ON ST. FELIX, BISHOP AND CONFESSOR, AT GENOA IN LIGURIA.
Century IV.
Account from Ferrarius.
Felix, Bishop, at Genoa in Liguria (S.)
BY THE AUTHOR J. B. S.
Augustine Justiniani, Bishop of Nebbio, in the Annals of Genoa, published in Italian in the year 1537, hands down a few things, and very confusedly, concerning the first Bishops of that city, at folio 25, expressing by name only eight who governed that church before Theodulf, In the confused series of the Bishops of Genoa, that is, before the tenth century. Among these he mentions four reckoned among the Saints, namely Valentinus, Felix, Syrus, and Romulus; but he openly confesses that neither the ages of these nor of the other four can be defined; so that I do not see on what foundation Jacobus de Voragine, cited in Ferrarius in an annotation, could have said that St. Felix lived about the year of the Lord 140. Ferrarius adds that it is beyond doubt that St. Syrus lived before the times of Gregory the Great, since he, in book 4 of the Dialogues, chapter 53, makes mention of the church of St. Syrus at Genoa, whence it follows that St. Felix also, the instructor of the other, was older than St. Gregory the Great; which Justiniani says is false, since Gregory calls that holy Syrus, not a Bishop, but a Martyr, when he asserts that a certain Valentinus, unworthy of the sacred place, was buried at Genoa in the church of the blessed martyr Syrus, whosoever at last that Syrus may have been. But that difficulty was long ago treated by Papebroch on the XXIX of June, volume 5, number 11, page 480, where also, at number 9, from the age of St. Syrus thou wilt gather that St. Felix belongs to the fourth century.
[2] The rest that pertains to those first Bishops of Genoa thou wilt find there explained as well as may be. his elogium is given from Ferrarius, The duration of his episcopate, if we trust the epitaph to be exhibited below, is to be extended to twenty years; and it must be said that St. Felix, when he departed from life, was a septuagenarian. From the very few monuments that survive at Genoa, Ferrarius composed a brief elogium: Felix, born at Genoa, learned in sacred letters and in morals, and initiated into holy orders by St. Valentinus
the Bishop, upon that one's death, on account of his eminent gifts of mind, was substituted in the episcopal see. His sanctity is believed to have been approved by miracles; for among other things, while he was celebrating the sacred mysteries of the Mass, a flame glowing red descended from heaven upon his head, in which the hand of Christ the Lord, radiant over the host already consecrated, is reported to have been seen by St. Syrus. He instructed St. Syrus, who succeeded him in the episcopate, who showed himself a disciple worthy of so great a master. Felix at length, spent with pious labors and old age, when he was in his seventieth year of age, flew away to his reward in heaven on the VII of the Ides of July.
[3] to which scarcely anything can be added from other sources. I will not deny that somewhat more, at least in far more words, is recorded of St. Felix in the Genoese Sanctuary of Marianus de Grimaldis, published at Genoa in the year 1613, both amplified in Italian at page 142, and more compressed in Latin in the lessons of the ecclesiastical Office, by which his memory is celebrated this day under the rite of a greater double, at page 22; but all these things, so far as they pertain to the true substance of the matter, add nothing to what has been said, which is not here abundantly set forth. Papebroch, in the place cited above, admits that St. Felix may be numbered sixth in order in the series of Bishops. He was buried, says Ughelli, in the church of the Twelve Apostles, which afterward, as has been said, it pleased to name from St. Syrus, where in the year 1283 they found his sacred relics with this inscription, or epitaph: Here rests St. Felix, Bishop of Genoa, who lived 70 years, ruled the episcopate 20, departed on the VII of the Ides of July. Of St. Syrus and his church I have already spoken; Papebroch is to be consulted. For the rest, St. Felix was unknown to all the more ancient Martyrologies before the Catalogue of Ferrarius; why he was not inscribed in the Roman, equally as St. Syrus, thou hast at the beginning of his commentary.