the relics of the Saints, the unclean inhabitant was departing from that place."

[20] That the relics of Saints Sebastian and Agatha were placed there is also stated by Gratian, On Consecration, dist. 1, chapter 22; and St. Antoninus, Part 2, title 12, chapter 3, section 9; and St. Gregory himself indicates in his Register, Book 3, letter 19: "Because," he says, Which is now St. Agatha's. "the church of St. Agatha situated in the Suburra, which was once a cave of heretical depravity, has been restored, with God's favor, to the practice of the Catholic faith," etc.

[21] There are, moreover, other basilicas of the City enriched with relics of St. Sebastian, whether in the time of Eugene II, when some were carried off to Gaul, or, as Pancirolus thinks, Others carried to other churches of the City. in the age of Honorius III, when those that had been left at the Catacumbs were placed in the marble tomb; or on whatever other occasion. For his head is preserved in the Vatican church of St. Peter, as Pancirolus attests in his Index of the Relics of the City; an arm and one arrow in S. Maria de Equirio; another arm in St. Praxedes; a shoulder blade in St. Martin's, both churches situated on the Hills; others in the church of the Four Crowned Saints, and elsewhere. We shall speak of the church of St. Peter in Chains in the following section. Concerning the relics translated to the Vatican basilica of St. Peter, Anastasius the Librarian writes in his entry on Gregory IV, who sat from September 24, 827, to the end of the year 843: "In the oratory of St. Gregory, within the Church of Blessed Peter the Apostle, he brought the bodies of the blessed Martyrs Sebastian, Gorgonius, and Tiburtius from the cemeteries in which they had formerly lain; and he placed each of them at separate altars." That this should be understood as referring to a part of the body of each will become clear elsewhere.

Section V. The salutary patronage of St. Sebastian against the plague.

[22] Philibert Marchini of Novara, in his Philosophical Problems on the Pestilence, Problem 8, St. Sebastian as patron against the plague, writes as follows on why the patronage of St. Sebastian is everywhere invoked for averting the plague: "Perhaps the conjecture may be this, which Pierius Valerianus reported in Book 42. For since among the ancients the hieroglyph of pestilence was the arrows of Apollo discharged against the Greeks; and since also in Sacred Scripture the same disease is called the weapon of an angry Deity — 'Unless you be converted, he has brandished his bow and prepared it, and in it he has prepared the instruments of death, he has made his arrows with burning things' — where contagions are called both instruments of death and the most burning arrows of divine wrath; therefore Christian piety chose for itself from among the number of the Saints, Sebastian, who was assailed with arrows, Not because he was pierced with arrows, as its protector against the pestilential disease, whose patronage, since many cities have often proved it by experience, especially the city of Milan in the year of Christ 1576, Sebastian is for this reason invoked by the common vow of Christians for repelling this disease, no other vestiges of this custom being found in his own Acts."

[23] But there do exist — if not in his Acts, then elsewhere — and those illustrious, vestiges of this pious custom. For Paul the Deacon, On the Deeds of the Lombards, Book 6, chapter 5, writes: But because a dire plague in Italy "In those times, during the eighth Indiction, the moon suffered an eclipse. An eclipse of the sun also occurred at almost the same time, about the tenth hour of the day, on the fifth day before the Nones of May; and there immediately followed a most severe plague for three months, that is, July, August, and September: and so great was the multitude of the dying that even parents with their children and brothers with their sisters, placed two by two on biers, were conducted to their graves at the city of Rome. In a similar manner this pestilence also depopulated Pavia; so that, with all the citizens fleeing to the ridges of the mountains or to various places, grass and shrubs grew up in the forum and through the streets of the city. Then it visibly appeared to many that a good and an evil angel were going through the city by night; Kindled by a demon, and at the command of the good Angel, the evil angel, who appeared to carry a hunting spear in his hand, struck the door of any house with the spear, and as many times as he struck it, that many people from that same house would die on the following day. Then it was said to someone by revelation that the plague itself would not cease until an altar of St. Sebastian the Martyr were placed in the basilica of Blessed Peter called 'in Chains.' Extinguished by the aid of St. Sebastian. And so it was done, and when the relics of Blessed Sebastian the Martyr had been brought from the city of Rome, as soon as the altar was set up in the aforesaid basilica, the plague itself ceased."

[24] The same passage from Paul is cited by Baronius, volume 8, at the year 680; and by Charles Stengelius in his Alexeterium, chapter 6. The same plague was treated on January 10 in the Life of Pope St. Agatho, where it is said to have begun after the eclipse of the moon, which occurred on the night following the seventeenth day of June in the year 680, Indiction 8. What Paul has — With his relics brought into the City. "when the relics of Blessed Sebastian the Martyr had been brought from the city of Rome" — seems to have been written "brought into the city of Rome," namely from the Catacumbs: and so Sigonius writes, Book 2 of the Kingdom of Italy; and he adds: "From that time it was observed that those who fell ill would invoke the Martyr himself with vows."

[25] That church of St. Peter in Chains is situated on the Esquiline and is called by another name the Title of Eudoxia, At the Title of Eudoxia. from the Empress Eudoxia, wife of Valentinian III, as we shall say on August 1, when we treat of the chains of St. Peter. In that basilica, as Baronius writes, an outstanding monument of the holy Martyr stands — his venerable image expressed in mosaic work, Where his image is. and still intact to this day, with an aged appearance and a beard: which should admonish painters who wrongly paint him as a young man bound to a stake. But painters (although the power of daring anything seems to have been granted to them from all time immemorial — which we marvel is nowhere restrained by any censure, not that the invention of art should be fastidiously restricted, but that what is attributed to the Saints should be weighed and propriety consulted) perhaps wished to express the unconquered strength of Sebastian through a youthful and vigorous form of body.

[26] Elsewhere, too, the patronage of this same Saint against pestilential contagion has often been invoked with no vain prayer, Venerated elsewhere for the sake of driving away plague. as will become clear from what will be said below about the Duke of Bavaria, Cardinal Dietrichstein, and the town of Wesel. In the most ancient and most celebrated monastery of St. Victor at Marseilles, over which John Cassian once presided, in the divine office after the commemoration of the holy Apostles at Lauds and Vespers, whenever the rite of the Church permits their recitation, the commemoration of St. Victor the Martyr is added, of which we shall treat on July 21 at the Acts of that same Saint; Even with a daily commemoration. then this of Saints Roch and Sebastian: "Saints Sebastian and Roch, precious ones, graciously receive the prayers of your servants, that he who chose you for the brightness of eternal vision may free us who celebrate your holy commemoration from the plague of epidemic: let there be joy in heaven and on earth peace to men of good will. V. Pray for us, Saints Sebastian and Roch. R. That we may merit to be preserved from the plague. Prayer: O God, who strengthened Blessed Sebastian your Martyr with the virtue of constancy in his passion, and aided Blessed Roch your Confessor in the illness of plague and epidemic, which he suffered in his body for the glory of your name; grant, we beseech you, that we who celebrate their memory may, by their merits, be freed from the deadly plague of body and soul." There follows the prayer for peace.

Section VI. Solemn veneration of him at Capua and Milan, on account of the plague repelled.

[27] Nor did the treasury of sacred relics that Rome disclosed to the farthest reaches of Gaul fail to supply something of it also to other cities of Italy. We have found two cities enriched with a portion of his relics and having experienced therefrom a singular protection: Some of his relics at Capua Capua and Milan. Concerning the former, Michael the Monk writes in Part 4 of the Sanctuary of Capua: "Moreover, in this our city are held relics of St. Sebastian, formerly discovered in the church of St. John ad Curtim and deposited in the Treasury. It is recorded in tradition that no parishioner of St. John ad Curtim was harmed by a raging plague. in three churches: There are also relics in the monastery of St. John, where water is blessed by the touch of the vessel containing the holy relic, water consecrated by dipping them in it, for the sake of health. and it is preserved for the sick; and it is so frequently sought that during the year it is sometimes necessary to bless it again."

[28] "And in the church of St. Eligius there are notable relics, as well as a most beautiful wooden statue, which the Priests of the most holy Annunciation bring to the cathedral on this very day; a solemn devotion there on account of plague being driven away. and from there it is carried around the city by the Chapter and the Clergy. They report that this custom was introduced at the time of a plague, which ceased through the intercession of St. Sebastian upon the discovery of his relics. In what year this occurred is not known to me; but since in the Breviary this feast is celebrated with a semi-double office, I am persuaded that at the time the Breviary was printed, that is, in the year 1489, such a custom did not yet exist, namely that the feast of St. Sebastian should be a solemn one. Since, therefore, the solemnity is recent, what is related about the plague should not be understood of that plague which endured for many, many years, as I was able to gather from the records of St. John and St. Eligius -- namely, before the year 1383 and around 1400 -- but rather of the plague that occurred around the year 1500, during which the infected (as our grandfathers related) were sent away near the Monte di Sant'Angelo, above an ancient square cryptoporticus, built near the Fountain called Pesciariello; though the ruins suggest that the house for the infected was built at the time of that earlier and so prolonged plague."

[29] So he writes; and elsewhere he records that the church of St. John ad Curtim is a parish church, so called because it was the chapel of the Princes, and therefore near the "Curtim," that is, the palace of the Prince; What those three churches are. and that it is dedicated to St. John the Baptist. The noble monastery of St. John for nuns, built by Aligernus, Abbot of Monte Cassino, in the year 967, about a hundred and fifty years after its first foundation, added to the title of St. John the Baptist the title of the Evangelist. The church of St. Eligius, a work of the Franks, was in the year 1574 granted to the venerable Clerics Regular Theatines, whereas in former times it was customarily served by hired secular priests.

[30] At Milan also there are celebrated relics of St. Sebastian, a salutary protection against the pestilential plague that raged in the year 1575 and afterward. Concerning this matter Charles a Basilica Petri, Bishop of Novara, in his Life of St. Charles Borromeo, Book 4, chapter 5, writes thus: "I shall first relate what the Council of the city of Milan, The Milanese vow a church to him, and other things, with the consent also of the rest who were in the city, vowed to God and to His Martyr Sebastian -- whom they invoked as their intercessor both on account of similar benefits formerly obtained through him, and because, born of a Milanese mother, he had also been educated at Milan. They therefore vowed to build a new church to the Martyr, the old one having been demolished; to contribute the means for a daily Mass to be celebrated in it; to observe the feast day of the Martyr, including a fast on the preceding day; to visit the church itself each year on the day of the vow, that is, on the Ides of October, and likewise on the feast of the Martyr, with solemn gifts; and to offer a precious vessel that would be a worthy receptacle for a bone of the same Martyr. Other things they added which it is not necessary to explain here. Charles, moreover, in order to favor as greatly as possible the fitting and proper fulfillment of the vow, on the days when the people were to assemble, together with the Clergy, having visited the church and performed the sacred rites with full ceremony, brought about a most devout celebration; and the following year, when the city had been restored from its prolonged affliction, with the design of the building approved, he laid the first stone according to the established rite of the Church." That book records many other things nobly accomplished by St. Charles at that time.

[31] Joseph Ripamontius also writes, in Part 4, Book 4, of the Histories of the Church of Milan: "Moreover, when the solemn procession was completed, as if celestial truces had expired, there were carnage and heaps of the dying and everywhere funerals and the aspect of a city hateful to God. And Charles was still diligently searching on every side for all expiatory remedies to avert the plague. Then there came to his mind the remembrance of the Martyr Sebastian, at the urging of St. Charles Borromeo, by whose favor and commendation with God it is recorded that cities were of old freed from a similar disaster. Reckoning him to be a citizen of this city by maternal origin, he hoped that in so great a public calamity the Saint would not fail a second fatherland, as it were, if he were piously and purely invoked. And so, after processions had already been held at the principal churches and the people had been provided with the sacred mysteries, having preached to the astonished multitude about invoking the aid of the Martyr, he urged them to make a public vow to him. He affirmed that before the Kalends of January the plague would be driven away; and promising a remedy for the plague; let them only believe and abstain from sins, and live innocently, committing all else to God and their patron. The city believed after the event that this had been a prophecy of a soul divinely foreseeing, and when vows were duly made, as indeed happened. although bodies did not immediately begin to be healthy, nevertheless the carnage and heaps of the dead grew somewhat smaller each day. By the day that had been predicted to bring an end to the evil, the plague departed from the city, and the citizens erected a church to the Martyr their liberator on the very site where the old chapel of the same Martyr had stood, and they brought gifts there; and from that time the feast of St. Sebastian is observed each year as a holiday in the city."

[32] The celebration of that day is solemn; the office is of St. Sebastian, with a commemoration of Saints Solutor and his companion Martyrs; no mention of St. Fabian. There are four prayers; three are indicative of health or other benefits obtained or hoped for. The first: The solemnity of his feast thereafter. "Multiply, we beseech you, O Lord, your blessing upon your people; and those whom you comfort with the frequent offices of your holy Martyr Sebastian, pursue with the generosity of your benefits, that they may rejoice both to be instructed by heavenly gifts and to be aided by fitting support. Through the Lord." The second: "Grant, we beseech you, O Lord our God, that amid the adversities which we endure as the penalty for our sins, what our confidence does not obtain, may the intercession of your blessed Martyr Sebastian procure. Through the Lord, etc." The third: "Grant, we beseech you, almighty God, that we may enjoy without ceasing the assistance of him whose patronage, by your generosity, we have obtained. Through the Lord." The fourth, from the Common: "O God, who made your blessed Martyr Sebastian strong in the virtue of constancy in his passion, etc."

Section VII. The Relics Brought to Soissons.

[33] At length the relics of the glorious Martyr were also conveyed to Gaul and deposited in the church of St. Medard at Soissons, Brought to Soissons, where they shone with innumerable miracles. Concerning these, Einhard writes in his Annals, most accurately edited after others by Andrew du Chesne, volume 2 of the French Writers, at the year of Christ 826: "While these things were happening, Hilduin, Abbot of St. Denis the Martyr, sending to Rome, with the consent of Eugene, then Prelate of the Holy Apostolic See, to his petitions, received the bones of the most blessed Martyr of Christ, Sebastian, and placed them in the basilica of St. Medard near the city of Soissons; where, while they still lay unburied in the casket in which they had been brought, beside the tomb of St. Medard, so great a multitude of signs and prodigies shone forth, so great a power of miracles in every kind of healing gleamed through divine grace in the name of the same most blessed Martyr, (where many miracles were performed) that neither the number of those miracles can be comprehended by any mortal, nor their variety expressed in words. Some of them are reported to be of such astonishment that they would exceed the belief of human weakness, were it not certain that our Lord Jesus Christ, for whom he suffered, can do all things that He wills through His divine power, in which every creature in heaven and on earth is subject to Him." Sigebert of Gembloux rendered these same things in nearly the same words, though somewhat more concisely, at the year 825.

[34] The writer of the Life of Louis the Pious, edited by the same distinguished Andrew du Chesne, a contemporary of Louis himself and of Einhard, writes at the same year: "At this same time Hilduin, Abbot of the monastery of Blessed Denis, sent monks to Rome as bearers of his petition to Eugene, Prelate of the Holy Roman See, requesting that the bones of the Blessed Martyr Sebastian be transmitted to him. The Lord Apostolic, satisfying his desire, sent through the aforesaid envoys the remains of the most sacred soldier of Christ. These, received most devoutly by the aforesaid man, and meanwhile placed, together with the portable casket just as they had been brought, beside the body of Blessed Medard -- while they rested there, God through the presence of their arrival bestowed upon mortals so great an abundance of miracles that their multitude exceeds number, and their quality surpasses belief; unless one believes with those ears to which it is persuasion that nothing resists the Divine command, and that all things are possible to him who believes." Marianus Scotus writes at the year 828, and Lambert of Hersfeld at 826: "Hilduin transferred the bones of the holy Martyr Sebastian to Gaul."

[35] A part of the body, not the entire body. Only certain bones, and not the whole body of the Martyr, were translated, since even now many parts of his relics remain at Rome. Ado of Vienne, who lived in the same age, attests to this. He writes thus in his Chronicle: "In the time of this Emperor, a part of the body of Blessed Sebastian the Martyr was brought to the city of Soissons, where many wondrous things were bestowed upon the sick in praise of almighty God -- various kinds of healings."

[36] The anniversary commemoration of the Translation in the Martyrologies. The record of this translation is preserved in the Martyrologies, both on this day and on December 9, on which it occurred in the year 826, when the Dominical letter was G. That day was then a Sunday, as is stated in the History of the Translation, number 44, and indeed the second Sunday of Advent, on which at the Introit, as they call it, of the Mass, is sung: "O people of Zion, behold the Lord shall come to save the nations." On that day, therefore, the fifth day before the Ides of December, Wandelbert writes:

"We celebrate Sebastian on the fifth, translated from the City, At which the Gallic countryside exults in its own Patron; For whom a mighty temple rises, and an altar, And gleaming summits rivaling the grandeur of old."

The same author, on January 20:

"The third after the thirteenth shines with Bishop Fabian; With whom Sebastian is joined in equal virtue, Borne from Rome, whom glad Soissons now frequents."

On the same December 9, the manuscript Martyrology of St. Mary of Utrecht reads: "The Translation of St. Sebastian the Martyr." Saussay, in his Gallican Martyrology, on the same day: "At Soissons, the reception of the relics of St. Sebastian the Martyr, a native of Narbonne. His venerable body, at the request of the Emperor Louis the Pious, induced by the prayers of Hilduin, Abbot of St. Medard, as well as by signs of divine inspiration, was conveyed from Rome, from the basilica bearing his name, by the concession of Pope Eugene II, to Soissons in Gaul, with great magnificence of divine glory, through Rodoin, Provost of the aforesaid monastery. The sacred burden was received, with every sign of piety and ritual celebration, by Rothard, Bishop of Soissons, who, after the eight-day and eight-night vigils that he had prescribed for the Clergy and people, placed the precious remains of the holy Martyr in the sacristy of the church of St. Medard, to be venerated with perpetual devotion, while at that very time miracles shone forth, by which the lame were raised up, the frenzied were healed, and demons were expelled. To behold the splendor of these marvels, the Emperor Louis Augustus himself, drawn by devotion, came to Soissons; and having purified his mind and laid aside his royal attire, he entered barefoot the basilica in which the glorious Martyr of Christ was resplendent, and, received by the Abbot Hilduin, after adoring the sacred relics, he witnessed the healing of eighteen sick persons. And thence, kindled with devotion, having bestowed royal gifts for the worship of the blessed guest, marveling at the mighty works of God of which he had been witness, he commended himself with his children and his kingdom to the patronage of the holy Martyr." So he writes, where he correctly reports that those relics were given by Eugene II, and not, as he had written on January 20, by Eugene I, who, having succeeded St. Martin, died on June 2 in the year 656.

[37] The history of this Translation was committed to writing by one who was present at the time, a monk in the monastery of St. Medard, A history written by a contemporary monk. as Andrew du Chesne noted in volume 1 of the French Writers; and this is evident from what the author himself writes at number 29: "Certainly he who here deigned to admit us, though unworthy, to his own funeral rites, etc."; and at number 61: "the following night the appointed time for morning assembly had arrived, when behold, while we were seated at the reading, a certain man was brought to us"; number 83: "May his profitable patronage, we pray, benefit both us and them, who by the generosity of our Fathers have deserved to become partakers of so great a pledge"; and number 84: "Which matter (concerning the nocturnal terrors heard at Soissons before the arrival of the relics) I heard in a consistent account from many who survived to our times, without suspicion of falsehood"; etc.

[38] This commentary of his was communicated to us by our Peter Francis Chifflet, whence published here. from an ancient codex of the Church of Besancon, in which there followed a letter of Odilo to Ingrannus on the translation of Saints Tiburtius, Marcellinus, Peter, and others, concerning which elsewhere. The same history had been transcribed by Nicholas Belfort, a Canon Regular in the monastery of St. John of the Vine at Soissons, from the archives of the monastery of St. Medard, but he had somewhat abridged it afterward. We collated the Chifflet copy with his autograph. He had appended the Privilege of Bishop Rothard given to the monastery of St. Medard, together with the letters of Louis the Pious concerning the donation of Caucy, of which mention is made in chapter 19, number 88, and a diploma of Charles the Bald. But these, since they are not altogether necessary to our subject, we have omitted; and they are of such a nature that anyone inclined to cavil might perhaps suspect their questionable authenticity. And Belfort acknowledges that he expunged certain redundancies, preserving nevertheless the sense and even the phrasing -- a course that would undoubtedly have won greater favor with a reader devoted to antiquity had he given the text in its entirety, however prolix and perhaps unpolished. From him we have transcribed the brief commentary of Alexander Salnove on the same relics rescued from the fury of the Calvinist heretics, translated into Latin by Nicholas Bezancon.

[39] Andrew du Chesne, in volume 2 of the French Writers, recites certain passages from the same history of the Translation, from the manuscript of Michael Sublet, Abbot of Vendome. He attests that in that codex there exists a Preface addressed to Ingrannus, Abbot of St. Medard of Soissons, Its prologue exists elsewhere. from which he brings forth these words: "Einhard (whom others indeed call Eginhard), surnamed the Wise, who in that age was considered distinguished, making mention of this most reverend inhabitant of heaven in his account of the deeds of the Emperors Charlemagne and his son Louis, among other things that he composed in his annual course, did not think it unprofitable to strengthen mortal deeds with immortal attestation, speaking thus: 'While these things were happening, Hilduin, Abbot of the monastery of St. Denis, etc.'" Moreover, this same Ingrannus is the Abbot to whom both our author here and Odilo dedicated their respective accounts of the Translation of Saints Tiburtius and others. Is the author perhaps the same person, namely Odilo? We can affirm nothing with certainty.

Section VIII. Relics of St. Sebastian in Various Places in Gaul, Belgium, and Spain.

[40] Many Gallic churches were thereafter adorned with a portion of the same relics, or with some object consecrated by their touch. Some of his relics at Maglieu: For first the monastery of Maglieu among the Arverni was given a portion of the linen in which the relics had been wrapped, and was thereby distinguished with innumerable miracles, of which mention is made here at number 83.

[41] Saussay is the authority that others are preserved at Toulouse in the monastery called St. Mary the Golden, belonging to monks of the Order of St. Benedict, writing thus in his Supplement to January 20: At Toulouse: "At Toulouse, the veneration of the relics of St. Sebastian, the most illustrious Martyr, a native of Narbonne, which, enclosed in a great silver casket, are preserved with great devotion among the ascetics of St. Mary the Golden and are exhibited to the devout people for veneration, especially on this day."

[42] The same Saussay relates the following concerning other churches: "Moreover, from so rich a treasury certain precious relics, plucked forth, have ennobled very many churches of the most Christian kingdom; and these, adorned with the relics of this renowned Martyr, elsewhere throughout Gaul: more than by any exquisite collection of jewels or magnificence of structure, rightly glory. Among these, after the church of Paris, the most celebrated of all, the church of Trier is especially commended for this distinction; then those of Sens, Troyes, Brussels, and other cathedrals, besides abbatial and countless other churches."

[43] But he incorrectly numbers the church of Brussels among the cathedrals. It is true that, with the august basilica of St. Gudula, in Belgium, at Brussels; augmented by a distinguished college of Canons, and a most ample city not unworthy of that honor, it has not yet attained it on account of the proximity of Mechlin, to whose Archbishop, the Primate of Belgium, it is subject. Nor are those relics preserved in the church of St. Gudula itself (even though they were said to have been bequeathed by the last will of our glorious Princess Isabella Clara Eugenia), but rather in the court oratory of the Princes. Concerning these relics, the distinguished Aubert Miraeus writes thus in his Belgian Calendar, at January 20: "The entire hand of this most celebrated and most valiant Martyr, renowned throughout the whole world, was sent as a gift through Lothair, Archbishop of Trier, to Albert of Austria, Prince of the Belgians; who adorned it with diamonds, gems, and a golden tabernacle; and it is preserved at Brussels in the palace with great veneration." So Miraeus. Moreover, among the relics of the court, there is also a bone of the same Saint, and part of the iron tip of one of the arrows with which he was pierced, as well as certain other small relics of his.

[44] Nor is Antwerp bereft of so great a protection. For this House of the Society of Jesus possesses an oblong bone At Antwerp; and another small bone of the same most valiant athlete. And that one indeed, together with relics of Saints Willibrord, John the Baptist, and others, was given by Everard Botterus to John Walter Viringus, a priest of our Society, and by him to Charles Scribanius, Rector of the college not yet erected into a professed house, on August 11, 1611. Botterus had received them from the devout Prioress of the monastery of St. Agnes, of the Order of St. Augustine, at Utrecht, where they had formerly been accustomed to be held in great veneration and to be reverently visited by the Bishops. These facts are established by authentic testimonies preserved in our archive.

[45] At Arrouaise; Among the relics brought also to Arrouaise, a monastery situated in Belgium, as was said above on January 13 in the life of Blessed Heldemar, its founder, chapter 9, number 17, by Cono, Cardinal of Palestrina, certain relics of St. Sebastian are also enumerated.

[46] At Tournai, John Cousin, Book 3, chapter 36, of his History of Tournai, is the authority that some relics also exist at Tournai in the cathedral church. Arnold Raisse, in his Belgian Sacred Treasury, reports that something of his vestment is preserved in the cathedral church of Arras.

[47] Let us join Spain to Gaul, where the relics of this same saintly hero serve both as a protection and an ornament. In Spain, There is no doubt that they are distributed to many churches throughout the entire kingdom; we have ascertained three: Compostela, Seville, and Malaga. At Seville indeed, and in the whole diocese, at Seville, they observe the solemnity that they call a Double of the second class, because a bone of his arm is there preserved, enclosed in a silver reliquary fashioned in the form of a human arm. Two colleges of Canons on that day (or, if winter flooding has prevented it, on the first convenient day) assemble in solemn procession at the basilica of St. Sebastian situated outside the city walls. An arm of the same Saint, or some other bone, at Malaga, is also to be found in the college of the Society of Jesus at Malaga. Our Anthony Quintaduenas reports these things in his book On the Saints of Seville. At Malaga, moreover, the church of St. Sebastian the Martyr, handed over to the Society of Jesus, which is among the most ancient in that town, is customarily visited by a procession of public suppliants proceeding from the basilica of St. Mary the Greater, and thence to the church of St. John, as our Martin de Roa writes in his book on the Antiquities of Malaga. At Compostela. The Licentiate Molina, in his Description of Galicia, Part 1, folio 5, attests that the blood of St. Sebastian is preserved at Compostela in the metropolitan church of St. James. It was undoubtedly wiped up and stored in some vessel (as was the custom at that time) by Irene or by Lucina -- the former when she tended his wounds, the latter when she washed and buried his dead body.

Section IX. The Origin of the Monastery of Ebersberg in Bavaria. Relics of St. Sebastian There.

[48] "Among the Bavarians also, the Saint has his most noble abodes in churches, where he succors those who pray and drives away a thousand kinds of disease, and corrects a thousand defects of the body: St. Sebastian at Ebersberg, etc." At Ebersberg in Bavaria. So writes our Matthew Rader in the preface to volume 1 of Holy Bavaria. Ebersberg is an ancient Bavarian monastery between the rivers Inn and Isar. Since its origins are variously set forth by Aventinus, Wiguleus Hund, Christopher Gewold, and others, we shall here give them as succinctly and clearly explained by our Andrew Brunner, volume 2, Book 8, of the Bavarian Annals, so that the ancient veneration of St. Sebastian there may be established. He writes thus at the year 974.

[49] "The brother of the holy Bishop (Conrad of Constance, who died that year) is called Rudolph in the Weingarten Annals, father of Richardis, who, married to one of the greatest Counts of Bavaria, and being childless, founded three monasteries with her husband: Ebersberg for men, and Ruhbach and Geisenfeld, each assigned to nuns. That Richardis was buried at Ebersberg is recorded in the same annals; The origin and name of that place. to which the domestic writers related things not entirely consistent. However they may stand, since they contain the origins and successions of the family of the Counts of Sempt, one of the most distinguished among the few in Bavaria, they will be inserted here, in what I believe to be not an inappropriate place. The Counts of Sempt, whom Aventinus, with an affectation of polished pronunciation, called the Senones, owe their name to the river Sempt, which flows through their territory, and their origin to Sighard; who, commonly believed to be the grandson or great-grandson of Carloman, King of Bavaria, is said to have given the name to the castle and church of Ebersberg from a boar of marvelous size -- about which no fewer tales are told today, adorned with poetical fables, than about the Erymanthian boar -- the founding of which was not without oracles, and to have transmitted a new designation to posterity, so that they were called Counts of Sempt and Ebersberg."

[50] "He met his death in the year 906, leaving his son Ratholdus, who attached religious priests from the community of St. Augustine to the church, appointing Hunfrid, a man of most celebrated reputation, to give them their rule. The Ebersberg records, which I follow in good faith, report that King Conrad appointed the same Ratholdus to defend the Carinthian frontier for his brave and successful exploits against the Hungarians, and counted him among his friends. When Ratholdus was removed from earthly affairs in the nineteenth year of that century, Eberhard entered upon his paternal possessions. He was renowned for familiar commerce with the heavenly powers, so that he was believed to learn (a) future things from divine portents. At the urging of the Saints, A church was built he undertook a more august church in the year 928, and also erected a holier dwelling for the religious to be housed in, with his brother Adalbero and sister Willibirga sharing in the effort. Into the church he brought many bones of the Saints, and adorned with relics of St. Sebastian: especially the skull of the great Martyr Sebastian -- treasures of inestimable value and thenceforth sacrosanct to all of Bavaria."

[51] "And this is that Eberhard who, in the last desperate crisis of Bavaria, to whom the holy and victorious Count Eberhard bequeathed his own; not only withstood the force of the Hungarians in the castle of Ebersberg, trusting in God, but repulsed those attacking with heavy losses; and the same man, as legate of Henry, Duke of the Bavarians, routed and put to flight the same enemy in a memorable battle on the Lechfeld -- a battle of which every age will speak -- and drove the chieftains of that people to the cross at Regensburg. He lived celibate without care for posterity, content with God and St. Sebastian as his heir. When, on the point of death, he wished to transfer the estate of Ahaim to St. Sebastian, he could not bring his brother Adalbero, without whose consent such a thing could not lawfully be done, to agree. His brother compelled by heaven to assent. For such meanness the brother soon paid heavy penalties, his house being exhausted by continual deaths, and Udalric, the most beloved of his sons, carrying about in his wasting body the image of death; until, having appeased the heavenly powers, bound by a perpetual vow, he received his son back from the altar of St. Sebastian, whole and flourishing again in his former vigor."

[52] "He, his parents having died around the year 969, now the head of the entire family, raised six children from Richardis, who is said to have been the daughter of Marquard, Prefect of the Carinthian Frontier; and, having most steadfastly defended the Ottonian party against Henry the Bavarian and his allies, [Udalric, the brother's son, and Richardis, holy spouses, give the place to the Benedictines.] he was the author of the solemn consecration ceremony, performed by Frederick, Bishop of Salzburg, of the church built by Eberhard forty-six years before; and in the year 990, when the community of St. Augustine abandoned the post, he brought a new colony of followers of St. Benedict to Ebersberg, with Reginbald summoned from the monastery of Augsburg to the sacred prefecture. He died with a reputation for sanctity in the year 1029, on March 11, sixteen years after his wife Richardis, who, happy beyond the common lot of mortals, refreshed by the vision of the Mother of God, is said to have received some foretaste of immortality while still alive. The noble tomb of both, carved in marble, is seen in the center of the church."

[53] "Udalric's brother Adalbero, in the village of Ruhbach situated on the river Barre, The piety of Udalric's brother's granddaughter: in the year 1011 founded a convent for nuns, as the letters of Henry, who was then Emperor, attest. Having then undertaken a pilgrimage to Palestine, he died on the journey. His wife Alberadis, stricken by the joyless news, refused to survive her husband and wasted away from grief of mind, together with the child she was carrying in her womb. Their surviving daughter Willibirgis, herself likewise unequal to mourning so many deaths, abandoned the world as far as she could, and voluntarily enclosed herself in her father's monastery, which had recently burned and been restored by her uncle Udalscalcus, and wished for the same tomb as her mother."

[54] "Finally, the Ebersberg Annals assign to Udalric's son, who was likewise called Adalbero, a wife who was the daughter of Rudolph of Altdorf, and of his sons and they name her not Richardis but Richlindis, or Richildis, who would not have come under her husband's authority before the year 995 of that century; in this they agree, that the marriage was childless; and that therefore a young man of rare disposition named Conrad, worthy of that fortune, was adopted as heir to such great wealth; who, however, being short-lived, disappointed the hopes of his parents before his time. No more fortunate was Eberhard the younger, Udalric's other son, Count of Moosburg, whose male offspring having died prematurely. By the river Ilm he built a religious dwelling for consecrated virgins and set over them his granddaughter Gerbirga; whose example her mother Willibirgis, daughter of Eberhard, emulated, and when she had devoted her old age to God and virtue in the same place, she set a most beautiful seal upon her life."

[55] "Moreover, Adalbero, lest he yield anything to his brother in the pursuit of virtue, offended by the narrowness of the Ebersberg monastery, leveled it to the ground and rebuilt it far more magnificently in the year 1037, and enriched it with a great accession of goods; Ebersberg restored and as his generosity grew day by day, he finally named St. Sebastian his sole heir, so that in this way he too, together with his wife, might bear the title of founder of the monastery -- for the first glory of that deed had already been claimed by his ancestors." So Brunner.

[56] As to when and from where the relics of St. Sebastian were brought to Ebersberg, our George Stengel informed us by his letter dated February 20, 1634, from Munich, attesting that in the Chronicle, or history of Ebersberg, Book 1, chapter 9, the following is read: When and from where the skull of St. Sebastian was brought there: "I think it is doubtful to no one that Count Eberhard and Provost Hunfrid, during the interval while the monastery was being completed, during that six-year period, dispatched and sent various persons, both religious and courtiers and secular lords, to Rome especially and to other pious places of that kind, to seek relics of Christ and Mary and other Saints -- relics most necessary for the future consecration of the new church and its altars. Nor indeed was it difficult to obtain some relics from most sources for so pious a cause, especially from those who had learned from the envoys sent to them about the prophecy of the holy seers Conrad von Hewa and Gebhard of Strasbourg, about the wonderful dream of Eberhard, and about his deliberation with Hunfrid concerning the building of a church and monastery in this place. Among other relics, and many at that, they received from Rome, I think first of all, the largest part -- namely, the entire upper part -- of the skull of St. Sebastian the Martyr, together with many other small pieces of his sacred bones, a treasure truly most great; then something from the bones of St. Stephen the Protomartyr and of Bishop Maternus, as will be made clear from what follows. I would believe that these were given as gifts and transmitted here from Rome by the Supreme Pontiff Stephen VII, who is recorded to have been in the Pontificate between the years 929 and 934." So it is written there.

[57] Rader mentions these relics in his Annotations to the Greek Menaia, December 18: "The sacred crown of the head, or skull, of St. Sebastian," he says, "is venerated at Ebersberg in Bavaria with immense devotion by all of Germany -- a sure protection against pestilence." Nevertheless, it is by no means the entire skull of the Martyr that is at Ebersberg, yet it is not the whole skull. but only the upper shell; (the lower and posterior part of the head being retained, as was written above, by the Vatican basilica.) It is so enclosed in silver that one may even drink from it, and it is placed upon the silver head of a statue of St. Sebastian. Arrows are also consecrated in it, beneficial against the plague. Innumerable votive offerings of every condition, sex, and nation are seen there, memorials of health obtained.

Section X. Other Relics of St. Sebastian in Bavaria.

[58] The capital city of Bavaria and seat of its Dukes, Munich, possesses another relic of the great Martyr. An august church dedicated to the Saint, not far from his palace, A church of the same Saint at Munich. was commissioned in the year 1588 by Ferdinand I of Bavaria, son of Duke Albert V and Anna of Austria, daughter of the Emperor Ferdinand I, born in the year 1550 on the very feast of St. Sebastian; whence his devotion to the Saint was innate from his very birth, and throughout his entire life he venerated him as his Patron and guardian. Nor is it an empty observation that January 27, the eighth day from the anniversary feast of the Saint, was the last day of his mortal life, in the year 1608.

[59] Other relics of his there: When that basilica was dedicated according to the customary rite of the Church, William V, Duke of Bavaria, Ferdinand's brother, during the solemn sacrifice, in an illustrious ceremony, offered the lower jawbone of St. Sebastian, to which nine teeth still firmly adhered, attesting by public documents that he had formerly received it from Rome as a pious gift from the Supreme Pontiff.

[60] Many years later, Maximilian, son of William, grandson of Albert, Duke of the Bavarians, had war against Wolfgang Theodore Raittenau, Archbishop of Salzburg. carried against plague to the camp: Before battle was joined, a pestilence spread throughout the camp and caused anxiety to the devout Duke, and turned his mind to seeking aid from the Saints. He requested that the relics of the Martyr Sebastian be brought to him where he was encamped. Nor was the devotion ungrateful to the heavenly powers, nor was the trust of the excellent Prince in vain. He himself remained unharmed, and his entire court was kept immune from contagion, preserved by this salutary protection.

[61] The Duke's piety was kindled by this benefit. Therefore, when he returned victorious to Munich, given to the court chapel, he asked Mary, the widow of his uncle Ferdinand, to give him that sacred treasure, the relics of his savior Sebastian. The authority and piety of the petitioner prevailed, though she was reluctant. There was added, however (as was right and proper), the consent of Stephen, Bishop of Freising. The relics were then transferred to the chapel of the ducal palace, in which other illustrious and nearly innumerable relics of the Saints are preserved.

[62] But lest it should appear that no relic of his patron had been left to the basilica erected by Ferdinand, the Duke presented a not inconsiderable portion of the arm of the same holy Martyr, other relics assigned to the former church; attesting that he had formerly been given it by the Supreme Pontiff while he was at Rome. In this church a monument was erected to Ferdinand and the Counts of Wartenberg his posterity, in which both the heart of Ferdinand and the body of his wife Mary are interred. Ferdinand William, and others sent from elsewhere. Ferdinand's son, Bishop of Osnabruck, sent to Munich in the year 1626, together with many other relics from Lower Saxony to adorn the same basilica, a not inconsiderable portion of the head of St. Sebastian, along with a public attestation of the same. This information we received from Maximilian, the brother of the same Francis William, a priest of our Society.

Section XI. Relics and Cult of St. Sebastian Elsewhere.

[63] It is not our intention to collect all the relics of the same Martyr that are reported to exist elsewhere; and some of them are perhaps those of another Sebastian, from the Theban Legion, concerning whom see January 2, or of other Saints bearing the same name. Some were formerly at Brunswick. We shall indicate three that have come to our notice. The first were at Brunswick. Thus the Chronological Compilation published by John Pistorius, from the library of Henry Petraeus, at the year 1473: "In the same year a plague raged at Brunswick throughout the whole summer; but alas, it was grievous to this monastery. For there died from among our Brothers the stronger and younger Priests, seven in number. Then scarcely a year later our senior died, along with two other Priests of our monastery. In the same year the relics of St. Sebastian the Martyr were introduced into the present city with a solemn procession of all the Clergy and people, through the Brothers of the Premonstratensian Order, at the promotion of the Most Serene Prince and Duke Henry. The first station with the Mass in honor of the Martyr was held in this monastery on the day after Trinity Sunday; afterward at St. Blaise; then at St. Catherine; and thence at St. Martin."

[64] At Wesel, a church dedicated to the Saint, in fulfillment of a vow. Wesel is a rich and splendid town of Cleves, at the mouth of the Lippe. Here, in the year 1332, a church of the Augustinian Hermits was dedicated to St. Sebastian by Volckard, Suffragan of Munster. The plague had raged there not long before in a horrible manner, to such a degree that very many were carried out daily to burial; but as soon as a public vow had been made to St. Sebastian, it subsided. This was the occasion for consecrating the church to him. Nicholas Crusenius mentions this vow in Part 3, chapter 13, of the Augustinian Monasticon, writing thus: "At Cleves-Wesel, a town of the diocese of Munster, when a contagious disease was raging, for the appeasing of divine wrath, by a vow of the citizens and the Magistrate, and at their expense, a monastery of the Hermits of St. Augustine was erected together with a church in honor of St. Sebastian, religious being summoned from the nearby house of Marienthal, whose assistance the citizens had frequently invoked during this scourge of God, since when almost all the Priests of the entire town had died, only the Augustinian Fathers from among the Clergy survived unharmed."

[65] Recently Francis von Dietrichstein, Cardinal and Bishop of Olomouc in Moravia, A magnificent chapel in Moravia. erected on an elevated hill near the town of Nikolsburg a notable church dedicated to St. Sebastian, and thereafter adopted him as his and his country's Patron for averting the plague, and at the public diet, with the unanimous consent of all the Nobles, decreed that his feast should be a solemn one, with even the noise of the marketplace falling silent.

[66] Erhard Winheim is the authority, in his Sanctuary of Cologne, that two relics of the same Saint exist at Cologne: Other relics of the Saint, at Cologne; in the parish church of St. Lawrence, a portion of the skull of the holy Martyr; and in the church of the Augustinian Hermits, the lower jawbone. Whether this be a part of that which is at Munich, or of another Saint of the same name, let others debate. "The third confraternity," he says, "among the Augustinians, established under the honor of St. Sebastian by the faithful of Christ, easily the foremost among the others in the number and dignity of its members, took its beginning from the donation of the lower jawbone of St. Sebastian, which the illustrious and gilded Knight, Sir Theodore van Hirtz, assigned to this basilica in the year 1269, as is established from the records of his family. This Theodore van Hirtz of Landskroon was buried with his wife Gudila in the choir of the church of the Augustinian Fathers at Cologne." Aegidius Gelenius, in the booklet entitled "Cologne Suppliant," attests that this jawbone was brought from Rome by Theodore and can be seen enclosed in a large reliquary, or monstrance.

[67] likewise other relics in the same place. The same author mentions two other relics of the same holy Martyr kept there: in the metropolitan basilica of St. Peter, an arm; and in the monastery of the Dominicans, an arrow with which he was pierced. And he attests that the people of Cologne have frequently experienced the certain aid of the same Saint against pestilence.

ACTS

BY ST. AMBROSE THE BISHOP

from several ancient manuscripts.

Sebastian, Defender of the Roman Church, Martyr (Saint)

BHL Number: 7543

FROM MANUSCRIPTS.

CHAPTER I.

St. Sebastian Encourages the Martyrs.

[1] St. Sebastian Sebastian, a most Christian man, educated in the region of Milan (a) but a citizen of Narbonne, was so dear to the Emperors Diocletian and Maximian that they entrusted to him the command of the first cohort chief centurion of the first cohort, and ordered him always to stand in their presence. For he was a man of complete prudence, truthful in speech, just in judgment, provident in counsel, faithful in what was entrusted to him, vigorous in intercession, endowed with every virtue: conspicuous in goodness, and distinguished in every integrity of character. The soldiers venerated him as a father; all who presided over the palace revered him with the most affectionate regard. For he was a true worshipper of God, and it was inevitable that one whom the grace of God had pervaded should be loved by all.

[2] secretly a Christian, He therefore rendered diligent service to Christ daily, but he conducted himself in such a way that this remained hidden from the sacrilegious Emperors -- not because he was terrified by fear of suffering, nor because he was constrained by love of his patrimony, but for this purpose alone he played the hidden soldier of Christ (b) beneath the cloak of earthly empire: that he might strengthen the spirits of Christians He fortifies the Martyrs: whom he saw failing under torments, and restore to God the souls that the devil was striving to take away.

[3] And so, after he had rescued many minds of Martyrs from the fear of suffering and spurred them on to the crown of perpetual glory, it became apparent who he was, for a light could not remain hidden in darkness. He consoles Marcellian and Marcus, captive with their servants: Accordingly, to those most distinguished men, the twin brothers Marcellian and Marcus, who had been placed in chains for the name of Christ, he daily offered consolation; and to them as well as to their servants, with whom they had been arrested, he provided the salutary counsels of faith: by which they might spurn the fleeting blandishments of the world and not fear the momentary kinds of torments.

(a) So most codices; some read "a citizen of the region." St. Ambrose in his Commentary on Psalm 118, Octonary 20: The birthplace of St. Sebastian: "Let us make use of the example of the Martyr Sebastian, whose feast day is today. He was a native of Milan. Perhaps the persecutor had already departed, or had not yet come into these parts, or was milder. He noticed that there was either no struggle here or that it was lukewarm. Martyrdom voluntarily sought. He set out for Rome, where fierce persecutions were burning on account of zeal for the faith. There he suffered, that is, there he was crowned. And so there, where he arrived as a guest, he established the dwelling place of perpetual immortality." But Baronius, volume 2, at the year 284, number 12, writes that St. Ambrose and others report that, being of a Narbonese father and a Milanese mother, he was born at Milan. Metaphrastes reports that he was born at Milan, but is silent about his parents. Saussay says he was born at Narbonne in Viennese Gaul, of a Gallic father and a Milanese mother. Neither Tristan Calchi nor Joseph Ripamontius disagree; the latter adds that the mother, left a widow by her husband's early death, returned to Milan with her only son. Rabanus and various manuscripts: "On the same day, of St. Sebastian of Milan, who in childhood, etc." Metaphrastes says he was of illustrious birth. The Greek Menaia: "He was a member of the Senatorial order." William Catel, in his History of Occitania, Book 2, attests that the house of St. Sebastian is still pointed out at Narbonne, where a church was afterward erected that is called "of the Nativity of St. Sebastian."

(b) Some codices read "hidden military service."

CHAPTER II.

The Steadfastness of Marcellian and Marcus Severely Assailed.

[4] When they rested in these most blessed consolations and endured the blows of the executioners with steadfast spirit, When they are condemned to death, they were ordered to undergo the capital sentence -- on this condition, namely: that if at the very moment when they were to be beheaded they consented to sacrifice, they would be restored to their parents, wives, children, and property. For they were, as we have said, not only men of the most distinguished birth, but also wealthy (a) in their possessions. Their father was named Tranquillinus, and their mother was called Marcia; their parents obtain a reprieve of thirty days: who followed them together with their wives and children, for they were led by an excessive affection for their grandchildren. Hence it came about that they obtained from Agrestius Chromatius (b), Prefect of the City of Rome, a reprieve of thirty days, during which time negotiations would be conducted with them, so that they might consent to offer incense to the idols.

[5] friends attempt to pervert them; And so their friends, approaching them, began to say: "Whence comes to you so hard a mind and so iron a heart, that you allow (c) the gray hairs of your father to be cast aside and bring new pangs of childbirth to your already decrepit mother? For she overcame the pangs of her labor with consolations, since in one delivery she bore two sons and poured forth upon the father a twofold love of children. But now there is an incurable grief, an inconsolable pain, an irremediable torment, an incomparable travail (d), by which hope and joy are taken away, life is despised, glory is spurned, and with all feelings of affection cast aside, the atrocity of death is sought (e) rather than feared. We beseech you, O dearest friends, at last put an end to these disasters, and remember, at least when reminded, that you are the fathers of sweet children."

[6] While their friends were saying these things and others like them, the wretched mother arrived, crying out her misery, and with her head uncovered, displaying the white hairs of her old age, she tore in their sight the garment that covered her breast; the mother assails them with various blandishments. and before all who wept, she showed them the breasts they had suckled, now hanging with loose skin, and weeping and wailing she recalled the tender care she had lavished upon their infancy. She said therefore to them both: "You, my son, were always more affectionate to me; and you were more modest. In this one I bore my own image; in you I poured forth your father's countenance. You were more useful to your father; this one was more like him. Alas, wretched me! On every side incomparable sorrows surround me -- unheard-of misery and a double bereavement, comparable to no tribulations whatsoever. I pass over sons hastening voluntarily to death; if enemies were taking them from me, I would follow (f) through the midst of battle lines; if harsh judgments confined them, I would break into the prison, resolved to die there. This is a new kind of perishing, in which the executioner is begged to strike, life is desired that it may perish, and death is invited to come. This is a new grief, a new misery, in which the youth of children is willingly thrown away, and the pitiable old age of parents is forced to live."

[7] While the mother continued with these and similar words, the infirm father, now bowed with age, the father with complaints, was brought in, supported by the hands of servants, and scattering the dust of the earth upon his swan-white head, he lifted up these words to heaven: "I have come to bid farewell to sons who voluntarily set out for death, so that everything I had prepared for my sons to provide at my burial, I, unhappy wretch, must now spend in burying my sons. O my sons, the staff of my old age and the twin light of my heart, born happily and raised prosperously, of most excellent memory and singular talent, imbued with the skill of all the liberal arts -- what sudden madness, born of your own will, has made you lovers of death? Never has death pleased the living; never has it inspired its own love in those about to die. To whomever its voice could reach, it was admitted by force and was never voluntarily received by any living person. If the naked debtor endures it under a greedy usurer, he can by no argument love it; and he is known not only not to love it, but to fear it. By what reason does he desire it who abounds in every good and owes nothing whatsoever to anyone? Come here, you elders, and mourn with me over my sons, you who feel that you have a father's heart. Come here, you young men, and weep over young men who willingly perish. Come here, fathers, and prevent such things, lest you suffer such things. Fail, O my eyes, by weeping, and draw down a darkness, pouring forth rivers of tears, lest I see cut down by the sword those at whom I trembled when a light rod touched them, at whom I shuddered when I saw them even slightly distressed."

[8] the wives with lamentations. And so while the old man was continuing with these and similar words, behold, the wives of both came with their own children, and presenting their little ones before the eyes of their husbands, they poured forth these wailing words: "To whom do you leave us as servants? To whom do you hand over the love of our marriage? Who do you think will be the masters of these infants, and the most greedy invaders of your houses? Who will seize your household? Who will divide among themselves the servants whom you raised? Alas, with what iron-hearted, with what impiously cruel character you despise your parents, reject your friends, cast off your wives, disown your children, and present yourselves as volunteers to the executioner!"

(a) Other codices read "enriched"; others, "adorned."

(b) Others read "Agrestinus." In the catalogue of Prefects of the City, one reads that under the consuls Carus and Carinus, the Prefect was Titucius Roburrus; under Carinus II and Numerianus, Ceionius Varus, who also held the prefecture the following year, when Diocletian and Aristobulus were consuls. It seems that the name of Chromatius was expunged from the records out of hatred for religion. Whether Vopiscus refers to him, or to Roburrus, or to Ceionius, is uncertain, when he writes in his Life of Carinus: "He made one of his Chancellors Prefect of the City." Chancellors were those who kept watch at the barriers of the Imperial House or of the courts.

(c) Others read "allows."

(d) Others read "grief."

(e) The three following words are absent from the St. Omer manuscript.

(f) Others read "I would follow through the midst of battle against the plunderers."

CHAPTER III.

St. Sebastian Strengthens the Wavering.

[9] Meanwhile, while the one party was speaking and the other replying, amid the tears of the wives and the sighs of the children, the soldiers of Christ began to soften and to bend their spirits toward sorrow. At this spectacle, as we said above, St. Sebastian was present, a man in every respect most Christian, Sebastian strengthens the wavering, whom his military dress concealed and the appearance of his cloak overshadowed. But when he saw the athletes of God wearied by the immense weight of the contest, placing himself in their midst, he said: "O most valiant soldiers of Christ! O most fully trained warriors of the divine battle! by setting before them the sufferings already endured; Through the surpassing strength of your courage you have valiantly attained the palm, and now through wretched blandishments you lay aside the eternal crown? Let the fortitude of Christ's soldiers now learn from you to be armed with faith rather than with iron. Do not cast away the trophies of your victories through the blandishments of women, and do not loose again from beneath your feet the necks of the vanquished enemy, now subject to you, for renewed and revived combats; for although his assault (a) against you has been savage and most unjust, yet his repeated wrath becomes more savage still. Raise up therefore from earthly affections (b) the trophy of your contest, glorious (c), and do not let it fall through the weeping of little children."

[10] "These people whom you see weeping would rejoice today if they could know what you know; for they think that this present life is the only one, eternal life; and that if it reaches its end, no portion of the living soul, when the body fails, can remain. For if they knew that there is another life, ignorant of death and knowing no sadness, in which immortality reigns and perpetual joys abide, assuredly they would hasten together with you to attain it, and counting this life as nothing, would desire that life which both endures in exultation and knows absolutely no end. and the present, fleeting life, For this life is a fugitive and so faithless that it has not been able to keep faith even with its own lovers. For from the beginning of the world it has deceived all who believed in it, disappointed all who waited for it, mocked all who presumed upon it, and has so rendered no one at all secure that it is proved to have been a liar to everyone. which persuades every kind of crime, And would that it were subject to the guilt of lying alone, and did not compel its lovers to run through every kind of crime. It gives gluttony (d) to the voracious, it forces drunkenness upon drunkards, it causes the shipwreck of modesty in adulterers, it hands over to the incestuous their execrable perversion; it advises the thief to steal, the wrathful man to rage, the liar to deceive. It sows divorces between spouses, quarrels between friends, lawsuits between the peaceable, injustice between the just, scandals between brothers. It takes away justice from judges, modesty from the chaste, skill (e) from craftsmen, and it removes discipline from morals. And to mention the higher crimes that it thrusts upon its lovers: if ever a brother killed his own brother, if a son murdered his father, if a friend was slain by a friend -- at whose instigation were these crimes committed, with what motive, what hope, what confidence were these abominations perpetrated? Was it not seduced by the love of the present life that men commit such things, and while they love it more than is just, they pursue men with unjust hatred? For why does the pirate slay the sailor, why does the robber kill the traveler, the rich man oppress the poor, the proud man the humble, and every criminal burden whatever innocent person he can? They do these evil things because they desire to serve this life, and imagine that in their love of it they will endure through more extended periods of time. Therefore, crimes are committed for no other reason than that this most wretched carnal life may be served by carnal men."

[11] "It is this life, in short, that commands crimes upon them, orders outrages, counsels injustice; and after it has been gorged with every cruelty which generates death. and every filth, it hands over those who served it to its daughter, that is, to perpetual death. For from it and from its womb eternal death was born, at the time when the first human beings served their gluttony and lust and the delights of the eyes; and therefore those who had been made for eternal life were cast down here into this region of death; and from here again they were plunged down to the underworld, carrying nothing with them except their sins. This, therefore, is the life that deceives you, O dearest friends, so that by unjust counsel you would call back your friends who are going to eternal life."

(a) Manuscript of Ripaille reads "constancy."

(b) Others read "full of affections"; others, "earthly appearances."

(c) Others read "of your glorious contest."

(d) Papias: "Gluto, so called from the gullet -- a glutton, a spendthrift."

(e) Some codices read "from arts."

CHAPTER IV.

The Punishments of Hell and the Joys of Heaven Impressed upon the Friends of the Martyrs.

[12] "It is this life that instigates you, O most holy parents, to call back your sons with the most foolish lamentations as they set out for the Court (a) of heaven, for incorruptible honor, He invites their wives and friends to the faith, for the friendship of the eternal Emperor. It is this life that has caused you, O most chaste wives of the Blessed ones, under the guise of affection, to impose impiety upon the minds of the Martyrs, and to bring death instead of liberation. For if they had consented to your recall, they could indeed have been with you for a short time; but afterward they would have been separated, and separated from you in such a way that you would never see them except amid perpetual torments -- where a devouring flame consumes the souls of unbelievers, where dragons consume the lips of blasphemers, by recalling the torments of hell; where serpents with their bites feed upon the breasts of the faithless. There the sound of wailing and groaning is heard, and a confused clamor wrung by the force of torments and extorted by the burning heat of the conflagration. Moreover, this very tribulation that will there receive the faithless is bounded by no term, enclosed by no end; nor is it consumed after the scorching of fierce flames, but he who has been burned is restored to renewed fires."

[13] "Allow them, therefore, to escape this punishment, and think of rescuing yourselves as well. Allow them meanwhile to attain the crown that is destined for them. Do not be afraid; for they will not be separated from you, but they go to prepare for you starry mansions in heaven, by the pleasures and joys of heaven: in which, together with you and with your children, you may remain in perpetual joy. And if the houses of yours made of stones delight you, how much more ought the beauty of those mansions to invite you, where there are dining halls radiant with pure gold, which have chambers (b) furnished with gems and pearls? There the crimson bloom of roses never fades; there flowering groves flourish in perpetual verdure; there fresh (c) meadows always flow with streams of honey; there the grasses are fragrant with saffron-colored flowers, and the breathing (d) fields are rich with most delightful fragrances. There breezes, possessing eternal life, waft a nectarous fragrance to the nostrils. There is light shining without the sun's ray, serenity without cloud; and without nocturnal darkness the eyes enjoy full day. There no occupations (e) impede pleasures, there no anxiety whatsoever disturbs security. Bellowing, wailing, groaning, lamentation, and grief are never heard or named there. Nothing foul or misshapen, gloomy, dark, dreadful, or sordid has ever been seen there by the eyes of its inhabitants. But with beauty amid the loveliness of groves, with splendor in the joyful and beautiful atmosphere, and with every elegance, the open eyes enjoy without intermission; and nothing at all that might disturb the mind is given to the ears. For there perpetually sound the instruments of hymns, which are chanted in praise of the King by Angels and Archangels. Bitterness and the harshness of gall have no place there; thunder has never been heard there, lightning and flashes have never appeared. There the shrubs produce cinnamon, and the trees burst forth with balsam. The fragrance of the air diffuses delight through every member, and food there produces no excrement. For just as the ears are sated by good news, the nostrils by a good fragrance, and the eyes by a good sight, and this refreshment cannot result in digestion, so there the food that the mouth receives, honeyed in taste, has for each person whatever flavor has delighted him. In short, whatever the soul has desired, all things attend upon its wish, and the most ready fulfillment serves its every delight."

[14] "For whoever in this mortal life shall have fought against his concupiscences and against his delights, whoever shall not have spent them here, will receive them whole from his Creator there. How these things are to be sought. For He so created man that he might live; and He placed death at the entrance of delight, so that those to whom it is pleasing to escape the fear of death might seek eternal life; and when they have learned that there is another life beyond this one, they may inquire whether that life too can be cut short by old age or ended by death; and when they have recognized it to be immortal, they may inquire whether that same eternity can bestow honor upon the just or inflict punishment upon the unjust."

(a) "Comitatus" often means the retinue of the Emperor; elsewhere the office of a Count; commonly now the place or district subject to his jurisdiction; here it signifies the Court. Comitatus. Thus Possidius in the Life of St. Augustine: "where at that time the Court of the younger Valentinian had been established." And St. Ambrose, On the Death of Valentinian: "he ordered her to come to the Court."

(b) Papias: "Zetae, rooms that have water beneath the floor." Zetae. Whence the force of this word? Turnebus, Adversaria, Book 24, chapter 4, interprets "zeta" as "diaeta"; and Casaubon on Lampridius calls it "zaeta"; but Salmasius writes "dieta" and "zeta." Thus "zabolum" for "diabolum," "Zabolenum" for "diabolenum," "Zarritum" for "diarritum" are observed, as Martinius also notes. But Passeratius derives it from the Greek "zein" (to boil), because it receives the sun from many sides, or from "zen" (to live). Here and elsewhere it signifies a kind of upper room. Below, "zetarius" means a keeper of the zetae, or dining halls.

(c) The St. Omer manuscript reads "verdant."

(d) Others read "whitening."

(e) Others read "occasion."

CHAPTER V.

The Use of Wealth and Pleasures.

[15] And when they have specifically proved this to be so, it remains for them to ask why riches were created by the Creator if by His law they are to be despised; or why the variety of quadrupeds, birds, and creeping things was made by the Creator if each one is to be renounced; or why by the Creator Himself a delight deeply implanted at the core was established in bodies as an incitement (b) to desire, if the use of it not only renders a man guilty before its Author, but also hands him over to perpetual fires. (c) The question is therefore asked: Why were riches given by the Creator if they are to be despised? We reply: These riches, made by the Creator, Why riches were created if they are to be despised. address their lovers in a certain fashion, saying: "Love us in such a way that we may never be separated from you. We cannot follow you when you die; but we can precede you while you live -- if only you yourselves command it. The greedy moneylender and the avaricious farmer -- the one entrusts gold to a man that he may receive it back doubled; the other commits various seeds to the earth, so that if it be possible he may seek (d) to receive a hundredfold for the single amount he puts in. And the debtor returns the gold to the creditor doubled, They are to be given to God, that they may be received back with interest, and the earth returns the seed to the farmer a hundredfold. O shame! A debtor is able to return interest to the moneylender, and the earth can restore seeds a hundredfold to its farmer -- yet God, if He receives His own riches from you, cannot return them to you multiplied?"

[16] "You now ask why He gave me riches, if they are to be returned to Him. He gave them to you so that you might know how great is the rest in them, how great the pleasure, how great the luxury, and how great the delights they can provide; so that through these things, having an attachment to your riches, you yourself might hand them over to be kept by our Lord Jesus Christ. If you refuse to entrust them to Him, either the voracity of the gullet will invade them, or lust, the mother of licentiousness, will tear them from you; or without doubt -- as you know very well -- death, attacking without warning, will so wrest them from you that you will never again be able either to possess or to see them. and kept safe for us in security, Would it not be the case that if you were passing through the midst of barbarian battle lines and found a strong man who had always loved you, who had even given you a sack full of money, saying to you: 'Give me for safekeeping the money I gave you, because these barbarians are plotting to take it from you, and when they have taken it from you they will tear you apart with their swords' -- would you not throw yourself at his feet and beg him to take it, since you would be certain that he would return more than he had received and would also free you from the enemy? It remains, then, that you can have Christ as the guardian of your riches."

[17] "Let us come to pleasures. He who has ears to hear will hear them saying to him: 'If you are truly our lovers, commend us to Him Pleasures too are to be reserved for the other life, who may restore us to you whole and unimpaired in that realm where we may remain with you forever. For in this life, if we wished to occupy our service to you, having been, as it were, used up here, we shall utterly deny you the service of our servitude there. Let us meanwhile serve those who are about to die, because for this reason the days of mortals have been shortened, so that we may serve the immortal forever. For so it is written: "For the sake of the elect the days shall be shortened," so that our servitude may not be long. Matthew 24:22. We serve the unjust, indeed, in a hasty (e) course; we serve the impious, the wicked, and the base, not willingly, but on account of Him who subjected us. Yet we shall be freed from the bondage of corruption which serve the wicked unwillingly: and shall be recalled to the liberty of the glory of the children of God.' All pleasure, therefore, when reserved for the future life, is not lost; nor indeed does he who hid treasures in the ground consider them to have perished; but rather he trusts that he possesses them all the more securely, the more secretly and safely he has placed them."

[18] "Let all the riches of pleasures, therefore, be laid up, so that they may not be touched in this life, which passes away; for if they are used here, they will be lost in that life which never passes away. Suppose that this life were extended to the span of a hundred years -- when the last day is past, will it not immediately seem as though it had never been, and to have left no more traces than the memory of a guest who stayed with us for a single day? here brief, in heaven eternal. But that other life endures forever and persists constantly; even as years pass it grows young and vigorous, and takes the beginning of its renewal from the point where the end is reached. O truly degenerate and bereft of all good things is he who is not captured by the love of so beautiful a life! -- who fears to surrender this life, which is destined to perish, and to receive that one which knows absolutely no perishing, in which pleasures and delights and riches and joys so begin that they know no end, so take their beginning that they absolutely cannot be finished."

[19] "For he who will not be a lover of so glorious a life not only loses this one and does not attain to that one, but also, as I have already said, is seized and held by perpetual death, in which there is unceasing flame, persisting tribulation, A metaphorical description of demons. and perpetual punishment; in which fierce angels dwell, whose arms are the heads of dragons, whose eyes hurl fiery arrows from themselves, whose teeth protrude like those of elephants and sting for torment like the tails of scorpions, whose voices sound like the roaring of lions, whose very appearance strikes terror and pain and death alike. And would that death could come to the aid of those placed in such straits! But, what is more bitter, they live for this purpose: that they may be governed by torments; they are restored for this purpose: that limbs consumed by the bites of serpents may be handled again by repeated and ever-renewed bites."

(a) Other codices read "of the gullet."

(b) Others read "defilement."

(c) Others read "Someone therefore asks: Why, etc."

(d) Others read "might be able."

(e) Others read "in an onslaught."

CHAPTER VI.

The Felicity and Glory of the Martyrs.

[20] "This is the whole cause of the contest, which teaches that the punishments of martyrdom must be endured with patience. Do not, therefore, O friends -- do not, O parents -- do not, O venerable wives of the Saints -- The Saint exhorts his hearers. do not call back those you love from life to death, lead them from joy to grief, drag them from light into darkness, and summon them from eternal rest to everlasting punishments. This would be like extending to them, together with the devil, as it were a fishhook to fish, and inviting them to a small sweetness within which lurks the torture of the entrails and a death wrung out by the torments of the inner parts. Would not this be to prefer fleeting joys to the compensation of eternal delights, and to consign them to eternal weeping so that they may laugh a very little? This is what we all condemn in the gladiators, who voluntarily offer themselves -- those who consider the pleasures of one year and do not consider what fruit springs from those very pleasures. And they are tortured by the blows of swords, or in mutual slaughter, with the covering of the belly split open, they display the inner parts of their entrails before the eyes of the populace, so that the fat which ill-advised feeding had produced may be offered to the devil to be devoured. By this counsel of the enemy, by which those men do these things, by this same counsel the Martyrs of God, who are going to eternal life, are being called back -- so that in order to live a life of but a few days, they may be entreated (a) to incur perpetual torments and not to fear perpetual death, which is especially to be dreaded."

[21] "To this argument you perhaps object: Why does a Christian not fear torments, and why is he not terrified by the present punishment of the torturer? Why Christians do not fear torments. For this reason he is not broken by fear, for this reason he is not led by pain: because he knows that by the price of a single pain he purchases the joy of perpetual health, and through momentary tribulation he attains to perpetual felicity and everlasting gladness. But if this pain is to be feared, if the executioner is to be feared, if also the novel and refined cruelty of the torturer is to be feared -- which is more to be feared, which is more dreadful, which is more to be fled from and guarded against: this pain, which boils up today and vanishes tomorrow, which blazes today and grows cold tomorrow, which is introduced within an hour and shut out within an hour? Or that which is enclosed by no end, extinguished by no time, absolutely consumed by no passage of years? For this present pain is either light, and can be endured with patience; or it is heavy, and with a glorious contest offers a swift end. But that pain of punishments and torment of fire, which is given to the lovers of this life -- being more vehement than every kind of torment -- attacks with the intention of never ending, and subsequently rages more fiercely than it began; and no limit to its raging, no end at all presents itself, but possessing with itself every kind of torture, it is continually renewed that it may rage, augmented that it may torment, inflamed that it may burn more fiercely."

[22] "Let us therefore urge those we love to escape from this destruction, and let us ourselves bravely prepare to escape. The Martyrs are to be encouraged and congratulated. Let us not fear to bear pain in the body for one hour, we who desire to rejoice forever with Christ. Let us permit our soul to depart from this body with the palm of martyrdom, so that we may be able to escape eternal punishments and attain to the starry dwellings full of delights. Let us turn our tears to joy, for we ought not to mourn as though they will die, whom we believe will reign with Christ. Let us congratulate those who have conquered the enemy, trampling his neck underfoot; let us rejoice together with those clothed in the vestment of martyrdom, and let us glory that they have been made consuls of heaven. Behold the day on which the tyrant thought himself victorious: he who while he captures is captured; while he holds, is bound; while he tortures, is tortured; while he insults, is mocked; while he slays, is slain. Now therefore let us arouse even our own affections in love of martyrdom, so that we may bravely capture him who wished to take victory from our captivity; and as though awakened from a heavy sleep, let us open the eyes of our minds, so that seeing the pits which the enemy had prepared for our destruction, we ourselves by God's help may escape, and with the devil himself and his satellites falling into the very pit he had prepared, we may say with the Prophet: 'They dug a pit before my face, and they themselves fell into it.'" Psalm 56:7.

(a) Others read "they are taught."

(b) The Ripaille manuscript reads "by the penalties of torments."

CHAPTER VII.

By Sebastian's Prayer and Miracles, Zoe and Nicostratus Are Converted.

[23] And so, when the most Blessed Sebastian, St. Sebastian is illuminated by heavenly light and divinely animated. clad in his military cloak and girded with his belt, was uttering these things from his own mouth, suddenly for nearly a whole hour he was illuminated by an exceeding splendor coming from heaven, and beneath that same splendor he was clad in a most brilliant white mantle by seven most radiant Angels, and a young man appeared beside him, giving him the kiss of peace and saying: "You shall always be with me."

[24] These things were taking place within (a) the house of the Chief Secretary (b), named Nicostratus, in whose custody Marcellian and Marcus were held. Zoe, wife of Nicostratus, mute, is converted, This Nicostratus had a wife named Zoe, who six years before had been rendered mute by the severity of illness; yet she had not only not lost the capacity of hearing and understanding, but indeed possessed the function of her ears even better than before. When she had understood all that Blessed Sebastian had said and had seen so great a light around him, and while all were held trembling with astonishment at the miracle, she was gesturing with her hand to everyone, as though reproving those who did not believe so manifest a declaration, and falling at his knees she began to entreat him by signs of her hands. But when St. Sebastian saw that she could not express the secrets of her heart by the utterance of her tongue, and had inquired into the causes of this silence, he learned that the power of speech had been taken from her by the excessive force of her illness. Then Blessed Sebastian said: "If I am a true servant of Christ, and if all things are true she recovers her speech. that this woman has heard from my mouth and believed, may my Lord Jesus Christ command that the function of the tongue return to her, and may He who opened the mouth of His prophet Zechariah open her mouth." And he made the sign of the cross upon her mouth. And at this word of St. Sebastian the woman cried out with a great voice, saying: "Blessed are you, and blessed is the speech of your mouth, and blessed are those who through you believe in Christ, the Son of the living God. She sees an Angel attending St. Sebastian. For with my own eyes I saw an Angel coming to you from heaven, and holding a book before your eyes, from the reading of which the entire discourse of your speech proceeded. Blessed are those who believe in all things that you have spoken, and cursed are those who doubt even a single word of all those things they have heard; for just as the dawn, arriving, dispels all the darkness of the night and restores to the eyes of all the light that the blind night had denied, so the light of your words has wiped away all obscurity and all blindness of ignorance, and has restored to the eyes of those who rightly believe a clear day after the darkness of night. From me, moreover, it has not only driven out the darkness of unbelief, but has also opened the door of my speech, which had been closed for six years."

[25] When Nicostratus her husband saw that so great a power of Christ had been displayed in his wife, he began to fall at his feet and to beg pardon for having held the Saints of God in chains by Imperial and Prefectorial command; Nicostratus allows the Martyrs to depart, and removing the iron fetters from their hands, he embraced their knees and began to beg them to deign to depart, saying: "O how blessed I would be if I could deserve to be bound for your salvation! Perhaps by the shedding of my blood I would be washed clean, so that I might escape that death of eternal punishments and desires to suffer in their place. and might attain to that life which God has deigned to reveal to us through the mouth of my lord Sebastian."

(a) Some codices read "next to." This is not approved.

(b) Under the administration of the illustrious Prefect of the City, among other offices, is the Chief Secretary, or Chief Clerk, concerning whose office others have written much.

CHAPTER VIII.

The Constancy of Marcellian and Marcus, and Their Address to the Neophytes.

[26] When he begged Marcellian and Marcus to depart, they said to him: "If you, who never had the glory of the faith, have now received it, how shall we, abandoning the faith we have always held from infancy, give you the chalice of our passion, which we can offer you Marcellian and Marcus refuse to depart; they encourage the Neophytes. but not bestow? For Christ is rich in all things, and the generous abundance of His riches offers to all who come better things than they ask. For if, when you were unbelievers, you were granted the grace of knowing the light of truth, how much more, when you believe, will all things you now ask be given to you? For divine mercy is always prepared to bestow all things upon you freely; and it multiplies each one with the gift of its grace in proportion as his mind has received the standard of a higher faith. Your faith, therefore, has taken its beginning from instruction, and all that long learning scarcely achieves, you have grasped in the space of a single hour. No memory of parents hinders you from believing. No tender affection for children or your own nurslings calls you back. You suddenly despise what you always loved, and you seek what you never knew. Having entered by unknown ways, you have suddenly arrived at Christ, and in spirit you have already entered heaven, because on earth you sought no consolation. O incomparable renown of this deed! O what an imitable example of virtue! Not yet has the wave of holy baptism led you to Christ; not yet have you even taken up the military standards through the initial rites of enlistment; and already you seize arms for the true King, and loosing His soldiers from the bond of iron, you desire, fearless, to be slain yourselves for the sake of those about to be slain."

[27] When all, hearing these things, equally showed by their tears repentance for their former persuasion, Marcus said: "Learn, dearest parents, Marcus exhorts his own: and let your conjugal affection, O wives, learn to set the shield of virtues against the battle of the devil and against all the arrows of carnal desire's passions, and amid the ranks of the tyrant's army not to yield to the enemy, to fight more fiercely, to hold your ground (a), and to reach the King valiantly. Let the satellites of the demons rise up as much as they will and rage, and let them tear our bodies apart with whatever punishments they please; they can kill the body, but they cannot conquer the soul fighting for the truth of the faith. Wounds received for the Emperor make soldiers more glorious; for the devil now rages with the fury of his tyranny precisely because he foresees that he can be tormented by the trophy of your perseverance. And therefore he inflicts torments, lest his hope perish; he threatens death, to terrify; he promises life, to snatch it away; he pledges security, to destroy it. This is the entire cunning of the war, this is the strategy of fraud: to rescue the body from sufferings and to subjugate the soul to vices. Let us on the contrary strive not to yield to the enemy, to despise the body, to succor the soul. For why should the bravest generals (b) turn their backs on the most wretched soldiers, and fail in a war in which they can be victors? Or by what reason should those fear to die who know that this is the nature, not the punishment, of man? Why, I say, should those fear to die who believe that this life is false, and that the true life cannot be found unless one has cast aside from his soul this false and fleeting life, which commands nothing else of its lovers but sins, counsels outrages, inflicts crimes, and demands nothing else of its lovers except that they utterly cease to think of everlasting life and despair that the kingdom of God is to come?"

[28] "Now let us see to what accidents it is subject and what dangers this handmaid is subject to, so that when we have proved that she cannot even govern herself, we may withdraw our service from her dominion and seek another whom we may rightly serve. For how many of her lovers has a sudden heavy collapse crushed, a crash from the sky struck down, a thunderbolt (c) consumed, he shows that adversity befalls even the wicked. shipwrecks destroyed, chaos covered, Charybdis swallowed, the sword slain! And these wretches, losing this life with pains, cannot find that other one at all! For it is not torture that leads to that other life, but one's cause. By one and the same kind of suffering, indeed, both eternal salvation is conferred upon the innocent and punishment is inflicted upon the guilty."

(a) Others read "to press toward joy"; others, "to wield the sword"; others, "to hold their ground."

(b) Others read "the soldiers of the General."

(c) Others read "flame consumed with fires."

CHAPTER IX.

The Rest Are Converted by Sebastian, Together with the Prisoners.

[29] And so while Marcus was continuing with these and similar things, all who were present began to give thanks to God, and everyone, weeping, bore repentance for having preferred the love of the flesh to the love of God, and for having dared to call back the spirits of the Saints from the contest of martyrdom. And when all who had come to deceive the Saints unanimously believed in Christ, All present are converted. Nicostratus with his wife pressed the matter, saying: "I will take neither food nor drink until the mystery (a) of the Christian religion has been conferred upon me." To him St. Sebastian said: "Change your dignity, and begin to be more the Chief Secretary of Christ than of the Prefect. Hear therefore my counsel, and bring together into one place all whom the prison has shut up, whom chains hold, whom dungeons are wearing down. When you have done this, I will bring the Bishop of the most holy law, so that together with all who are willing to believe you may receive the sacrament of the mystery. For if the devil has attempted and still attempts to snatch away from Christ His Saints, how much more ought we, by the claim of piety, to take care of these whom the devil has unjustly gained, and to restore them to their Creator?" And Nicostratus replied to this, saying: "How can holy things be entrusted to the wicked and criminal?" St. Sebastian said: "Our Savior deigned to make His presence known to us for sinners, and He revealed the mystery by which all sins and crimes are removed from a man and all the virtues of the Lord are conferred. Therefore, at the beginning of your conversion, if you confer this first gift upon Christ, the reward of His recompense will be at hand over you: the crown of martyrdom, bearing with it the unfading flowers of all virtues, destined (b) to profit in the joys of eternal life." Hearing these things, Nicostratus the Chief Secretary went to Claudius the Keeper of the Records, and ordered all the persons to be brought to his house, saying: The other prisoners are brought thither. "Since all are to be examined at the next session, I wish that they be present with those Christians who are in my custody, lest any person be missing for the Prefectorial (c) examination."

[30] And so when all had been brought and stood in the house of the Chief Secretary, bound with the links of chains, the man of God, Sebastian, addressed them in this manner: "If diabolical crimes yield to divine virtues, your guilt is excluded from death and recalled (d) from fleeting joys. For the unjust enemy had worked through his satellites to overturn the minds of Christ's soldiers, raised (e) to the summit of virtues, and to strive to plunge into the mire of hell those who were placed at the very pinnacle of perfection. For this reason our spirit has been inflamed, provoked by the battle against the enemies, so that we might take you, St. Sebastian instructs them; whom the enemy had already gained, from his captivity and restore you to your Creator. For the devil is known to be neither your lord, nor your creator, nor your father; but God is proved to be both Father and Lord and Maker. And if, forsaking Him, you went to that one who proved to be so much your enemy that he led you to the punishments of eternal death and caused you to come to this lethal end, how much more must you return to Him who delivered His only Son to suffering and death, that He might free us from eternal sufferings and from perpetual death?" While St. Sebastian was continuing with these and similar things, and those who believe, he orders to be freed from their chains: they all prostrated themselves with tears, and bending their knees, they began to pour forth the groaning of their hearts and to cry out with voices of repentance that they had sinned and acted impiously. They therefore shed bitter tears, and with unanimous voices they proclaimed their desire to believe in Christ. Then Blessed Sebastian ordered them all to be released from the bonds of their chains.

(a) Some codices read "martyrdom."

(b) The Ripaille manuscript reads "fragrant."

(c) Others read "of the Prefect"; others, "of the Praetor"; others, "of the Prefect of the Praetorium"; others, "of the Praetorian examination."

(d) Others read "to the joys of the vow."

(e) Others read "from the straight summit of virtues."

CHAPTER X.

All Are Prepared for Baptism by Polycarp.

[31] After this St. Sebastian went to the Priest Polycarp (a), where he was hidden on account of the persecution, he summons the holy Priest Polycarp: and he narrated to him all that had taken place. Hearing these things, St. Polycarp gave thanks to God, and came with him to the house of the Chief Secretary Nicostratus, and seeing the crowds of believers, he greeted them with all joy and said: "Blessed are all of you who have heard the voice of our Lord Jesus Christ saying: who congratulated them, 'Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest. Matthew 11:28. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is sweet and my burden is light.' You therefore, our brothers, whom (b) the wave of baptism has not yet washed and, by consecrating you, made most dear children of almighty God, and exhorted the rest to repentance. because you attempted to call back from their holy purpose the most blessed soldiers of Christ, you had need of repentance, that through it you might come to pardon. But now, since you have advanced to so great a glory that you even desire to run gladly and willingly embrace the very suffering from which you sorrowfully wished to call others back, know that you have both attained pardon and reached the palm. This is an ancient stratagem of Christ. For the very one whom He deigned to make the vessel of His election and wished to give as a teacher to the nations -- who not only called back the spirits of the faithful from their resolution of piety but even crushed with stones those who were unwilling to depart from Christ -- this very one the Lord bestowed upon us as an Apostle, and gave us Paul from Saul, made an Apostle from an apostate, and gave His Church a teacher from a persecutor. He who had been the author of persecution became a lover of suffering; and he who formerly rejoiced in the afflictions of others afterward rejoiced in his own persecutions. He therefore who then exercised this virtue in His Apostle, the same even now has snatched from the very inner chamber of hell and from the very jaws of the dragons the captivity of your souls, and has now opened to you, as you return from darkness to light, the gates of eternal life. Since therefore all the demons, who are children of darkness, are made sorrowful -- he prescribes a fast for all until evening. whence all the holy Angels, who are children of light, rejoice -- let each one of you come forward and give his name, so that as today's fast continues until evening, the festive sacrament of baptism may find its opportune time. For it is just that the light, departing from the mortal world, should come to our immortal minds, so that we who have wallowed in the mire of darkness in this world, washed and cleansed by the water of sanctification and clothed with sincerity, may proceed cheerfully to Christ." While St. Polycarp continued with these and similar things, all rejoiced, and each one hastened to offer his name before he was asked.

(a) The feast of St. Polycarp the Priest is celebrated on February 23.

(b) Many codices omit the word "not yet," as though the speech were addressed to the lapsed.

CHAPTER XI.

The Catechumens Are Baptized, Together with Claudius and His Sons.

[32] While these things were being done, Claudius the Keeper of the Records came to the house of the Chief Secretary Nicostratus, where these things were taking place, and said to Nicostratus: "The Prefecture is greatly disturbed that you ordered the persons of the accused to be placed in the custody of your house. Nicostratus is summoned before the Prefect of the City. For this reason the Prefect has ordered that you be presented before him. See what answer you ought to give when questioned." Nicostratus therefore, having entered before the Prefect and been asked why he had wished to assign to the custody of his own house those persons whom the walls of the prison were holding, replied: "By order of Your Excellency, I took into my house for custody certain Christian persons, and in order to strike in them the terror of suffering, I caused them to be associated with persons of the accused, so that if not by their own consent, at least by the experience of others, they might comply with your command and our persuasion, and fear lest a similar punishment befall them." The Prefect, hearing this most willingly, dismissed him, saying: "I will have you richly rewarded by the parents of those men, when through you their sons shall have been restored to them unharmed."

[33] Nicostratus the Chief Secretary, therefore, returning to his house with Claudius the Keeper of the Records, began to relate everything: He narrates his conversion and that of his household to Claudius: how St. Sebastian, though a friend of the Emperors, is a most devoted Christian and perfect in divine learning; how he had recalled the souls of Christians by his exhortation; and how he had demonstrated with very adequate reasoning that this life is fleeting and illusory, and thus, while it is thought to be held, it is taken away. He also narrated how a light coming suddenly from heaven had illuminated Sebastian, and how he had made his wife, who had been mute for six years, speak.

[34] When Nicostratus had narrated these things to Claudius, Claudius fell at the feet of Nicostratus, saying: "From my deceased wife I have two sons, of whom one is afflicted with the disease of dropsy and the other oppressed with various wounds. He brings his sons thither to be healed of their diseases, I beg you to order them to be visited. For I do not doubt that he who was able to make your wife speak after six years can, if he will, cause health to return to my sons." And saying this, he rushed to his own house and had his two sons brought in by hand, and leading them into the house where the Saints of God were, he cast them at their feet, saying: "No signs of doubt whatsoever remain in my heart; but believing with my whole heart that the Christ whom you worship is Himself the true God, I have brought you here my two children, believing that through you they can be freed from the danger of death." All the Saints of God said to him at once: "All whom any infirmity holds here today, and asks for baptism. as soon as they have been made Christians, will be healed."

[35] When Claudius cried out that he believed and desired to become a Christian, St. Polycarp ordered each one to give his name. First of all, therefore, Tranquillinus, the father of Marcellian and Marcus, gave his name. After him, their six friends, that is, Ariston, Crescentian, They give their names for baptism: Eutychian, Urban, Vitalis, and Justus; after these, Nicostratus the Chief Secretary and his brother Castorius, and Claudius the Keeper of the Records. After these, the sons of Claudius, Felicissimus and Felix. After these, Marcia, the mother of Marcellian and Marcus, with their wives and children; and likewise Symphorosa, the wife of Claudius, and Zoe, the wife of Nicostratus. After these, all the household that was in the house of Nicostratus, thirty-three souls of both sexes and every age; then all who had been in chains and brought from the filth of the prison, sixteen souls.

[36] They are baptized: All these sixty-eight, therefore, were baptized by St. Polycarp the Priest and received from the font by St. Sebastian; and the godmothers of the women were Beatrix (a) and Lucina (b). First, therefore, the sons of Claudius -- the one dropsical and the other covered with wounds -- The dropsical and ulcerous child are healed by baptism, as soon as he immersed them in the name of the Holy Trinity, were lifted from the font so perfectly healed that not even a trace of any former disease remained in them. After these children came Tranquillinus, the father of Saints Marcellian and Marcus, who had been so afflicted (c) with gout and pain in his hands that, as was said above, he could scarcely be carried in the arms of others. and the gouty man, When they were removing his garments and he said he was being tormented with unbearable pain, Polycarp the Priest questioned him, saying: "Tranquillinus, if you believe with your whole heart that the only-begotten Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, can confer salvation upon you and grant pardon for all your sins, declare it with your own mouth." Tranquillinus replied: even though he did not ask for this, but nobly professed the faith. "I both desire and believe that pardon alone may be granted for my sins. Moreover, even if after the sanctification of this baptism I remain in my pains, I shall not be able to doubt the faith of Christ any further. For I have proved it, and believing with my whole heart I have consented in my mind that the Lord Jesus Christ is the Son of God, who can bestow salvation upon both souls and bodies, and recall them from eternal death to perpetual life." When he had said this with a loud voice, all the Saints shed tears of joy and prayed to the Lord that the fruit of his faith might be shown. St. Polycarp, therefore, Confessor and Priest, as soon as he had anointed him with the oil of chrism (d) and questioned him again whether he believed in the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, immediately upon his answering "I believe," his hands, which had been knotted, were loosened, and his knees together with the soles of his feet were so perfectly restored to health that, as though a little child with feet renewed, he descended into the font, crying out and saying: "You are the one and true God, whom this wretched world does not know."

[37] When he had been thus baptized in his turn, all were baptized as was fitting; and for the ten (e) days that remained of the reprieve they had obtained, they spent their days and nights persevering in the praises of God, in hymns and canticles, and like faithful soldiers they prepared their spirits to fight for the name of Christ, ready to do battle in martyrdom, All prepare themselves for martyrdom. so that even in the women and little children the love of martyrdom burned, and they mutually prepared one another for the confession of the holy name against the diabolical armies.

(a) The feast of St. Beatrix is celebrated on July 29.

(b) Concerning this Lucina, see the entry of January 16, in the life of St. Marcellus. Her feast is celebrated on June 30.

(c) Others read "contracted."

(d) Others read "oil."

(e) Some codices add "and six."

CHAPTER XII.

The Errors of the Pagans Refuted before Chromatius, Prefect of the City, by Tranquillinus.

[38] (a) When the days of the granted reprieve had been completed, therefore, Agrestius Chromatius, Prefect of the City of Rome, ordered Tranquillinus, the father of Marcellian and Marcus, to come before him. When he inquired about the decision concerning his sons, Tranquillinus gives thanks to Chromatius, Prefect of the City: Tranquillinus replied: "No speech of my mouth suffices to render thanks for your kindnesses. For had not the reins of your governance held back the rushing sentences, both I would have lost my sons, and my sons would not have me as their father. All who are held by paternal affection and pricked by the goad of love congratulate me; I believe that even your Excellency rejoices with me, since life has been granted to the dying, gladness restored to the anxious, and security returned (b) to the worried."

[39] Then the Prefect, thinking that his sons wished to bow their necks to the idols, said: "On the coming day, then, (c) let the incense due to the gods be offered by your sons, by which means both you may continue unharmed in your sons, and your sons may be restored to you." Hearing this, Tranquillinus said: "Most illustrious of men, if you were willing to weigh the balance of your judgment concerning me and my sons on an equal scale, you would be able to recognize that this name 'Christian' is of great power." The Prefect said: "You are mad, Tranquillinus." he reveals that he has become a Christian: Tranquillinus replied: "I suffered madness of both soul and body; but as soon as I believed in Christ, I recovered the health of both my soul and my body."

[40] The Prefect said: "As I see it, I am now recognized to have granted a reprieve to your criminal sons for this purpose: that not only should you not remove them from their error, but that they should entangle you in their errors." Tranquillinus said: "By your glory, examine the very name of error, and see what works are called by the name of error." The Prefect said: nor do Christians err, but pagans, "Tell me which works receive the name of error." Tranquillinus said: "The first error is to abandon the way of life and to walk gladly along the way of death." The Prefect said: "And what is the way of death?" Tranquillinus said: "Does it not seem to you the way of death to impose upon dead men the name of Deity and to adore their images in wood and stone?"

[41] The Prefect said: "Then are they not gods whom we worship?" Tranquillinus said: "So far are they from being gods that one may read in the public (d) records both how wickedly they were born, and how unjust and cruel and criminal their parents were, and how unjustly and deceitfully and fraudulently they lived, whose gods he shows not to be gods: and how miserably they died. Before Saturn ruled over the Cretans and ate the flesh of his own children, was there no God in heaven, or did the island of Crete have a king while the heavens had no God? He greatly errs who believes that Jupiter his son commands the thunderbolts -- The crimes of Jupiter and Juno. a mere mannikin in whom malice and lust reigned. Whom did he not persecute, who did not spare his own father? Or what filth did he not practice, who took his own sister as wife? In the forum, in the streets, in houses, and in every place we read daily that the most sordid Juno boasts of being both sister and wife; and the most shameful and most incestuous honor of the ravished Ganymede is not denied even by those by whom Jupiter is worshipped. Do you not err, then, most exalted Sir, you who worship such beings as the Roman laws command to be condemned for the quality of their deeds, and who, forsaking the almighty God who reigns in heaven, say to stone, 'You are my God,' and to wood, 'Help me'?"

[42] The Prefect said: "From the moment you began to blaspheme the gods and to withdraw from their worship, the Roman world has been oppressed by various calamities." Christians are not the cause of the calamities of the Empire. Tranquillinus replied: "That is not true. For if you review the decades composed in the style of Livy (f), you will find there that on a single day, while they placed incense before Jupiter, twenty-three thousand young men of the Roman army fell. But you are not unmindful of this also: that the Senones Gauls even occupied (g) the Capitol and subjected the entire Roman force to their mockeries. The Roman world suffered various famines, and unspeakable plagues, various captivities, various effusions of blood, before men worshipped the one God. But now, since the invisible and true God has begun to be worshipped by believers, the Roman Empire exults in increased (h) peace. But what is worse, the God who bestows this is not recognized, but whatever is bestowed by the Creator is attributed to His creature."

[43] The Prefect said: "If He is to be worshipped who bestows something for the benefit of humans, then none but the sun will be regarded as God, who by his aspect quickens the bowels of the earth so that it brings forth the seeds it has received and restores the grains of its natural offspring in the stalk, and grants to all the benefits of our salvation alike light and restoration and vigor." The sun is not God. Tranquillinus replied: "In this too there is boundless error. For if someone today, through his servant, bestows upon his clients what is asked, it is infinite folly if he who bestowed is neglected and the servant through whom he bestowed is honored. And to offer some comparison for this statement: when ships bring provisions to the Romans, are thanks given to the ships rather than to the rulers? If, therefore, men attribute their being fed not to the sailors but to the rulers, how much more are thanks to be rendered to God alone, by whose will these elements serve all our needs, and the sun itself daily is both shut in at the close of day over both land and sea, and opened again (i) at the renewal of day?"

(a) It was written in Rosweyde's autograph: "Book II." We have omitted this division, as it was found in no other copy.

(b) Others read "established."

(c) The manuscript of St. Ghislain reads "Come therefore today, and let the due incense..."

(d) Others read "your."

(e) This was a common calumny against Christians, refuted by various Church Fathers, especially by Paul Orosius and St. Augustine.

(f) Others read "of the book," erroneously. In some copies it was written "LIBII."

(g) So all manuscripts. It should rather read "attacked." For they were induced to leave by payment, and soon afterward were driven out by Camillus.

(h) Others read "lofty."

(i) Others read "appears"; others, "is born."

CHAPTER XIII.

The Incarnation of the Word Explained to the Pagan.

[44] The Prefect said: "If, therefore, the one whom you worship is one and invisible, he defends the divinity of Christ, you do not worship Christ, whom the Jews crucified?" Tranquillinus said: "You would rightly inquire into this if you intended to believe. For to unbelievers everything they do not wish to accept seems vain. For once the will of mortals has declined (a) headlong, it desires that everything it censures be censured by all, and wishes that everything it praises be praised by all. But a wise man strives to bestow (b) upon each thing, according to its merit, either his censure or his praise." The Prefect said: "I am asking you about your Christ. For if you worship what is not seen by these eyes, you do not worship Christ, who was both seen and heard and questioned, and in whose passion all things that belong to human frailty are read to have been fulfilled." which is joined to human nature, Tranquillinus said: "Hear a comparison and understand the truth. Suppose, for example, that today you saw your ring, set with a precious gem, rolling in a sewer or a dung heap, and you sent your servants to extract it; but they were unable to recover it, and even soiled themselves in some way while attempting to rescue it. But afterward you yourself, putting off the silken garments you are wearing, clothed yourself in a servant's tunic, descended into the sewer, thrust your hands into the filth, and brought forth at once in your own hands both the golden ring and the gem. In your joy you invite all your friends to a feast and rejoice over the ring and the gem, that they have been freed from the extreme filth." The Prefect said: "To what comparison have you brought this proposition?" Tranquillinus replied: "To show you that we worship one invisible God." The Prefect said: "And what is the gold? And what is the gem that was rolling in the dung heap?" [so that He might seek our body, like a golden ring, and the soul like a gem, when they were lost.] Tranquillinus replied: "The gold is the human body; the gem is the soul, which is enclosed in that body. The body and soul together make one man, just as gold and gem are shown to make one ring. But however precious the ring may be to you, man is far more precious -- a hundredfold -- and dear to Christ. You sent your servants to rescue the ring from the filth, and they were by no means able to extract it. God also sent His Prophets, speaking to them from heaven, to rescue (c) the human race from the filth of this world; and by no means whatsoever were they able to accomplish this, even with their urgency. You laid aside your golden garments, and clad in a servant's clothing you descended into the sewer and thrust your hands into the filth to free the ring from the filth. So too the Majesty divested itself of the splendor of its Divinity -- yet without leaving the heights -- and clothed itself in the servant's garment of our body, and descending here from heaven into the sewer of this world, it thrust its hands into the filth of our sufferings; and taking upon itself the suffering that was owed by our merits, it restored us to the glory of its fingers. For we who through unbelief were rolling in the filth of the world, cleansed from our sordidness through faith, have been restored by the divine hands, like that ring of yours. Could not your servants, who denied you were their master when they saw you in a servant's garb, have been killed as rebels? Just so, those who deny Christ their Lord because He emptied Himself of His majesty and took the form of a servant will by no means be able to escape the punishments of eternal fire. Therefore, to us who believe in Him, the water of the eternal fountain comes to our aid, so that the eternal fire may be conquered by the eternal fountain, and unbelief may be overcome by faith."

[45] Tranquillinus had not premeditated his words. The Prefect said: "As I see it, you are shown not to have sought the reprieve in order to remove your sons from this resolve, but to have rehearsed (d) these old wives' tales and brought them to our tribunal." Tranquillinus said: "The disciples of Christ do not rehearse what they are to say in the presence of judges. For He gave this prior warning, saying: 'When the powers of this world deliver you up on account of my name, do not think about how or what you shall say, for it shall be given you by God in that hour what you shall say. Matthew 10:19. For it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of God who speaks in you.' Therefore not by rehearsing, he professes his faith and the health he has received: but by believing have I found my Creator; and I, who was contracted and shattered (e) with gout and pain in the hands, as soon as I believed in Christ, received the health of all my members, as if I were a child. It is therefore established in my mind that He who deigned to renew me is the one who created me; and just as He gave restoration to my body, so also has He promised to give restoration to my soul after this life -- provided that I am not broken, doubtful or timid, by the terrors of men, but persevering in the confession of His name, I preserve whole the faith that God has made me find."

[46] The Prefect said: "You are unaware, Tranquillinus, of how great a wrath of the most unconquered Princes rages against the Christians, and therefore, as though secure, you pursue what seems right to you without fear." Tranquillinus said: "It is foolish fear he despises the threats of the tyrants: by which the indignation of men is feared more than the divine. For if we were to come into the midst of barking dogs and they were to begin to handle us with their bites in futile fury, can they remove from our mind the fact that we are rational (f) human beings, while they are dogs, both irrational and mad? So also those who are angry with us for rightly believing can indeed rage and inflict unjust punishments; yet they will never be able to remove from our heart the fact that we believe the Lord Jesus Christ to be our Creator, and that we rejoice that He is our Redeemer and Restorer." Then the Prefect ordered him to be remanded to the Keepers of the Records, saying: "I will hear you at the next session."

(a) Others read "fallen."

(b) Others read "to spend."

(c) Others read "to rescue."

(d) Others read "rehearsed."

(e) Others read "shattered."

(f) Some read "rational."

CHAPTER XIV.

Chromatius, Prefect of the City, Is Catechized.

[47] He is again summoned secretly to Chromatius by night: After this the Prefect sent for him and ordered him to be brought secretly by night, and offering him an immense weight of gold, he said: "Show me the remedy by which you recovered your health." Tranquillinus said to him: "Know that those who suppose the grace of God to be either for sale or for purchase will suffer great wrath and fury of God. Therefore, if you wish to be freed from the pain of gout, believe in Christ the Son of God, and you will be freed, and you will be as healthy as you see me today. I could scarcely be carried by the hands of others, he had been gouty for eleven years: and for eleven years, bound by knots of pain through every joint of the sinews in my body, bread was scarcely placed in my mouth by the hands of others. The moment I believed that Christ is the true God, I received the joys of my salvation and am whole, because I recognized the true God as my Savior."

[48] Then the Prefect dismissed him, saying: "Bring to me the one who made you a Christian, so that if he promises me health, I too may become a Christian." Tranquillinus immediately went to St. Polycarp the Priest, he brings St. Polycarp to him; narrated to him all that had been done and said, and leading him secretly into the house, presented him before the Prefect. The Prefect said to him: "Although the severe punishment of the Princes is hostile to Christians, yet in the hope of recovering my health I will offer you whatever it may be, up to half the goods of my patrimony, if my bodily members may be freed from this knottiness of swellings (a)." who, declining his gifts for the recovery of health, Then St. Polycarp said with a smile: "The Lord Jesus Christ is powerful to open the doors (b) of your ignorance and to show you that He Himself is the restorer of your body. For those who either offer or accept money offered confer no remedy at all upon the suffering, but even take upon themselves an incurable disease." The Prefect said to him: "Tell me, then, what I must do in order to obtain what I hope for." counsels him to believe and catechizes him, Polycarp said to him: "If you believe with your whole heart, as Tranquillinus believed, you will be saved." The Prefect said to him: "Explain to me in what order I ought to believe." Then St. Polycarp catechized him and prescribed that he fast for three days. And summoning St. Sebastian to himself, he fasted with him for three days and three nights, prescribing a three-day fast: and together with tears they prayed that the Lord might declare the faith of His name for the salvation of one willing to believe.

(a) "Condyloma" is a swelling or inflammation in the knuckles, or joints of the fingers. Condyloma. The manuscripts had "condologmatum"; some had "of pain."

(b) Others read "gates."

CHAPTER XV.

The Idols of Chromatius Are Destroyed.

[49] When the third day, which had been appointed, arrived, they came together in haste to the house of the waiting Prefect. Upon entering, they said: "Peace to your faith." He returned their greeting most courteously and urged them to sit beside him, and said: "The argument that came from the mouth of Tranquillinus is confirmed by the evidence of my own eyes. For I see perfectly healthy the man whom I had seen afflicted with the pain of gout in hands and feet. When I inquired of him what kind of remedy had saved him, I received from him this reply: 'While I placed my faith in idols, I was weakened and afflicted by excessive infirmity; but when I learned from the demonstration of the Christians that there is one God in heaven, I renounced all that I had worshipped without cause and surrendered (a) the faith of my soul to Christ. As soon as I confessed that one and true God reigns in heaven, immediately all the health that I had lost for eleven years returned to me, and all infirmity was forthwith separated from me.' He asks them to confer health upon him, This I heard with my ears, proved with my eyes, and believed in my heart. It remains that what you did for Tranquillinus you do also for me, so that I may receive the health of my body."

[50] Polycarp the Priest said: "If the soul of man cannot endure passing pains, what will it do about those pains for which no end ever comes, no succession at all is given? For these present pains bear the image of those pains, he sets forth the eternal torments. and the distance between a living fire and its picture is the same as the distance between the pains which the body now suffers and those which the soul will suffer if, ignorant (b) of its Creator, it has fulfilled the duty of the present life. Deal with us first, therefore, concerning those pains, and be anxious about that punishment which has fire always burning and a worm always consuming."

[51] Then Chromatius, Prefect of the City of Rome, together with his only son Tiburtius, gave his name, saying: "In this it is fitting that you be assured of my faith, [Chromatius pledges that he together with his son Tiburtius will become a Christian,] in which I desire that my son too become a Christian along with me." St. Sebastian said: "See to it that, led by the mere recovery of your body, you do not hope to become a Christian, but rather that in hope of eternal life you make your mind pure for seeing the reason of truth. For unless you recognize who your Creator is, you will not be able to find the salvation you seek." Chromatius said: "Then do we not also see that rustics and the simplest of men are Christians, so that among a thousand men you would scarcely find one who could even attain to the discipline of learned discourse? Could all of these have attained to such inquiry when they became Christians?" St. Sebastian said: "This answer of yours strengthens (c) the assertion of our side. For from the beginning of the world God has had regard for country folk and shepherds of sheep, and coming near the end of the world He did not choose grammarians and orators, but fishermen and simple men, and to these He delivered His own knowledge."

[52] Chromatius said: "Then why do you say that I must first recognize who my Creator is, and that unless I recognize Him I cannot find salvation?" St. Sebastian said: "Because you have worshipped many gods and many goddesses. St. Sebastian counsels him to allow his idols to be broken, Unless, therefore, you exclude them from your heart and break their images and recognize the one and true God, you will not be able to find life and salvation." Chromatius said: "Tell me then who the one and true God is." St. Sebastian replied: "If you were to send your servant to draw water, and when he came to the fountain he first looked to see whether any filth lurked inside the jar, and he dared not put water into the vessel unless he saw it cleansed of filth -- how shall we be able to deliver to you the fountain of truth, unless you first make yourself free from all the filth and squalor of idols?" Chromatius said: "And in what manner can I become free from them?" St. Sebastian said: "Give us the power to break all the stone idols that we find in your house, to burn the wooden ones, to melt down the gold, silver, or bronze ones, and to distribute their value to the needy." Chromatius said: "And when you have done this, what benefit will accrue to me?" St. Sebastian said: "You will immediately obtain the health of all your sinews (d), whose knottiness now binds you; and promises health in return: and as one who has never suffered pain, so you will begin to walk on your own feet, and you will recognize that you have loved gods who were enemies of your salvation, (e) and that this one is your true parent, who immediately restores and saves you as soon as you have found the knowledge and worship of Him."

[53] He does not wish this to be done by servants, and why. Chromatius said: "Do not lower yourselves to this outrage; rather I will command my servants, and they will break everything." St. Sebastian said: "If the doubtful, the timid, and the faithless break them, the devil will find through some negligence of theirs an occasion for injuring them, and as soon as they are injured, the faithless will say that they were injured because they broke the idols. For one without a breastplate is not protected from the blows of arrows. A trained hand uses helmet, shield, and spear in battle, so that from the protection of arms and the force of the attack it may take courage and not turn its back. Similarly, it is safe for the soldiers of God, who are defended by the shield of faith and protected by the breastplate of Christ's covering, having the helmet of faith and salvation, to enter the contest. For they fight most fiercely and conquer bravely, because against the invisible enemy they wage war by day and night without tiring; and they are covered in all their members, armed with faith rather than with iron." Chromatius said: "Let the will of God and yours be done." Then St. Polycarp the Priest He himself breaks them with Polycarp. and Blessed Sebastian, girding themselves, prayed; and after their prayer, breaking more than two hundred statues of idols, they began to give thanks to their God.

(a) Others read "my soul in faith to Christ."

(b) Others read "has despised the gift of its Creator."

(c) Others read "confirms."

(d) Others read "members."

(e) Others read "that you have thought the gods worthy of worship."

CHAPTER XVI.

With the Instruments of Judicial Astrology Destroyed, Chromatius Is Healed.

[54] After this they approached Chromatius, saying to him: "While we were breaking the idols you should have received your health, unless perchance some signs of unbelief remain in your mind. For we hold this as certain: either there is something that has not yet been broken, or if everything has been broken, A glass celestial sphere made for the use of judicial astrology, make more clearly manifest to us what is in your mind." Then he said: "I have a room entirely of glass, in which the whole science of the stars and astrology (a) has been constructed by mechanical art, on whose fabrication my father Tarquinius is known to have spent more than two hundred pounds (b) of gold." St. Sebastian said to him: "If you wish to keep this intact, you are breaking yourself." Chromatius said: "Why so? Are astrology or ephemerides (c) worshipped with any use of sacrifices, when only the courses of months and years are distinguished by them in a fixed number (d) through intervals of hours? he advises that it should be destroyed: And is the fullness or diminution of the lunar globe not foreseen by the movement of the fingers, by the mastery of reason, and by the reckoning of calculation?" St. Polycarp the Priest said: "There are there the signs of the Lion and Capricorn and Sagittarius, and Scorpio and Taurus; there the Moon is in Aries, the hour in Cancer, a star in Jupiter, the tropic in Mercury, Mars in Venus; and in all these monstrous demons an art hostile to God is recognized. Christians so reject these things that they not only do not themselves possess, worship, believe in, or retain them, but they do not even count as friends those who occupy their hearts with frivolities of this kind. For all these things are false and ministers of deception: in them there is a semblance of truth, not the truth itself."

[55] Chromatius said to him: "What of the fact that they sometimes predict the future?" St. Sebastian said: "We have learned from the revelation of Christ that all these things are most vain and most false, and we will now explain this to you more clearly. He shows the deceit of the astrologers, Command a doctor of astrology to come to you today, and say to him that at a certain time you suffered harsh misfortunes, and inquire through which stars this evil befell you. His answers will doubtless be such that your time was taken up by malicious Mars, or Saturn was in his return (e), or your year was taken in opposition, or critical periods (f) were born for you in the center, or there was a conjunction (g) with an evil influence, or an invisible or configurated (h) or stationary course occurred around you in the stars. When he has said these and similar things, he strives to assign and prove something plausible to you by way of reason. Go now, and ask another astrologer, to whom you say that in those very hours and that very time things went exceedingly well for you; and immediately you will see him bringing you innumerable rational charts by which he proves that in those very times good things were bound to befall you. For he holds a circle collected from every side, in which he receives diverse and various causes, from which he may seize an occasion for saying whatever he wishes."

[56] "For since they absolutely cannot foresee the future, they speak of critical periods -- that is, uncertain refuges of the nature of the thing. For people born at different times have perished in a single shipwreck, he laughs at the vanity of that art. and of those born at one and the same hour of day or night, one is reduced to beggary while another ascends to a kingdom; and in a single battle an innumerable multitude is laid low; and on a single day -- nay, at a single moment (i) -- in a single house, two women, one most chaste and the other most unchaste: if the merit of the stars of both is compared, then neither is the harlot to be blamed nor the chaste woman to be praised. Certainly the lawmakers and Princes punish violations of their sacred laws, and that is why there is a forum, a judge, and laws: so that the just may be rightly praised and the unjust justly punished. And I do not wish you to consider this idle, for you yourself observe that you are not yet saved. For if you were to cast from yourself completely the ceremonies of the enemy of the human race, you would learn in yourself what is true."

[57] Hearing this, Chromatius said: "He is the true God who is shown to have such worshippers as you. For your every word so abounds in reasons that it inclines even the minds of cattle to the true reason. Chromatius giving permission for it to be destroyed, Whence even this very thing, which I seemed to have acquired for the adornment of my house, lest its preservation impede my salvation, let it be destroyed. For I believe, and this is my faith, that if I completely separate from myself all these things which the law of Christianity abominates and prohibits, I shall deserve to obtain both present and future salvation."

[58] Hearing this, his son Tiburtius said: "By no argument will I allow this precious, excellent, and incomparable work to be cast down. But lest I appear to oppose my father's salvation, Tiburtius threatens death if they then fail to heal his father. let two furnaces be brought and set alight before the door of the room, so that when they have destroyed it and my father has not recovered his health, both may be plunged into the blazing furnaces." Hearing this, his father forbade it to be done. But the Saints not only did not fear the promised destruction, but even stoutly urged that the furnaces be prepared.

[59] Then they approached all the crystalline and glass idols and the entire mechanical work; and suddenly, as they were being broken by the hands of the Saints, a young man appeared before the eyes of Chromatius, an Angel appears and Chromatius is healed, whose face was radiant with a flaming aspect, and he said to him: "My Lord Jesus Christ, in whom you have believed, has sent me, that you may receive the health of all your members." At this word, he was restored to perfect health and began to run after the young man to kiss his feet. But he said to him: "See that you do not touch me, [the one not yet baptized is forbidden to touch him: he seeks baptism together with his son.] for the sanctification of baptism has not yet washed you from the filth of idols." Seeing this, his son Tiburtius threw himself at the feet of St. Polycarp. Chromatius the Prefect himself clasped the feet of Blessed Sebastian, and both cried out with one voice: "Christ is the true God, true and almighty, the only-begotten Son of God, whom you preach, O good ministers of His."

(a) Others read "appears to stand constructed by mechanical means."

(b) The Ripaille manuscript reads "talents."

(c) "Ephemeris" is properly a diary, or a record of events and deeds arranged day by day.

(d) The Rebdorf manuscript reads "are weighed and extended by weight."

(e) So most manuscripts. The time when the sun (or another planet) returns to the same part of the zodiac through the same numbers by which it began its course The return-cycle of the planets. is called by students of celestial matters an "apokatastasis." Columella uses this term. It can therefore be understood as the revolution of the planet Saturn to its original position, or a disturbance of affairs and a "katastasis" stirred up by its malign star. But the Ripaille manuscript has "apocasticus." Brecht reads "apostaticus," that is, retrograde, or rather, contrary, malefic.

(f) "Climacteres" are so-called ascending years, from "climax," which means a step. Pliny himself laughs at these most vain observations, Book 7, chapter 49: "Again, the school of Aesculapius," he says, "which says that fixed periods of life are received from the stars -- but how much at most it assigns is uncertain. Climacteric years. They say, moreover, that longer periods are rare, since from the notable moments of the moon's hours and of seven and nine days (which are observed by night and day) a vast multitude is born, under the descending law of ascending years, which they call climacteric periods, with those so born scarcely exceeding their fifty-fourth year. The vain observation of horoscopes. First, therefore, the very inconsistency of the art declares how uncertain the matter is. There are added the experiments and examples of the most recent census, which within four years the Emperors Vespasian, father and son, as Censors conducted." And after some interposed examples, he adds: "Another instance of the inconstancy of mortality: Homer records that Hector and Polydamas were born on the same night -- men of such different fortune. In the consulship of Gaius Marius and Gnaeus Carbo III, on the fifth day before the Kalends of June, Marcus Caecilius Rufus and Gaius Licinius Calvus were born on the same day -- both orators, indeed, but of such different outcome. This also happens daily throughout the whole world to those born at the same hours, and alike lords and slaves are begotten, kings and paupers."

(g) Brecht and certain codices read "return"; others, "synedethos"; others, "si inditus"; others correctly, "syndetos" and "syndetus," that is, bound, conjoined; perhaps "syndesmos," conjunction.

(h) Some codices read "stigmate." Brecht omits this.

(i) Others read "at an atom of a point."

CHAPTER XVII.

The Baptism of Chromatius and Tiburtius.

[60] Then Blessed Sebastian said to Chromatius: "As you yourself know, I hold the command of the first cohort; but whether it be the military service (a) of man, I long since resolved not to know, nor did I wish to. For this purpose alone I wished to hide beneath my military cloak: to instruct the wavering spirits and to make the doubting steadfast, lest they yield to the pains of suffering, they whom faith had made warriors. But you, who bear the pinnacle of the most ample power, cannot withdraw yourself either from the public spectacles or from the judging of cases. [At the counsel of St. Sebastian, he seeks release from the Prefecture of the City.] Therefore, feigning illness, request a successor for yourself, so that, free from the occupations of the world, you may be able to undertake the rudiments of the future life, so that, born again in a second birth, you may become the offspring of eternal parents." On that very day, therefore, he sent to his friends stationed in the palace, through whom, receiving letters of testimonial, he took the first steps of the divine military service before being baptized.

[61] Why should I recount how full his faith was, and how keen his intellect stood against the assertions of the faithless? The following reading makes this clear. For at the very beginning, in the manner in which he was washed with the water of the most holy font, the faith of his mind shone forth clearly. Asked if he believed, he said: "I believe." Asked again whether he renounced all idols, he replied: "I renounce them." The Priest's questioning continued, whether he renounced all sins. But he said: With a generous spirit, before baptism, he renounces his sins, "You should have inquired into this before I entered the courts (b) of the King of heaven. Now, however, let me clothe myself again unbaptized, so that I may first forgive all those with whom I am angry; restore their bonds to all my debtors; if I have violently taken anything from anyone, command that it be restored in full. I have two concubines since the death of my wife, he restores what was taken, and I will provide them with dowries and husbands; from every bond of servile, free, private, or public obligation of my affairs I will loose the knots; he settles his concubines with dowries. and only then will I promise to renounce all diabolical sins and the pleasures of the world." Polycarp the Priest said to him: "The heavenly water will wash over you more blessedly when you have accomplished with all haste those things which you say you will do by your own decision. For the period of Lent is imposed upon those about to be baptized precisely so that for that many (c) days they may learn that they must renounce all the artifices of the enemy and the affairs of the world, if they truly wish to become Christians."

[62] Tiburtius is baptized, Then Tiburtius, a most wise young man, said: "Father, if you require time for renouncing your affairs, I who was still about to take up the business of the forum renounce only my will to take them up; and I who was going to be an advocate for conducting the cases of mortals will receive Christianity, to conduct the actions of Angels, since I am about to become one of those who receive eternal life and become advocates of holiness." Then Blessed Sebastian embraced him; St. Sebastian receiving him at the font. and when St. Polycarp had baptized him, Sebastian himself became the godfather of his reception.

[63] Therefore, when only a few days had passed, Chromatius is baptized together with 1,400 of his household: when all worldly affairs had been duly renounced by Chromatius, he received the newness of sacred baptism; and with him, from his household, one thousand four hundred souls of both sexes, all of whom he first released from the bond of servitude by the grace of manumission and furnished with excellent gifts, he manumits all his slaves. saying this: "Those who begin to have God as their father ought not to be the slaves of man."

(a) The Rebdorf manuscript reads "wickedness."

(b) Others read "of the kingdom."

(c) Others read "for all those days."

CHAPTER XVIII.

Chromatius, Having Abdicated the Prefecture of the City, Feeds the Christians during the Time of Persecution.

[64] The Pope of the City of Rome at that time was named Caius (a), a man of great prudence and great virtue, under the reigns of Carinus (b), Diocletian, and Maximian. Diocletian was in the City with Maximian, The persecution milder, with Carinus favoring the Christians; while Carinus was stationed with the entire army in the regions of Gaul. Out of regard for him, Diocletian's persecution of the Christians had begun to be slow, (c) because Carinus had certain friends whom the profession of this title adorned.

[65] Therefore, when Carinus was killed in the city of Mainz (d) in the consulship of Maximian and Aquilinus (e), the persecution became so severe that no one could buy or sell anything unless, having placed little statues (f) in the place where one had come for the purpose of buying, one had offered the burning of incense. fierce, after his death. Around the tenement blocks (g), around the neighborhoods, and around the fountains (h) as well, enforcers were posted who would give neither the opportunity to buy nor the means to draw water itself, unless the person had offered a libation to the idols.

[66] Then, by the counsel of St. Caius the Bishop, Chromatius, a man of illustrious rank, received all the Christians into his house and sheltered them all in such a way Chromatius feeds the Christians: that none at all succumbed to the necessity of sacrificing. But because the force of the persecution had been so great that even the reputation of his Christianity could not be concealed, released from the prefecture, he retires to the country with many, Chromatius obtained by imperial rescript the privilege of remaining for the sake of his health on the Campanian coast, (i) where he was the lord of a broad estate; and he granted the opportunity to every Christian who wished to go with him, in order to avoid the fury of the persecutor. Then a dispute arose between St. Polycarp and Blessed Sebastian as to which of the two should remain in the City and which should go with Chromatius, who had taken in so great a Christian people. While they were debating, the venerable Pope Caius said: and with St. Polycarp the Priest, "While you both seek the crown of suffering, you leave desolate the people acquired for the Lord. Therefore it seems best to me that you, brother Polycarp, since you hold the right path of the priesthood and are filled with the knowledge of God, should go to strengthen the minds of the believers and to edify (k) the doubtful spirits." Hearing this, he acquiesced and bore the gentle command of the Pope with equanimity. at the counsel of Pope St. Caius: And so the Lord's Day came, on which Bishop Caius, performing the things of God within the house of Chromatius, addressed all with these words: "Our Lord Jesus Christ, foreknowing human frailty, established two grades for those who believe in Him -- namely, confession and martyrdom -- so that those who despair of being able to bear the weight of martyrdom may hold the grace of confession, and, giving support (l) to the combatants, may bear the care of Christ's soldiers who are about to fight for His name. Let those who wish, therefore, go together with our sons Chromatius and Tiburtius, and let those who wish remain with me in this city. For the distances of lands will not divide us, whom the love of Christ binds, nor will our eyes feel your absence, because we behold you with the gaze of the inner man."

[67] While Pope Caius was saying these and similar things, Tiburtius, a most distinguished man, cried out, saying: "I beseech you, Father and Bishop of Bishops, do not allow me to turn my back on the persecutors. For it is very delightful and desirable to me if I could be killed a thousand times for the true God, if only I may find the dignity of that life Saints Tiburtius and others remaining in the City; which no successor may snatch from me and upon which no passage of time may impose an end." Then St. Caius, rejoicing together in his faith, shed tears, praying that all who had remained might emerge as victors from the contest, seizing the triumph of martyrdom.

(a) The feast of Pope St. Caius is celebrated on April 22. He held the see from the consulship of Carus II and Carinus, in the year of Christ 283, to the consulship of Diocletian VI and Constantius II, in the year of Christ 296.

(b) The Emperor Carinus. Carinus, created Caesar toward the end of the year 282, after his father Carus was killed by a lightning strike during the Persian expedition and his brother Numerianus was killed by the treachery of his father-in-law Aper, was himself also defeated and slain by Diocletian in the year 285, Diocletian's second year.

(c) It is perhaps to this that Vopiscus refers when he writes of him, out of hatred for our religion: "He banished all his best friends; he chose or retained every worst person." And below: "He showed the greatest deference to wicked men." He favors Christians: Such men were also considered Christians. Although Orosius also testifies that Carinus otherwise lived disgracefully. But envy was increased by the fact that he had Christians in his retinue, even those related by blood, as is clear from the life of St. Julian on January 9, chapter 8, number 35.

(d) So most codices; some read "Maguntiaca"; one reads "Moguntiaco"; Mombritius reads "Montiacho." Brecht reads "at Margum," correctly. So Vopiscus: "For he fought against Diocletian in many battles. But in the last battle, joined at Margum, he fell." Where he was killed. Other copies have "at Murtium." Eutropius, Book 9: "Afterward he conquered Carinus, who lived in universal hatred and detestation, at Murgum in a great battle, betrayed by his own army, which was the stronger, or certainly deserted, between Viminacium and Aureus Mons." Aurelius Victor, On the Caesars: "But Carinus, when he reached Moesia, immediately engaging Diocletian near Margus, while he was eagerly pressing the vanquished, perished by the blow of his own men." Margus was a city of Moesia and a river, as can be seen on the itinerary map.

(e) So all codices. One should perhaps read "Maximus and Aquilinus," unless Maximian Herculeus was substituted for him, who is recorded to have held his second consulship the following year, the year of Christ 287. Under these consuls, therefore, since Carinus had been killed the previous year, a fierce persecution was stirred up in the West.

(f) So St. Gregory of Tours, Book 1, History of the Franks, chapter 5: Little statues. "He (Chus) was the first to set up a little statue to be worshipped, at the instigation of the devil." Others read "statunculum" and "staticulum," as here; and the term "staticulus" is also used by Tertullian. Brecht: "little statues, that is, small statues of idols."

(g) "Insulae" in cities are houses enclosed on every side by streets and separated from other buildings, just as islands in the sea are surrounded on every side by water. Insulae in cities. Suetonius, Life of Nero, chapter 16: "and that there should be porticos in front of the tenement blocks and houses, from whose upper stories fires might be warded off." And in the Life of Julius, chapter 41: "He conducted the census of the people not in the usual manner or place, but street by street through the landlords of the tenement blocks." In the ancient description of the City, for each region the number of insulae is given.

(h) Others read "nymphs." In the same description of the City, besides baths, certain fountains called "nymphaea" are also listed.

(i) Others read "because a stream flows underground, in which there was a fish in the water, etc." -- a text absurdly corrupted.

(k) The Ripaille manuscript reads "to refresh." Others, "to strengthen."

(l) Others read "giving place."

CHAPTER XIX.

The Illustrious Deeds of Saints Sebastian, Tiburtius, and Others in the City.

[68] There remained, therefore, with the venerable Pope Caius the following: Marcellian and Marcus, together with their father, the most distinguished man Tranquillinus; likewise Blessed Sebastian; and the most beautiful young man, but even more beautiful in mind, St. Tiburtius; and Nicostratus, formerly Chief Secretary, with his brother Castorius and his wife named Zoe; likewise Claudius with his brother Victorinus and his son Symphorian (a), who had been freed from the disease of dropsy. These alone, those who are initiated into holy orders, while all the others departed with Chromatius, remained with Bishop Caius. He sanctified Marcus and Marcellian with the honor of the diaconate and made Tranquillinus their father a Priest. St. Sebastian, however, St. Sebastian being appointed Defender of the Church. who lay hidden under the guise of military service for the benefit of many, he appointed as Defender of the Church, and the rest he made Subdeacons.

[69] But because no safe place could be found for maintaining their hiding place, they all stayed with a certain Christian named Castulus (c), who was the Keeper of the Chambers of the palace. This Castulus himself lived in the palace, in an upper and very elevated place. They all dwell with Castulus, Keeper of the Chambers of the palace, safe there: This dwelling was approved as suitable because Castulus himself with all his people was a most devout Christian; and the law concerning sacrifices, although it raged everywhere with its fury, was concealed in those who were attached to the palace, because no suspicion could fall upon them. They all, therefore, as we have said, were dwelling with the holy Pope Caius in the house of Castulus the Keeper of the Chambers, in the very upper parts of the palace, and occupied day and night with groanings and weeping and fastings and prayers, they besought the Lord that they might be deemed worthy, by the endurance of confession in His name, to be associated in the number of the holy Martyrs.

[70] They perform many miracles. Devout men and devout women would ascend to them secretly, and obtained from the Saints various graces of healings for themselves. For being strengthened by the firmness of true faith and the solidified foundation of virtues, the grace of healings accompanied them. For the eyes of the blind were illuminated by their prayers, and the sick were healed, and demons were driven from possessed bodies.

[71] [Tiburtius heals a man half dead from a fall, by reciting the Lord's Prayer and the Creed;] Meanwhile, while these things were going on, Blessed Tiburtius, passing by, came upon a man who had fallen from a height and had shattered his head and all his limbs, so that those who were known to be his parents were concerned only with his burial. Then he said to them as they wept: "Permit me to chant (d) over him; perhaps he will recover his health." And when all had given him room, he approached the man and, slowly reciting the Lord's Prayer and the Creed over his wounds, his bones were so mended, and his head and all his internal organs, that as if nothing had happened to him, he was made perfectly whole.

[72] When he had done this, he began to go on his way. But the man's parents held him, saying: "Come, and have him as your slave, and we surrender all our goods to you together with him, because you have restored to us alive our only son, whom we already counted as dead." he converts both him and his parents, He said to them: "If you do what I tell you, I will greatly value the reward of this healing." His parents said to him: "We cannot oppose you, even if you deign to have us ourselves as slaves; indeed we even desire it, if you yourself judge it worthy." Then, taking them by the hand, he separated them from the crowds and revealed to them the power of the name of Christ. And seeing their mind firmly fixed in the fear of the Lord, and brings them to St. Caius to be baptized. he led them to Pope Caius and said: "Venerable Pope and Bishop of the divine law, behold those whom Christ has today gained through me, in whom my faith, like a young sapling, has burst forth in its first fruit." Then St. Caius the Bishop baptized them -- that is, the young man together with his parents -- giving thanks to God.

(a) He appears to be called Felicissimus above. But all manuscripts except the Ripaille one have Symphorian here, whom some call Symphronian and others Sympronian. He is inscribed in the Martyrology on July 7; Felicissimus and Felix on July 2.

(b) The Ripaille manuscript reads "to be guarded."

(c) What the "zetae" are, over which the Zetarius presided, has been explained above at chapter 3, note (b).

(d) Others read "to chant an incantation." Others, "to chant."

CHAPTER XX.

The Deaths of Saints Zoe, Tranquillinus, and Others.

[73] But since it would be too much if we wished to relate all the things, and how great were the things, that Christ accomplished through them, let us explain only how each one came to the palm of martyrdom. The most blessed Zoe, on the feast of the Apostles, while she was praying at the Confession (a) of the Apostle Peter, was seized by pagans lying in wait, St. Zoe, refusing to sacrifice to Mars, and was led to the Patron of the district of the Naumachia (b), and was compelled to burn drops of incense before a little statue (c) of Mars that stood there. She replied: "You compel a woman to sacrifice to Mars, to show that your Mars delights in feminine things. But although he was able to rob the most shameless Venus of her modesty, he shall not prevail against me, who bear the trophy of faith upon my brow. For I do not struggle against him with my own strength, but trusting in the power of my Lord Jesus Christ, she is long tormented by hunger: I laugh at both you and him with equal contempt." Then the Patron of the district sent her to a very dark prison, and for five days had her neither see the light nor receive food or drink. Only the voice of the man who had shut her in there was heard saying: "There you will die of hunger and thirst and blindness, unless you promise to offer a libation to the Gods."

[74] But when six days had passed, they reported about her to the raging Prefect, she is suspended and killed by foul smoke: who ordered her to be hung from a tall tree by her neck and hair, and that smoke from a dung heap be applied beneath her. As soon as she was suspended, she gave up her spirit (d) in the confession of the Lord. They then took her body, tied it to a stone, and sank it in the bed of the Tiber, she is cast into the Tiber: saying: "Lest the Christians take her body and make her a goddess for themselves."

[75] After her martyrdom was accomplished, she came in a dream to Blessed Sebastian and narrated to him how she had received the martyrdom of the Lord. She appears to St. Sebastian. When St. Sebastian had narrated this, St. Tranquillinus rushed forward, saying: "Women are preceding us to the crown; why do we still live?" Tranquillinus is stoned. He himself also, going down on the eighth day after the feast of the Apostles, approached the Confession of Blessed Paul; he too likewise suffered an ambush, was seized, and was stoned to death (e) by the people, and his body was committed to the whirlpool of the Tiber.

[76] Nicostratus and others, tortured three times, are thrown into the sea. Likewise Nicostratus and Claudius, together with Castorius, Victorinus, and Symphorian, while they were seeking the bodies of the Saints along the mouths of the Tiber, were seized by the persecutors and brought before the Prefect of the City. The judge was Fabianus, who urged them to sacrifice, and for ten days, employing both threats and blandishments, he was unable to move them in the slightest. Then he made a report concerning them to the Emperors, who ordered them to be tortured up to three times. And when they could by no means be compelled by torments to yield, he ordered them to be cast headlong into the midst of the sea. Weighed down therefore with immense weights, they were given over to the waves of the deep and in a clean place amid the waters they celebrated (f) the crown of martyrdom. The faithless, therefore, were plotting against the faithful, and, vexed by unjust fury, they could not even endure to hear the Christian name.

(a) The "Confessio" is the part of the church where the bodies of the Saints rest, generally beneath the high altar.

(b) There were many Naumachiae in the City: Domitian's in Region 9; others in Region 13; two in Region 14, across the Tiber. Baronius, at the year 286, number 13, believes this took place across the Tiber, and that new duties were at that time assigned to certain places and certain men for the purpose of seeking out Christians; and thus that several Patrons, or prefects, were set over a single region of the City, each of whom would seek out Christians in the part entrusted to him.

(c) Others read "staticulum," as above.

(d) Her feast is celebrated on July 5.

(e) July 6.

(f) July 7.

CHAPTER XXI.

The Martyrdom of St. Tiburtius.

[77] Meanwhile, a certain person had associated himself with St. Caius the Bishop under a pretense of faith, saying that he was a Christian; but in fact he had been an apostate and was deceitful in all his speech and cunning in everything entrusted to him. In short, since he was frequently reproved by Blessed Tiburtius, a most learned, noble, and holy man, Tiburtius reproves Torquatus for his frivolous manners: for arranging his hair above his forehead with the art of a barber, for constantly feasting (a) and dining amid play, for giving himself too freely to the gaze of women, for withdrawing himself from fastings and prayers, and for being devoted to sleep rather than being present as a vigorous watchman (b) in the hymns of God that lasted through the nights -- while he was, as we said, more sharply reproved by Blessed Tiburtius for these things, he pretended to accept the admonition with equanimity; and he contrived that the faithless should seize St. Tiburtius while he was praying. In this arrest he had himself seized too, betrayed by him, he is captured: and both were brought to the chambers of the raging Judge. When they were brought in, Fabianus the Prefect said to the one who had handed himself over by design: "What is your name?" He replied: "Torquatus." (c) Fabianus said: "What do you profess?" Torquatus said: "I am a Christian." Fabianus said: "Are you unaware that the most unconquered Princes have ordered that those who refuse to sacrifice to the gods are to be worn down with various tortures?" Torquatus said: "This man is my teacher, and he has always taught me: whatever I see him do, I must do likewise."

[78] Fabianus, turning to St. Tiburtius, said: "You have heard what Torquatus asserts? What do you answer to this?" St. Tiburtius said: "It is long since Torquatus has been lying about being a Christian. For the power of that holy name bears it gravely and with displeasure that its name should be usurped by those who are not its lovers (d). For truly, most illustrious Sir, this name 'Christian' belongs to the divine power -- namely, to the followers of Christ, he convicts him of feigned faith. who have truly pursued wisdom, who have truly been called Christians, who have fought bravely to crush their lusts. Do you believe, most illustrious Sir, that this man is a Christian, who in the vanity of arranging (e) the locks (f) of his head busies himself, who cultivates the barber, who carries his shoulders languidly, who extends his loose (g) stride with an unseemly effort, who treats men carelessly but gazes upon women more attentively? Christ never deigned to have such servants. But since he has asserted that he would imitate me here, in your presence you will prove that he has lied. For what he has always been, he will now manifestly show."

[79] Fabianus said: "You will act more prudently if you consult your own welfare and do not despise the decrees of the Princes." St. Tiburtius said: "I consult my welfare in no better way than by despising gods and goddesses and confessing the one Lord Jesus Christ to be my God." Torquatus said: "Not only is he himself a cruel Christian, but he also persuades and deceives many, and teaches that all the gods are demons; and he himself, together with his associates, with whom he practices magical arts (h), is occupied day and night with incantations." St. Tiburtius said: "A false witness shall not go unpunished." And he said to the Judge: "This man whom you see, most illustrious Sir, burning with the cares of his malice, joined the Christians for no other purpose than to devise how he might present himself to us as a Christian, how he might falsely present himself to others as a most faithful man. (i) Yet I reproved in him his Cyclopean gluttony, (k) his modesty drowned in wine, and the buried sanctity of the divine name. he accuses him of intemperate morals: Drunk, he suffered thirst, and vomiting, he suffered hunger; not as a Christian but as one of those diners of Antonius he ate, drank, and vomited. And now he accuses Christians, he denounces Christians, he incites a mild Judge against us, he puts a sword into the hand of an unwilling Judge, and he urges us to bow our necks to demons. We see your desire; we see your bloody counsels; and by your criminal art of words we behold the poisons of your breast. Arm yourself now, (l) most cruel one: exercise the office of the executioner; claim for yourself even the voice of the Judge himself; apply the rack, suspend the Christians, condemn, strike, burn, apply every torment -- you have received us well. If you threaten exile: to the philosophically minded, the whole world is home. If punishment: we escape the prison of the world. If fires: we overcome in our lusts greater things than these. Decree whatever you please; every punishment is cheap to us where a pure conscience is our companion."

[80] He disdains the blandishments of the Prefect. Fabianus the Prefect said: "Restore yourself to your family and be what nature has made you. For though nobly born, you have sunk to such dregs that you are willing (m) to undergo at once punishment, infamy, and death." St. Tiburtius said: "O most prudent of men, He mocks the gods: and Judge appointed over the Romans! Because I refuse to worship Venus the harlot, and incestuous Jupiter, and Mercury the deceiver, and Saturn the slayer of his own children, I incur the infamy (n) of my nobility; and because I adore and venerate the one true God who reigns in heaven, you threaten that I must be worn down with punishments. (o) We do not yield to your persuasion; we do not deny: Christ the Son of God descended from heaven to earth for this purpose, that from earth man might ascend to heaven; therefore, trampling underfoot with my feet all these vain images that you worship without cause, I have submitted myself to almighty God."

[81] Then Fabianus ordered burning coals to be poured out before his feet and said to him: "Choose one of two things: either add incense upon these coals, or walk upon them with bare feet." He walks upon burning coals with bare feet, unhurt: Then Blessed Tiburtius, making the sign of the Cross, trod upon them steadfastly with bare soles, and began to say to the Prefect: "Put aside your unbelief and learn that He alone is God whom we confess to rule over all creatures. Put your hand, if you can, into hot water in the name of your god Jupiter; and if your Jupiter can, let him make you not feel the heat of the burning. For to me, in the name of my Lord Jesus Christ, it seems that I am walking upon rose petals, because the creature serves the command of its Creator."

[82] Fabianus said: "Who does not know that your Christ taught you magic?" St. Tiburtius said: "Hold your tongue, wretch, and do not do this wrong to my ears, he rebukes the blaspheming Judge: that I should hear you, barking with a rabid mouth, name His sweet and holy name." Then Fabianus, enraged, dictated the sentence, saying: "Let the blasphemer of the gods, guilty of atrocious insults, be punished with the sword." He was led out by the Lavican Way, three miles from the City, and pouring forth a prayer to the Lord, he departed (p) by a single stroke of the sword. He is punished by beheading. And in the same place he was buried, a certain Christian having appeared; and in that place Christ has always bestowed many benefits, to the praise of His name, even to the present day.

(a) The Ripaille manuscript reads "might drink."

(b) Others read "vigils."

(c) Metaphrastes reads "Curtuatus." Unless perhaps one should read "Turcuatus."

(d) Others read "by its own manners."

(e) Others read "softening."

(f) Others read "loses his fibers"; others, "lets his fibers fall."

(g) Others read "bent."

(h) Others read "calamities."

(i) Others read "they reproved."

(k) Others read "his immoderate shamelessness with wine"; Brecht, "his stench emerging from wine."

(l) Others read "most Christian one."

(m) Others read "you can."

(n) Others read "and degeneracy."

(o) Others read "We do not refuse, we do not resist, we do not deny."

(p) The feast of St. Tiburtius is celebrated on August 11, on which day also the memory of his father St. Chromatius is observed.

CHAPTER XXII.

The Deaths of Saints Castulus, Marcellian, and Marcus.

[83] After this, Torquatus contrived that Castulus, the Keeper of the Chambers of the palace and host of the Saints, should be arrested. When he had been seized and hung up three times, Castulus is buried in sand. heard three times, and persevered in the confession of the Lord, he was thrown into a pit and a mass of sand was released upon him, and he departed (a) to the Lord with the palm of martyrdom.

[84] Marcellian and Marcus, with their feet pierced, After this Marcellian and Marcus were seized; and both, bound to a stake, received sharp nails in their feet. To them the most insane Fabianus said: "You will stand with your feet fixed until you render the duty owed to the gods." Then both brothers, nailed together to a single piece of wood, sang psalms, saying: "Behold how good and how pleasant it is for brothers to dwell together." Fabianus said to them: "Unhappy and wretched men, put aside your madness and free yourselves from the torments impending over you." They exult in their torment: Both replied, saying: "Never have we feasted so well; we have just begun to be fixed in the love of Christ. Would that you would permit us to remain as we are for as long as we are covered with the garment of this body." When one day and one night had passed they are pierced through with lances. and they persevered in psalms and hymns, he ordered them both to be struck through the sides with lances where they stood; and so through the glory of martyrdom they departed (b) to the starry realms. They too were buried on the Appian Way, two miles from the City, in a place called "At the Sands," because there were sand quarries there, from which the walls of the City were built (c).

(a) March 26.

(b) June 18.

(c) Others read "were built up."

CHAPTER XXIII.

The Glorious Contest of St. Sebastian.

[85] St. Sebastian is arrested: These things having been accomplished, Blessed Sebastian was assailed by those who were lying in wait for him; and because, as we have said, he seemed to lie hidden beneath his military cloak, although he was a most worthy soldier of Christ, the Prefect reported him to the Emperor Diocletian. Diocletian, summoning him, said: "I have always held you among the foremost of my palace. And you have until now been hiding against my welfare, to the insult of the Gods." St. Sebastian said: "For your welfare I have always worshipped Christ, and for the stability of the Roman world I have always adored Him who is in heaven, considering that to seek help from stones is the mark of a mad and vain mind." Then Diocletian, enraged, ordered him to be led into the middle of a field, by the command of Diocletian, he is shot through with arrows: to be bound like a target for arrows, and commanded that the archers shoot him (a). Then the soldiers placed him in the middle of the field, and from every side they so filled him with arrows (b) that he was bristling with the blows of arrows like a hedgehog.

[86] Thinking him dead, they departed. Then the widow of the Martyr Castulus the Keeper of the Chambers, named Irene (c), went by night to take his body and bury it. And finding him alive, she brought him to her house on a high stairway (d) where she lived near the palace, and there within a few days he recovered perfect health in all his members. He is nursed by the widow of St. Castulus:

[87] And when all the Christians came to him, they urged him to depart. But he, after praying, went down and, standing upon the steps of Heliogabalus (e), said to the Emperors as they were coming: "The Pontiffs of the temples beset the mind of your Empire with wicked insinuations, suggesting false inventions about the Christians, saying that they are enemies of the Republic -- cured, he rebukes the Emperors: they whose prayers improve and strengthen the very Republic, who never cease to pray for your Empire and for the safety of the Roman army." While he was saying these and similar things, Diocletian said: "Are you not Sebastian, whom we ordered to be killed with arrows some time ago?" St. Sebastian said: "For this reason my Lord Jesus Christ deigned to bring me back to life: that I might come before you and testify before all the people that your persecution has boiled over against the servants of Christ by an unjust judgment."

[88] Then he ordered him to be taken to the hippodrome (f) of the palace and to be beaten with clubs (g) until he should breathe his last. Then they took his body by night and threw it into the Great Sewer (h), saying: "Lest the Christians make him a Martyr for themselves." He is killed with clubs; thrown into a sewer; he appears to St. Lucina: Then Blessed Sebastian appeared in a dream to St. Lucina, a certain most devout matron, saying: "In that sewer which is beside the Circus, you will find my body hanging upon a hook (i). When you have lifted it, you will bring it to the Catacombs (k) and bury it at the entrance of the crypt, beside the footprints of the Apostles."

[89] He is buried by her. Then Blessed Lucina herself, with her servants, went at midnight and, lifting his body, placed it in her palanquin (l) and brought it to the place where he himself had commanded, and buried it with all diligence. The holy Lucina herself did not leave that sacred place for thirty days.

[90] Lucina converts her house into a church: After some years, peace was restored to the Church; and as soon as the Church received the glory of peace, she made her own house (m) into a church. Leaving all her wealth for the comfort of the Christians, she made this church heir in Christ, who with God the Father and the Holy Spirit, equal in power, lives and reigns in unity forever and ever. Amen. She gives all her goods to the Church.

(a) Others read "should take up"; others, "should sew"; others, "should strip"; others, "should cast at him."

(b) Others read "sewn in"; others, "implanted."

(c) Most codices read "Hirene"; Rabanus reads "Herene"; others, "Herena"; others, "Aerena."

(d) Others read "a high tenement block."

(e) Where these Steps of Heliogabalus, or Elagabalus, were can be gathered from Lampridius, who in his Life of Antoninus Heliogabalus writes thus: The Steps of Heliogabalus. "He consecrated Heliogabalus on the Palatine Hill near the Imperial residence, and built a temple for him... striving that no God should be worshipped at Rome except Heliogabalus." Indeed, that Antoninus had been the priest of this god.

(f) Some codices read "epidromium"; some, "hippodromium"; others, correctly, "hippodromium."

(g) Rabanus and others read "to be worn down." Others, "to be beaten with clubs."

(h) Concerning the truly admirable sewers of the City, consult Baronius in his Notes to the Martyrology, August 26 (b); Andrew Fulvius, Roman Antiquities, Book 3, chapter 30; Pliny, Book 36, chapter 15.

(i) Brecht and most codices read "in unco" (on a hook). Baronius holds this to be a hook by which the body of the Martyr was dragged to the sewer, Bodies dragged by hooks. as was the custom, which he proves by many testimonies of the ancients. Lampridius in his Life of Commodus: "Let the executioner be dragged by a hook; let the executioner of the Senate be dragged by a hook, after the manner of our ancestors." And in his Life of Heliogabalus: "He was dragged most foully through the streets, led through the sewers, and plunged into the Tiber." But since a hook had been driven into the body, how did he hang from the hook? Or was it a multiple hook on one, like those by which things that have fallen into deeper wells are customarily extracted; and was one tooth perhaps fixed into a wall? Certain codices point to a truer reading, in which "gumpho" and "gonpho" are written. One should read "in gompho." The Greek "gomphos" means a nail or a joint. Thus Statius, Silvae 4, on the Domitian Way:

"Then, with bosses pressed together on either side, And binding the road with frequent nail-pins," Gomphus

namely, with stones connected so that they would not twist apart and separate from one another. Tertullian in his Apology: "We place our necks before the lead, the glue, and the nail-pins." The paraphrasist Francis Zephyrus renders them as larger nails. The same word appears below in the martyrdom of St. Thyrsus. Here, therefore, a nail projecting somewhere from a wall, or some other piece of iron used for securing stones, seems to be meant.

(k) On the catacombs or catacumbs, one may read Baronius in his Notes to the Martyrology, January 3 (e) and January 20 (b).

(l) Others read "pavilion"; others, "pagone"; Surius, "pilentum" (a type of carriage) -- and so the Monk contends it should be read. On the "pavo" or "pabo," we have treated on January 16, in the life of St. Marcellus, chapter 5, letter (a).

(m) This matter is treated in the same life of St. Marcellus.

THE TRANSLATION OF ST. SEBASTIAN

By an anonymous Soissons monk, extracted from an ancient Besancon manuscript by Peter Francis Chifflet of the Society of Jesus.

Sebastian, Defender of the Roman Church, Martyr (Saint)

BHL Number: 7545

By an anonymous Soissons monk, from manuscripts.

CHAPTER I.

The Embassy of Hilduin to Rome.

[1] In the year of the incarnate Word eight hundred and fourteen, Hilduin, Arch-chaplain and counselor of Louis the Pious, the Emperor Augustus Louis Caesar, of divine memory, son of Charlemagne, after the final death of his father -- lamentable to all ages -- having obtained the sovereignty of the whole monarchy by the judgment of the Franks, enjoying the scepters of a consolidated kingdom without any opposition raised against him, and endowed with the diadem, with all everywhere applauding, was placed upon his father's throne. Since he surpassed all in the glory of immense dignity with the fasces of Imperial power, he took care to adorn himself more magnificently with the immortal insignia of blessed virtues, from which he could never be stripped; especially embracing memory and patience in every action of his. But he was also sometimes foreknowing of future things. Among all the primates of his Empire whom he had summoned to his council, he so loved and exalted (a) the most reverend Abbot Hilduin -- a man most modest in every kind of uprightness, endowed with all sagacity and industry, conspicuous in justice, distinguished in holiness -- that he entrusted to him more particularly whatever required more secret handling, and appointed him Arch-chaplain (b) throughout his entire Empire.

[2] This venerable Abbot, therefore, among the many monasteries that had been entrusted to him by the Imperial benevolence, had within sight of the city of Soissons a noble monastery (c), which Clothar, once King of the Franks, and his son Sigebert, Abbot at Soissons and elsewhere; had built at great expense in honor of the most Blessed Medard, Confessor of Christ, in which they had also entombed his most sacred remains. Seeing that the Brothers of this place excelled in monastic religion and were accustomed to ecclesiastical learning, the said Father Hilduin, greatly congratulating and delighting in their progress, diligently exhorted them with salutary admonitions to strive more and more toward the summit of perfection. In short, he cultivated, exalted, and enriched this place with such love and diligence that it was considered second to none in all of Gaul in religion, learning, and abundance of wealth.

[3] The Provost of this holy congregation at that time was Rodoin, a sagacious man, whose cunning and ingenuity I think no one of our time can equal. He, on account of the merit of his faithfulness and the industry divinely bestowed upon him, obtained so great a grace of familiarity from the same most holy Father Hilduin that he preferred him to all the Provosts of the monasteries that were under his authority. Hence, with his fame spreading, his name was renowned in the King's court. (under whom Rodoin served as Provost, And so the God-loving Emperor, having learned of this man's industry, began to honor him both privately and publicly, granting him free leave that whatever of utility or advantage he might find for himself or for the place over which he presided, he might bring to his tribunals without consulting anyone and obtain it at once. Nor long afterward, through the divine mercy, he obtained so great a grace from the same Emperor dear to Louis) that he would willingly admit him, both for the love of the pious Father Hilduin, in whose service he frequented the royal court, and for the sagacious industry by which he singularly excelled, among those who were privy to secrets whenever the affairs of the kingdom were to be discussed.

[4] At that time the aforesaid Father Hilduin held the pinnacle, as we have already said, over all of his rank in the whole monarchy of Augustus. This office, befitting the dignity of his excellence, he administered, keen of intellect as he was, with a sufficiently fitting exercise. He, having been delegated by the most pious Caesar to suppress the insolence of certain persons (d) who had risen up against the supreme Bishop Eugene at Rome, so exercised the whole judgment with prudent examination that he both fulfilled the Caesar's command and satisfied the Pontiff, and rendered those who had proudly risen against him He calms the tumult of the Romans. peaceful and quiet, their contumacy having been subdued. When these things had been duly accomplished, the cry of the City was raised in favor of so great a Father, Imperial judgments were approved, the mercy worked through this man was praised, the Pontiff's love and devotion toward the venerable Father grew abundantly, and the whole Senate of the Church implored with the utmost devotion that he might live a long time in the honor of this dignity. To their prayers were joined manifold gifts, which he is reported to have received from certain persons in such quantity and quality that they seemed to exceed price. Having therefore sought and obtained a blessing, praying that the Prince of the Apostles would be present to them, and having obtained leave to return, they set out, with God's favor, for home.

(a) So Theganus relates at number 36: "and there came to meet him his son Pippin with the first magnates of his father, the Arch-chaplain Hilduin, etc." And Lupus, Abbot of Ferrieres, in letter 97 to Hilduin himself: "As it seems to most, almighty God has placed you before all of your rank in bestowing riches." But he showed little gratitude toward Louis, having conspired against him, as the same Theganus is witness, and having broken faith sworn to his son Charles the Bald, as Nithard writes in Book 2.

(b) What the duties of the Arch-chaplain were, learn from Hincmar's letter on the order and offices of the Palace, section 16: "The Apocrisiarius," he says, The power of Abbot Hilduin. "whom our people call the Chaplain, or Keeper of the Palace, governed all the Clergy of the Palace under his care and administration. The High Chancellor, who was formerly called the Secretary, The Arch-chaplain of the Court. was associated with him," etc.

(c) Concerning this most noble monastery (which Clothar I, son of Clovis I, was preparing to build beside Soissons at the tomb of St. Medard, Bishop of Noyon and Tournai, who died on June 8, 561; but which, after the father's death toward the end of the same year, was completed by his son Sigebert, King of Austrasia) -- concerning this, I say, we shall treat more fully in the life of the same St. Medard.

(d) When Pope Paschal died on May 14 in the year 824, after four days, when two had been elected by the consent of the people, as Einhard writes in his Annals, Eugene, then Archpriest of the titular church of St. Sabina, with the party of the nobles prevailing, was substituted and ordained. It was necessary, however, Pope Eugene II. as the same author and after him Baronius at the year 824, numbers 11 and following, relate, for the suppression of the attempts of the opposing faction, that Lothair, the Emperor's son, be sent thither, and with him, as is evident from this text, Hilduin. They set out for Italy after the middle of August, as the same Einhard reports. Eugene II died on August 11, 827.

CHAPTER II.

Rodoin's Plan to Seek Relics from Rome.

[5] Meanwhile, those who loved him most intimately with a singular affection bore his absence painfully, Having returned to Gaul, seeing that he was returning later than the time at which they had hoped; uncertain in their unsure hope, they suddenly heard -- not without great joy -- that he had already entered the regions of Gaul. Rodoin, meanwhile, and his companions, most faithful as he was to his Father, since all things weighed upon him particularly, set out with a most honorable retinue to meet his longed-for patron. When at last they found and saw him again, having cast aside the sorrow with which they had been afflicted, received in the paternal embraces of the same, and greatly restored by immense exultation, they enjoyed the long-desired joys.

[6] After the paternal embraces and the most sweet kisses, as they eagerly inquired about the things that had happened to him, he delivered a lengthy narrative account: he relates what he saw and did at Rome. how, and with what honor, he had been received by the Lord Apostolic and by the Senate of the Holy Roman Church; with what authority and censure, having suppressed the garrulity of certain men who had been contumacious against the sacred Bishop, he had both preserved the Imperial right and obeyed the Apostolic sanctions and been a most fair judge of both parties; how well he had been treated by all the leading men of the Romans and how amicably obligated. And finally -- what was most precious to him and most gratifying to his own -- that through the grace of the same Lord Pontiff they had also merited to have the bond of his friendship in special companionship. In short, whatever it was that had gone well, or whatever had happened unpleasantly by chance, he affirmed that God's ineffable protection had been present to him in all things.

[7] And so, while Hilduin was fully relating to his dearest sons the dangers of his journey and embassy, Rodoin said: "We give and render thanks indeed to the almighty Lord, illustrious Father, his followers congratulating him: that with all things granted by Him in a sufficiently prosperous manner we have merited to see you safe and unharmed; indeed we have demanded this by night and day without ceasing, if He has deigned to hear us. And if not by our own merit -- which we determine to be none -- yet by the good of your faith and by your sacred merits, O Father beloved of God, we are gladdened that this has been granted to us from heaven. For the longer was the distress in the remembrance of you, the more joyful is the gladness at your restoration, since the outcome was prosperous; and may it be our good fortune to enjoy this joy while you, our patron, are well, for as long as the breath of life shall govern these limbs." The pious Father Hilduin, charmed by these addresses and greatly delighted, began to speak about the Apostolic dignity, and the religion of the Church, and the veneration of the Saints, whose infinite multitude enriched the city of Rome; recounting the struggles, merits, and names of certain of them. The venerable Abbot, therefore, indulging himself in these delightful recollections, extended the conversation at length.

[8] He relates concerning the veneration of Saints, their relics, and their deeds; Meanwhile Rodoin, being of a sagacious mind and, as I believe, divinely inspired, looking with eager desire to the future of the place over which he presided, said: "A little while ago, my Father and Lord, while you were speaking, I ventured to say first that whatever at any time might be advantageous or pleasing to you had been granted in perpetuity by the Supreme Pope of the Apostolic See, by an inviolable pledge. We must test whether his promise contains an effective clause. Surely, as I believe, with Rodoin urging him to seek some relics. it may happen that he would not refuse to confer upon you some heavenly citizen of outstanding merit from among those of whom we have just been speaking. If this should come to pass, what more salutary gift could be imparted to you; and how opportune it would also be if, by your procurement, a companion were given to your protector in all things, namely St. Medard? For we enjoy the patronage of that one alone. Moreover, this will be beneficial to your salvation and a memorial enduring without end, and perpetually profitable to the whole country." The Abbot Hilduin, of supreme reverence, said to Rodoin with great joy: "You are striving to persuade us greatly to raise up and exalt the place of your religious community, as far as can be understood. I do not disapprove your wish, nor do I dissent from your petition. Nay, I pledge my entire effort, insofar as God shall grant it, and I appoint you the executor of this business. Nevertheless, we must seek the Imperial judgment on this matter. If it is deemed praiseworthy, then consequently it will be irrevocable." To which Rodoin said: "Most excellent, Father, is the decree of your holiness."

[9] At Aachen he is kindly received by the Emperor and Empress. When companions had been dispatched from the most glorious Caesar to escort the venerable Abbot, they urged that the journey be hastened, declaring that the Emperor was seized with a great desire to see him. Setting out gladly from there, they arrived at the palace of Aachen. Then, thronging around him on every side and exulting beyond measure, they led him to the inner chambers of the Emperors. Received graciously by him, as was customary, he laid out the entire course of the completed embassy. When this was finished, Augustus was greatly pleased at the things well accomplished, rendered thanks, and bestowed gifts. With the haughty air of Empire laid aside, the celebrated and famous Empress Judith (a) came forth from the dining hall and, receiving the venerable Abbot more affectionately than usual, was greatly gladdened and delighted by his prosperous return. The entire court also rejoiced at his return as though at that of their own father.

(a) Concerning her, Einhard writes in his Annals at the year 819: "The Emperor, having inspected many of the daughters of the Nobles, The Empress Judith. married the daughter of Count Welf, by the name of Judith." Theganus, section 25: "Returning thence (from Brittany), he found Queen Irmingard suffering from fever, and she died not many days later in peace. The following year he married the daughter of Duke Welf, who was of the most noble stock of the Bavarians; and the maiden's name was Judith, who on her mother's side was of the most noble Saxon lineage, and he made her Queen; for she was very beautiful."

CHAPTER III.

The Occasion for Seeking the Relics of St. Sebastian. The Embassy of Rodoin.

[10] After they had been sufficiently gladdened with joy, Hilduin -- of good memory, for this epithet was proper to him -- not forgetful of what had been suggested to him by his faithful Rodoin, At Hilduin's suggestion, seized the opportune moment and took care to intimate this very thing to the ears of Augustus. To which the Emperor, most benign as he was, replied: "It should not seem unreasonable to you that what is suggested with ready devotion by your and my faithful servant should be pursued. For this, if the matter has its effect, will be profitable not to us alone but to the governance of the whole kingdom. Whom then have you chosen as most fitting for us to seek?" Rodoin was summoned and, presented before the King's presence and addressed by the Emperor on this very subject, he promptly and swiftly delivered his opinion, saying: "Silvester (a), the most holy Bishop of old, I think should be sought, if it please your most exalted Majesty." Rodoin is dispatched to Rome, to seek the body of St. Silvester; Augustus received his definitive speech favorably. "Is this then agreeable to all present?" he inquired. There was one unanimous consent of all in this matter, and they prayed with united vows that it might obtain a happy outcome. The Emperor willingly assented and pledged his full compliance in executing this, insofar as divine grace might favor it. Then he urged and admonished his beloved Abbot, together with Rodoin, concerning the outfitting of so great a journey. He fixed for Rodoin certain intervals of time for undertaking the journey, upon the expiration of which he commanded him to return to his presence.

[11] Rodoin returned to his homeland and the place that had nurtured him, not sluggishly using the time of the intervening delay. In preparing what was necessary for so great a journey, whatever the fertile soil of Gaul was accustomed to produce in a more pleasing fashion, he was quite zealous in furnishing his provision abundantly and in full, and he labored to amass a very great sum of money. After this, when the days of the granted delay had been completed, he returned to the presence of Augustus. When he was most benignly received, equipped with letters of recommendation from the Emperor. the Emperor delivered to Rodoin and his companions letters to be brought to Rome, signed with his name and the impression of his ring, filled with every kind of prayer concerning the obtaining of the aforesaid relics of the Saints, in which he entreated the most blessed Pope Eugene; and he earnestly charged them to apply their effort of labor and ingenuity, to the extent of their powers, in executing this.

[12] [Sick, divinely healed by the aid of St. Sebastian, he is directed to seek his relics.] Thus elegantly instructed by the Caesar, and embraced individually with most sweet kisses and sacred embraces, beyond what could be expected from so great a dignity, they were graciously dismissed and set out on their journey, unknowing that it would be changed. They pressed on as far as the city of Langres, where, to refresh their strength for a while, they pitched a most suitable tent. Here, before the doors of the mother church, a certain man, gravely seized by a very powerful illness, lay bedridden and helpless. On that very night when they arrived there, after long sighs from the pain of the day, when he had relaxed his weary limbs in a most restless slumber, he beheld himself standing before a person of indescribable splendor and excessive radiance. Unable to bear his gaze, turning his head this way and that, and unable with mortal sight, his vision being reflected back, to fix his eyes upon the one present, he was asked by the same figure, with exceedingly gentle words, what he was doing there and by what event he had incurred his malady. He gave the cause and stated the duration of his affliction. The figure again asked whether he wished to be restored to his former health. He replied that he had an immense desire for this, if he could by any means hope for it. Then the figure, pointing with a golden staff that he carried in his hand to the wound and the place of lodging, said: "Go to that suburb, and you will find certain men you seek, who are planning to go to Rome. You shall make known on my behalf that the cause they are pursuing is not of divine predestination. Let them know that what is mine has been granted by the Lord to human hands, not the relics of the one for whom they go." At this the man, trembling and anxious, said: "Lord, by what name do you bid that you be made known?" And he said: "I am Sebastian the Martyr, who at Rome was beaten to death with clubs for the confession of Christ God; where also I have lain buried in body until now. Let them know that my relics have been granted by the Lord for them, not those of the one for whom they go." To this the man said: "Not refusing to obey the command of your serenity, I will eagerly hasten to convey to them what you have commanded me. They will perhaps suspect that I wish to delude them by a fabricated trick. If they begin to demand proof of this matter from me, what answer do you command me to give? For, as I think, they will not be persuaded otherwise." Then the most blessed Martyr, extending his arm toward him, with his powerful hand, the moment he touched him, restored him to health; and continuing thus, he said: "Be well, and let this be the sign conferred upon you by me, which will by no means be rejectable by any ambiguity."

[13] When his sleep was put to flight by joy and fear, restored to perfect soundness, he confirmed that everything he had heard was most true. For he appeared so perfectly healthy, as if he had never been afflicted by the heat of any illness. Then, jubilantly traversing the entire city and its suburbs, he began to seek the men he had been commanded to find, and to make public the divine remedies wrought in himself through the most sacred Martyr. and advises him to seek the Martyr's relics. Those who yesterday and the day before had seen him lying half-dead at the threshold of the aforesaid basilica, running together from every direction as the report spread, astonished at the marvel of his unknown restoration, loudly resounded thanks to God in common chorus. At length he carefully sought out and found the men, whom he immediately recognized by the indicated signs, and fearlessly narrated what had been commanded to him; and he openly presented himself as a living proof in attestation of his words. They, having received with the greatest reverence the commands given by the most blessed Martyr, immensely gladdened, did not cease to pay vows of thanksgiving to almighty God and to magnify the Saint with united praise for the benefit conferred upon them.

[14] Then, retracing their steps, they gradually attempted to return to their own country, and seeking the venerable Father Hilduin, the author of this undertaking, they set forth in order the matter divinely accomplished, and anxiously begged him to deign to bring this same matter to the knowledge of Augustus in person. He obtains new letters from the Emperor. They also earnestly begged that the official letters, which had requested the relics of the great Bishop Silvester, be changed into a request for those of the renowned Martyr Sebastian. And lest they incur any misfortune on the journey they had begun, they pressed the matter as speedily as possible, with all the importunity they dared. The distinguished man Hilduin brought the secret of the divine embassy to the knowledge of the pious Prince; he revealed the salutary revelation concerning the obtaining of the relics of so great a Martyr. Augustus commanded that the drafts of the letters be renewed, filled with manifold prayer, under the pretext of a veteran soldier. Then, as before, he delivered to Rodoin and his companions the letters signed with his name and the impression of his ring. He arrives at Rome: They, with a more salutary breeze blowing by divine revelation, gladly retraced the road and, no longer hesitating about the completion of the business, eagerly sought the golden city of Rome.

(a) Concerning the life and relics of Pope St. Silvester, we shall treat on December 31.

CHAPTER IV.

Friends Greeted. The Embassy Presented to the Pontiff.

[15] In the year of the Incarnate Word 826, and the thirteenth year of the reign of the Emperor Louis Caesar, Rodoin entered Rome with an immense retinue and abundant provision. He prudently discharged the commission of the embassy imposed upon him, skillfully contrived by his industry. He implored and obtained the life-giving ashes of the most elegant Martyr Sebastian, of great virtues and healings. But before approaching the Apostolic Majesty, he sought out and found certain bishops, abbots, and leading men of the state He visits the friends of Hilduin, whom the venerable Father Hilduin had shown to be his most faithful friends there. Foremost among these and the most ready, and diligently attending upon the Apostolic dignity, were Quirinus the Primicerius (a), Theophylactus the Nomenclator, and the most reverend Abbot Ingoald, who happened to be absent at that time. He had indeed set out on a journey to the Beneventans by order of the Emperor, to make a survey of the bishopric of Albocuria. But overtaken by a swift courier, he was intercepted by a friendly summons and turned back to the City. He received the envoys with a cheerful countenance, treated them courteously, and before all else inquired whether the aforesaid Father Hilduin was faring well in prosperous circumstances. first the Abbot Ingoald, Learning that he was in prosperous health, he gave thanks to God for this, and prayed from his heart that, even if he could not see it in person, it might at least be granted him to hear that he was advancing with ever greater progress over many years. Then he asked why they had come so unexpectedly and without warning. They, admitted more familiarly to his ear, trustingly disclosed the secret of the whole affair. He received it with equanimity and most kindly encouraged them in the undertaking, removing their despair. And what he promised by word, he fulfilled with unwearied resolve. For through him the way and every access before the Lord Apostolic was opened to them.

[16] Then at last, seeking the most illustrious men Quirinus and Theophylactus, they delivered the letters sent to them, and for the matters contained therein, they doubled their prayers and gifts. And so those men, upon hearing the name of the Martyr, were struck in spirit, and with pallor suffusing their faces, they protested that it was beyond human capability to determine how a third patron, if he were granted, could be removed without tumultuous prejudice to the Apostles Peter and Paul; then other prelates: since they would most willingly wish to satisfy both the Emperor's command and their friend's petition. On the other hand, Rodoin and his companions, by no means repulsed by this obstacle, pressed more importunately, reiterating the inescapable vow of the Emperor and the confidence that the Father who had dispatched them had placed in their eminence. Won over by such appeals, they indicated that they would support the cause from their heart if it were the permission of the will of God and the Martyr, and wisely suggested how it might most fittingly be arranged.

[17] At length they were led into the Lateran Palace before the Lord Apostolic. Bending their knees to the ground, they pressed prone kisses upon his sacred feet. Then the letters were brought forth and the transmitted documents were presented. With abundance of words they soothed the pious Father's spirit, that he might perhaps be inclined toward their wish. They set forth the authority of Augustus; they explained the fidelity of the named and enrolled Father. He is admitted to the ailing Pontiff, If the written documents had fallen short in any respect, they labored to supply the deficiency as best they could. No private person was present at this conference except Quirinus and Theophylactus. For the Pontiff was then gravely ill, so that he appeared half-dead, and could hear their embassy in no other way than lying in his bed. When therefore the letters were being read, and he heard the name of the Martyr,

"He was struck dumb, and his troubled mind confused The organs of his voice, unable to bear the crisis of so great a Saint;"

who shows himself reluctant: for after the Apostles, the Roman people frequented him as it were a third patron, with magnificent gifts and praises. What his mind was thinking, the pallor of his face showed. While he was long silent, they stood with anxious minds; and when at last, recovering his breath, he gave his answer, he removed all hope in it and declared that the matter was above him. But they, with all the supplication they dared, pressed on importunately and kissed his knees and feet, bathing them with tears. Whereupon he ordered them to wait while he meditated on these things and sought counsel from the prudent Roman Senate, without whose consultation he said it was not good to attempt such things.

[18] Rodoin, considering the matter anxiously more than his companions, for care spurred him more keenly, did not depart immediately, but drew aside the aforesaid men Quirinus and Theophylactus into a corner of the building, he commends the matter to his friends. and earnestly begged them to remain firm in their opinion, saying: "Deign to have pity on us, who have committed all our hope to your eminence, and remember that friendship of yours, by which both in the present you can gain the profit of excellent delights, and in the heavenly places you can share in the grace of God with the Saint. For if it is true that the face indicates the mind, it has been openly given to us to know that the Lord Pope does not bear our mission with equanimity. Wherefore, whatever it is that you can ascertain with certainty, we beg that you make it known to your faithful servants without dissimulation, before we depart, and put us at ease." They, as before, gave their word to help, provided it could be the will of God and the Martyr. Led out from the Lateran, they returned to their lodging.

(a) The same Quirinus and Theophylactus were sent as envoys by Gregory IV to Louis in the year 828. So Einhard: "He also dismissed the envoys of the Roman Pontiff, Quirinus the Primicerius and Theophylactus the Nomenclator, who had come to him there, after hearing their embassy." The same is narrated in the Life of Louis. This seems to be the same Quirinus the Subdeacon who served as envoy to the same Louis under Pope Paschal, as mentioned in Einhard's Annals for the year 824.

CHAPTER V.

The Consultation of the Cardinals.

[19] But because a twofold care tormented the sacred Bishop -- the absence of the Saint on the one hand, and on the other the friendship of the most excellent Abbot, to whom everything within his jurisdiction had at some time been granted -- having called a private assembly of Priests and of those who were privy to secrets, he set forth the embassy and commanded them to resolve it with sound judgment. Then they, equally disturbed The Cardinals advise against the donation of the relics, and astonished beyond what can be believed, declared that such a petition was that of a madman or one ignorant of the Saint's merit; and they prayed for a more favorable fortune, that the matter should not proceed successfully. Nor did they fear to say in the Pope's presence that if the holy body were given to them, he would be far inferior to and unlike the acts of his predecessors, who had augmented the dignity of Rome with ecclesiastical treasures. What more? They protested that this ought not to be done and could not justly be done. On the other hand, the illustrious men Quirinus and Theophylactus said that it both ought to be done and could be done. And when those who were causing an unseemly and tedious confusion of noise, which seemed to weary the sacred Bishop, withdrew, while others urged it: and those who were among the more privy counselors remained, he began to engage in a fitting conversation with them on the same matter, and to attend to the counsels of a better opinion -- inspired, as we believe, by God -- and to show his own readier will manifestly.

[20] But those who had withdrawn on account of the disgust caused by their own garrulity were not ashamed to explore with envious anxiety what the Lord Apostolic was discussing with Quirinus and Theophylactus concerning this very matter. And because they had learned by very frequent experience that those two surpassed them in the favor of their Lord, since they were the arbiters of every decision, and that without their counsel, by the consultation of those others, the matter would not proceed successfully, and they themselves would be regarded as contemptible, they returned to the Curia uncalled, demanding access regarding those matters about which they had been consulted, and they pronounced a favorable judgment. they insist that the Saint would not be pleased; "We remember," they said, "most excellent Pastor and Lord, the most generous affection of your son, the venerable Hilduin, toward the Majesty of the Apostolic See; nor are we ignorant of the Imperial supplication in this very business made known to us. Both matters, by divine providence, the incomparable blessedness of your prudence will so dispose that neither he may charge you with inhumanity, nor we charge you with cruelty."

[21] "The Supreme Pontiff, the Lord Adrian (a), once, with what intent we do not know, having approached the tomb of this Martyr either to transfer him within the walls of the City or wishing to grant relics from his body to those who sought them, was in his first attempt seized by a terrible horror and repulsed, and left the work unfinished. Indeed, that he escaped with his health he ascribed to the mercy of the Saint who spared him. We have also heard that under Pope Leo (b) of blessed memory this same thing was attempted by his command, various examples being adduced, where, a sudden storm arising with a flash of lightning, it shook the entire temple to its foundations, so that the terrified Clergy, forgetting their chants, cried out that the ceiling was falling upon them, and no one thought he could leave alive. It is also reported that under the Lord Paschal (c) this same work, long since begun, was disrupted by a similar disturbance. It is established, therefore, by such frequently demonstrated prodigies, that the Martyr by no means wished to depart from here. Hence we too seize upon the confidence of granting without losing. For if, with God's assent, it should so come to pass, your Eminence will see no loss on either side. Full satisfaction for them, and the removal of querulous detraction from us. Those men will preserve the devotion which they say they have toward your Eminence; we will preserve the tenor of our pledged faith. and the feeling of the people. There is also another thing that we know most certainly: that no Roman can be found who would dare, however compelled, to lay his hand upon the Martyr's tomb. Both will be possible: it can both be granted and retained." Hearing these things, the Lord Apostolic gave his calm approval, and ordered the venerable Bishop John (d) to be summoned. When he arrived, the Pope sought with him in more secrecy a more fitting outcome for the matter, and by his free authority he decreed what, by divine impulse, was more salutary to the future. But this did not become known to many at that time.

(a) Adrian I, Pope, held the see from February 9, 772, to December 26, 795.

(b) Adrian was succeeded by Leo III on the same day; he died on June 12, 816.

(c) Paschal I held the see from January 27, 817, to May 14, 824.

(d) This appears to be John, Bishop of Silva Candida, who frequently served on embassies to Louis, as Einhard attests for the year 823.

CHAPTER VI.

The Tomb of St. Sebastian Is Opened.

[22] While these things were being debated, the illustrious Count Ingobert (a) arrived, whom our people supposed would be an obstacle to them, because they had thus far pursued the matter without his knowledge. For he was very powerful and influential in all things with the Supreme Bishop; and being a close friend of the venerable Abbot Hilduin, with Count Ingobert pressing the matter, they suspected that he would be indignant because they had neglected to inform him of these things. Wherefore they went to him with quick step and made these things known to him in the name and by the command of Hilduin, declaring that they had been sent particularly on his behalf for the purpose of what they sought. He too, not unmindful of their old friendship, showed himself as cheerful in this matter, with all the effort and zeal of his sagacity, as God granted him strength, and supplied from his own resources what was needed for the undertaking. Moreover, he spoke with the Lord Apostolic, so that their petition might be brought to effect without any envious impediment.

[23] When this had been arranged, they were summoned again and led back before the Lord Apostolic. The Pope assents to the petition. And when intercession was made by those standing around on behalf of their petition, and they themselves lay prostrate with their faces cast down to the ground, he was at length moved by compassion and, though fearful and trembling, consented to grant the body of the Saint. Bishop John was appointed the most suitable minister for this gift. For since, as we mentioned above, the Pope was afflicted with a severe illness, he could not carry this out himself, though he did not deny that he wished it most earnestly. As it later became clear, this served the divine dispensation quite well. And so, taking John, The place of burial is approached. whom the venerable Pope had appointed as their benevolent director, they go together with eager hearts to the place that was no longer unknown; for they had learned from the narrative of his passion, elegantly composed by St. Ambrose, that at the third milestone from the City, at the place called the Catacombs on account of the mooring of ships, the most blessed Martyr had commanded in a vision a certain matron named Lucina to bury him at the footsteps of the Apostles Peter and Paul. She had embalmed him with spices and carried out with ready devotion what she had been commanded.

[24] Having first undertaken fasting and prayers, Two days later they devoutly observed the prescribed fast with the Priests and Deacons and the rest of the Clergy; among whom also Ingoald the Archimandrite was a most faithful helper with his men, according to his ability. When the solemn observance of the fast had been completed, as the twilight of night fell, they approached his noble tomb to celebrate the vigils of the Martyr in invocation, and they set their hand to work with every duty and service in the cause of their people. There, spending the night with the singing of hymns and the melodies of psalms, with the continual odors of incense and the cloudy fragrances of various spices, they besought the Lord that they might be deemed worthy to handle the saving relic, and that He would not on account of their sinful contagion reject that which faithful desire and impatient love had with the greatest labor drawn thither through many perils.

[25] While certain parties made objections; And so, spending the entire night continuously in spiritual praises, when the pale Dawn was restoring the day, they asked the garrulous Romans to withdraw from the church and to grant them their customary privacy. But indeed, when these withdrew into the choir, they were discovered by our men to have risen up in a jealous assault against the enterprise to perform a Litany, and those whom they had thought to be intercessors, they perceived to be detractors with their foolish murmuring. Moreover, they hurled imprecations even against the Supreme Pontiff, reviling him as crueler than all his predecessors, for not fearing to cast out such a great Patron beyond his borders, blinded by money. Furthermore, they besought the holy Martyr with most bitter sobs not to allow himself to be carried away from his dear homeland by the ignoble Gauls -- the homeland in which he had chosen to possess the palm of eternity and the place of his rest by his own decree. When those whisperers had been driven out, our men alone, together with Bishop John and Abbot Ingoald, withdrew into the inner sanctum, and having barred the doors, they resolutely approached the tomb.

[26] Meanwhile, John, exhausted from the mortification of the preceding fast and the continuation of vigils, as he sat upon a chair, was suddenly overcome by the violence of sleep and fell into a drowsy half-sleep. And as soon as he had gently relaxed his eyelids into rest, he saw standing before him a man of resplendent appearance; who addressed him with these most gentle words: "O John, Bishop John is confirmed by a heavenly vision. do not fear any longer to give the body of this Martyr Sebastian to those men who have come for him. Know that this is by heavenly predestination and by his own will. Approach, therefore, and lay your hand upon the sepulchre, to convey it to the appointed place." And when he tried to carry out what was commanded, he saw close by, at his feet, fiery stones lying, belching intolerable heat upon him and blocking his advance. And when, as though already placed midway, he saw that no passage was open to him in any direction, surrounded by the heat of those burning stones, and trembling, not knowing what to do, he was encouraged by the figure and marveled that he had suddenly leaped over them without injury. And again he saw an intervening mass of raging coals, by which his progress was forced to halt. But trusting in the gesture of that same figure, he found himself transported beyond it. Then he wished to continue the road he had begun. And behold, across his path a devouring flame had scattered monstrous balls of fire, which the holy Bishop greatly feared, especially because there was no room to turn aside. At last, with that same figure giving him his right hand, he was led unharmed beyond.

[27] Then a brother named Wilharius was sent to summon him. When he had gently roused John, who was still trembling with the horror of the terrible vision, by a soft touch, he informed him on behalf of his companions that the time for performing the sacred rite had come, that it was in no way profitable to delay, and that they had already been waiting for some time prepared at the Martyr's tomb. He immediately rose, and having been vested in his pontifical vestments, The Oblationer refusing, he hastened to the place with the utmost reverence. He excused his delay by disclosing the revelation, and exhorted them to lay aside doubt and stand firm in confident hope of receiving the sacred treasure for which they had so often sighed. And so the Oblationer was summoned, whose duty it was by Roman custom to open the sepulchre; but when he long and vigorously resisted, protesting that this was a most unjust thing and that no Roman man should presume upon so unforgivable a crime, by which through succeeding generations the charge of sacrilege would be imputed, the same John, strengthened by divine warnings, seized a tool and, as far as his strength allowed, struck the sarcophagus with repeated blows until he grew weary, he opens the sepulchre: and by striking he pierced it through. When our men saw him failing with rapid fatigue, at his signal they plunged in with fiercer spirits and stronger arms, and although with great labor, having broken through the monument -- for it was of immense mass and insoluble cement -- they at last received the most sacred body of the Martyr.

[28] Meanwhile, all who stood by inhaled an aromatic fragrance, unprecedented and unknown to mortals, from which a sweet odor breathes forth, which they reported to have been of such sweetness and delight that no one, however abundantly he enjoyed it, could be sated with it. From this we clearly attest that it was not of human composition, but a most pleasing effusion of heavenly grace, which had always been fragrant in the most blessed Martyr. This vapor, then, breathing from the holy place for a long time, agreeably perfumed the entire building, which at its entrance kept the corpse of someone buried scarcely ten days before, from whose oozing discharge a loathsome stench welled up and infected all who entered. But that noxious odor, overwhelmed by the abundance of the other, was reduced to nothing and subsided until all the festive rites for the Saint were completed.

(a) Mention of this illustrious man is frequently made in the deeds of Louis and Charlemagne.

(b) We have followed the authority of this writer.

(c) From kymbe (boat), the name Catacombs seems to derive; but what mooring of ships was there?

CHAPTER VII.

The Relics Are Carried Away from Rome.

[29] The Saint's departure had been foreshadowed. The most blessed Martyr had already appeared some time before, in the secrecy of a revelation, to a certain Archpriest, declaring that he wished to depart from that temple -- unable, as I believe, to endure the stench of that perishable corpse. For he seemed to him to proceed from the apse with averted face, and to go out as though indignant. And as he departed, a small boy followed in his footsteps, carrying a broom in his hands and sweeping the filth behind him, until he had fully departed from that place. Moreover, the basilica was estimated to be equal in size to the basilica of St. Denis; in it the most blessed Apostles Peter and Paul had once been entombed, and near their footsteps the same venerable Martyr had commanded himself to be buried. Whence it is clear that it had been unworthy of the most worthy merits of the Saint, and unsuitable for his repose. Therefore, his Ministers and Attendants -- to whom we have recounted these things by way of example -- act so as to serve him continually with spotless devotions. Consider how much you have obtained through him in temporal things: recall how much you may hope for without end of time. Surely he who here deigned to admit us, however unworthy, to his funeral rites, will himself -- if we strive worthily, I dare to say -- have as perpetual companions in that place, by the help of his intercession, those whom he here had as servants. Let none of us grow weary of laborious service in the brief span of finite time, whom no doubt ought to break regarding the reward of eternal recompense.

[30] And so with immense joy and honor, while they were wrapping the discovered body -- full of divine fragrance -- first in fine linen and then in costly cloths, it healed with marvelous swiftness a certain cleric who lay mortally ill with the heat of fevers. When the most sacred body of the Martyr had been found, abundantly fragrant with heavenly odor as we have said, A sick man is healed. word was immediately sent to Quirinus and Theophylactus, that they might most opportunely communicate this to the Lord Apostolic -- which was done. Since on account of his infirmity he could not come there in person, he ordered the venerable Bishop John to deliver it to them. Receiving it with all alacrity and veneration, they departed with Bishop John himself, Archimandrite Ingoald, and very many other Clerics and common people of the Roman Church. The relics are sealed with the Pope's ring, according to custom, The chanting choir reverently scattered the sound of sweet melodies, going before them at a distance. Some gave songs of joy; others gave deep sighs and bitter laments. In this manner they bore it all the way to the presence of the Lord Apostolic, so that it might be sealed with his ring according to custom. When this had been carefully done by him, it was carried to the church of Blessed Peter and deposited there on the same day. While certain parties murmured again. Whereupon very many of the Romans, stirred by malice and envy, assailed the Lord Apostolic, not fearing to cry out that he was crueler than all his predecessors, for permitting such a great patron to be expelled from his borders -- something no other had ever granted. Whence they urged that only an arm be given to them and the remainder decently placed in a worthy location there. This treachery could not escape the notice of Archimandrite Ingoald. He immediately disclosed the same to our men, and handling the matter more cautiously together, after taking counsel they kept silent on that day.

[31] Furthermore, Rodoin, whom the force of love and impatient desire had animated with the affection of pious devotion for obtaining the relics of the Saints, having abundantly bribed the sacristans whose duty it was at that time to guard the basilica of St. Peter, boldly assaulted the most sacred tomb of the most Blessed Pope Gregory under cover of that same night -- which was before the sacristy -- Other relics are secretly taken away, the custodians having been corrupted, and the body, taken up with the utmost reverence and decently composed, was carried to the altar of Blessed Peter and placed next to the venerable body of the aforementioned Martyr. Then Rodoin and his companions were asked to give a pledge of faith, which they gladly took, and over those most sacred remains of both the Martyr and the Pontiff they willingly fulfilled the sacrament of oath -- namely, that they would never disclose or make public to any mortal what had been done, but would keep it buried in perpetual silence. Hence our men, praiseworthy in their pious fraud, with doubled joy and magnanimous in silent heart, having removed the holy bodies from that place, impeded by no obstacle, transferred them to the monastery of Ingoald.

[32] On the following day, the Lord Apostolic ordered them to be brought before him again; for they had not yet obtained permission to depart, but had only received the Saint into their possession. He immediately asked them where they had the Saint. They professed not to know, except only that they had already sent him onward to their own regions. A new obstacle; soon removed. "Whatever the case," he said, "whether you know or not, see to it that you bring him back here at once. For this decree cannot be altered: permission to depart from here will not be granted to you otherwise." They, exceedingly fearful and sorrowful, swore by oath that things stood as they had said, and that what he commanded was entirely impossible. This could hardly be persuaded upon him, but by the assenting mercy of God, matters remained as they had begun. For those who had previously favored them altered the situation. When they perceived that his mind was disturbed, approaching more closely to his ear, they said that it was necessary, since the envoys could neither be bent nor turned back, to treat them somewhat better and not to rebuke them so harshly, lest perhaps they might depart as ingrates and report the most magnificent gift unfavorably. In this way, though with the greatest difficulty, they were released, and having received a blessing, they rejoined their companions not far from the City, and with great joys swelling from the great treasure, accompanied by divine grace, they returned to their homeland by prosperous journeys.

(a) Odilo writes the same in his letter to Abbot Ingramnus concerning the arrival and reception of the bodies of SS. Tiburtius, Marcellinus, and others. "By whose ingenuity and skill," he says, "the bodily remains of the most blessed and all-worthy Martyr Sebastian, Some relics of St. Gregory at Soissons. together with the most sacred limbs of Pope Gregory of blessed memory, are reported to have been conveyed and deposited together within the walls of Soissons, in the basilica of the great Confessor of Christ, Medard," etc. We shall discuss this matter more fully in the Life of St. Gregory on March 12.

CHAPTER VIII.

Various Miracles on the Journey.

[33] From there they reached the city of Piacenza, and when the body of the most blessed Martyr was being carried in, A demoniac is freed at the relics in Piacenza: a demoniac, tightly bound with straps, was brought to the entrance. At once the most wretched spirit, disturbed and terrified, indignant that it was being forced to abandon the miserable man whom it had wretchedly possessed, began to torment him most savagely. And since he could scarcely be held by the hands of many, springing forward and bursting the bonds by which he had been tied, with disordered convulsions amidst the crowds -- now hurling himself upward, now falling headlong to the ground -- he put everyone to flight. But as soon as he came before the Saint, he suddenly fell trembling and lay prostrate as though lifeless for a long time. Then the most wicked devil, overcome by a mighty arm and unable to endure the Martyr's presence, abandoned the man; and powerfully cast out, he fled vanquished into the foul darkness he deserved. The captive fully recovered the senses he had lost, and with his dwelling cleansed by the dew of heavenly power, he roused many to the veneration of the Saint and kindled praise of almighty God -- whose gift was what had been wrought through the Martyr -- in every direction. On that same journey from the City, many who were feverish, many other sick persons healed: many who were lunatic, and those afflicted with various ailments, meeting the Saint along the way, were rescued from their burning afflictions through his venerable merits and endowed with the full vigor of health.

[34] At Mount Jove, the renowned fame of the Martyr's glorious miracles had arrived. Here a cleric named Benedict, a sick man carrying the relics is healed: the sacristan of that very place, had been wasting away for thirty continuous days with a lethal illness; he heard tell that the relics were being brought that way, since the direct road led past. And since, with the structure of his limbs falling apart, he could in no way go out to meet them as he desired, he had himself carried by the hands of others. On the public road, not far from that place, he was brought to the Saint in this half-dead state and set down before him; he said, with what strength he could muster, that he wished to carry him and humbly begged to be allowed to do so. Sustained on either side -- by faith, not by rashness -- receiving him in his own arms, he soon merited the restoration of his former health, and thus brought him in safe and joyful to Octodurus. There, offering gratuitous sacrifices of praise to the Savior of all for his restoration, and kissing the bier of the Martyr, he returned home unharmed with his companions. With God glorifying His Saint through such works, a considerable multitude streamed in from every direction.

[35] A blind man obtains sight: At length they arrived by a gentle road at the place called Granant, where a small boy, blind from birth, was brought by his parents and set down before the altar of the church in which the most blessed Martyr had already been placed. He spent that night sleepless there, just as he had been set before the Saint. But when the morning dawned, after the conclusion of the Mass, when the relics were being carried forward by the hand and office of the Priests, the boy, hearing the commotion of those departing, knew that the Saint was being raised from that place. Immediately, stretching out his arm into the uncertain darkness, he laid it on the bier. At that very touch he received his sight, and with clear eyes beheld the one who had illumined him as he was being carried, and first recognized the shape of his own palm. Calling out the name of the Saint, he rendered his due thanks, and displayed upon himself the light -- which he had never before experienced -- so that others might be provoked to the same gratitude, saying with joy that he could now behold what he had never known; and he proclaimed blessed for eternity by every person Him who had restored to him by ineffable infusion, in a single moment, the capacity of sight which nature itself had denied him. This, O Lord God, Your champion, seasoned in battle, has wrought by Your most secret dispensation: that he may shine in You with everlasting splendor, that he may enjoy You in eternal and inaccessible light, that he may be ever more and more inflamed by You -- who illuminate every rational creature -- and by that inflaming be made blessed: this he makes known to Your faithful. Through him, we Your humble servants eagerly desire to send the vows of our devotion and the sacrifices of pure praise, with firm faith and with all our strength, that we may deserve to be rescued from the darkness of our sins and to be flooded with the light of Your brightness; and we pray that through his mediation these may become pleasing to You and salutary to us.

[36] A hunchbacked woman is healed; The distinguished Martyr of the Lord was carried with an honorable procession to the cell of St. Serenus; a certain woman, always looking at the ground and never able to raise herself upward, had herself dragged to the church to meet him. As soon as she arrived, she raised herself upright, and as though she had never suffered any hump at all, she appeared cured before all who were present, by the intercession of the Martyr. Amazement and astonishment seized especially those who had known her before the previous day. Thus marvelously released by his power, giving thanks to God and the Saint, she returned to her home.

[37] Another man: deaf, mute, crippled, and lame; Among the frequent throngs running together to the Saint, a certain commoner -- deaf, mute, crippled, and lame -- was presented to the Martyr at that place. He spent three days before the life-giving body. On the succeeding fourth day, while he persevered in his votive prayers, he found himself granted mercy through the Saint's intercession. For the deaf man merited hearing, the mute produced ready speech, the cripple changed the aridity of his limb to verdure, and the lame man extended his unsteady step to firmness. As testimony of his restoration, having obtained complete health, he carried the Martyr of God on his own shoulders to the village of Calno-munde. Likewise two blind men and two lame men. As the Saint entered the village, the glorious Martyr restored lost sight to two blind men and straightened the twisted steps of two lame men of the same number, and with unseen swiftness caused them to walk so that they might immediately be companions of his journey, having compassion before the eyes of all. And so the blind men went before, needing no guide, and with the dense darkness torn away, they displayed to the wonder of all new lights infused from heaven. With the withered sinews softened by divine remedy and the joints and soles made firm, the lame men, their strength restored, rejoiced that they were bearing salutary burdens.

[38] This renown of signs, by which the heavenly majesty was glorifying His Saint, had drawn from every quarter a devout multitude, vying to bring offerings to him. For from all that province, the noble and powerful men, and illustrious matrons as well, Great throngs flock to them. rushing out together with mixed crowds of common people, came running; they joyfully beheld each day the magnificent works of the Lord, such as they had never seen, and -- more than this, I might say -- had not even heard of anywhere at all, and in beholding them they were healthfully nourished.

(a) Mount Jove. Mount Jove, also called the Greater St. Bernard (from St. Bernard, who founded a monastery there, as we shall relate on May 16 in his Life), is in the Pennine Alps, not far from Aosta.

(b) So the manuscript; perhaps "augmentum" increase?

(c) Bier. That is, a bier, from capere to take; or, as Papias says, because it is carried upon the heads of men.

(d) "Momento" in a moment should be read; unless the Author wished to express the bier, by whose touch he had drawn light.

(e) We shall treat of St. Serenus on October 2. His cell is in the territory of Troyes.

(f) Clinicus. Clinici are those who attend the sick who are bedridden, and themselves the sick confined to bed; for kline means bed. But Papias says: "Clinicus, paralytic." Here it is used for a bent and hunchbacked person.

(g) Belfort. Calnomium or Calvonium.

CHAPTER IX.

The Procession of Translation to the Monastery of St. Medard.

[39] Thus, gratefully traversing the road, they arrive at the borders of the long-desired territory, placing their halt at the sixth milestone from the city, They are brought into the territory of Soissons: until the entire army of the heavenly soldier should prepare itself to meet them -- about to attend upon the most glorious victor, through whom it too, clad in the armor of virtues, might learn to take up unconquerable battles against the most savage enemy, and by worthily venerating his holy wounds, might acquire a laurel and eternal trophies.

[40] The venerable Bishop Rothadus the Elder was at that time governing the Church of Soissons. Having roused by ecclesiastical exhortation an assembled band of the entire order of Clergy and people, and having ascertained the place of rest, he went to meet the Saint with all manner of sacred offices and chants, thence solemnly into the city, encompassing and embracing the virtue-bearing body with all his strength, honoring and venerating it. Then he solemnly bore it forth and with a great throng and festive jubilation triumphantly transferred it into the city. Every sex and age, meeting outside the walls for this admirable spectacle, joyfully inserted themselves among the companies attending the Saint, sent their votive offerings, and swelled the shining procession immensely. Everyone deemed it profane who could not be present at this so glorious reception. With choirs chanting in gentle measure and crowds of people applauding, it was borne in triumphal pomp into the principal basilica of the blessed Martyrs Gervasius and Protasius.

[41] Here a lame man, known to all by face and disability, stood in the midst of the throngs -- one who had long dwelt as an inhabitant in that same city, and who, upon hearing the fame of the Saint, had happened to enter just then, unaware that the Lord's Martyr had wished to manifest the first tokens of his miraculous power in him there. A lame man healed in the crowd. When, therefore, he stood in the midst of the surging throngs, he was suddenly shaken by an invisible power and trembled all over; the deformity of his legs was changed, the sluggish and half-dead weakness was cast away, and the inert bendings of his knees were quickly loosened and stretched out. With no intervening delay, the strength to walk grew powerful: before all present he rose up vigorously, walked before the Saint, and departed sound and rejoicing.

[42] From there it was carried to the monastery of the holy Virgin Mary, where it was magnificently received. So great a popular multitude assembled there that a person could scarcely turn to one side or even move. Having been raised from there, it was conveyed as far as the river Axona.

[43] A more splendid array had already occupied the nearer banks of the river, as the force of love and the unspeakable devotion of desire demanded. The devout assembly of monks, vested in ecclesiastical robes, stood gazing with unanimous devotion, animated with the full range of liturgical offices, They are received by the monks. so as to render fitting services of reception to their protector and patron who was to abide with them in perpetuity. As soon as they saw him approaching by the thrust of the oars toward them, they fell to the ground, then rising with melodious praises, they received him. Choirs of singers surrounded him on every side, with hymns and sweet-sounding organs, with the continual vapors of incense and various spices -- some bearing glittering banners, others carrying the emblems of the cross radiant with tawny gold and gleaming with the diverse color of gems, some bearing censers and thuribles, others carrying candelabra, and augmenting the day with brilliant light.

[44] Carried with great speed in such a triumph, he is set down in the place prepared for him by divine providence and divine gifts, next to the tomb of the glorious Confessor of Christ, Medard, with exulting spirits, and all singing in harmonious concert these words: "Voices resounding with the glories of your noble sanctity join in praise. With suppliant word let us say: Hail, illustrious Martyr, companion of the Angels, fellow citizen of the Prophets, and co-heir of the Martyrs, Saint Sebastian, intercede for the salvation of us all." That translation took place on Sunday, December 9, 826. It was then a Sunday, and a fitting antiphon was set as the introit: "People of Sion, behold, the Lord shall come to save the nations." By the fitting melody of this chant, that singular salvation of the Lord's Incarnation, which was foretold in this passage as coming to all nations, poured forth salvation and joy upon all the peoples of Gaul from the arrival of this illustrious Martyr; and if sought with faith, through his intercession it bestows temporal gifts and eternal rewards. O day, rich with such abundant praises, laden with such joys, on which the Imperial Champion was brought into the city of Soissons -- than which no more joyful day dawned upon the world, nor did a more cheerful one shine upon the earth.

(a) There were two Rothaduses, or Rothadi, Bishops of Soissons. From this one may refute Claude Robert, who writes that the relics of St. Sebastian were brought to Soissons when Rothadus the Younger occupied the see. Both are treated in the Gallic councils.

(b) Those holy Martyrs still have the principal basilica of Augusta Suessionum (Soissons) dedicated to them, as Robert attests. Saussay writes that their Discovery is celebrated at Soissons on April 27, and the Dedication of their church on the second Sunday after Easter.

(c) Belfort adds: "by that community of nuns." The monastery is of the Order of St. Benedict, according to Robert.

(d) The Axona, commonly called the Aisne, rises in the farthest borders of the Remi, Axona River. washes the city of Soissons, and flows at Compiegne into the Oise, which others call the Isara.

(e) Belfort adds: "And because during those days there was no crossing over the river except by boat, they conveyed him across by rowing; he who afterward would render the river safely passable, in which evil spirits had often set the snares of their arts against those crossing."

(f) Papias: "A ceroferarius is so called from carrying a candle; in Greek, Acolyte." Candelabra. Ceroferalia, or rather ceroferaria, seem to be used here for candelabra.

CHAPTER X.

Various Illnesses Healed.

[45] When he had been deposited in a glorious and fitting manner, a certain girl, lame in both feet from her very cradle, well known to nearly everyone, A lame girl recovers her step; was dragged there by her parents and presented to the Saint. She obtained her restoration with such speed that without any faltering in her step she raised herself upon firm feet; and in the sight of all, she walked before the Saint and returned to her family cheerful and sound.

[46] After a very brief interval, while the Bishop with the Clergy was engaged in the sacred solemnities of the Mass, a certain disabled man with withered knees was brought through the dense ranks before the Saint, sitting upon his sunken calves: this was his customary seat. Likewise another, But the most merciful Martyr also took pity on him with his accustomed compassion, and having loosened the rigidity of his withered sinews, he marvelously restored him and endowed him with perfect health, to the wonder of the people who witnessed these things. He had as many witnesses of his long-standing disability as there were citizens from that same city who could press into that spectacle.

[47] Another woman: sense and speech restored: Without delay: behold, a woman most pitiable and wretched, deprived of her mind and the use of her tongue, was dragged in bound with ropes. With a savage heart, entirely desolate within, she knew nothing of what she was doing outwardly; flinging herself about in aimless dashes, she gave wanton leaps into the crowds. She could neither be restrained by chains from her frenzy nor controlled by threats. The wearisome labor of her family presented such a one before the gaze of the Saint. The most compassionate man of God did not disdain to look upon her who had been brought to him, and in looking upon her, he favored the tearful prayers of her lamenting kinfolk: the use of speech, entirely taken from her palate, he restored; her sense he not only reformed but even abundantly increased. Joy mixed with fear arose; the most ready affection of all toward his veneration was multiplied. And so they humbly honored and cultivated, blessed and praised the majesty of God present there. Then they returned joyfully to their homes.

[48] A lame man is healed: After the completion of the sacred rites, the dense multitude that had gathered from every side saw a certain man enter, limping so badly that he was on the point of falling. But they were astonished to see him return immediately, by the Martyr's deliverance, on sound feet.

[49] For the Saints, who for the love of their Creator delivered their own bodies to the most savage torments of suffering, no cure of infirmity is difficult; because the more fiercely the bitterness of torments raged against them, the more the grace of spiritual gifts shone forth in them, so that according to the truthful promise of the Lord Christ, each one might receive a hundredfold of what he had given, and star might differ from star according to the quality of its light. That this is so wondrously ordered by God in the heavenly dwellings is clearly perceived from the fact that in these earthly seats as well, where their mortal remains are preserved, they are glorified by the distinct recompense of merits and the brilliance of signs. Among these, this most victorious warrior, preeminent among the fellowship of Martyrs for the most noble trophies of his combat, and after his death more magnificent in the abundance of his miracles, has obtained through divine grace such perfection that it is clear he has merited every kind of healing. And while all these things are wondrous, those are especially worthy of admiration which are both more unusual and not granted to many. And so I shall relate one such from among many. A certain matron, suffering from a flow of blood, came on the very day of his reception and stood on the threshold of the basilica, conscious that her perpetual defilement made her unworthy to enter; for eight years already she had wasted away in infirmity from the ceaseless flow of blood, likewise a woman suffering a flow of blood for eight years; without interruption, without recovery, without rest. At length she did not know what to do or to whom to turn. Gasping with frequent sighs, drained of blood beyond all measure, she could scarcely bear the severe distress with her exhausted limbs. Wonderful indeed and very remarkable: that a woman afflicted through so many spans of time should be cured by divine medicine through the holy Martyr in the space of a single hour. For as soon as she directed herself to him with all her hope, standing as she was before the doors, the stream of corrupt blood, flowing ceaselessly, halted; the foul ulcer of her belly returned to its natural state. There was no delay of healing where the heavenly Physician deigned to lay His hand: not even a scar from the infirmity afterward appeared; whatever had been horribly painful or noxious vanished. A rosy color suddenly restored overspread her ashen cheeks; the joys of complete health, imparted to her, were made known.

[50] Granted, this woman had heard from someone unskilled in the sacraments that she must abstain from entering the church and receiving the Eucharist for as long as she remained in the uncleanness of this infirmity; but it should be known that the affliction of a corrupted nature is not a sin, nor does the single stroke of ecclesiastical censure punish alike voluntary pollution and the wearisome, unavoidable necessity of natural ailment. For the former the mind suffers, enticed by willing consent; the latter the penalty of a depraved nature has inflicted. But since many are ignorant of what the decrees of the Canons ordain on this matter, I have judged it not out of place to insert here the decree of the venerable Pope Gregory on the same matter; for he says: "A woman, while she suffers her menstrual habit, [she ought not therefore to be barred from entry to church or the use of the sacraments;] should never be prohibited from entering the church, because the superfluity of her nature cannot be imputed to her as a fault, and it is not just that she should be deprived of entry to the church on account of that which she suffers involuntarily. For we know that the woman who suffered a flow of blood came humbly behind the Lord and touched the hem of His garment, and immediately her infirmity departed from her. If therefore she who was in a flow of blood could laudably touch the Lord's garments, why should it not be permitted for a woman who suffers her monthly blood to enter the church of the Lord? But you say: 'She was compelled by infirmity to try a remedy against her sickness.' A woman's monthly flow of blood is likewise a sickness. If to that woman with the hemorrhage health is granted, why should it not be granted to all women who are infirm by the defect of their nature? She ought not to be forbidden to receive the mystery of holy Communion during those days."

[51] She afterwards publicly professed the miracle. After she had obtained full health, casting aside the cloak of shame, she first disclosed this to the custodians of the church; then she did not blush to profess the same to all the Brethren. For she had perhaps learned that saying of divine teaching: "To reveal and confess the works of God is honorable." Tobit 12:7. There arose applause of the people, with unanimous devotion and a common spirit of thanksgiving, offering to God their duties of gratitude and praise -- He who, triumphing wondrously in His Saint, deigned to work through him such great and marvelous displays of power. Thus the matron, exulting in the restored health she had obtained, returning to the sorrowful home she had left, filled it with joy, bestowing gladness upon her family and wonder upon all.

[52] Bertha, sister of the Emperor, attends the solemnity. All leading this day -- most richly filled with the restoration of many -- in salutary joy and sincere gladness, with festive triumph, there were also present the by no means negligible testimonies of royal authority. For the most excellent Bertha, sister of Emperor Louis, Bertha, daughter of Charlemagne. attended this spectacle, herself remarkable, never ceasing to marvel at and magnify all that occurred. At the command of the Bishop she advanced close to the altar and stood long before the Saint, and fixing in her mind certain numbers of those who had been healed, she distinguished the cases of each one, so that she might be able to report them at a suitable time to her brother the Emperor and to the nobles of his palace.

[53] A blind woman recovers her sight, On the following day of the resplendent station, while the Lord Bishop was ascending the ambo during the sacred offices and pouring forth the teachings of the divine word upon the people who had assembled, instructing them to love and seek the true light of the Saints, behold, a certain blind woman was attentive to these things; she merited both the illumination of heart through the ministry of the Priest and also, by the mercy of the Martyr, the immediate recovery of her lost bodily sight. She sees, she rejoices, she invokes the Saint, she adores, she declares him blessed. No longer needing a guide, she hastens to his illustrious relics, so that seeing with the body, she might compel to see any who might be present who were blind in mind; and at the same time she would cause them to reflect within themselves how easily it lay within his power to kindle spiritual lights inwardly, who so easily restored them outwardly, and who by working invisibly demonstrated invisible remedies in whomever he wished.

(a) In the responses to St. Augustine, concerning which see May 26 in his Life.

(b) Bertha, daughter of Charlemagne. Bertha, daughter of Charlemagne and Hildegard, wife of St. Angilbert, as we shall relate in his Life on February 18. She was the mother of the historian Nithard. At the time when the relics were brought to Soissons, she had already been consecrated for thirty years and more under the sacred veil, placed by her husband in a suitable location within the monastery of Centula (Saint-Riquier), and was devoted to vigils and fasts.

CHAPTER XI.

Punishment Inflicted on an Impious Man; Assistance Bestowed.

[54] At the fifth milestone from the monastery, there is an estate to which ancient antiquity gave the name Caprea, in which there was a certain tenant farmer named Gyslenteus, who, pressed down by the heavy burden of a hump and always walking with a stooped, bowed gait, could not look up at the sky. He earned the sustenance of human necessity by diligent farming. And so on the aforementioned day of the appointed station, while all the surrounding inhabitants were leading a day celebrated with festive joys, this man alone wished to carry out his usual labors; yoking his oxen, he hastened to the field, desiring to complete his day's work. A certain neighbor meeting him One who violates and blasphemes the feast of the Saint is punished; reminded him of the day proclaimed by the Bishop as a holiday, urged him and admonished him to return home and observe the day with festive worship along with the rest, and to beseech the Saint with suppliant intercession to be his help. He, thinking nothing of the wholesome advice given him by his companion, refused, and dull and stupid as he was, gave such answers: "Up to now, by carrying on such labors, I have painfully acquired the sustenance by which I somehow support myself; I have never heard this Saint commemorated, nor do I owe anything to report to his benefits, because I have received neither good nor evil from him. Therefore I will not listen to you urging me in this matter, nor will I cease from the work I have begun." As the day receded, the quiet of night arose; and behold, the wretched man, by the withering of his sinew-joints, deservedly for his impudence, was contracted entirely into the form of a ball, so that his legs stuck fast to his thighs. On the following night as well, his mouth -- with which he had spoken contumaciously -- was twisted into the shape of the letter X, with his jaws turned to opposite sides in each direction. This pitiable prodigy was a spectacle to many when the second day dawned.

[55] On the third night, as he was violently afflicted with intolerable torment and crying out with what voice he could, he saw standing before him a person of most resplendent countenance and distinguished appearance, by whom, when asked what he was suffering, he gave the cause of his great calamity, and confessed that the punishments he endured he had received for his contempt of the Saint. He was asked whether he would henceforth be willing to amend. He is healed, having promised amendment. Then he bound himself by oath, declaring that he would by no means be incorrigible from that point on, nor would he perform any work on the feast day of the aforesaid Martyr for his entire lifetime. No sooner said than done: he who was, as I said, contracted into the form of a ball and as it were crushed, with his legs stretched out straight, recovered the strength to walk. Somewhat stronger on that day, on the vigil of the fourth night he was asked by the same person as before whether he was feeling better, and he said that it was plain for anyone to see. The figure said to him: "Receive your health, and rising, hasten to the place where the solemnity of the Martyr Sebastian is being celebrated with festive joys; and make known to all by what censure and severity you were punished for contempt of him, and by what mercy of his compassion you were wondrously released, so that by your example they may know to observe this day solemnly as a perpetual holiday in the recurring cycles of years." Immediately at the command of the speaker, health followed as a handmaid, and his mouth, which had been distorted, returned to its proper state; yet he did not lose his hump for the rest of his life. Without delay, complying with the command, he hastened to the place where the mixed multitude of people was keeping joyful watch before the tomb of the holy Martyr, and before all the Brethren he recounted what had befallen him on account of his negligence. Then, after heartfelt sacrifices of thanksgiving and praise offered to God for his restoration through the most sacred Champion, now chastened by the divine scourge, carrying his joy with him, he returned to his humble cottage, proclaiming to all who were streaming to the Saint's celebration in every direction that no one could escape with impunity who neglected to observe his solemn feast day.

(a) Glomus, glomeris and glomi: a ball made from wound threads.

CHAPTER XII.

Other Miracles. An Abundance of Offerings.

[56] A lame and crippled man is healed: A certain courier -- his name has escaped memory -- lame in both feet, had lost the freedom of walking; also afflicted with the withering of one hand, he had lost the ability to write. Thus disabled, he was devotedly presented by the hands of his relatives before the Saint. Without any intervening delay, as his hand revived, he recovered the use of the defrauded sense; and with his joints made firm, he immediately stood erect in his proper stature and regained the power of walking. O how ineffable and admirable is the efficacy of divine operation! There was no delay of healing where the intercession of the Martyr was sought. For it was one and the same thing for him to have come and to have seized upon salvation. And so, having gained the health of his entire body, he glorifies God with praises, magnifies the champion of the Lord, and returns on his own feet -- he who had been carried by the hands of others.

[57] Another woman with a withered hand and foot: He had not yet left the atrium when behold, a certain poor woman followed, displaying to all a withered hand, drained of all moisture, with only skin drawn over the bones; she also had a foot equally wasted and parched with dryness. As soon as she arrived, she was immediately restored, having experienced the swift power of the Martyr. For her hand recovered the function of spinning and her foot the use of walking.

[58] Another lame man: As she was departing in triumph for the health she had obtained, a certain lame man was admitted. He, lying prostrate on the ground before the Saint for three days alone, merited healing, having received the Martyr's intercession.

[59] Gislebert, Count of Soissons, among the tokens of virtue in which he excelled by his upright character, also diligently committing the gains of his almsgiving to Christ, placed them for safer keeping in the treasuries of heaven; for it was his custom at dinner to care for the needy and disabled, whom he had assigned as daily guests at his table, and to refresh them charitably from what he industriously withheld from himself. And so one of these, a man named Walherus, disabled for three lustra, when he lay prostrate before the life-giving body of the Martyr, likewise a disabled man: in the very effort of his prayer, he immediately stood upon his feet in health, the divine mercy being propitious to him through the intercession of the illustrious Martyr. And there were more who praised God for his admirable recovery than had previously been aware of his disability.

[60] Then immediately following, a certain man named Eurulfus, whose eyes had been condemned for five years, a blind man; as soon as he arrived before the holy of holies, guided by a staff, he immediately and perfectly recovered his sight, divinely illuminated after a full lustrum of lost light, and gazed upon the various colors of worldly things with attentive eyes.

[61] On the following night, the opportune time for the morning synaxis had arrived; likewise another: when behold, while we were seated during the readings, a certain man was brought in, named Baldegerus, who for a cycle of nine years had been held in blind night with his pupils deprived of light. The illustrious Martyr of the Lord took pity on him as was his custom, and without any intervening delay, putting darkness to flight and unsealing his eyes, he restored the ancient use of sight; and the brilliance of the sun, which prolonged blindness had denied, he granted him to behold with unblinking eyes.

[62] A lame boy: Meanwhile, while those present were held in amazement, intent upon these miracles, a certain small boy named Tedelgysus, lame from his first cries, whom the venerable Bishop Rothadus had been accustomed to nourish at his table, was brought by his parents and set down before the tomb of the Saint. He was as well known to all the townspeople and those dwelling in the suburbs by face as by disability. As he lay beside the Saint's memorial, he was immediately raised upright and obtained the most perfect health, which he had never experienced. And what was not granted to him to obtain through nature, he merited to gain -- by the prerogatives of the merits of the distinguished Martyr -- through the power of divinity.

[63] It would be very long and most difficult for a mere word-scatterer to pursue individually and personally all the things which divine power deigned to work through his venerable merits, amid the universal kinds of afflictions and diseases that befall the human condition either by nature's original susceptibility or by chance occurrence. For when, from diverse breadths of the world, innumerable others: 72 in a single day, stirred by the fame of his miracles, an innumerable multitude of people converged -- from all the territories of Gaul and Germany, and even from overseas provinces -- such an immensity of peoples flowed together that, like locusts, it occupied every area of the place itself, which extends to a quite ample breadth. Among these there was such a multitude of the blind, lame, withered, leprous, and possessed, as well as lunatics and those impeded by ailments of every kind, that they seemed to exceed the capacity of numbering. Among all these, the exhibition of healings by divine will through the most blessed Martyr was as frequent as the concourse of those who needed healing was numerous. For they were healed not only individually or personally, but in tens and twenties and, so to speak, in crowds; to such an extent that on the day of the vigils of the holy and venerable Confessor of Christ, Abbot Benedict, seventy-two of mixed sex and age, and also of mixed disability, were restored to health by the intercession of the miracle-working Martyr. The blind received the sight they had never experienced; the lame obtained the ability to walk which they had not known.

[64] Among those who flocked to experience his benefits out of devotion, there was an excessive fear, mixed with reverential worship. For many openly confessed their sins, and many were visibly burned by an invisible fire. But those whose minds were sounder took care more circumspectly not to enter the threshold of the church until they had first washed their minds with the cleansing of confession and penance, and their bodies with water. An incredible abundance of offerings. And so among the diverse kinds of goods that were offered by the pious devotion of the faithful as votive gifts at the shrine of this most excellent Martyr, from diverse provinces and regions, there was such an immense abundance that it seemed almost to exceed the sum of weight and number; so much so that a heap of silver coins of various denominations swelled to eighty-five modii, besides the ornaments of men and women, platters of diverse weight, and other vessels; and the sum of gold reached nine hundred pounds.

(a) Therefore Guido was not the first Count of Soissons whose memory survives, in the times of Kings Lothair and Hugh Capet, as Andre du Chesne writes in his History of Castillon, book 4, chapter 3. In the Privilege of Bishop Rothadus, as given by Belfort, Gerard Count of Soissons and Gislebert Viscount are mentioned.

(b) This seems to be used for a staff or walking stick.

CHAPTER XIII.

The Detraction of Rivals Suppressed.

[65] Others envy the monks of St. Medard. But because every good is always accompanied by envy close at hand, many of the Priests began to be burned with the rust of jealousy, forbidding the people entrusted to them from hastening to his patronage -- more frequently sought throughout the whole world -- and from offering their vows at his illustrious relics. For they said it would be more proper that the churches in which they had received the gift of baptism and faith be enriched with those revenues, and that their widows and orphans be nourished thereby; and that it was not good for them to go without while others grew rich, for them to be stripped while others were clothed. This rust of envy grew to such an extent that it even infected the hearts of certain Bishops. Among these was Ostroldus, who at that time presided at Laon; when he had ascended the pulpit to deliver a sermon on this matter to the people, after a lengthy discourse to the assembly, he spoke thus: "What," he said, "do you seek by wandering to Soissons, as though you would find the Martyr Sebastian there? Know for certain that he was buried at Rome long ago after his martyrdom, and there he lies to this day, moved by no one. Bishop Ostroldus discourages pilgrimage to St. Sebastian: You have here the venerable temple of the Mother of God; frequent it. In it make and fulfill your vows. There is no need for you to wander elsewhere and seek foreign aid. Through her, whatever you faithfully ask will be granted by the Lord." After he had addressed the people at length, each one returned home; and he himself, savoring the joys of the day, was soon to be overthrown by distress close at hand.

[66] Night came on and closed that day to its end. The Bishop, having dined, went to bed; his limbs relaxed in sleep. And when the hour of the dead of night pressed in, behold, a certain young man, bearing the graceful figure of the Lord Sebastian, stood before his couch, with two others standing at his right and left, gleaming with a similar splendor and wearing pontifical vestments; but he himself was clad in a military cloak, carrying a golden rod in his hand. Striking the Bishop with it and calling him by name, he addressed him with these words of rebuke: "I," he said, he is rebuked and struck by St. Sebastian: "am Sebastian, Defender of the Church, who once died at Rome for the love of Christ, where my body has lain buried until now; but now, by God's predestination, for the love of Medard, Bishop of Noyon -- whom you see standing at my left -- I and this one at my right, Gregory, Pope of the city of Rome, have been sent to Soissons, so that we may guard that place and its inhabitants by our patronage, and by guarding, foster them. But you, led by envy, acted impudently yesterday against me, turning away the people entrusted to you from going to the confession of my name and bringing their vows in my service. Moreover, you falsely testified that my human remains are by no means to be found there. But so that all scruple on this matter may be driven from your mind, learn by these blows that I lie there, just as you now behold me, deposited long ago without any diminishment of body, resting beside the tomb of Medard, Confessor of Christ." Having said this, he struck him with the rod he carried in his hand with many blows, commanding thus: "Go to Soissons, walking with bare feet, and display openly to all the marks of the blows I have inflicted upon you, so that all may know that I am there in bodily presence; and that by spiritual power I preside over and benefit not only the inhabitants of that place, but also all the peoples of Gaul who faithfully adhere to my King and Lord; and who render due service of homage to me and my companions, that is, the patrons of that place." Having spoken these things, he returned with his companions to the joys of heaven.

[67] The Bishop, sleepless from the pain of the blows and from shame, anxiously waited for the light of day to return with hurried course. When it was restored to mortals, he summoned his intimate counselors and necessary friends, disclosed the vision, and revealed the swollen and livid marks of the blows. They, indeed anxious and greatly troubled, urged that the execution of the work divinely commanded must be hastened as quickly as possible. [He goes on foot to Soissons: having recounted the vision, he venerates the Saint.] And so the journey was arranged, and gifts to be brought to the illustrious Martyr were prepared. A melodious company, singing hymns, slowly followed the one who walked on foot, until they arrived at the place where an immense throng of people was keeping watch before the Martyr's tomb. Having laid aside all haughtiness, with his eyes cast to the ground in deep shame, he fell prostrate on his face with as much humility as the severity of the divine correction he had received. His prayer was prolonged at length. Groans and sighs were poured forth from the depths of his breast. When his prayer was finished, his supplication was commended to the leading men of the place in a fitting chapter; then his appeasing gifts were brought forward; thereupon the noble assembly of the Brethren was convoked; confession of his fault was made; the divine censure and the correction that followed were displayed; and he pledged that for the whole course of his life a more fervent devotion toward the most blessed Martyr would endure. And so the man of God, now made wiser by the divine scourge, with a sincerer mind and a more vigorous body, gratefully returned to the lofty heights of the see of Laon. The outcome of this affair was then as much more widely known to all as the dignity of his person was more famous, and since the city was situated on a height, the matter, done in the open, could not at all be hidden under a bushel. The venerable Ostroldus, the aforesaid Bishop, having been taught by the best teacher to be a docile student, began freely, both in private and in public, to teach that no one would be exempt from divine chastisement, nor would it go unpunished for anyone who should deem it contemptible to honor the memory of the Martyr Sebastian. Thus the envy of many yielded, overcome by the Martyr's virtues, and through the skin of one body the venom of envy was expelled from the hearts of many by such a poultice.

(a) This Ostroldus is the twenty-third Bishop of Laon (Lugdunum Clavatum) according to Claude Robert. He is recorded as having been present at the Council of Noyon, in the first year of Louis the Pious, in the year of Christ 814. He is called Ostualdus in the Privilege of Rothadus, unless it is an error.

(b) Eurythmia: grace, a comely and fitting bearing of the body.

(c) For Laon is situated upon a hill.

(d) Malagma, from malattein (to soften): a medicament by which hardened matter is softened and worked. Poultice.

CHAPTER XIV.

The Origin of the Monastery of Magnilocus.

[68] In the province of Aquitaine, in the district of Auvergne, in the village of Tudurnum, there is a monastery consecrated by the merits and in the name of this most excellent Martyr. The account of its original construction is reported by the following truthful narrative. There was in that same region a certain Priest, notable for the probity of his character, Magnus in deed and name; who also, from the event -- which came to him not by chance but by divine decree -- gave the place its name, so that it was called and is Magnilocus. Indeed, among all the monasteries of that province, it is held to this day as the most famous and noble. This man, then, while he burned with the ardor of faith and grew in the pious love of virtues and the alacrity of his mind, was seized by a violent fever by the governance of divine dispensation, Magnus, a sick man, will recover by the aid of St. Sebastian, by which everyone whom God loves is chastened. As the long duration of his illness grew worse, his strength broken and destitute of all hope of recovery, he was advised through a vision to direct his swift steps to Rome and faithfully to seek the most precious mausoleum of the Martyr Sebastian: he learned from a truthful vision that he would be generously healed there.

[69] Immediately rendered somewhat more vigorous, not hesitating about the fulfillment of the vision, he arranged his small means, he goes to Rome, and for the difficulty of the longer journey took what was necessary with him, and humble and lowly, he undertook the arduous labor of so great a journey with a heart panting with pious devotion. Although the journey was completed with difficulty, he at last entered Rome, mistress of the world, with the fulfillment of his long-cherished wish; and ascending the temple holier and more famous than any in all the world, he heartily committed his transgressions through the greatest Consuls of the heavenly court to God with the most abundant outpouring of prayers. He visits his basilica: Then, having visited the sepulchres of Christ's Martyrs -- in whose multitude and victories the city of Rome exults with a singular privilege -- he came to the Catacombs at the third mile from the city. Entering the church in which the blessed Apostles Peter and Paul had once been entombed, and at whose footsteps this warrior, the most victorious champion of whom our narrative speaks, had appointed himself to be buried, he lay long in votive prayer. Then, raising himself from prayer, he came away in the most perfect health, restored to such robust vigor as if he had never been afflicted by any burning of fevers or the vexation of any illness.

[70] He carries away dust from his sepulchre: Then, inspired, as I believe, by a divine impulse, he carefully gathered the dust that was around the sepulchre with the utmost devotion of faith, and set it aside to be carried home with him as a great treasure. Having saluted again the blessed Apostles and all the Saints who illumine the city of Rome with their merits and presence, full of joy he sought the native soil of Aquitaine. Upon entering it, before he revisited his familiar home, he came to a certain place most delightful in the flow of its waters and the beauty of its groves; and since the place charmed his eyes and the hour, growing later, urged weary bodies to refresh themselves, they set down their baggage and indulged in a meal. As the sun set, the repose of night, friendly to gentle labors, stole in. The Priest, removing the sacred dust he had carried with him from around his neck, hung it on a branch of the tree under whose shade he had reclined. Then he lay down early to sleep, intending to set out more promptly the next day. He is unable to remove it from the tree on which he had hung it. At the first light of the following day, having packed his baggage and wishing to return to the road, he put his hands to the branch of the tree from which the virtue-bearing dust hung. Stretching out his arms with full effort, he could not at all seize it, or even touch it. Again and again reaching out to detach it and placing under his feet whatever could help his hands, his attempt was frustrated. His companions in turn, clinging to the little tree, labored in vain.

[71] Flying rumor drew the neighboring villagers to so great a spectacle. The common folk flowed together from every side. And these too, attempting by turns what they had learned by report, proved it by experience. They set down their baggage and took an involuntary rest that day, between willing and not willing. Newcomers, Miracles were worked there: arriving fresh, thrust themselves forward in alternation, and their arms, numb with amazement, labored in vain. People afflicted with various ailments converged from every direction. The divine power worked through the merit of His Martyr every kind of miraculous sign -- granting sight to the blind, walking to the lame, purging others who were possessed by a fierce demon, and bestowing on some the natural power of hearing and speaking, once the harmful affliction was removed. Meanwhile, the lord of the estate on which these things were taking place, seeing such wondrous and astounding divine sacraments being performed in his territory, summoned a public notary, and having made a legal transfer, assigned it to the Saint, to be possessed in perpetual right. Thus with the passing of days, both the worship of religion and the situation of the place received increase through the generosity of various faithful. A monastery was built. First, on that same spot, a small oratory chapel was built. At length, as the devotion of the faithful grew, a monastery was established there and consecrated with episcopal blessing in the honor and name of the most precious Martyr of Christ, Sebastian. The order of monastic life under the rule of an Abbot was also put in place.

(a) Commonly Manlieu, as found in Savaron in his Origines Claromontanae.

(b) Hodoiporikon: an itinerary, or description of a journey; here used for the journey itself.

(c) That is, temporius, sooner.

CHAPTER XV.

Wicked Traffickers in Relics, Wickedly Deluded.

[72] At a later time, as the place prospered with the rigor of monastic discipline, there were two pseudo-monks in that same monastery, wolves in sheep's clothing, who, at odds with the sheepfold of the Lord's flock in which they had grown up by their unseemly conduct, were frequently reproved, admonished, and corrected by the Abbot or the Prior. But with the impudent restlessness of their hearts they turned a deaf ear and would by no means yield to salutary warnings. According to the statutes of sacred law, lest the diseased sheep contaminate the entire flock, separation from the body of the sacred community was threatened against them with stern rebuke. Two monks flee from there, having stolen much: Upon learning this, in the dead of night, carrying off secretly whatever they could seize from the monastery, they escaped by flight, heedless of their monastic profession and thereby of the perdition of their souls; they wandered uncertainly wherever their own will enticed them. At length, looking to Italy as a suitable hiding place for such persons, they cast off their habit lest they be recognized by anyone and set out for that country.

[73] When they had found in Italy a place congenial to their wandering life, after they had satisfied their madness, they began to recall the votive tranquillity and inner security of the monastery, and worn down by the weariness and labor of their exile, they greatly desired a return, if any hope of being readmitted could be entertained. And they conversed together about what profit might accrue to them. But the shame of their crime in every way impeded their return. Suspended between hope and fear, there occurred to them a scheme by which, with their crime suppressed and even with an increase of honor, they might be restored to their proper place: namely, that they should extend themselves further on the labors of the journey, go to Rome, and purchase some Saint, by whose conveyance they might earn pardon and favor among their own people. Animated by this plan, which they believed had been divinely sent to them, trusting wickedly that they would succeed, the Aquitanian vagabonds arrived to parley with the crafty Romans. They sought out the Reverend Bishop and the robed Senators; wishing to purchase relics of St. Sebastian at Rome, and according to the Solomonic maxim, they diligently sought out their like. Bad men were quickly bonded to worse, and the more worthless to the more worthless, and amid their mutual and insipid conversations, when asked, they revealed their origin and homeland. They were asked again what reason had led them to come there from such remote borders and to undertake such great dangers, and as though sympathizing with them, the Romans artfully inquired into everything. They disclosed their desire and humbly begged to be given assistance. They claimed to have built a monastery in their region, for which they professed to be in every way in need of the relics of Saints. The cunning Romans boasted that they had in their charge very many relics committed to them by the Supreme Pontiff himself, and that they could bestow the choicest relics upon whomever they wished at their pleasure. The monks declared that they wished to obtain their desire with money, if the matter could be brought to effect. Then the Romans, promising certainty of obtaining what they desired -- provided they trusted their words -- asked which Saint they particularly wanted. They named the Martyr Sebastian, pledging on oath all their present possessions and promising to convey far more and far more precious things from their homeland without delay. The Romans, enticed by the blandishments of these promises, pretended that it was necessarily required that they scout out an opportune time so as not to be detected. When it had been found and appointed, they pledged to present themselves again at the same place under cover of a dark night, and they stipulated that the monks must also be present there.

[74] Meanwhile, while the crafty Romans schemed in their cunning minds about what to do during this interval of the deceitful compact, they contrived a plan: in a nearby market there was a sarcophagus of a certain Caesar, richly anointed with many spices. They are deceived. And so they came at the appointed hour: the monks, whose impatient ardor of desire burned within them, arrived before the time and found the Romans, greedy for profit, already there to meet them. The Romans, feigning trembling, signaled for silence. Having received the body of a pagan Caesar: They made their way step by step to the tomb of that wretched creature who had been a stranger to Christian regeneration. If the monks wished to see and obtain the desired Martyr, they were ordered to produce and weigh out the promised money. Having pried off the lid of the sarcophagus, the Romans displayed the face of a man sweetly redolent with ambergris of wondrous potency. At the sight of this, the monks quickly bent their knees and tearfully invoked him to be their aid. All scruple of suspicion was eliminated from their hearts; entirely credulous toward the Romans, as though they were guardians of sacred things, they gave away whatever they had in their possessions with the most ready generosity, deluded by such trickery. Then, with as much ceremony as they knew or could muster -- not receiving him whom France boasts of having merited by heavenly gift as its best defender and unconquerable protector, but rather one who was not at all worthy even of the very name of Martyr, receiving by their own desert a tyrant -- they carry it to Gaul: exulting with vain hope from the depths of their hearts, they hastened home with swift step, heedless of the ruin to come. And while they imagined for themselves the finest rewards, most wretchedly blinded, they could not see the punishments that were soon to follow.

(a) Ambar, or ambarum, commonly ambergris: a well-known type of perfume.

CHAPTER XVI.

The Fraud of the Rashly Received Relics Is Detected.

[75] Before they could reach the borders of the estate they had long and eagerly desired, acting on ill-considered counsel, they sent messengers ahead to disclose the arrival of the beloved and ever-honorable Martyr St. Sebastian, and to rouse the leading men to duties of reception. They appointed a place for so great a spectacle and generously made known the day on which they should hasten to meet them. The Abbot of the aforesaid venerable house and the pale assembly of the Brethren, forgetting the former crimes of these their sometime brothers, rejoiced that through them so great a good had been able to be accomplished by that supreme Good; they proclaimed them more blessed after their fall, and by unanimous favor judged them more eminent in their community. They unfurled banners, brought forth the trophies of the cross and splendid reliquaries -- alas, for the pain! -- about to receive the worst returns for these honors in short order. It is honorifically received at Magnilocus, The teeming crowd, summoned from every direction by their honeyed words, the common people with the nobles and nearly all the powerful of the entire nation, kindled by the fervor of religion, went eagerly forth bearing their vows with them to meet the relics. What more? They received at last not the glorious Martyr of Christ, but the savage satellite of Antichrist; not that most famous standard-bearer of the former first legion of Romulus, but a minister most dear to Satan among the gravels of Cocytus; and it is placed on the altar: and with great glory of hymns they bore it -- O the sacrilege! -- all the way to the most sacred altars. They celebrated festive joys, soon to be marred by mournful complaints; and they recorded these as solemnities to be annually observed -- solemnities about to cease forthwith.

[76] After manifold offices of Masses and hymns, the weary band of Brethren entered the inner chambers of the refectory for a banquet. During the meal, every human courtesy was shown, and the joy was multiplied in abundance; but a very near and most impious confusion was about to overthrow it. For while they indulged rather freely in food and wine, and by the command of their Abbot those two who had exported that sacrilegious relic from Rome, together with others, remained behind to guard the church lest even a single lamp go out, by divine power it is shattered and scattered, by the decree of God -- whose beloved soldier's worship that wretched creature had undeservedly usurped -- the impostor was hurled from the holy altar with a horrible crash and divine whirlwind, dashed upon the pavement; and thrown up again and falling back, he crashed and collided, now here, now there, against the walls, and again, hurling himself now downward, now upward, he was battered, ground to pieces, and shattered into fragments -- losing to mortal ears, with the ridicule and disgrace of the most foul embalmers who had brought him thence, the name of Martyr and the offices which he had vainly assumed.

[77] Of the authors of the outrage, one was delivered to a savage spirit, the other was rendered senseless; the sacrilegious men being punished from heaven. yet both displayed by the gestures of their bodies what they had done. All the rest who were present and who had sought the Martyr's intercession and the exercise of his powers, struck by an unexpected and never-before-experienced terror, half-dead, hastened their flight in panic. They rushed into the banqueting hall, crying out with frantic voices for help and aid: "Alas, Lord Fathers," they said, "rise, hasten, come to our aid! Behold a crime the like of which has never been seen since the beginning of the world! O the shame! Perpetual disgrace and the blush of confusion never to be effaced! The devil himself is here today, brought in the tyrant." Whatever was at hand was thrown aside; springing from the tables with a great clatter, armed with the sign and power of the holy cross in rivalry, they entered the church. Neighbors too, who had been held back by the bond of charity, converged from every direction. What shall I say? So sudden and unhoped-for a joy was overtaken by a sudden and never-suspected grief. They beheld close at hand, on the pavement, face down, the body of that most abominable and most wretched man, torn apart piece by piece; and they grieved that in the space of a brief moment they had lost the joy which they had congratulated themselves would last forever. A confused clamor arose, a stunned amazement in all; against the authors of the outrage the converging mob raged furiously; some cried that the sacrilegious men should be stoned, others that they should be hanged from the gallows, some that they should be burned in fire, or that they deserved to be punished with some even more atrocious death, assailing them with curses. But those whose hearts were more teachable and whose minds were sincerer maintained that they could by no means be condemned by human judgment, since divine severity had clearly already punished them. The fragments of that body are cast into a dung heap. Meanwhile the gathered pieces of the dismembered cadaver of that unhappy wretch were cast into the foulest dung heap of the common people, buried, and trampled underfoot; and a final farewell of perpetual anathema was pronounced upon it. The pavements were scraped with rakes, washed with water, and purified by the sprinkling of holy water.

[78] It is fitting to compare with this event the ancient outcome of that affair which occurred among the people of the Ecaronites, whose god was Astaroth, as the history of Kings relates; who, not enduring to dwell in one house with the ark of God placed within the doors of his temple, was shaken to the ground by some mighty force, his skull on the very threshold of the idol, and his hands cut off, a helpless trunk, remaining fixed in its place as it was, left a perpetual reproach to its worshippers. Relics must be carefully examined. But in a far different manner it is seen to have happened to these men, for whom there was sincere faith in God and a most ready -- though less learned and therefore badly deluded -- service, than to the Philistines. For to those it came as vengeance and punishment; but to these, and to those of this religion, it came as a strengthening and confirmation of faith -- that they should not too easily give assent to uncertain things, nor dare to call any mortal holy before they have verified it; and that, following the teachings of the Lord, when people say, "Behold, God is here, or behold, there," they should refuse to believe, lest perhaps, having thereby admitted occasion for diabolical fraud, they should somehow, having set aside the worship of their Creator, offend in idolatry. Luke 17:21.

(a) The passage is drawn from Job 21:33, where it says: "The clods of the valley were sweet to him."

(b) Elsewhere iusum, for "downward." Downward, upward. St. Augustine, Tract. 8 on the First Epistle of St. John: "What is above, you make below; what is below, you make above. You wish to make God below and yourself above." And Tract. 10: "Above you honor me, below you trample me."

(c) Rather, these things were done at Azotus, to the idol Dagon, as narrated in 1 Kings (1 Samuel), chapter 5.

CHAPTER XVII.

Miracles Wrought by the Linen in Which the Relics Were Wrapped.

[79] The monks of Magnilocus come to Soissons: And so, before a very long span of time had passed, while the most blessed and all-praiseworthy Martyr Sebastian was being honorifically installed near the city of Soissons and received with great jubilation, and as the fame of his prodigies and signs, as we have described, grew ever more frequent -- so that people flowed to his fragrant relics even from the farthest borders of Thule -- the Abbot of the aforesaid monastery of which we have spoken, hearing this and filled with joy, exhorted his men and urged them to direct their swiftest steps thither, offering himself as guide and leader of the journey, so that what they could not obtain in whole, they might at least merit to receive a small part from the whole. When they had arrived and been received by Rodoin the Provost and the Brethren according to custom and treated with kindness, they tearfully poured forth the reason for their journey and the cause for which they had undertaken so great a burden, professing themselves indeed unworthy of obtaining the gift they sought; but since they were of the same order, they begged them to remember the fraternal charity by which they were singularly blessed, and to be attentive to the hope for which they had come and to their devotion.

[80] "Long ago," they said, "Venerable Fathers, two of our number went forth and traveled to Rome for the sake of this very patron, by whose favor you now enjoy the present blessing. What more can we say? Paying a furtive price, they purchased a certain tyrant, whose name we do not know. This wretched creature they brought to us, and with him the devil as well. He was indeed received by us solemnly; but -- if it may be said -- by the indignation of God, he was wondrously cast down. Having narrated the imposture by which they had been deceived, For when, in our ignorance, we had placed him upon the altar of the holy Virgin Mary and festively arranged him, and had sat down to dine with the many who had gathered, he was suddenly raised from the altar into the air, dashed to the ground with an immense crash; and he struck those who had remained in the basilica to attend him with an overwhelming shudder and drove them terrified from the church. And when they burst in upon us, pale and nearly lifeless, they began to proclaim in the most dreadful voices what had befallen them, before the entire assembly, resembling madmen. We signaled for silence, as we were ignorant of the event, but they would by no means yield to our commands, and continued, disrespectfully as they had begun, to pursue the public disgrace with loud and clamorous voices. Entering the church with quick step, we beheld that creature -- shattered into pieces, its limbs scattered, such as it was in its quality and size -- a 'Saint' befitting our own actions. By this rumor we are everywhere marked and pelted with unbearable reproach and confounded. They ask for some relics of St. Sebastian. So that we may at last be freed from this disgrace, we take refuge with your venerable paternity. It remains for your blessedness not to disdain to compassionate and succor our destitution. For we believe we shall be able to lay down the burden of our vexation if we have obtained from your charity even the smallest portion of his relics."

[81] Upon hearing this, Rodoin was moved by fraternal affection to compassion and grief; and with the consent of Father Hilduin and the agreement of the Brethren, he promised aid in carrying out the matter. The cause was first reported to the Brethren, who did not refuse the petition; moreover, they declared that they greatly loved this, since it would increase the worship and memorial of the Saint. When this had been made known to the Lord Abbot, and he too had received the Brethren's request on the matter, he ordered that the linen cloth -- in which the life-giving limbs of the Martyr had been wrapped, obtained through the gift of the venerable Bishop Rothadus -- be given to them. But when the Brethren came to assist with the task and brought forth the linen from its chest to give to those who were asking, the monks, kindled with anger, said that they had sought relics of the Saint, not linens, the linen in which the relics had been wrapped, offered to them, they reject: of which they had an abundance in their own region. When the surrounding Brethren insisted that it was none other than the cloth in which his most sacred body had been wrapped from the inside, from Rome all the way there, they were by no means satisfied and would not receive it. "You have heard," they said, "Lord Fathers, of our disgrace, now known to the whole world, which we had hoped to wash away by your beneficence. Why do you try to renew our shame? Allow us, with your grace, to return home as we came, unburdened, and without a renewed mockery." Rodoin, seeing their spirits roused against him and not much caring to make amends, carefully folded the linen and replaced it in its chest, saying that he did not so despise the garments of his Lord; and he added that these ought rather to be shared with others in whose breast a more robust faith prevailed.

[82] Afterward, asking for it, they receive only a portion: But they, having stayed there that same day and seeing that they had accomplished nothing in this matter, were moved to remorse. Summoning the seniors, they humbly begged them to intercede with the man on their behalf with paternal kindness, so that they might not be permitted to depart from that holy place so sorrowful and empty. But Rodoin, moved by the prayers of his men, ordered that not the whole, as before, but a portion cut by the hands of the Priests be given. They received it far more graciously than before, with devout rites of faith, and placing it in a honorifically prepared casket, and having duly celebrated the solemnities of the Mass in the name of the Martyr, with a devout company of Brethren accompanying them with hymns and melodies, they thus bore it to their homeland.

[83] When they had arrived, they placed the relics -- glorified by the grace of many miracles and healings -- in the hall, in a position of preeminence, in the name of him whose merits surpass all others. Where to this day his glorious merits flourish, and the palm of his miracles blossoms more abundantly and more magnificently than in that place where his virtue-bearing body is frequented by the due devotion of the faithful people. May his patronage, we pray, be profitable both to us and to them, we who by the generosity of our Fathers have merited to become partakers of so great a relic. Innumerable miracles were wrought at those relics.

(a) What Thule of the ancients now is, the geographers dispute.

CHAPTER XVIII.

Public Calamities Averted by the Relics.

[84] We have seen certain men of no contemptible probity, who attest that they received from those who had heard it a prophecy of the coming ruin of the city of Soissons, which we dread. There was in that same city a small tower, looking from the East toward the western regions; The destruction of Soissons foretold, upon which an ambiguous spirit, as the dawn was beginning to scatter the dark shadows of night, poured forth a voice of terrible sentence, repeated three times, saying: "Woe, woe, woe to you, Soissons, like Sodom and Gomorrah of old, to be consumed by mighty flames of fire and reduced to empty ashes and cinders." The unknown person, recognized by no one, having discharged the mystery of his office, swiftly vanished into the thin air. This death-bearing voice, intoning horribly before daybreak, as we mentioned, was heard not only by the citizens within the city itself, but by the suburban dwellers in every direction. Its fame, flying from region to region, became universally known. Averted by the relics of St. Sebastian; This matter I heard from many who survived to our times, with a consistent account free from suspicion of falsehood, and I judged it fitting to append it to this work, for the correction of all who inhabit that same city, and especially of those who do not scruple to defile themselves with the most base and unnatural crime.

[85] And this same thing our fathers and predecessors, who narrated these things to us, attributed to the merits and intercession of this our most compassionate protector -- that it was by no means fulfilled in their time. Phantoms driven away. They added, moreover, that before he was brought from Rome, there had frequently been terrifying illusions of wicked spirits, importunately contrived against the citizens through the streets and through the houses; but upon his arrival, all these vanished like the vapor of smoke, a quiet serenity being established by his beneficence for the common people, and a placid service rendered to human comforts.

(a)

This chapter is expressed more fully in Belfort's manuscript thus: "Indeed, before he had reached the territory of Soissons and received his rest in the aforesaid place, the natives of that city were vexed by frequent demonic infestation. These demons, residing on both sides of the river Axona, Demons infesting the city and river are put to flight. frequently used to plunge those crossing with a horrible headlong fall into the water to drown them. But when the holy man crossed through that same port, immediately all that spiritual wickedness was driven away and departed; and the invisible enemies no longer dared to extend their snares there where they felt he had impressed the footsteps of his sanctification. In memory of this benefaction, we know that two stone columns were erected and fixed on both sides of that promontory by Brodoin the Prefect and the leading men of the place. Two columns erected in memory of the event: And on the column which overlooked the city, this inscription was set forth: 'Help us, O God of our salvation, and be merciful to our sins for the sake of Your name.' The other, which was adjacent to the monastery, was seen to be marked with this epigraph: 'Deliver me, O Lord, and free me, for I have sinned against You.' When a boatman, to whom these things were being revealed in sleep, could not make out the words and confessed his ignorance, asserting that he knew no letters, the most blessed Martyr impressed them upon his mind with such subtlety that, although a rustic and unlettered man, he could never thereafter forget them. For he held these same words always imprinted upon his mind, The inscriptions, suggested to an unlettered sailor. as though he had learned the full knowledge of the psalms from his very cradle; and the matter afterward became known through his narration, which -- when the columns had been erected at the holy man's command with the inscriptions affixed -- depicted in plain speech the salvation and deliverance of the entire region. For the most blessed Martyr had once appeared to this same rustic man while sleeping, revealed to him the entire text of this history, and just as he recounted it to the Brethren, so their diligent care effectively carried it out."

Now therefore let the people of Soissons consider how many misfortunes they endured before the arrival of Christ's seasoned witness, and thence with what abundance of every good thing they have overflowed; and they will be able to understand how much they owe to him. Wherefore let them come to his feasts with due observances and joyfully celebrate the reception of his body, so that he who has rescued them from the sword of divine punishment may also be able to deliver them from a second indignation, which they should most greatly fear. Terrifying voices heard earlier. For long ago through that entire city a voice thrice repeating "Woe" resounded, and predicted that it would perish by fire and brimstone after the example of Sodom and Gomorrah. The fulfillment of this prophecy, because it is still suspended and deferred into the future, is obtained by his prayers.

[A deaf, crippled, and lame man is given a boat by St. Sebastian, and his health is restored.] And so it is written that there was afterward in that same city a certain deaf, crippled, and lame man, to whom it was divinely revealed that he should hasten to the shrine of so great a Martyr, for there he would receive the joys of the health he desired. When he wished to cross the river Axona for this purpose, but no crossing was available to him, the most blessed Martyr prepared a small boat for him. And so, coming to the Martyr's memorial and continuing his vigils with the others for some time, he merited the complete restoration of his disabled limbs. Wherefore let us devoutly persist in his continual praises, so that he may bring the aid of his intercession to those darkened by the mist of vices, and obtain the light of brightness for those sitting in darkness, by the working of the grace of our Redeemer, who lives and reigns for ever and ever. Amen.

Side Note Perhaps inscitiam* ignorance should be read.

CHAPTER XIX.

The Piety of Louis the Pious and His Wife toward St. Sebastian.

[86] Moreover, the quality and greatness of the devotion of the memorable Caesar Louis toward the Saint was revealed by the most generous execution of his works. For having learned that boundless miracles were being wrought there through the Martyr of Christ by the presence of the divine power, he laid aside his royal purple, Emperor Louis goes barefoot to Soissons; and casting off his shoes at roughly the third milestone, he processed barefoot with his wife to the monastery where the Saint had already been placed. And because the Empress Judith had heard that certain flagitious persons, by some irresistible force, had disclosed their crimes in a public assembly, and that those consumed inwardly by the venom of hatred were being outwardly burned in public by a most fearsome ordeal with fierce fires -- because they had neglected, before arriving at the place, to restrain the appetites of their crimes with the fitting remedies of confession and penance -- she, stricken by the storms of excessive anxiety, when she learned that the Emperor was planning his journey thither, with the Empress, having first confessed and piously prepared herself: and knowing that she could not be separated from him without embarrassment to herself, turned herself entirely to the merciful omnipotence of the Redeemer. Dealing with the venerable Priests in the sacrament of the secret of her sins, she prayed with the Psalmist that she might be cleansed from her hidden faults and absolved from those of others. In the meantime, she unhesitatingly devoted herself to expenditures for almsgiving and to the performance of other good works, throughout the intervening period she had foreseen. And so at last, made a devoted companion to the religious Majesty, she hastened, preeminent in her illustrious merits, to the threshold of the holy Martyr.

[87] And when the Most Reverend Abbot Hilduin and the adorned company of the Brethren, rising to meet such an Eminence, came to await their arrival with festive array before the doors, he venerates the relics of St. Sebastian: and at last, having received them, led them with melodious voices chanting to the tomb of the Martyr -- in the humble attire in which they were, close to the ground with a great company of nobles, with cloaks spread before them, before they could reach the edges of the altar -- they immediately fell upon their faces, and pouring forth groaning prayers moistened with the dew of tears, recounting the merits of the same soldier and invoking him as a compassionate intercessor, they poured out prolonged sighs to the universal Lord. Then, rising from prayer, by a fitting verse, the prayer of both was commended to the unanimous wish of all present.

[88] Therefore, having entered the hall prepared for such exalted visitors, clothed again in imperial robes and the finer ornaments that were then in fashion, and crowned with the diadem, the Emperor had the solemnities of Mass chanted in honor of the Martyr, mounting the consistory. And when the Gospel was reached, he held in his own hands a golden chalice with a paten inscribed with the monogram of his father, Charlemagne the Great, they offer all their ornaments, vestments, and many other things to him, of immense weight, and dedicated it to the Martyr with the oblation to be consecrated. After the solemn celebration as well, he approached his relics with his wife. There, when they had commended themselves to God through the Saint in a lengthy prayer, with a devotion both all-embracing and worthy of remembrance through all ages, each of them individually laid aside their royal attire for the Martyr, from their crown to their undergarment, depositing each piece there. Then he offered, with the most willing spirit, a book of the sacred Gospels written in golden characters, enclosed in plates of the same metal without admixture of any other material; a censer of forty-eight shekels of the same metal; and a large amphora of oil for preparing the lamps. He also assigned a public mint with anvils and a moneyer in perpetual service to his sacred treasury. He also gave the Abbey of the Protomartyr Stephen at Cauciacum, which is said to consist of seven hundred households, for the enlargement of the church building, and confirmed it with a decree of royal authority, sealed with the impression of his ring, with a protestation and the binding of anathema, so that it might not be snatched away by any reckless person. And since he visited the monastery very often afterward, he added such increases to his former devotion that one day, when he was proceeding to the chapel of St. Sophia, which was attached to the Palace, to pray, he stopped at the threshold, and gazing at it from outside, leaning upon a staff of gleaming gold, he chanted that yearning verse of David, in which he longed for the construction of the Lord's tabernacle, saying: "This is my rest forever; here I will dwell, for I have chosen it." Psalm 132:14.

[89] Wonderful to relate: as though these words had been given to the ears of the Martyr standing by, that very same evening, the magnificent tokens of the signs of the distinguished champion came forth. Eighteen healings performed in the presence of the Emperor. For he was granted to behold, present on that same night before he had arranged to retire to bed, eighteen healings of both sexes. He beheld the clouded eyes of some, with the darkness driven away, gleaming with the brilliance of shining light; the hooked hands and withered arms of others made supple; the nerveless calves and twisted feet extended more directly, with strength given rather than returned; the ears of some, flowing with blood, which long deafness had condemned, now attested by a gentle and faint sound to be perfectly clear; in one man, a most wicked spirit, conquered and powerfully expelled; the stains of leprosy erased; the senseless minds of the raging duly restored.

[90] Having enjoyed these things according to his wish, the Emperor, with no stirring of incredulous error in his breast, His great piety toward the Saint, devoutly pledged himself to preserve for the future an affection of the highest and incomparable love toward the holy Martyr; multiplying unspeakable groans and sighs sprinkled with showers of tears, he honored, venerated, and besought him as though he beheld him present in the flesh. And because he believed without hesitation that what he asked could be granted to him by the Saint, he was made the master of his vow and salutarily obtained that very thing. But what it was that we have mentioned he so earnestly asked -- the following narrative, or rather the most secret sacrament within the narrative, will reveal.

(a) We have collated the following up to the Epilogue with the Du Chesne edition. To this chapter he prefixes the title: "The devotion and munificence which Louis the Pious showed toward the Martyr St. Sebastian, when he was detained in the monastery of St. Medard of Soissons by his son Lothair." But it is clear from what follows that these events took place before the captivity.

(b) Du Chesne reads praeparavit.

(c) Monogrammon: a picture drawn with lines alone without any colors. Here it seems to mean either the portrait or the seal of Charlemagne, engraved on the chalice and paten.

(d) Trapezites: a money-changer, and a minter. Du Chesne here has trapezeta.

(e) Du Chesne reads temerarie.

(f) Glaukoma: a defect of the eyes. The Author derived this word from that.

(g) Du Chesne reads enarrat.

CHAPTER XX.

The Abdication and Captivity of Louis the Pious.

[91] The strength of my once powerful arm now broken, I, Louis Caesar, Emperor Augustus, ruling the Roman world by the dispensing grace of God -- when I had too loosely relaxed the reins of law upon my peoples -- certain persons, dissolved by my indulgence, broke forth into the cruelty of infidelity, assailing piety. This evil grew so hot that it compelled even my most beloved sons to rage against me and caused them to deliberate with the rebels concerning the death of their own father. Thus was reached the place which, from the event of the breach of faith, peace, and oaths, Louis, captured by his sons and others, has since been called the Campus Mentitus -- the Field of the Lie. Here almost the entire force of my soldiers deserted me; the rebellion, as I have said, involved my sons in a horrible crime and appointed them the ringleaders of the outrage, imputing to me, an innocent man, many things deserving of death. Multiply injured and deluded by those I had never harmed, not unmindful of my own sinful deeds and reflecting that I justly suffered these things by the most equitable judgment of God, I bore my misfortunes with equanimity.

[92] Then, surrounded by a hostile cohort, I was led to the city of Soissons, to the monastery of my holy lords Medard and Sebastian. And because they knew that I loved that place above all others, they calculated that I would there, after despair, spontaneously lay down my arms of my own accord. He is closely confined in the monastery of St. Medard. When they had confined me under public custody, in order to carry out by action what they had cunningly plotted, they sent certain persons to announce to me that my wife had been made a nun in a convent, or -- what they had more truly heard -- that she was dead. They also affirmed that my little and innocent son Charles, a boy of fine character, whom they knew was dearest to me above all others, had been tonsured and enrolled among the monks. When I heard this, unable to contain myself -- for I was stripped of the splendor of my kingdom, deprived of my wife, and bereft of my son -- I wailed for many days, enjoying no consoler, and gradually felt myself being consumed by the fires of a most violent languor arising from the magnitude of my grief.

[93] And because I could have no consoler besides God -- since access and conversation were denied to all; only the way to the church and to the Brethren was open, and that rarely and with the utmost surveillance of the guards -- it entered my mind to go there. When I had arrived, prostrating myself at the feet of all, I disclosed the wound of my illness to the wise physicians. I begged them to obtain for me at least some relief from our propitious Lords, and I earnestly entreated their venerable religiosity to celebrate Masses and to pray more attentively for the repose of my wife, whom I believed to have departed this life. He receives some comfort from conversation with the monks: They, prudently compassionate toward my afflictions and miseries, through the merits and intercession of the Saints whom they served, as though prescient of the future, promised that relief from the Almighty would soon come to me, if only I would apply my mind to the sacraments of the faith.

[94] Thus well comforted by them, after prayer, I was escorted by them and restored at last to the familiar depths of my prison. As the shadow of night followed, with sedulous thought I longed to see the bright-tressed star. Entering the oratory of the Holy Trinity, which adjoined the prison, after the completion of Matins, spending the night alone there, while I directed my gaze outward through the window, I saw one of the guards close by, lying under the eaves, who was hostile to me beyond measure, though undeservedly -- and who in that very posture sought to ensure that I should not escape even through the smallest crack in the wall. Perceiving him stupefied by sleep and wine, amid deep sighs of my heart, a better omen occurred to me as I looked upon the ridiculous sight. For indeed, seeing him sprawled upon the ground, and his sword -- dislodged by the frequent jostling of the pillow on which it had been laid -- caught among the foundations of the basilica, I quickly mounted a ladder that had been stored in a corner for lighting the torches, and untied a rope lying idle above the rafters. He takes the sword from his inhumane guard, Then, noticing nearby the poles to which banners were attached for carrying during the Litanies, I fastened the rope with a noose to one of them and cast it through the window. By this contrivance I lifted up the captured blade and had it thrown into the deep and foul latrines. Calling him by name, I said to him: "O watchful guard, most trusty hope of your masters, are you awake?" To this he answered: "I am awake, and wide awake." And I again: "And what are you about?" And he: "What business is that of yours?" Again I said: "If some sudden need should arise, perhaps your sword would be missing from your hand." When he turned his arms to his head and searched for it here and there, I said: "If you had guarded me like this, you would certainly not have me here today." "Whatever has been done about the sword," he said, "I have guarded you, as ordered, more than enough, and I will continue to guard you." He soon returns it: And I said: "Go then; and in the reward of this fidelity and your watchfulness, recover in that place -- a fitting armory -- the sword you so shamefully lost."

[95] On that very same day, certain of the Brethren, investigating the full truth of my situation, sent a message in writing through Hardinus, who was accustomed to sing Mass before me in his daily ministry. And when I offered him, as was customary, oblations to be sacrificed to God, he learns there is hope of recovering the Empire; especially for the absolution of my wife, whom I believed to have departed from human affairs, he, more carefully pressing my hand, said: "It is beside the altar." After the sacrifice was completed, when everyone had gone out, I remained alone, and picking up a little scroll that had been cast beside the chapel, I learned that my wife was alive, that nothing sinister had been done to my son, that many were already repenting of having so broken faith and deserted me, and that with fierce determination they were striving to effect the restoration of my kingdom. Which, with God's favor, and with affairs being transformed for the better through the intercession of His Saints, they brought to completion. He recovers it: But although, with the heights of the kingdom recovered in even more august fashion, I enjoyed the glory of my former dignity, I was not unmindful of my vows and prayers by which I had besought the most excellent Martyr Sebastian, believing without hesitation that I would receive what I had asked.

(a) The following has this title in Du Chesne, from the autograph which is in the library of M. Alexandre Petau: "The Complaint of the Lord Emperor Louis, most pious Augustus, The Deposition of Louis the Pious, concerning the cruelty and defection and breach of faith of his soldiers, and the horrible crime perpetrated by his sons in his deposition and degradation." The acts of that infamous deposition are found in the same Du Chesne, volume 2 of the Frankish writers. These events took place in the year 833, which are narrated at length in the Life of Louis by an anonymous contemporary.

(b) Du Chesne reads infidelitatum.

(c) The author of the Life of Louis: "At length therefore they came together on the feast of the holy Precursor of Christ, John, at the place which, from what was done there, has been marked with the perpetual ignominy of its name, so that it is called the Campus Mentitus -- the Field of the Lie. Campus Mentitus. For because those who promised faith to the Emperor lied, the place where this happened has remained in its name as a witness of their wickedness."

(d) Du Chesne reads mihi.

(e) She was then deported into exile, as the Life of Louis has it, to the Italian city of Tortona.

(f) Du Chesne reads addictum. Charles the Bald was entrusted to Pruem, but was not tonsured, as the same Life states.

(g) The Chifflet manuscript reads cogeret.

(h) Du Chesne reads Harduinus.

CHAPTER XXI.

The Anxiety of Louis over His Deferred Religious Vow, and His Death.

[96] When the rebellion arose again, and the tranquillity of the kingdom was being fought over on every side and the peace was being disturbed, I approached the aforesaid place to beseech the Saint regarding these matters. He comes again to Soissons: And because I had very often experienced his most powerful aid in private and public affairs of this kind, I prayed all the more earnestly that he would deign to bestow his accustomed help in these matters as well. On the following night, that which I had asked for in the preceding days I received in a nocturnal vision, granted to me from heaven, as I believe, by him, with the most evident tokens. And since the onset of calamities allowed by no means the doubling of the wished-for stay there, I departed from that place, intending to expose myself to danger for the peoples entrusted to me by God, and to present myself manfully for battle, should the situation demand it. As I set out, the Provost of this nourishing community, named Teuterus, accompanied me and became the companion of my journey. And as he rode beside me and we were being torn from the holy place, turning my head back and casting my gaze -- alas! -- for the last time upon it, he departs in sorrow; troubled by the grief of my inmost heart, I could no longer contain the swelling waves of deep sorrow. divinely forewarned of his death: Sad and sorrowful, I shed bitter tears, mortally afflicted, greatly in suspense as to what I ought rather to do. I had vowed a vow to the Saint, the appointed day for its fulfillment I saw approaching; I had received from him the end of my life, the limits of which I knew I was not permitted to transgress. And I was by no means ignorant of the Christian Empire entrusted to me by God to govern; but when I considered how the entire world was being destabilized, and when I dreaded the approaching desolation which I had foreseen, I feared that I would be found guilty on this account and condemned to eternal torments by Him who was the Author and Lord of all things, and who, as Judge to come, would render to each according to his works.

[97] He, seeing me so deeply afflicted, held his counsel for a long while -- for he was a man most faithful in all things. And when he could no longer endure the most copious shower of my tears, to the Provost who consoles him, he too, moved by this, burst into tears. "What," he said, "most excellent Caesar, can these things profit you and your people, who are gravely bereft? Through you all were consoled. If your cheerfulness appeared to those in sorrow, it drove away all grief. Do not, my Lord and most glorious Emperor, do not display to your servants this wound of deadly sorrow upon yourself -- you in whom the highest joy has always resided -- by the clouding of your most serene countenance, making it visible to all. This will dissolve the hearts and arms of your soldiers; the strength of the enemy will take on new vigor. This, at least, should be your secret alone -- whatever it is that has been able so to disturb the most joyful and ever most tranquil state of your breast. To these men perhaps, if they have truly shared in your sufferings, it will be given to find remedies of consolation. And if it cannot be otherwise, you will henceforth bear it more lightly when many more have begun to share in the knowledge of this matter."

[98] Then I, receiving the words of my consoler, which I knew had been spoken from faithful persuasion, gave him the reason he reveals his vow of leaving the world: and disclosed at once with my lips what lay hidden in my heart. I said I had loved that holy place above all others, and that by the revelation of the holy Martyr I had learned I would never see it again. I had moreover made a vow, the fulfillment of which the turbulence of the Empire had prevented. And were it not that it would be imputed to cowardice by the enemy, or -- what was more greatly to be feared above all -- that the ruin of all would be demanded by the Almighty, I would most gladly have laid down my arms, my purple, and my crown there and then. When I then sought from him some more salutary counsel, I received this: "Your vow is good, most glorious Caesar; but as the Blessed Gregory teaches, nothing is richer for God than good will. It is indeed a great thing he is advised by him rather to settle the tumults of the Empire: that you desire to renounce the world and all that you possess, since through this you could be an imitator of Christ. But the salvation of many, accomplished by those who serve it, promises manifold rewards in each individual. The former benefits you alone; the latter benefits all. That is great, but this is the greatest. If the will cannot accomplish the former, in the latter it can be rewarded. And indeed this was more wonderful in God: that He deigned to die for His servants. The increase of charity, He Himself declared, is greater if one does not hesitate to lay down his life for a brother. He did what He taught: He laid down His life for us. The Lord endured death so that the servant might receive dignity -- not yielding to necessity, but ineffably coming to the aid of His creature. He showed in Himself the example we should follow, and to those who strive, He promised the palm of victory and laid up an abiding reward. Because, therefore, He committed His flock to your governance, to fight for it even unto death, if need be, will be both distinguished and praiseworthy for you." Thus eloquently instructed and mightily emboldened to action by the aforesaid man, commending myself again and again to his holiness and to the attentive prayers of the Brethren, although not as sorrowful as before, I was nevertheless unable to depart entirely happy; for I knew that I was sending a last farewell to those I had uniquely loved.

[99] Therefore, when these things had been reported to the Brethren who were foremost in age and religion, they resolved to beseech the holy Martyr unanimously, so that his oracles, if it could in any way come to pass, might be turned for their benefit to another outcome. Although this was earnestly performed, they were by no means worthy to be heard in this matter, since this stood firm as the never-changeable predestination of God. For on that very same expedition, leading his army against his legitimate and namesake son, he dies: he departed this bodily life on a certain island of the Rhine, and obtained, as we believe, through the intercession of the Saint whom he had embraced with incomparable love, everlasting life with him. His remains, he is buried, celebrated at Metz in the basilica of St. Arnulf, from whom he had drawn his lineage, were splendidly honored with the endowment of precious treasures and royal estates. And because, as we learned from his own disclosure, he put off fulfilling his vow, he did not merit to obtain the long-desired place of burial in the domain of the Martyr.

(a) Du Chesne reads In timidi.

(b) This Louis was King of Germany after the death of his father.

(c) An island adjacent to the city of Mainz, as the author of the Life states.

(d) On June 20 of the year 840, in the 64th year of his age.

(e) By Drogo, Bishop of Metz, his brother, who had been present at his death.

EPILOGUE.

[100] The Prince of the entire Roman world having departed this life, an epilogue must now be set to this theme, compelled by the modesty of my pen. For insofar as the merit of so great a Martyr is concerned, and the dignity of the subject, all that any human eloquence can say of him is a mute omen, since every human word is inferior to heavenly praise. I have pursued few things concerning him in an unpolished oration, and have spared fastidious readers by omitting many more -- indeed, nearly innumerable -- things. For to this day there survives in our archives a document of Rodoin sent to the memorable Abbot Hilduin, in which, in a very copious enumeration of chapters, the tokens of his miracles are briefly recorded by individual persons; Innumerable miracles wrought at the relics of St. Sebastian: the sum of which, reduced to a total, rises to four thousand one hundred and seventy. And so, overwhelmed by so immense a material, placing my hand upon my mouth, I leave all these things to be treated by those who are more learned and more doctored, and by successors who have not yet come into this light, through all ages to the end of the world. Whoever you are who are fastidious and desire to be filled with a more sumptuous feast, set aside this bran of ours and seek instead the work which the most holy Father Ambrose composed on the triumph of this celibate champion, in which you will find a dish most richly laden; and having tasted its most delightful fine flour with the palate of your mind, you will be able to be delightfully nourished.

Here ends the epitome of the miracles of Sebastian, the most distinguished champion, whose name, sounding from the Greek into the Latin as "Imperial Man" or "Imperial," is inscribed in the golden volume of that immaculate Lamb with the most beautiful characters. And therefore the earth is full of his praise, and his memorial shall not be abandoned for ages, because he reigns with Christ happily in eternal glory. Amen.

(a) So the manuscript; it seems omne should be written.

(b) More correctly caelitis of a heavenly one.

(c) Sebastos in Greek: Augustus, venerable.

ON THE SAME RELICS

of St. Sebastian, and likewise of SS. Gregory and Medard, preserved from the fury of the Calvinists.

COMMENTARY OF ALEXANDRE SALNOUEUS,

rendered into Latin by Nicolas Bezancon, from the manuscript of Nicolas Belfort.

Sebastian, Defender of the Roman Church, Martyr (St.)

Author: Alexandre Salnoueus.

[1] I, Brother Alexandre Salnoueus, a native of Fronet in the parish of Mery-sur-Marne, in the diocese of Meaux, a humble and unworthy Priest, and now a senior Religious and Almoner of St. Medard of Soissons, for the perpetual memory of the recovery of the sacred bodies of SS. Sebastian, Gregory, and Medard, and lest the wickedness of pseudo-Christians should carp that they have perished, wished before I departed this life to make known to posterity The Author's purpose and trustworthiness. that in the year of the Lord 1564, when I was about twelve years old, I was received as a Novice in the said monastery by the noble and religious man, Brother Emeric Roguel, Claustral Prior, with the assistance of the religious men Brothers Philippe de Liguieres, Sub-Prior; Louis de Billy, Granarian; Gerard Datye; Jean de la Boissiere, Cantor; Francois Monoys; Nicolas de Lye, Novice Master; Nicolas Flameng, Treasurer; Nicolas de Fourmanoir; Jean Judas, Procurator; Barthelemy Boulart; Antoine de Vergeolin; Eustache de Verchin; and other professed Religious.

[2] In which same year of my reception, 1564, on Saturday the 27th of September, about the third or fourth hour of the morning, by the secret connivance of certain aldermen and certain citizens of the said city of Soissons, Soissons taken by treachery by the Calvinists, the Huguenots, or Calvinists, led by the Lords of Jenly and Vendy, with counterfeit keys, entered the city through a postern near the shambles, and wrought such devastations upon the churches as are still visible after the passage of thirty years, the churches plundered, in the churches themselves, which have not yet been repaired.

[3] The monastery of St. Medard laid waste. As for our church of St. Medard, situated near the suburb, the aforesaid Huguenots did not enter it in force -- that is, with a multitude -- until the following Tuesday, which was the last day of that same month. On that very Tuesday, they came and entered with no one resisting, since the Religious, hearing that the city had been taken, had fled. They then began to destroy and smash the altars, the images of the Saints, the cloister, the refectory, and the dormitory -- buildings which had been so excellently constructed by Charlemagne and Louis the Pious, his son, that their equals could scarcely be found in the entire kingdom, as the walls still standing immediately attest at first sight. The relics and ornaments foully violated. After this, digging and searching in a certain deserted room beneath the infirmary, which served as a woodshed, they discovered a hiding place in which the Religious had stored many precious items -- namely, reliquaries, relics, tapestries, and ornaments of the Church -- which they forthwith extracted, broke, burned, and treated with their customary savagery.

[4] But it happened that the said Huguenots did not find there the reliquaries of SS. Sebastian, Gregory, and Medard, the three crosses most preciously adorned with gems, gold, and silver, the silver ewer, and the most precious silver candelabra; because during the interval from the aforesaid Saturday to Tuesday, certain Nobles from the ranks of the same Huguenots, more diligent than the rest, had come and from the said hiding place had seized for themselves the reliquaries of SS. Sebastian, Gregory, and Medard, the three crosses, the ewer, and the candelabra mentioned above, and having plundered the riches, had scattered the enclosed relics here and there. But by the grace of God they were afterward found. Some cast into the moats of the monastery; The greater part was seen floating upon the waters of the moats -- namely, between the enclosure of the convent, on the side of the garden of the Religious, and the close of the almonry -- so that, gently impelled by a soft breeze, the said relics came and drew near opposite the house thence extracted, of a certain Antoine Barre, tailor of the Religious, a devout and pious man. This Barre collected them, as one who easily recognized them and had seen them many times before the war, on days of processions and other solemnities.

[5] But indeed, by God's permission, at that time there came to him a certain poor widow, named Jeanne Hurillon, who willingly helped in extracting the sacred bones. And it was soon agreed between them that Jeanne should carry the sacred relics to the Lady Catherine de Bourbon, Abbess of the Blessed Mary of Soissons. Delivered to the sister of the Prince of Conde: She was the sister of the Prince of Conde, and in her favor that monastery of the Blessed Mary had been preserved from all harm. And so Jeanne brought to the same Abbess the sacred bones of the said Saints with other relics of Saints, since she frequented the abbey and served to wash the linens of those same Huguenots -- under which pretext she meanwhile saved many relics both from fire and from other perils, and carefully and diligently both concealed them in the folds of her garments and carried them away.

[6] Likewise, some time later, a certain vine-dresser, named Philippe Doden, a man also of good repute according to the quality of his station, found yet other relics in a vineyard which he possessed under an annual rent from the Religious themselves, situated near and beyond the gate called Belvedere, to the right as one goes from the said monastery to the village of Crouy, in which the said Philippe resided. Others found elsewhere. In this vineyard -- at that time a vineyard, but now arable land -- while he was tending the vine, he found a small bag of violet damask, decorated with golden trim, about fifteen inches long and eight wide, in which were the ashes of a portion of the body of St. Gregory, which had been reduced to ashes by the Romans. The other part of the said sacred bones was found both in the said moats and the aforementioned vineyard, as well as in the woods adjacent to the abbatial garden. Furthermore, the same Philippe afterward gave the bag and its sacred contents to the said Lord Prior Roguel, in the presence of Philippe de Liguieres and Louis de Billy mentioned above, with me also present although then a Novice. And they were placed in the chapel of the almonry until a legitimate verification of them could be made -- both of those, and likewise of those which were in the hands of the said Abbess -- as we shall presently relate.

[7] But before we speak of this, it should not be omitted that a certain Martin Buzot, The dreadful death of a sacrilegious man. a native of a village on the Aisne, was among the number of those who committed many other of our relics of Saints to the flames. But while he was doing so, he was seized by a sudden madness, and necessity compelled him to be suffocated, as I was informed by the aforesaid Hurillon, who told me that she had seen him suffocating and dying while she was present to give aid, the disease agitating him. And this is now well known and commonly spoken of throughout the entire city of Soissons.

[8] Therefore, the Brothers having at last returned to their monastery, they ordered certain places to be fitted for the sacred relics. Not long after, they came to the Reverend Lord Bishop, Charles de Roussy, presenting a petition that it might please him to assign certain days for the said verification and to decree that witnesses be summoned. Having deliberated, he assigned For the juridical examination of the authenticity of the relics the first hour of the afternoon of Friday, the 17th of January, 1578, for the oaths of the witnesses to be received by him. Wherefore, upon the report of Master Damien Willefroy, Notary and Auditor of the Episcopal Court, the following were summoned: Master Jean Masson, Parish Priest of Rosieres; Brother Jean Monnart, Senior Lay Brother of the monastery of St. Medard; Antoine de Villars; Barthelemy Soret; Louis Pourneu; witnesses summoned: Jean Maquefer; Simon le Maistre; Jean Rullin; Claude Roger; Jacques Crepeau; Pierre Charpentier; Crespin Tornemolle; and the aforementioned Jeanne Hurillon. All of whom, inhabitants of the Aisne quarter of the said Abbey of St. Medard, appeared before the principal gate of Our Lady's and solemnly swore that they would speak the truth concerning the recognition of the sacred relics without any fraud or dissimulation.

[9] These proceedings having been completed, and with the following honorable persons in attendance -- namely, the said Lady Catherine de Bourbon, Abbess; Mr. Nicolas Davy, Archdeacon; Georges de la Fontaine, Abbot of St. Leger; Claude de Novalery, Abbot of Blessed Mary of Vermandois; Master Claude Merlet, Provost of the Cathedral Church; the Venerable and very religious Simon Regnoult, Prior of the Carthusians at Our Lady of Bourgfontaine; Master Crespin Joly, Dean of Our Lady of the Vineyards; Jean Fassier, noble Lord of Roucour and Royal Protector of the City; Master Marin Pinon, Licentiate of Law; Jean Boucher; Jean Herpon, Judge, Consul of the Merchants of Soissons; Antoine Lore, merchant; Charles Lespicier, apothecary; the examination was conducted. and many other notable citizens of Soissons -- in whose presence a moderate-sized oak chest, closed with a key and containing the sacred relics, was brought to a table covered with a clean white linen cloth. The Abbess, who had honorifically kept it in her chapel, attested that it contained the same bodies of the aforementioned Saints, since she had seen and kissed them many times before the devastation of the monastery. Wherefore she declared and affirmed that they had always been under her protection, from the time the said city was seized by the heretics. Then the relics of the Saints were drawn from the chest, placed upon the table, and exhibited and presented separately to all the witnesses. And each of the said witnesses, having taken an oath in the hands of the Bishop, declared and affirmed that those bones were the true sacred relics of SS. Sebastian, Gregory, and Medard, which had formerly been kept at St. Medard's in silver and ivory reliquaries, and that they had many times before the war seen and touched them when they were openly taken from their caskets (to be exhibited to devout pilgrims, especially on days of processions).

[10] Legitimately re-enshrined. These things having been accomplished, the Lord Bishop ordered them to be placed in three different caskets; and to each casket was affixed a parchment document written in Latin, setting forth the above-described verification, and each was signed by Baptiste Petit, scribe of the said Lord Bishop; which same Petit also drew up the written structure and verbal process of the said attestation, signed below, CHARLES DE ROUSSY, BISHOP OF SOISSONS, and countersigned, Baptiste Petit, Scribe.

(a) Belfort testifies that he too heard this sad funeral of the impious man celebrated by popular report at Soissons.

(b) Belfort notes this: This Bishop was present at the sacred Council of Trent; and in my presence he expelled a demon from the body of a boy named Laurent, as the printed records also attest.

(c) Belfort adds: "This is no longer done. Rightly so."