ON SS. PROCLUS OR PROCULUS, HILARION OR HILARIUS, MARTYRS.
UNDER Trajan.
Notice from the Greek Synaxaries and the Roman Martyrology.
Proclus or Proculus, Martyr (S.)
Hilarion or Hilarius, Martyr (S.)
BY THE AUTHOR J. P.
A most frequent memory of these holy Champions is found in the Greek Tables, the Typicon of St. Sabas, the printed Epitome of the Menology, the Horologium, the printed Menæa, Maximus Bishop of Cythera, the Supplement of the said Menæa from the Synaxary of Sirmond and the Ms. of Chifflet, The frequent memory of these Saints among the Greeks; with verses. and the Menæum of Chifflet, and finally the Slavo-Russian Menology, relating them; to which add the Menology of Sirlet; from which they were assumed into the Roman Martyrology, thus commemorating them: On the same day (the twelfth of July) the passion of the holy Proclus and Hilarion, who under Trajan the Emperor, and Maximus the governor, through most bitter torments came to the palm of martyrdom.
[2] Nor did the Basilian Synaxary pass them over, recounting their combat with a distinguished elogium. An elogium from the Basilian Synaxary. The Greek text, edited at the end of the first volume of the month of July, I thus interpret into Latin: Proclus and Hilarius, Martyrs of Christ, Trajan reigning, were of the city of Ancyra. But since they were Christians, they preached Christ and converted many of the unbelievers to him. Proclus therefore first, seized by the idolaters, stood before the Emperor; and questioned, and having confessed Christ more earnestly, was handed over to Maximinus [*] the governor; and suspended, scraped with iron, and burnt on the belly and sides with lamps of fire. And after these things, sentence having been received that he should be pierced with darts, he was led naked to the place of martyrdom: and on the way, meeting Hilarius his kinsman, and having embraced him, was the cause why he himself also was seized. And he indeed, suspended on the wood, struck with arrows, gave up his spirit; but Hilarius, beaten and scraped, and dragged naked to the third milestone, at last was beheaded with the sword. The printed Menæa have similar things. See also Galesinius, who announces them in Greece. The aforesaid Supplement composes these verses on St. Proclus.
Καὶ γυμνὸς ὢν ἤνεγκεν ὡς Πρόκλος βέλη, Ἔνδον γὰρ εἶχε τὸν Θεὸν πανοπλίαν.
How well you bore the darts, Proclus, even naked, armed within with the panoply of the Godhead.
But to St. Hilarius he thus applauds:
Ἱλάριος πάντιμον ἐκτμηθεὶς κάραν Ἀθλήσεως πάντιμον ἤρατο στέφος.
Hilarius, his all-honored head cut off, bore off the all-honored garland of the Martyrs.
In place of a coronis I add with the printed Menæa:
Δωδεκάτῃ βέλος εἶλε Πρόκλον, ξίφος Ἱλάριόν τε.
On the twice-sixth Hilarius falls by the sword, and Proclus by the arrow.
[3] The dreams of pseudo-Dexter Nicolaus Antonius, in the posthumous Mss. obligingly communicated to us by the most Ample and very Reverend Lord, Adrian de Coninck his near kinsman, at Madrid in the year 1721, here excellently harasses pseudo-Dexter, the ill-employed patron of the martyrs who are recorded without a place of martyrdom in the Roman Martyrology, to be adjudged to Spain. The memory of these Martyrs certainly, who suffered under Trajan, as we saw, from the sacred Fasti, he connects with the year 308. I do not divine whether knowingly and deliberately he marked that Era; or was forgetful of himself, straying two centuries outside the bounds of true chronology. In the edition of Bivarius, page 358, he thus speaks: At Serpa in Bætica flourish the holy Martyrs Proculus and Hilarion, whom also the Greeks celebrate for the glory of their sanctity, who under Trajan the emperor, Marcus Aurelius being governor, suffered. I do not here dwell on the ridiculous evasion of Tamayus, after Roder. Caro, whom he cites, bidding it be noted, that in that year there was not the passion, but the cult, which he writes only flourished at that time. But who does not see, says the above-praised author, the mention of the tyrant's presence withdrawn, which that one perhaps was not ignorant agreed ill with the Spanish opinion, who, setting sail for pseudo-Dexter, supplied to Bivarius the Menology, endowed with an interpretation not in good faith. Since it is most plain from the Roman histories, and especially from Dio, that Trajan, although a Spaniard, throughout the whole time of his empire, from the hundredth secular year up to the 119th, in which he died at Selinus in Cilicia while returning to Rome, never came to Spain. Nor does it help, that it is common to many Acts of the Martyrs, that the things which were done under some Emperor by prefects should be said to have been done before him himself; as Baronius observed in the notes to the Roman Martyrology on the XXII day of June. For he who is elsewhere convicted of so many falsehoods, does not here merit that evasion; always suspect, because accustomed to deceive.
[4] Then, the words of pseudo-Dexter and of Galesinius being collated on both sides, agreeing well enough with each other, he thus presses: they are refuted from the Mss. of Nicolaus Antonius. Pray, which of them transcribed the other? Galesinius Dexter? Dexter he could by no means, being unknown to him, unseen. It remains therefore that pseudo-Dexter used the more ancient Galesinius, and that we miss the mind and eyes of Tamayus, who seems to celebrate this stupidity of furtive transcription, as a conformity worthy to be observed, of both authors. He observes also that for Maximus here M. Aurelius is placed as governor. Is it the same man, expressed under a different name? By no means, Tamayus will say; but Maximus was the vicar of M. Aurelius. But this does not agree with the Acts composed by himself: While M. Aurelius, he says, governor of Farther Spain, was surveying Bætica, he dismissed Maximus the prefect to Serpa, a city of that dominion, that he might execute to the letter the edicts of the Emperor against the Christians. Trifles! For, as Nicolaus Antonius subjoins, according to the polity of Tamayus, governors used prefects as vicars or legates. Lest he leave anything uncorrected, the name of Serpa, he says, is retained by inscribed stones, which he could have seen in Resende book 4 of the Lusitanian Antiquities; besides that the novice Dexter mentions the Itinerary of Antoninus; in which he drew forth from his own brain that the memory and cult of the Martyrs flourished, not from any ancient monument of the matter, the recent deformer of the Acts, lighter than air and feather.
[5] What is to be answered to Tamayus, rebuking Galesinius? Furthermore, Tamayus shows himself a more than fair champion of these Martyrs to be ascribed to Serpa, against whom the very things which he casts up to Galesinius can almost be turned back: I marvel, he says, at the audacity of Peter Galesinius, who, with no guide, writes that they suffered in Greece, carried away by that consideration alone, that he found the combats of the holy Martyrs ascribed by the Greeks in the menology. Thus he; which, a few things being changed, you might retort upon him himself.
Annotation* al. Maximo.