ON SS. STEPHEN, THE FIRST BISHOP OF REGGIO, AND HIS COMPANIONS, SUERA THE BISHOP, AGNES, FELICITY, AND PERPETUA.
MARTYRS AT REGGIO IN CALABRIA.
FIRST, SECOND, OR THIRD CENTURY.
PRELIMINARY COMMENTARY.
The cult of the Saints, their elogia, their age, a life not very ancient.
Stephen, Bishop and Martyr, at Reggio in Calabria (S.)
Suera, Bishop and Martyr, at Reggio in Calabria (S.)
Agnes, Martyr, at Reggio in Calabria (S.)
Felicity, Martyr, at Reggio in Calabria (S.)
Perpetua, Martyr, at Reggio in Calabria (S.)
BY THE AUTHOR C. J.
These Saints were once better known among the Greeks than among the Latins. Some of the Menaea in our possession make mention of them, the Chifflet and the Sirmond; of which the former reads on the fifth of July: Στεφάνου Καλαβρ καὶ τῶν σὺν αὐτῳ. The cult among the Greeks, But this other, on the same day, a little more explicitly: Τοῦ ἁγίου Μάρτυρος Στεφάνου, τοῦ εἰς τὸ Ῥήγιον καλαβρίας κειμένου, καὶ τῶν σὺν αὐτῳ Ἀγίων μαρτυρησάντων. Of the holy Martyr Stephen, who lies at Reggio in Calabria, and of his holy companions, who underwent martyrdom together with him. To the monks also of Grottaferrata, and to other churchmen of the Greek rite, the feast is prescribed to be celebrated on the same day: Τοῦ ἁγίου Στεφάνου καὶ τῆς συνοδίας αὐτου. The like is found in the Greek Menaea of the Vatican Library; and elsewhere other things may easily be found which I have not seen, and which will be able to confirm what has already been said.
[2] Yet among the Latin Martyrologists there survives no memory of this Stephen and of his fellow martyrs. likewise among the Latins This may be an indication that the cult, in the times of those writers, did not flourish so notably in the Latin Church. And hence it came about that the archbishop of Reggio, Annibale de Afflitto, a man renowned for great sanctity, at the beginning of the last century petitioned the Congregation of Sacred Rites at Rome, that leave might be given to himself and to his people of Reggio publicly to expose an image to St. Stephen, their Bishop and Martyr, and to erect altars and churches in his honor. He brings forward as the motive for obtaining such things, that long before, and even at that time, there was celebrated concerning the same St. Stephen and his companions, on the fifth of July, a Mass and other Offices. And the sacred Congregation, on the report of the most Illustrious and most Reverend Lord Francesco, Cardinal Buoncompagni of St. Angelo in the Fish Market, granted the favor sought in the year 1622. Of these things it is established to me that they were so done, from the testimony of Nicola Maria Modafari, then at Rome Rector of the church of St. Thomas in Parione, and the Agent of this cause, and in the same year 1622 elected Bishop of Bova, who is a suffragan of Reggio.
[3] Of the aforesaid writings (as he adds who sent them to us) the originals are preserved recently increased. in the keeping of Giovanni Simone de Antonillo, Doctor of both Laws, an erudite and pious man, and himself sufficiently devoted to St. Stephen, by whose devotion and expense there stands a chapel (built, that is, after the response of the sacred Congregation at Rome had been received concerning that matter), erected in the church of the Preachers, dedicated to St. Stephen, in which every year, with becoming magnificence, the sacrifice of the Mass and Vespers are solemnly celebrated with musical harmonies on the Saint's feast. And about the icon of the Bishop Stephen, his Acts and Martyrdom are set forth here and there in figures and verses.
[4] The elogium of Stephen alone, from Ferrari, At nearly the same times in which at Rome the faculty was sought and granted of building altars, chapels, and churches to St. Stephen, Ferrari printed both of his Catalogues, the one, namely of the Saints of Italy, in the year 1613, the other, of those who are not contained in the Roman Martyrology, in the year 1625. In both he commemorates, on the fifth of July, St. Stephen, but without his companions; in the former indeed with this elogium: Stephen, a citizen of Reggio, when, being led from Syria to Rome by St. Paul the Apostle, he had put in at Reggio, the metropolis of the Bruttii, was converted to Christ and instructed in the faith, and was ordained the first Bishop of the people of Reggio by that same Apostle. He, after the Apostle's departure, while he tirelessly discharged the episcopal office by preaching, and had already led many to the faith, was arrested in the Neronian persecution; and when he steadfastly persevered in the confession of the faith, and, afflicted with many torments, had overcome all his torments, at last by the beheading of his head he consummated his martyrdom. But in the latter Catalogue the same Ferrari has thus: At Reggio in the land of the Bruttii, St. Stephen, the first Bishop of that place and Martyr under Nero.
[5] not in every part agreeing with the Acts, These things do not in every part agree with the Greek Acts, which twenty years ago, when I was then living at Rome, were caused to be transcribed for me by the Reverend Father Giuseppe Denti, Superior of the Professed House of our Society at Messina, from the manuscript codices of the most famous monastery of the Holy Savior near that city, of the Order of St. Basil; as I have said at greater length concerning the Life of St. Sebastiana, Virgin and Martyr, in the sixth volume of June, which from that same place were, like many others, sent to me in Greek by the same man. These Acts of St. Stephen, I say, seem to be the source from which all who wrote of him in Latin drew their material, with some things added and others changed, according to each one's own judgment. Thus Stephen, who in the Greek Acts is read to have been by birth a Nicaean in Bithynia, and to have put in at Reggio with St. Paul the Apostle, is in Ferrari called a citizen of Reggio, and to have been found at Reggio by Paul as he touched at those shores, and there to have been converted to the faith of Christ.
[6] which have been published in Latin by various men. Girolamo Marafioti in his Chronicle of Calabria, printed in Italian in the year 1601, page 47; and Marco Antonio Politi likewise in his Chronicle, printed at Messina in the year 1617, page 80; likewise Paolo Gualtieri in the Saints of Calabria, which came out at Naples in the year 1630, page 53; and Ferdinando Ughelli in his Italia Sacra, volume 9, published in the year 1662, have the Life of St. Stephen, which the first translated from a Greek codex into Italian; the second and the fourth published a Latin one from one interpretation and another; the third made an Italian one from a Latin text with oratorical interpolation. Having compared their editions with one another and with our Greek text, although nearly everything comes to the same thing, I nevertheless preferred to make a new translation, closely conformed to our Greek manuscript, and to print it at the same time, so that everything might be the more authentic. Ughelli's edition keeps closer to our Greek manuscript; those of Marafioti and Politi disagree somewhat in a few points; and especially in this, that they assign the day of the martyrdom to the seventh of July, which Ughelli, our Greek text, and the Menaea and Menologia cited unanimously assert to be the fifth of July.
[7] Cornelius a Lapide, commenting on the last chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, on those words, also by Cornelius a Lapide; We came to Rhegium, has various things which were sent to him, when he was then staying at Rome, by men of Reggio, learned and of the first rank: and upon their word he relates these things: Luke here is silent on many things, and especially on the conversion of the people of Reggio by Paul, made in one day, on which he tarried among them: which things, from the monuments of the church of Reggio, written in Greek in the same age (namely in the first century of Christ), and afterwards translated into the Latin tongue, and preserved in the archiepiscopal archive, and transmitted to me at Rome by learned and leading men of Reggio, I will here transcribe. And there he transcribes the Latin Acts of St. Stephen the Bishop, ordained, as they say, in passing, by Paul the Apostle for the people of Reggio: which are no other than those which we give below in Greek and Latin; nor yet are they there complete: for they break off at the martyrdom with these words, that they were worthy to die for Christ; nor have they anything about the burial of the holy bodies. I readily pardon Father Cornelius, an eminent Theologian and Commentator on sacred Scripture, that on the faith and authority of the men of Reggio, learned and of the first rank, he wrote such things. He himself meanwhile comments nothing of his own about the delay or non-delay of Paul the Apostle at Reggio: he supposed that the things were true which the men of Reggio affirmed about his delay of one day among them, and about the great conversion of the gentiles made on that day; likewise about the Acts of St. Stephen, written in Greek in the first century of Christ. And if he had commented anything of his own on that matter, he would surely have observed that if Paul had drawn out a delay of one day at Reggio, he could not on the second day have reached Puteoli, which Luke says was done. But of these things other matters shortly.
[8] Meanwhile, from the editions cited, I notice that in our Greek text certain errors were committed, from which some things in our Greek text are supplied, probably through the drowsiness of the copyist, in those places where I have tried to supply the words by enclosing them within these signs [ ]. Among which corrections is also this, that the third name of the women who suffered together, Perpetua, was lacking, which in the Italian and Latin is joined to Suera the bishop, to Agnes and to Felicity. But from these very names a doubt might arise, whether all these suffered together with Stephen in the first century of Christ. That life is not ancient, The Acts indeed, even the Greek, are not so ancient, nor such, that this can safely be believed of them. No testimonies of Martyrologists are found. The cult was neither very ancient among the Latins nor very famous before the seventeenth century,
when its enlargement was sought from the sacred Congregation of Rites at Rome and obtained, through the faculty of publicly exposing an image of the Saint and of dedicating altars and churches to his name: which up to that time it had not had. The place where the body was buried down to the present day, as the historian of Reggio, Politi, writes in the year 1617, could not be found.
[9] From these things, I say, it may be doubted whether St. Stephen with his companions suffered martyrdom in the first century; so that from this it may be believed, and all the more because through the whole of the first three centuries no other Bishop of that city is known to the people of Reggio. If you should say that by tradition St. Stephen is known to belong to the first century, I shall ask why no other bishop for that same century, and for the two following, is likewise known. You will reply, because the ancient writings of the city perished; but there survives the Life of St. Stephen, that St. Stephen lived in the first century of Christ, which makes him a disciple of St. Paul the Apostle. I hear it: but that very Life does not savor of great antiquity; nor can it have been written before the tenth century, if not long after. And with a space of nine, ten, or more centuries then elapsed, when it was written, the writer may have been ignorant of many things about the deeds of his Saint, just as now nothing is known of them from antiquity except what is narrated in the Life; and still more may he have been ignorant of the certain time at which he lived and was crowned with martyrdom. Moreover, in this ignorance, or in the doubtful light of the tradition of the common people, it may have seemed to him who set about writing, that Stephen could not be brought to Reggio at a fitter time than that at which Paul the Apostle was known to have put in there; and it could be presumed that he himself had left some Bishop there in his place.
[10] or even his companions. Then indeed one may inquire concerning the fellow martyrs of St. Stephen, Suera the bishop, and the women, Agnes, Felicity, and Perpetua, whence the writer of the Life received them or perhaps borrowed them. These things too are equally obscure from other sources: nor do I easily grasp how, in those beginnings of the Christian Religion just introduced, there should have been two Bishops at Reggio, when concerning one alone it is not certainly established. Concerning the women too more certain things may be desired, lest anyone be forced to suspect that Perpetua and Felicity, celebrated in the writings of almost all the ancient Fathers, who suffered martyrdom in Africa with other companions at the beginning of the third century, were transferred to Reggio.
[11] It may be doubted whether Paul the Apostle, from his voyage, I indeed by these doubts of mine would have nothing detracted from the truth; but rather I desire that the truth be made more illustrious from them, through fitting solutions of my doubts by the men of Reggio. Another doubt also pertains here, where the subject is the first conversion of the people of Reggio to the faith of Christ through Paul the Apostle. The voice of the common people, and in a manner a Gospel, of which to doubt would be a crime, rings in the ears, that Paul, when he had put in at Reggio from Syria, being led to Rome by the Centurion and his guards, at the entrance of the city of Reggio began to announce Christ: but that the inhabitants with obstinate mind forbade him such announcing; yet at last, when Paul begged that they would hear him speaking for so short a time as a little bit of a candle, which he held burning in his hand, should burn away, they permitted it. Then indeed Paul set the little piece of the burning candle upon a marble column that happened to be standing near; and this column, the little candle being quickly consumed, caught fire and continued to burn. At which prodigy seen, the inhabitants embraced the faith of Christ.
[12] entered the city of Reggio; This deed is celebrated not only in the talk of the common people, but also in writing, by Marco Antonio Politi in the Chronicle of Reggio, page 80, but only in passing. My first doubt in these matters is whether Paul worked miracles at Reggio, or converted any to the faith, indeed whether from that voyage he entered that city at all. Luke writes, the companion of St. Paul in the Syrian-Roman voyage, the things which he saw; and he accurately notes the delay which they made in the cities they met. Thus at Malta, he says, Paul wintered three months, and he describes the miracles and conversions of gentiles which he meanwhile did there. At Syracuse they stayed three days; at Puteoli, at the request of the Brethren, they remained seven days. But of Reggio Luke's text mentions nothing of the sort. Behold the words, from the last chapter of the Acts: And when we had come to Syracuse, we stayed there three days. Thence, coasting around, we came to Rhegium; and after one day, the south wind blowing, on the second day we came to Puteoli; where, having found Brethren, we were asked to stay with them seven days: and so we came to Rome. Therefore Paul and Luke, sailing, came from Syracuse to Reggio. They are not said to have entered the city, much less to have made a day's stay there; but rather, having continued their journey, out of sight of Reggio, the south wind favoring, after one day of voyage, they came on the second day to Puteoli. For if they had stopped one day at Reggio, they could not have reached Puteoli on the second day, whatever winds were blowing, on account of the great distance of the places.
[13] The text of the sacred Writer being thus understood, as it plainly seems it ought to be understood, certainly the prodigy which is now attributed to him, the prodigy of the burning marble column for the conversion of the people of Reggio vanishes, and indeed also their conversion by Paul, and the ordination of Stephen at that time as bishop. And even if someone should wish to maintain that Paul entered the city and stayed there one day, still the marble column did not yet burn. For what then? If that had been done, Luke, Paul's companion, would surely have known it. If he had known it, he would surely have written it; inasmuch as he so diligently consigned to the memory of posterity in writing far smaller deeds of Paul on the island of Malta and elsewhere. St. Jerome uses a like argument in a like matter. There was read still in his time a book about the deeds of Paul and Thecla, there he did not work; in which also was narrated the story of the baptized lion. Refuting which, he says thus: Therefore the Periods of Paul and Thecla, and the whole fable of the baptized lion, we reckon among the apocryphal writings. For how likely is it that the inseparable companion of the Apostle, Luke, should have been ignorant of this alone among his other doings? Similarly, how should the same man have been ignorant that a marble column, kindled by a little candle, while Paul preached at Reggio, burned? Jerome adds from Tertullian, that a certain Presbyter in Asia, an admirer of the Apostle Paul, was convicted before John of being the author of the book; and confessed that he had done this out of love for Paul; and for that reason was deposed from his office. A worthy penalty for forgers in sacred and serious matters; whether one forge out of love for a private person, or out of love for his country, that they may trace its deeds as high as possible, or derive its conversion to the faith of Christ from the Apostles.
[14] Let us proceed further. Not only in Paul's time was the prodigy of the burning column unknown, scarcely begun to be believed after a thousand years and more, but even a thousand years after, up to the time in which the earliest Life of St. Stephen, which we give in Greek and Latin, was written. For its author, although he brings Paul to Reggio, and says that there he announced the faith, baptized many, and even ordained presbyters and bishops, and so hints that he drew out a longer delay there; nevertheless in his own time did not yet know that the inhabitants of Reggio at first stubbornly forbade Paul to preach the faith, and then were converted by him through the prodigy of the burning marble column. nor now believed by the more prudent. Nay rather, the author of the Life sufficiently declares that the people of Reggio from the beginning, without any singular miracle, listened attentively to Paul preaching; and just as good ground multiplies the seed it has received a hundredfold, so they received the word of God from the mouth of Paul. That fable, therefore, must first have been born among the common people, after the age of the said writer, and perhaps long after, out of the brain of some idle person, which soon pleased the crowd, and was even received by the aforesaid chronographer of Reggio, Marco Antonio Politi. But the other writers, Marafioti in the Chronicle of Calabria, and Ughelli in the Bishops of Reggio; likewise Paolo Gualtieri in the Saints of Calabria and the Life of St. Stephen; who published their works before and after Politi, did not dare so much as by a word to mention the said prodigy and such a conversion of the people of Reggio to the faith of Christ, as far as I know.
[15] When St. Stephen was made bishop, It remains that we add a word about the age of St. Stephen and of his fellow martyrs. It can be sufficiently established from what has been disputed thus far, that he was not appointed bishop of Reggio by St. Paul out of the Syrian-Roman voyage: this, meanwhile, the people of Reggio assert; and so, in their opinion, he was appointed in the year of Christ 56, in which Paul passed that way. But of the determined year of the martyrdom nothing has yet been read among them. Ferrari writes that Stephen suffered under Nero: which conflicts with the Acts, in which it is read that he presided as bishop seventeen years. From which it follows that he died a martyr in the year 73: which likewise cannot be maintained. when he was afflicted with martyrdom. Because it is known that neither in that year, nor in some preceding, nor in some following, was any persecution stirred up against the Christians. Wherefore another time must be sought, in which St. Stephen was made bishop and suffered martyrdom. But to find that will not be easy: since Ughelli says that after Stephen, up to the time of Constantine the Great, the Bishops who flourished in the city of Reggio are wanting. I ask, therefore, the people of Reggio, that they themselves, with new care, inquire more closely into that matter as their own.
[16] Antiquity everywhere affected. To us indeed it is established by experience that everywhere among the nations it has prevailed and prevails, and is in a manner inborn in many, that they should affect the antiquity of their own affairs, and extol it as high as possible: which frequently comes to pass in the Acts of the Saints, which after long ages are collected from misty tradition or apocryphal writings. That this happened to the earliest bishops of Gaul is clearly attested by Philippe Labbe, learned in antiquity if any man is, in his chronological Breviary of sacred and profane History, writing thus at the year of Christ 69 in the year 1665: For a good eight hundred years many of our forefathers believed that the first bishops, founders of our churches throughout Gaul, were disciples either of Christ the Lord or of the holy Peter, Paul, or Clement, etc., and that they came to preach the Gospel in these vast provinces in the first century of Christianity, namely St. Ursinus of Bourges, St. Austremonius of Clermont, St. Martial of Limoges, St. Fronto of Périgueux, St. Eutropius of Saintes, and the many others whom he goes on to recount in great number: which men, he says, most learned men—Faber, Bosquet, Launoy, the Fathers Sirmond and Petau, and many others—judged not to have come except in the third or fourth century. Of some of those Saints we too have treated in our Acts, and we nearly agree with the cited Authors.
[17] even in sacred matters, In Sicily too the people of Syracuse, who name their own St. Marcian the first bishop of the city, and contend that he was sent to them from Antioch by St. Peter the Apostle, are shown on the fourteenth of June of our work to have erred, and that the Saint himself, in the reign of Valerian and Gallienus, in the third century, underwent martyrdom. The Umbrians likewise, as we lately
said in the preliminary Treatise to the First Volume of July, affect the antiquity of some of their first Bishops, whom they say were sent to them from Syria by St. Peter the Apostle; who lived and were made martyrs only in the times of Diocletian and Maximian. It is of no use to heap up more examples. The matter is very well known to the learned. Concerning St. Stephen, the first bishop of the people of Reggio, I seem to myself already to have shown that he was not made Bishop in the first century, nor by St. Paul the Apostle when he sailed to Rome: but when he was ordained, and likewise in our Stephen I am unable to divine; because concerning this Stephen both the Latin Martyrologists and other ancient writers are silent, at least those who lived before his Life was written. Perhaps his martyrdom might be referred to the times of Diocletian and Maximian, because no other Bishops of Reggio before that time are known. But more certain things about these matters we shall await from the people of Reggio themselves, as I have already said.
[18] The title of the Acts. We have also said whence we received the Greek Acts: and because they were collected late, they are found to be of no great authority. Behold them, with our translation. Such a title was prefixed: Ἄθλησις τοῦ ὁσίου πατρὸς ἡμῶν ἱερομάρτυρος Στεφάνου, μητροπολίτου Ῥηγίου τῆς Καλαβρίας. The combat of our holy Father, the sacred martyr Stephen, Metropolitan of the city of Reggio in Calabria.
ACTS
By an Anonymous Author, unless perhaps it be Metaphrastes.
From a Manuscript Codex of the monastery of the Holy Savior, of the Order of St. Basil, near Messina.
Stephen, Bishop and Martyr, at Reggio in Calabria (S.)
Suera, Bishop and Martyr, at Reggio in Calabria (S.)
Agnes, Martyr, at Reggio in Calabria (S.)
Felicity, Martyr, at Reggio in Calabria (S.)
Perpetua, Martyr, at Reggio in Calabria (S.)
Οὗτος ὁ ἄγιος ἱερομάρτυς Στέφανος ὑπῆρχεν ἀπὸ πόλεως Νικαίας· κατερχομένου δὲ Παύλου τοῦ ἀποστόλου ἐν τῇ Ῥώμῃ, συνακολούθησεν αὐτῷ ἄχρι πόλεως Ῥηγίου τῆς Καλαβρίας. Εὑρὼν ὁ Ἀπόστολος τὴν πόλιν οὖσαν κατείδωλον, ἐκήρυξεν ἐν αὐτῇ λόγον Κυρίου, καὶ ὥσπερ ἀγαθὴ τὸν σπόρον δεχομένη καὶ ἑκατοστεύουσα, οὕτως οἱ ἐν αὐτῇ τὸν λόγον ἐδέξαντο· κατηχήσας τοῦς αὐτοὺς ὁ Παῦλος, καὶ βαπτίσας πλείστους εἰς τὸ ὄνομα τοῦ Πατρὸς καὶ τοῦ Ὑιοῦ καὶ τοῦ ἁγίου Πνεύματος, προχειρίζει αὐτοῖς ἀρχιεπίσκοπον Στέφανον, ὃς καλῶς ποιμάνας τὴν ἐμπιστευθεῖσαν αὐτῷ ποίμνην, πολλοὺς τῷ ἑσπερίῳ μέρει ὑπέστρεψεν εἰς τὸν τοῦ Χριστοῦ πίστιν ταῖς αὐτοῦ διδασκαλίαις. Διατριψας οὖν ἐν ταύτῃ τῇ πόλει ἑπτὰ καὶ δέκα ἐνιαυτοὺς, καὶ ἐπισκόπους καὶ πρεσβυτέρυς χειροτονήσας, καὶ τῆς ἐκκλησίας Θεοῦ χάριτι μεγαλύνθείσης, ἐκινήθη διωγμὸς κατὰ τῶν Χριστιανῶν.
[2] Ἐκρατήθη ὑπὸ Ἱέρακος ἡγεμόνος ὁ Ἅγιος προσαίτιος τοῦ χριστιανισμοῦ, καὶ ἠναγκάσθη ἀρνήσασθαι τὸν Χριστὸν, καὶ θῦσαι τοῖς εἰδώλοις ὃς δὲ οὐκ ἠνέσχετο, ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον παρρησίᾳ τὸν Χριστὸν ὁμολογήσας, Θεὸν ὄντα, καὶ ποιητὴν πάντων· τὰ δὲ ἐίδωλα, ξύλα καὶ λίθους ἀναίσθητα, ἔργα χειρῶν ἀνθρώπων, τοῦ διαβόλου ἐφευρήματα. Διὸ τύπτεται ἀφειδῶς σὺν τῷ Σκηρᾷ ἐπισκόπῳ καὶ λίθοις τὰς ὄψεις συνθλῶνται, καὶ εἰς κάμινον πυρὸς ἐμβληθέντες, ἐξῆλθον ἀβλαβεῖς· ὅθεν πλεῖστοι ἐπίστευσαν τῷ Χριστῷ, καὶ μέγας ὁ Θεὸς ἀνεβόησαν, ὁ ὑπὸ Στεφάνου, καὶ Σουηρᾶ τῶν ἀρχιερέων κηρυττόμενος. Ἐν οἷς ὑπῆρχον γυναῖκες σεμναὶ, Ἀγνῆ, φιλικητὰς καὶ Περπετούα προσαγορευόμεναι, μαθήτριαι τοῦ ὁσίου Στεφάνου ὑπάρχουσαι, παῤῥησιάμηναι ἔμπροσθεν στάντες Ἱέρακος ἡγεμόνος, ὡμολόγησαν τὸ ὄνομα τοῦ Χριστοῦ, Θεὸν ἀληθινὸν καὶ ποιητὴν πάντων ἀνακηρύξασαι.
[3] Τότε θυμοῦ πλησθεὶς, ἐκέλευσεν αὐτὰς ξίφει ἀποτμηθῆναι ἅμα Στεφάνῳ καὶ Σουηρᾷ τοῖς ἀρχιερεῦσι. Οὗ γινομενου, παραυτίκα ἀπέδωκαν τὰς ἁγίας αὐτῶν ψυχὰς τῷ Κυρίῳ, εὐχαριστοῦντες καὶ ἀγαλλιώμενοι, ὅτι ἠξιώθησαν ὑπὲρ Χριστοῦ ἀποθανεῖν. Τὸ δὲ τίμιον σῶμα τοῦ ὁσίου ἱερομάρτυρος Στεφάνου ὑπ᾽ ἀνδρῶν εὐσεβῶν ἀωρὶ τῆς νυκτὸς κομισθὲν, ἐν τῷ νοτιαίῳ μέρει τῆς αυτῆς πόλεως, κατετέθη ἐν τῷ ἡσυχαστικῷ αὐτοῦ εὐκτηρίῳ, ὡς ἀπὸ σημείου ἑνὸς τῆς πόλεως, πλείστας ἰάσεις ἐπιτελοῦν. Τὰ δὲ τῶν λοιπῶν ἁγίων τὰ σώματα, Σουηρᾶ ἐπισκόπου, σεμνῆς Ἀγνῆς καὶ Φιλικητάτης καὶ Περπετούας, ἔνθα ἀπετμήθησαν, ὑπὸ πιστῶν κατέτεθησαν, ὑπὲρ τοῦ κόσμου πρεσβεύοντες.
This holy martyr Stephen, born in the city of Nicaea, when Paul the Apostle was journeying to Rome, The coming of the Saint with Paul the Apostle to Reggio. accompanied him as far as the city of Reggio in Calabria. But the Apostle, finding that city wholly given to idolatry, preached there the word of God; and just as good ground receives the seed and multiplies it a hundredfold, so the inhabitants of the city received the word. Meanwhile Paul, catechizing them, his deeds, baptized very many in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit; and ordained there Stephen as archbishop, who, rightly pasturing the flock committed to him, converted many in the western regions by his teaching to the faith of Christ. After therefore he had passed seventeen years there, and had consecrated bishops and presbyters, and the church by the grace of God had become very large; a persecution was stirred up against the Christians.
[2] In that persecution St. Stephen was arrested by Hierax the Governor, his martyrdom, as the author of Christianity, and was compelled to deny Christ and to sacrifice to the idols. Which he, not enduring, rather confessed that Christ is God and the creator of all things; but that the idols are wood and stones, lacking sense; the works of men's hands, and the inventions of the devil. Hence he is scourged without ceasing together with the bishop Suera, and their faces are crushed with stones, and, cast into a furnace of fire, they came out from it unharmed. By which miracle very many believed in Christ, crying out: Great is the God whom Stephen and Suera the bishops preach. Among these too were honorable women, named Agnes and Felicity and Perpetua, disciples of St. Stephen; who with free voice, standing before Hierax the governor, confessed the name of Christ; proclaiming him the true God and the maker of all things.
[3] Then the Governor, full of anger, commanded that their heads be cut off with the sword, and of his companions, as also those of Stephen and of Suera the bishops. Which being done, they straightway rendered their holy souls to the Lord, giving thanks and exulting, that they were worthy to die for Christ. But the venerable body of St. Stephen was carried by religious men in the dead of night into the southern part of the same city, their burial. and laid in his secret oratory, which is about a mile distant from the city, working very many cures. But the bodies of the other Saints, of Suera the Bishop, of the venerable Agnes, of Felicity and of Perpetua, were laid by the faithful there where they had fallen; interceding for the world.