ON SS. RUFINUS AND AVENANTIUS, CONFESSORS,
AT SARZANA NEAR TORTONA IN ITALY.
From Ferrari.
CommentaryRufinus, Confessor, at Sarzana in Italy (S.)
Avenantius, Confessor, at Sarzana in Italy (S.)
J. B. S.
These two Saints, hitherto unknown to all the Martyrologies, Ferrari suggested on this day from the tables of the church of Tortona, which through the whole diocese, he says, recalls their memory on this day, and indeed with a double Office, as he has in his General Catalogue. For he notes here that the day of their birth, together with their deeds, is unknown, but that on this day their finding is celebrated: whence afterward in the said General Catalogue he wrote: At Sarzana near Tortona, the finding of the holy confessors Rufinus and Avenantius. To him thus testifying and giving assurance of a settled and constant cult there, we thought it altogether right to believe, and so from his testimony alone, and in his very words, we here describe their brief elogium. Thus he has: Rufinus the hermit, with his disciple Avenantius, led a solitary life in a valley through which a little river runs, near the castle of Sarzana in the territory of Tortona, which valley is called the Valley of St. Rufinus to the present day. Whose bodies, when they had long lain hidden, were found with a marble inscription of this kind: HERE LIE THE BODIES OF SS. RUFINUS AND AVENANTIUS, and were translated to a more convenient and more seemly place in the parish church, and are venerated with special veneration. These few things on the sole credit of Ferrari.