ON ST. DOMNINUS OF APRILIACUM AND HIS COMPANION MARTYRS,
AT ANICIUM OR LE PUY AMONG THE VELLAVI IN GAUL.
From the Gallican Martyrologies and the Proper of Le Puy.
under Diocletian.
CommentaryDomninus, Martyr of Apriliacum, at Anicium or Le Puy among the Vellavi in Gaul (S.)
The Companions, at Anicium or Le Puy among the Vellavi in Gaul
BY THE AUTHOR J. B. S.
I rely here chiefly on the authority of Saussay and Castellanus, who expressly assert that the body of this holy Martyr, a boy of ten years, was translated to Anicium or Le Puy—of which city we have spoken at VII June and elsewhere—and that he is venerated there on this very day, It is known from what the Marches say that St. Domninus, whatever our Gissey or Jacques Branche, who searched the saints of the Vellavi or Velaunes not carelessly, may not have remembered concerning him. The words of Castellanus, from the French, are these: At Apriliacum, of St. Domninus the boy, whose body is honored at Le Puy among the Velaunes. But let us hear Saussay in the Supplement, page 1147: In the village of Apriliacum, the birthday of St. Domninus, a boy of ten years, who, having attained the divine light of faith, when he professes the name of Christ to be adored and the one only Godhead, by order of Rictiovarus was beaten with rods, tortured with salt, vinegar, and mustard in his ears and nostrils; and when the boy laughed at these things and said, "These are to me like honey," he was tormented with twenty-four glowing nails in the fingers of his hands and feet, in his nostrils and ears. And when he had converted fifty-four men to the faith of Christ, both by divine words and by admirable patience, and had recalled to life Maurus and Justinus out of the thirty who had been killed for that cause, he himself at last, that he might obtain the crown he had merited, was beheaded. His body, from Apriliacum, destroyed by the Normans, was first translated to the monastery of Nobiliacum in the diocese of Poitiers, then to Anicium among the Velaunes, by Godelenus, abbot of Nobiliacum, desiring the safer custody of so precious a pledge and to enlarge the honor of so great a Martyr. Altaserra records the same translation, Res Aquitanicae book 4, page 301.
[2] they rendered him a little better known Now, since the narrative thus set forth did not seem capable of having been excerpted except from some Acts, of whatever kind they might be supposed to be, which had shone before Saussay, a desire came upon my mind to dig them out from wherever, and, using the labor of our Father Charles Fleury, then residing at Paris, I received lessons from Le Puy out of the proper of the Cathedral church, namely the very fountain from which Saussay drew his elogium: so that it must seem altogether astonishing that no memory whatever of that holy Domninus, Martyr of Apriliacum, exists in any sacred Fasti, nor that anything is handed down elsewhere concerning so illustrious a martyrdom carried out by Rictius Varus. Several Saints of that name have already been illustrated by us; several others remain to be illustrated, but to none of these seem proper the things which Saussay recorded of his Domninus of Apriliacum. Further, as the faith of that kind of Acts has thus far not been sufficiently clear to me, so concerning the translation made first to Nobiliacum, and thence to Anicium, I find nothing more certain. I know Godelenus the abbot from the fourth century of the Acts of the Order of St. Benedict, part 1, page 433, and from the Annals of the same, tome 2, page 532, as one who translated the body of St. Junianus to Nobiliacum in the year 830; but why he judged the sacred relics of St. Domninus, rather than those of St. Junianus, to be carried off to Anicium as to a safer place, I confess I do not sufficiently understand. For the rest, from the letters of Le Puy, dated XXVI June 1723, we are made more certain of the constant cult there, and indeed of the particular veneration of the Saint, exposed upon the principal altar itself. Behold a somewhat fuller history, which is there recited every year on this XVI July in the Office:
[3] the lessons of the Office of Le Puy, At the time when Rictiovarus, prefect of the Gauls, was raging against the Christians with diverse kinds of torments, Domninus, a boy only ten years old, pleaded the cause of all the faithful who were brought as defendants to judgment. And when the impious president asked him by what name he was called, he answered that he was called first a Christian, secondly Domninus. Then the man offered money to the most holy boy; to whom the boy said: "Your money be with you unto perdition: my treasure is the grace of Christ Jesus." When he had said this, Domninus was most cruelly beaten with rods, but, divinely strengthened, he bore the cruel blows with thanksgiving: and when with equal constancy of soul he endured vinegar, salt, and mustard mixed together to be poured into his nostrils and ears, twenty-four glowing nails were driven into each of the fingers of his hands and feet and into both his nostrils and ears. Then, the most brave boy having been shut up in prison after so many torments, and there chanting psalms with gladness, the malignant spirit appears to him, transfigured into an angel of light, and endeavors to persuade him to obey the impious laws of the Emperors: but, recognized by Domninus and despised, he departed, saying to him: "You long for martyrdom; you shall be without martyrdom." The good angel succeeded the wicked spirit, comforting the servant of God and promising divine help. And when the prefect asked of him, not that he should sacrifice to the gods, but only that he should speak of the gods with praise: "Let your gods perish," said Domninus, "and let their altars fall down."
[4] Scarcely had he spoken when the angel of the Lord overthrew the altars and images, by which the martyrdom is described up to a point; Domninus laughing and saying: "Your gods, Rectiovarus, are ill; seek garments for them, that perchance they may recover." At these things the president, driven into a fury, orders the holy Martyr to be thrust back into the workhouse, where he converted fifty-four men to the faith of Christ Jesus, of whom thirty were put to death to terrify Domninus. The prefect, uncertain in mind, promises Domninus that he will become a Christian if he recalls to life one or another of the thirty. The condition accepted, the holy Boy raises Maurus and Justinus from the dead; at which spectacle the cry of the bystanders was heard: "Truly great is the God of the Christians!" The perfidious president, calling the divine miracles conjuring-tricks, does not stand by his promises; but orders the head of Domninus to be cut off. While the faithful were burying the sacred body, the songs of angels were heard, and five blind men received their sight, and many heathens received the Christian faith. But Rictiovarus a little after perished by an evil end. The relics of the holy Martyr shone with many miracles in the village of Apriliacum; whence, by the work of the prelate Godelenus, they were translated to the monastery of Nobiliacum; but afterward they were carried to the church of Anicium, where
they are now honored for many years by the pious cult of the faithful; whence Nicholas IV, Supreme Pontiff, granted in perpetuity Indulgences to those who should visit this church on the feast of St. Domninus. Thus far the Lessons of Le Puy transmitted hither.
[5] What age all these things savor of, and by what authority they accordingly rest, there is no ground from which one may conjecture with sufficient safety; that he was adorned with a true martyrdom I think sufficiently clear, many things omitted which stir doubts. this is enough for me here, that there is a most certain notice of an ancient cult; which, if it had reached the reformers of the Senonese Breviary, I do not indeed doubt that they would have left untouched the things which for so many centuries had been received into their Calendar. So wrote to me, on II March 1723, the Reverend and Distinguished D. Le Beuf, canon and precentor of the church of Auxerre. "I was expecting," he says, "some light concerning the two Senonese Saints, whose names, distinctly expressed in the older Calendars of the diocese, were in my judgment not rightly rescinded. Of these one is St. Domninus, Martyr, on the day XVI July, the other Hilarion, Bishop, on the XXVII of the same month, concerning whom I confess I have thus far been able to find very little. St. Domninus is known, and there exists under his name a certain priory in the diocese of Sens. The Martyrology of the metropolis announces him simply in these words, The birthday of St. Domninus the Martyr, without position or place of martyrdom. The Calendars follow the Martyrology, which is of the thirteenth century, and constantly call him a MARTYR; in the XVI century wrongly the title of abbot was added. Moreover, in the edition of the Breviary of the year 1702, all these things were wrongly rescinded." Rightly does this man, skilled in these matters, disapprove of the change made, as though the cult of St. Domninus could not have passed into the Senonese from the neighboring province of Bourges, or even from elsewhere.
[6] They are no clearer. Perhaps those Senonese correctors were moved by the various doubtful and uncertain things which repeatedly occur concerning St. Domninus, which also impelled me, after various other inquiries already made, to search more deeply whether the holy Boy, celebrated by so many victories and triumphs, was nowhere else venerated, if not on this day, at least on some other: which, since it did not appear in the preceding months, I had to recur to the following ones for examination: and behold, in the month of August on the day XVI I come upon writings sent by our Pierre-François Chifflet (here always most praised) once to our elders; of which, that you may understand the chief part, the principal document bears this title: Acts of St. Domninus, boy, and his companion martyrs, from a manuscript codex of the monastery of Candiacum, where St. Domninus rests. Chifflet moreover testifies that he is venerated there on XVI August, adducing documents of translations, with a long medley of antiphons, hymns, verses, responsories, etc., which are drawn from the Acts themselves. From the Acts, I say, but such that they do not altogether agree with those already given from Le Puy. Chifflet had seen Saussay's elogium, already related by us above; and, not doubting of the identity, he subjoined to it this annotation: "He suffered," he says, "at Herbedilla; perhaps he was carried first to the village of Apriliacum, 2nd to the monastery of Nobiliacum, 3rd to Anicium, 4th to Magnilocum, 5th and lastly to Candiacum." Roundly enough, if truly enough; which by another inquiry, as far as it can be done, we shall now try to explore.