Baculus

ON S. BACULUS, BISHOP OF SORRENTO IN CAMPANIA.

Baculus, Bishop of Sorrento in Campania (S.)

[1] This is the third of the Protectors of the city of Sorrento. We gave S. Valerius on 16 January and S. Athanasius on the 26th. Neither his date nor his deeds are sufficiently illustrated. Ferrarius inscribed his feast on this day in the general Catalogue of Saints, Feast of S. Baculus, with these words: At Sorrento in the land of the Picentini, of S. Baculus, Bishop. Ptolemy indeed, whom Ferrarius seems to have followed, assigns Sorrento to the Picentini; but most authorities disagree, and specifically Pliny, who places the territory of the Picentini from Sorrento to the River Silarus.

[2] The Life of S. Baculus was described in a booklet on the five Protectors of the city of Sorrento by David Romeo Philocasius, Life, with a rather awkwardly affected elegance of style, as the reader will judge. Ferrarius in the Catalogue of Saints of Italy and Paulus Regius, Bishop of Vicoequense, part 2, On the Saints of the Kingdom of Naples, Life of S. Antoninus the Abbot, chapter 11, report the same.

LIFE, by David Romeo Philocasius.

Baculus, Bishop of Sorrento in Campania (S.)

Author: David Romeo.

[1] Baculus (I doubt whether this is a name), Bishop of Sorrento, was born at Naples, a celebrated place, of an old and illustrious family (in what age he lived, or under which kings or Supreme Pontiffs, we have not read). Liberally trained in boyish education and learning, S. Baculus excellently educated, and versed in the most liberal studies and sciences, and cultivating justice and piety, the foundation of all virtues, it happened that he quickly excelled all in the glory of his talent, his humanity, wisdom, and integrity: and this from boyhood; so that the citizens, by the honorable, good, and serious opinion they had of his character, loved and esteemed him: his praise, set in a high and illustrious place, in the sight of all citizens and very many cities, was brought to the people of Sorrento not by obscure or uncertain report, but by the most famous and unanimous voice of all. When their Bishop died, and an assembly having been convened, Baculus was made Bishop without opposition. He is unwillingly made Bishop of Sorrento. Noble men were delegated; and with instructions and letters they were sent to tell him that he had been proclaimed Bishop, and to ask him to come to them: they accomplished nothing with more difficulty and more labor on their part than to bring him over to their view and conduct him to Sorrento, where he was desired with the utmost piety. Thus his arrival was so celebrated that the expectation surpassed the report of his talent and integrity, and the admiration at his actual arrival surpassed the expectation of the man.

[2] His virtue answered to the opinion of men; and the expectation which he himself had aroused, he not only sustained but very easily surpassed. Made a superior in rank, he was not inferior in prudence He lives in holiness: or integrity of life. He continued as he had done, so that he never provoked displeasure in either God or men: he bore adverse circumstances, as well as favorable ones, with calm and moderation: he thought well and acted rightly: he sustained himself by the consciousness of the best counsels, of right deeds, of right will, and of his own duty, from which in his whole life he never deviated a nail's breadth: what he owed he always delivered: he was very far from all fault: he helped all with counsel, with every care, and in deed. When, as a gray-haired old man, he was called by God on the fourth day before the Kalends of February, there was great bitterness at his death. He dies. The people of Sorrento were afflicted by the desire for their Baculus, and grieved especially that what had happened affected all, and they were deprived of his fruit: they could scarcely sustain their mourning and grief at his departure, who had been of such a spirit as he had been; the more his virtue was divine, the greater the sorrow with which they were torn from him. Nor indeed, if he was being taken from them, were they angry at him from whom they received so great a wound. For they saw that God was taking him from them: this one consolation sustained them, that no office of love, no zeal, no duty of piety toward the city would be lacking from him: but he would cast himself as a suppliant before God for it, would strive with all his love, and would bring it about that he would help it with his care and prudence.

[3] Wherefore the people of Sorrento, placing their hope in his body -- which alone consoles men in their miseries -- buried it in the city wall, Near a temple of idols, so that they might have two defenses and bulwarks set against and opposed to the enemy, which they might use against all their attacks; and with these sufficiently firm protections they might fortify the city. Today his sepulchre is in the middle of the city. The reason why they transferred it there from that place at a long interval is said to have been this. In the middle of the city there was a temple consecrated to the gods of the Barbarians (those who do not observe but reject our religion, we call Barbarians), filled with images, statues, and those things we call idols. From there all illusions, all deceits, all tricks, all machinations, all snares arose: whoever traveled by that road the nearby road, infested by specters, did so at his own peril, nor did he bear it with impunity; for he would see the forms of the gods of the dead, which they call both larvae and lemures, and it brought about wondrous and magical terrors: for this reason he who returned was driven mad, deranged, which they also call bewitched and moonstruck.

[4] But God, who takes pity on those who do not seek his mercy no less than on those who do not beg for it, wishing to redeem the people of Sorrento, held captive by the satellites of the underworld, and to drive out that divination also -- not true but merely supposed -- together with the rest, which was always most fraudulent to all, from the Christian commonwealth, and to release and free the city from the superstition of the witches which had oppressed the minds of nearly all the people of Sorrento; and because they were held by some guilt of human error, he wished them to be freed from wickedness, the servile yoke to be cast from their necks, and his own religion to be propagated; he brought it about that, beyond all expectation, a thing occurred by divine agency that was wonderful, most pleasing, most delightful, and hardly to be believed, unless it had been confirmed by the testimony of the most distinguished men who were involved in this matter and were present and saw it. And so the Lord of the people of Sorrento, who was called the Duke, near sunset, riding his horse hither and thither, arrived there and unexpectedly and suddenly fell upon a ring of specters, transformed into the figure and garb of women: who, armed, surrounded him as he approached, and having made a violent attack, assailed him unprepared; they harried, pursued, and attempted to wound and injure him. When he was held from behind, in front, and on the sides, repelling force with force, defending his life from his enemies, fighting from horseback, he covered himself with his own arms, and pursuing them with drawn sword, he cut off the arm of one of them, one of them being mutilated, and escaped half-dead from their hands, got out of the ambush, fled, and flew from there; he could not even breathe without fear.

[5] The next day in the morning, those who went there saw one statue cast down, lying on the ground, maimed, with its arm cut off from the shoulder. Then God, through the one who presided over the public sacred rites, persuaded the people of Sorrento the rest being cast into the sea, that men should be suddenly turned from their custom and led to different ways of life, and to cast down, dash, shatter, scatter, and throw into the sea the statues, images, and idols venerated in that shrine. This is indeed the very thing that is said: that the gulf of Sorrento was formerly tranquil by its own nature, and was not accustomed to be agitated and disturbed by the force of winds as other gulfs are, and no shipwrecks occurred there: but even in the depths of winter it could be crossed safely on a fixed course; and no storm of danger could move sailors from their course by fear. But from that time those spirits of the dead endeavored to employ cruelty against those who navigated, to exercise brutality against all, to vex, to plunder, to lacerate them with every cruelty, and to overturn their ships. It very often happens that the best helmsmen, who cannot overcome the force of the tempest, are overwhelmed by the waves and suffer the most wretched shipwrecks; the sea boils with every surge, treacherous tempests, storms, and shipwrecks arise.

[6] There followed the overthrow of those accursed altars, and when the building had been purified from those nefarious traces of crime, and all things had been removed, and the memory of the name of the gods together with the trace of those things had been erased not only from the buildings The body of S. Baculus is transferred, but also from the records; having been made sacred from profane, they dedicated it to S. Felix, Bishop of Nola, whose feast day and solemnity is celebrated at Nola annually on the seventeenth day before the Kalends of December. Into this church of S. Felix they afterward carried the body of S. Baculus, except for the arm, so that the great shrine might be adorned by that severed limb, and there they honored it with burial.

[7] Many years later a certain priest named Sergius, the guardian of this church, while repairing and renovating the building, was placing four marble columns around the altar, His altar adorned, not without a miracle, where S. Baculus was buried, to support the canopy, the vault which was to be set up above the altar. When the pavement was dug up, the most intense and sharpest sweetness of fragrance breathed forth from the openings and was carried upward, so that not only those in the church but also those around the church were seized by the pleasure of that fragrance, as if incense and aromatics were burning. And when Sergius wished to support a column on his shoulder, and did not do so piously, he immediately said that he was consumed by a pain in his side: and then, debilitated in half his body, maimed and seized in those limbs, he became weak. But seeing that no grave cause underlay it, and understanding what had offended his mind, pouring forth tears, he prostrated himself, and not ceasing to beseech S. Baculus on his behalf, he was healed, and worshipping S. Baculus more devoutly, living well and honorably, after some time he was made Bishop of Stabiae. In addition we shall write another thing in the Life of S. Antoninus.

Now you have, O people of Sorrento, a staff upon which to lean.