Ennodius

ON ST. ENNODIUS, BISHOP AND CONFESSOR,

AT TICINUM OR PAVIA IN ITALY.

IN THE YEAR 521.

HISTORICAL COMMENTARY.

Ennodius, Bishop and Confessor, at Ticinum or Pavia in Insubria (S.)

BY THE AUTHOR J. B. S.

§ I. The Saint's name, race, homeland, and deeds before the episcopate.

The encomia of ancient Ticinum or of modern Pavia have been recorded long ago and often in these our Acts; a not lowly glory of it was St. Ennodius the bishop, deservedly to be numbered among the more celebrated prelates of the sixth century for illustrious race, erudition, and distinguished deeds: Illustrious deeds, not by native writers, the series of whose life, since no writer has hitherto pursued in order, we are here, after our manner, compelled to collect in a brief syllabus those things which have been handed down about him by various writers, but in very various and diverse ways; and by no means accurately by those to whom the deeds of their renowned prelate ought to have been better known. By quite a rare chance it seems to have happened that of our men two most learned, Andreas Schott in Belgium, Jacques Sirmond in France, at almost the same time reviewed and edited the writings of St. Ennodius, the former at Tournai in the year 1610, the latter at Paris in 1611, a brief compendium of his Life being prefixed by each, which will here opportunely shed light for us in examining the rest. There had preceded Jacopo Gualla, who died in the year 1505, whose history, called the Sanctuary of Pavia, first appeared there in 1587. Bernardo Sacco, in ten books on the variety and elegance of Italian matters, published in that very year at Ticinum, and the history of Antonio Maria Spelta, printed in 1597; which unnamed writers it was a scruple here to pass over, although their works were rather to be refuted than approved, as will be plain to one comparing this our dissertation with their elogia.

[2] Behold for you a specimen, from which you may conjecture of the exact erudition of Jacopo Gualla, who feigned many things wrongly, when he wrongly called the Saint Ænodius, namely the tenth bishop of Ticinum, who in the year of salvation two hundred and eighty and more was held a distinguished doctor and orator, almost two hundred whole years before he was born. No more happily did Bernardo Sacco express the Saint's name by "Ænnodius Juvenalis," by which he adduces a marvelous indeed but gentile Italian observation, which is born only to provoke all foreigners to laughter, when, page 154, you may doubt whether seriously enough, he thus says: "But the family of Juvenalis was that itself by which was built a village not far from the most celebrated Carthusian monastery of Pavia, called Juventianus. Which noble family indeed nearly a hundred years ago ceased to be among the living, the village Juventianus, commonly Giovenzano, being distracted into diverse owners." Hear what follows: "But whether the family of Juvenalis, sprung from Latium and the Sabines and neighboring peoples, was connected with our Ticinenses by agnation,

I could rather divine than know: for I have known at Rome a Latin Juvenalis, an excellent man." How many empty consequences from a false supposition, which commend neither the nobility of St. Ennodius nor his sanctity greatly: he himself speaks of himself far more humbly, although it is established enough from elsewhere that his family was especially illustrious, which we shall soon more clearly set forth.

[3] also in assigning the Saint's name; To return to the name, thus a little better did the praised Schott pronounce of it in the compendium of the Saint's Life composed by him. "Ennodius," he says, "I lawfully name, on the credit of codices and old writers, not Euodius, as Bapt. Platina and Lazius, nor Ænnodius Juvenalis." What Schott here notes of Euodius will be plainer below from the Martyrologies; nor is he to be called Innodius on account of the hardness of his style, as Barth would have it, book 33, chapter 17, from Arnulf of Lisieux, concerning whom is to be seen Sirmond's letter to the most distinguished man Nicolas Fabri, where, describing the previously depraved and defiled work of St. Ennodius, he excuses Arnulf of Lisieux, that, having got a faulty, mutilated, and in every way corrupted exemplar, he had cause enough why he should say of him, on account of the obscurity, that Innodius seemed to him truer than Ennodius: namely because, accustomed to the soft and gentle eloquence of the writers of a better age, he utterly shuddered at this rough, as they say, and rugged kind of speaking, which emerged in the last centuries of the Latin language. To pass over the rest, let it suffice to say that the Saint seems most rightly marked by his names, when he is called by Sirmond Magnus Felix Ennodius; which indeed is a wonder was not known to Schott.

[4] but to be sought from his writings, edited by Schott and Sirmond. To his race and homeland pertain the things which Sirmond no less accurately subjoins; "That he was a Gaul by lineage and procreated of Gallic parents, he testified more than once. But whether in Gaul, that is at Arles, whence was his origin, and which he calls a sweet seat; or, which I rather think, in Liguria at Milan he was born, he left uncertain: certainly that he was of Ticinum, either by origin or by the chance of birth, we know he nowhere even from afar indicated." Sirmond proceeds: "And although he is himself wont to call himself lowly in place, yet it is clear that he embraced the chief families of his age, either by the bond of blood or by affinity: since among his kinsmen and connections he numbers Faustus, Boethius, Avienus, ex-consuls, Cæsarius of Arles, and Aurelianus, bishops; Senarius, Florianus, Olybrius, Eugenes, and others most illustrious in race and honors." This about his race is enough: his homeland the Saint himself not obscurely intimates in epistle 2 to Florus, in Sirmond's edition, which we follow, page 4, in these words: "Let him contend with you, drawn out from the very bounds of the court, be silent about your Gallic lineage"; which he jestingly indicates again, page 621, so that I altogether do not grasp how Schott could so expressly pronounce that Ennodius did not at all betray his homeland and parent: perhaps for this reason, because he lost the latter while quite an infant, and did not even see him. This I would easily admit; the rest I judge should be so reconciled, that he was a Gaul by origin, born and educated in Italy, probably of an Italian mother Camilla, of whom the epitome of Schott: a little graver are the difficulties which surround the Saint's age.

[5] And that part indeed I would here undertake to explain, unless the whole series were better brought back to the following paragraph, His birth is fixed in the year 473. whose foundation must be laid in passing. Previously therefore I observe that the single characterization, on which almost the rest depend, was assigned to us by the holy Ennodius himself in the Eucharisticon on his life, in Sirmond, page 434, in these words: "At the time when the most longed-for entrance of King Theodoric revived Italy, when all things were laid waste by his enemies with inexplicable slaughter, and what the swords left, famine slew: when want burst through the lofty citadels of the mountains and of the camps; and want, fiercer than arms, besieged those placed on the heights: I, of about sixteen years, was at that time deprived of the solace of my aunt, who had reared me. I remained alone, poor in means, and destitute of counsel, to whom adversity alone could give a remedy." Now the entrance of Theodoric into Italy historians commonly place, with Baronius, in the year 489, so that, going back to the Saint's birth, it must be connected with the year 473: but since he lived only forty-nine years, his happy departure, not in the year 516, as the Italians commonly err from the ill-read epitaph, but must be brought back to 521, we shall soon show; here first, from the said Eucharisticon and other places, must be gathered those things which will seem to pertain to the life spent before the episcopate.

[6] He writes himself, book 5, chapter 14, page 148, that he was instructed by Servilio in the liberal arts, on which that he too much intended, it helps to understand from his confession, page 429: He narrates his youthful studies, "For, elated," he says, "by insane successes, I had, ignorant of the venerable profession, put myself into the flock of poets. Verses delighted me, fabricated with squared little porticoes, and solidified with an ordered variety of feet. A fluid or tender poem mingled me with the choirs of angels: and if it happened that I was, the law being kept, a former of illustrious verses, I beheld whatever is covered by the axis of heaven subjected under my feet. Mortal life long revolved the inept one, and a certain blindness of miseries carried me utterly off from the false felicity of speaking … Thus while the charm of superfluous composition drove me in the rhetorical and poetic fields, I had departed from true wisdom, having followed a false one, desiring nothing else but to catch the praises of a vain ear. There was a loathing of praying, while I was held by the desire of gaining by perorating." Hear the purpose of amendment, page 433: "I promised also, if he should grant me by his grace the affection [*] of a more illustrious study, that this confession should proceed from the hand of my tongue, that of the gifts of my little talent I should offer him the fat, that never should the care of the pen be wearied by the windy execution of secular matters." That St. Ennodius vowed this while, seized by a grave sickness, he escaped the danger by the patronage of St. Victor, is certain enough; but in about what year this happened, no one has hitherto explored.

[7] The clericate being undertaken, I indeed think that he sent an entire dismissal to letters, at least profane, which afterward, made a cleric, he corrected, and to that time I think must be recalled what he writes, book 9, epistle 1, "The very names of liberal studies I now detest"; of which it pleases here to hear the judgment of Sirmond, most versed in the works of the Saint. "In this grade (of the diaconate) he led a great part of his life; and although he had begun to neglect the studies of the rhetoricians and poets, to which he had been devoted from his first age, and had already thence given his name with the clergy, and afterward also, in the deadly sickness from which he was restored by the aid of Blessed Victor, to flee them by a fixed purpose of mind; yet he flourished with such a fame of talent and doctrine, that not only were the things which he wrote of his own accord in esteem, but at the request also of his friends, whom he cultivated most intensely, he was compelled to give assiduous labor in dictating, in the name of others, orations, letters, epitaphs, and epigrams of diverse matters. In which kind many things were illustrious to the glory of Ennodius, but nothing more illustrious than the apologetic and the panegyric, by the one of which he publicly praised Theodoric, by the other he defended the cause of Pope Symmachus and of the Roman synod with such approbation, that he was adorned by the whole synod with a most honorable elogium and decree." We believe he was a bishop when he accurately described the Lives of Sts. Epiphanius the bishop and Antony the monk of Lérins.

[8] his wife dismissed, ordained deacon. What besides before the entering of marriage, what at its time he did, neither did he himself singly commemorate, nor is it easy to draw out from elsewhere. "That he had a son, he seems in a certain place to signify," says Sirmond; but that this is certain, he nowhere asserted: there will be those who wish it indicated in the third little verse of his epitaph, to be related below, "illustrious indeed by offspring": but whether that offspring was male, is not yet gathered thence. That he was enrolled in the clergy of Ticinum, after she who had shared with him the parity of marriage shared also with the same the honor of a religious disposition, and soon was distinguished with the diaconate by St. Epiphanius, is established enough; but that he passed over to the Roman clergy in the 24th year of his age, I know not whence the recent French Legendist drew, since of that matter no one, that I know, has hitherto made mention. That he labored in his eyes, and, oppressed by other diseases, by the help of his Preserver happily overcame all their force, he himself testifies in more than one place; but these and other things of that kind there is no one who can connect with certain times. His ingenuous confession taught some things in the praised Eucharisticon, which are obvious to all, so that therefore it may suffice to taste another specimen from page 435, where, after narrating the benefits of God the best and greatest conferred on him, and that especially by which, through an opulent marriage, he had happily emerged from the hardships mentioned above, he weighs his ingratitude, and new and greater arguments of the divine mercy, which we here judged should be set forth in his own words. Thus he speaks:

[9] Another ingenuous confession of the Saint, "Then first, changed from a beggar into a king, I began to deride the evils of the afflicted, and, as if prosperity had been due to me, so to neglect their author. Yet my rebellious and stiff-necked spirit's swelling was not at once dashed by thee. Thou didst prolong the times of vengeance, lest perhaps I be pricked, and, healed, feel only this, who was the bestower. But because man does not correct himself from the unjust, nor is easily settled [*] to the white after stains, I stood in that sentence of mine by which I should fall, I conquered thy patience by the continuation of sin. And because, since thou art most clement, thou dost not always repay justice, stripped of thy protection, I received that voice which was directed to the ears of the first parent, Adam, where art thou? In my confusion I numbered how great treasures of thy clemency I had lost, and of what dowry I was stripped: the estimation of the things conferred by thee was then granted, when it was perishing for me. I returned to myself and to my hardships, and for the prolonged joys I wept. At once indeed by another way, but not unequal, thou didst come to my aid: thou didst ordain that I should be healed, compelled through the office of the levites, and that the burden of the honor imposed should remove from me the weight which pressed. But after the pressure of the venerable dignity released me, I had a pride from the title, not a conscience from the brightness of action."

[10] We by no means deny that some rougher and unexplained things here occur, which in fewer words would be more clearly set forth, and the rest done before the episcopate. but we preferred to shadow forth the lively and elegant genius of the holy Man, his soul kindled with better flames, and his purpose of a holier life, in his very own style, than to change anything in his oration. In about what time these happened, will somehow be plain from the following paragraph: but what followed his complete conversion down to the year 503, in which most probably he undertook to defend the cause of Pope Symmachus against the Laurentian accusers, is not yet clear enough: there is extant among his works an apologetic for the synod from page 317, but the whole history of the deed; which does not pertain to this our disquisition, Baronius drew out at the said year

503, from no. 2 to 12. To about the same time, or a little later, pertains another apologetic of the same St. Ennodius addressed to Theodoric, which is had from page 291, not undeservedly praised by the most Eminent Annalist there. Nor much after was given, I think, the consolatory letter, with the relics of Sts. Nazarius and Romanus, to the exiled African bishops, to be seen also in the Annals at the year 504, no. 42. All which indeed done before the episcopate, it seems undoubted, as also most of the letters written, Sirmond rightly thinks.

* "affection" (affectu).

* Is it not "returned"?

§ II. Age, episcopate, and legations.

Rightly did Pagi observe at the year 515, that the first mention of St. Ennodius as bishop is made on the occasion of his oriental legation to the Emperor Anastasius: The errors of various writers are refuted, and he succeeded St. Maximus, bishop of Ticinum, who subscribed the Roman synod, which by some is called the Absolution, by others the Palmary, gathered in the year 501, at about which time the Saint, then still a deacon, composed that distinguished apology, of which we already made mention. Schott, Labbé, and others err, especially the Ticinense writers, who will have him to have succeeded St. Epiphanius in the year 490. For even if we granted, which however is false, that St. Epiphanius died in that year, it can by no means be made probable that a young man, born only in the year 473, and so having then entered only the seventeenth year of his age, was raised to the episcopal dignity. Far better did our Bolland refer the death of St. Epiphanius, from others, in the Acts of the XXI of January, to the year 496, in which, even if it were less absurd to give St. Ennodius as his successor, yet that supposition is openly refuted from the already alleged Roman synod, at which since Maximus was present and subscribed, as bishop of Ticinum, it is proved certainly enough that St. Ennodius could first succeed not St. Epiphanius but St. Maximus.

[12] In what order, at what time, in what determined year this happened, concerning the beginning, duration, and end of the episcopate. the Pavian writers Gualla, Sacco, and Spelta in no way examined, among whom many things are disturbed, as long ago and often our Elders in this work have complained: it does not please me here to refute the several things. Ughelli pleases more, and after him de Gaspari, who make Ennodius the twenty-fourth bishop in order, and substituted in the year 511 to St. Maximus II, whose brief elogia Bolland described from St. Ennodius himself at the VIII of January, marking his death in the year 510. Which opinion is to be preferred, you would not easily say; for us it is enough to have demonstrated that Ennodius neither succeeded St. Epiphanius, nor could attain the episcopal dignity in the year 490, from which, the error of the beginning of the episcopate being supposed, they commonly obtrude another, that he held the Pavian see for twenty-six whole years, and died in the year 516, which is a third hallucination, no less than the rest: namely to this those Pavian writers are led by the epitaph of the Saint himself, from which very thing they are convicted of a most manifest error, when they ineptly connect the consulship of Valerius, a distinguished man, with the year 516, having gone so far that they did not hesitate to subscribe that year to the epitaph, of which matter again below; now let us in some measure arrange the Saint's age, as we very lately promised.

[13] The marriage must have been short, We have already shown him born in the year 473, from which epoch the rest of the calculations must be disposed. In what year he took a wife, is hitherto uncertain, and so must be gathered from the more probable conjectures. Let us grant that, pressed by straits from the death of his good aunt, he seized the happier lot as quickly as he could; it is not probable that he demanded in marriage the little daughter of a certain most noble … before the eighteenth year of his age, and so not before the year 491 or 492; on which hypothesis too the marriage must have been of no long time. For we suppose that he was initiated in the order of the diaconate by St. Epiphanius; nay he even then seems to have constantly adhered to him, when by the order of Theodoric, king of the Goths, he discharged the Burgundian legation to Gundobad for the redemption of the captive Italians, whence it must follow that he passed only very few years in marriage. But that he was aggregated to the clergy and marked with the sacred character by St. Epiphanius himself, he not obscurely insinuates in the last clause of the Epiphanian Life, when he thus invokes the Saint praised by him: "Do thou, O soul most powerful with our Redeemer, grant me, that, free of care, and free in breast, being pure I may pay the encomia due to thee, as they are due. Moreover, do not leave one having trust in thee after the Lord, and him whom thou hast marked with the title of religion, render a partaker of the religious in the divine promise."

[14] since by St. Epiphanius he seems to have been ordained about the year 494. That by "religious life" is there indicated the sacred Order undertaken, or at least the clericate, is more clearly plain from the cited Eucharisticon, where, page 436 of the edition which we follow, explaining his conversion, he thus speaks: "This my patron (St. Victor) obtained more than I asked, that she who had with me the parity of marriage should share with me the honor of a religious disposition, and become the female leader of a distinguished title"; namely, his wife put on the religious habit at the same time at which he bound himself with holier bonds. Now that the death of St. Epiphanius must be connected with the year 496, Bolland long ago judged at the XXI of January, and Pagi and others following him, unless you prefer to prolong it to the January of the following year 497. If therefore St. Ennodius was enrolled in the sacred militia by St. Epiphanius, this cannot be deferred beyond the year 496. Nay, it must even be more hastened, if he was truly the companion of his Bishop in the Burgundian legation, which some draw from page 407, where he writes; "For I am a witness of this matter, through whose hands the little tickets to the prisons drew forth the order of the priest"; for since that triumph of charity of St. Epiphanius certainly falls in the year 494, it will be more manifestly demonstrated that St. Ennodius could not have enjoyed those so eagerly grasped fleeting and perishing goods for a whole three years. Now we return to the episcopate.

[15] St. Ennodius therefore was, on account of his distinguished merits toward the Apostolic See, Raised to the episcopate about the year 510, raised to the see of Ticinum by Pope Symmachus, whom he often praises in his letters, substituted for St. Maximus deceased in the year, as we already noted, 510 or 511, from which time, intent on ordering the affairs of his church, he applied himself wholly and diligently to instructing the flock committed to him, until, Symmachus not long after, namely in the year 514, being called to the heavenly ones, he was compelled to render new service to Hormisdas the Pontiff, the successor of the other, whom, still established in minor orders, he addresses in a friendly manner, book 5, epistle 13, being chosen, on account of the distinguished fame of his sanctity and doctrine, to undertake a most difficult legation, by which he should compel the crafty and cunning emperor Anastasius to the bosom and unity of the Church, of which matter fully and learnedly Baronius, at the year mentioned above, in which the legation was undertaken, 515, from no. 14, a little below more expressly observing that it had to be dealt with so circumspectly and cautiously with the old fox, lest the majesty of the Apostolic See should be eluded by him, while he seemed to abuse its authority not for establishing the Catholic faith, but for preserving his kingdom, and turning away Vitalian. "But there were," he subjoins, "chosen for the arduous work four most excellent legates, among whom the first place held Ennodius, from deacon now bishop of Ticinum, etc."

[16] You have there the letter of Pope Hormisdas to Anastasius with a provident admonition given to the legates setting out; he discharges the legations to Anastasius in 515 and 517: you have the conditions on which the versatile Prince is to be admitted to the communion of the Catholic Church, provided he repent; you have the chapters prescribed by Hormisdas to the Orientals; in a word the whole matter, as most skillfully disposed by the Pope, so most diligently and accurately drawn out by Baronius in the Annals, whose not happy enough issue, and the various arts of Anastasius, he pursues, from the beginning of the following year 516, commemorating the return of the legates to the City, and the new counsels and machinations of Anastasius. Yet Hormisdas did not desist from the undertaking, but, the legation being repeated, trying by all means to bring back the most cunning heretical man to saner counsels, he judged that the same province should be committed again to St. Ennodius, as you have again in the same Baronius at the year in which that second legation was undertaken, 517, where concerning his holy legate the Pontiff thus writes to Anastasius, no. 10: "To these things, to be alleged by our tears, by our prayers, we have directed Ennodius and Peregrinus, our brothers and fellow-bishops, in our stead, also for exhibiting an honorable salutation. Therefore especially, the burden of the second legation being imposed on the designated man, that he who brought us the beginning of good hope may now, God helping, bring back the full effect. Acquiesce, we beseech, in the faithful admonitions of him by whose institutes we have long read that you were delighted. Given the III Nones of April, Agapitus, a distinguished man, being Consul."

[17] The remaining deeds of this whole second legation the most Eminent Annalist embraced no less exactly, at the already said year 517 down to no. 50. what he suffered in the second is described. Moreover he subjoins the catastrophe of the expedition from Anastasius the Librarian, which we here describe from the source, to be referred not to the year 515, as wrongly Peter the Deacon, confusing both legations, but to this 517, the Librarian has thus: "He directed also Ennodius, bishop of Ticinum, and Fortunatus, bishop of Catania, and Venantius, presbyter of the city of Rome, and Vitalis, deacon of the Apostolic See, and Hilary, notary of the aforesaid See: and, going to Anastasius Augustus, they accomplished nothing. The same a second time sent Ennodius himself and Peregrinus, bishop of Misenum, carrying letters of confirmation of the faith, and secret attestations, nineteen in number, and the text of a booklet, in which booklet Anastasius Augustus would not consent, because he too had communicated in the Eutychian heresy. He wished therefore to corrupt the same legates by reward. But the legates of the Apostolic See, Anastasius Augustus being despised, in no way consented to receive the moneys, unless he should effect the satisfaction of the Apostolic See. Then the Emperor, filled with fury, cast them out through the postern, and put them in a perilous ship, with soldiers and magistriani and prefectiani, by name Heliodorus and Demetrius; which the Emperor Anastasius gave them in charge, that they should enter no city. But the legates of the Apostolic See more secretly set forth the aforesaid nineteen letters of the faith, through the hands of orthodox monks, through all the cities, and, having struggled through all dangers, all the tyrant's machinations being eluded, happily returned to their own."

§ III. Death, cult, writings, and elogia.

Not long surviving the legation, he dies in the year 521, St. Ennodius, returned from that second legation, after so many labors and hardships, was refreshed by the concord of both Churches, Eastern and Western, which followed a little after, the old fox Anastasius being taken away by a heavenly thunderbolt, whose successor Justin, a man eminently Catholic, granted to Pope Hormisdas all things which he had so often tried in vain to obtain for establishing the integrity of the faith and peace. But that the Saint did not long survive these, the epitaph placed for him, mentioned above, proves,

which Sirmond testifies he read and described in the very place, from which tablet it is a wonder that the Ticinense writers, praised above by me, and others, could draw out that St. Ennodius died in the year 516, whereas the most open characterization set down, "Valerius, a distinguished man, being Consul," could designate no other year than 521, most excellently restored by Sirmond: after whom nevertheless Ferrari, following his fellow-countrymen, did not hesitate to express these words in capital letters: "Laid down on the day XVI Kal. of August, Valerius V. being Consul, in the year 516 FROM THE VIRGIN BIRTH." These therefore we dismiss, as well as all those who, from the wrongly prefixed beginning of St. Ennodius' episcopate in the year 490, consequently did not fear to ascribe to him twenty-six whole years of governance, since he could preside over that church only ten or eleven, according to the calculation established by us, namely from 510 to the already said 521, which the epitaph itself thus demonstrates, which I here subjoin from Sirmond:

Ennodius the seer, about to return into the rising of light, placed in this tomb the spoils of his body. Illustrious indeed by offspring, himself more noble than his kinsmen, whom, deceased, he bade have a day of praise. He restored these to heaven with living figures, when he made them live by the discourses of fame. What wonder if he lacks death, surviving after his fate, who restored his kinsmen to the heavenly ones? In how great regions of the world he would be celebrated, not even the ocean of the western pole is silent. By schism discord had long conflicted with the law, and he restored the faith of Peter to the churches. Powerful in eloquence, noble in the art of doctrine, he restored innumerable peoples to Christ. Generous yet wise, and a kindly dispenser, believing the riches which he gave to be his own. Making temples for God, he adorned them with hymns and gold, and the wall now speaks the doctrines of the deceased. Laid down on the day XVI Kal. of August, Valerius, a distinguished man, being Consul.

[20] From what has been disputed hitherto are plainly resolved all the doubts proposed by Ferrari in a longer than usual annotation, against the confusions of the Pavian writers. which it may here suffice to have touched a little more briefly. The first is, under what Pontiff and what Emperor Ennodius was taken to the episcopate. "Some," he says, "will have him created bishop by Pope Hormisdas, others long before, in the reign of Zeno." That both are false, we have already manifestly shown. Not much unlike is the other doubt about the duration of St. Ennodius' episcopate, which too is dissolved with equal evidence. Again (the words are Ferrari's own) "a greater difficulty is stirred among the writers of the Life of St. Ennodius, namely all the more recent Ticinenses, and Baronius in the Annals, as to the year in which he died." But that difficulty too we have given most fully explained in the two next numbers. "Finally," he says, "Baronius held that Ennodius was substituted for bishop Maximus, which Ennodius too has in the Life of St. Epiphanius. But Gualla, Breventano, and Spelta, that he succeeded not Maximus, but Epiphanius immediately." But the errors of these too we have abundantly detected, so that Ferrari rightly subjoins: "In all which I judge that deference should be paid to Baronius, who used ancient and certain monuments of the Church; to which the Pavians too must needs come."

[21] Of the true cult of St. Ennodius in the Church, Baronius in the notes on the Roman Martyrology calls as witnesses the Ticinense tablets, He was long ago endowed with the honors of the Saints, than which doubtless older are the testimonies of John VIII in the ninth century, and of Blessed Gregory VII in the eleventh, of whom the former, writing to the abbot Bercarius, expressly calls Ennodius blessed, in these words in Sirmond: "Far be it from pious minds to think anything sinister of the Pontiff of the Roman summit, since we are taught, the BLESSED Ennodius the confessor, prelate of the city of Ticinum, writing, that God almighty either raises the illustrious to such heights, or certainly illustrates those whom he raises." But Gregory attributes the title of Saint: "That the Roman Pontiff, if he be canonically ordained, is undoubtedly made a Saint by the merits of blessed Peter, the HOLY Ennodius, bishop of Pavia, testifying, and many holy Fathers favoring, as is contained in the decrees of blessed Pope Symmachus." Thus in a few words the praised Sirmond concludes the epitome of the Life of St. Ennodius: "Returned to his church, surviving a few years after, still whole in age, and of not more than 48 years, he departed from life, in such opinion of sanctity, that among the holy confessors of Christ he is venerated with anniversary honors on the XVI Kal. of August, on which day he was received into heaven in the year of the Lord 521; for the day and the consul the epitaph notes, etc."

[22] although he is marked only in the more recent Martyrologies. In the ancient more general Martyrologies no memory of St. Ennodius is found, which we have observed in this work to have happened more than once to many illustrious Saints. Among the Usuardine supplements we have shown him marked by Greven, obscurely enough; "Of Euodius, bishop and confessor," in which manner he is noted also by Canisius; better by Molanus "Enodius," and in the later editions a little more distinctly; "At Ticinum, of St. Enodius, bishop and confessor": to which add the more recent, at least Galesinius (for by Maurolyco and Felici he is passed over), also ill-forming the name. Thus he has: "At Pavia, of St. Euodius the bishop, who, a man of excellence of doctrine and divine talent, was sent by the Pontiff Hormisdas as legate to Constantinople: but, solicitous for the safety of the people of Pavia, he kept the rich in the office of piety; the poor he helped both by counsel, and by consoling, and by substance; those going astray he recalled to the way, and finally inflamed all to the zeal of acting holily, by the examples of his admirable virtues, in which, illustrious, he flew forth to heaven." Let the authority of the Roman Martyrology stand for all, thus announcing him on this day: "At Pavia, of St. Ennodius, bishop and confessor." From all which it is sufficiently plain that the sanctity of Ennodius was long ago acknowledged and honored by the Church.

[23] Among the distinguished writings of the Saint; What is to be thought of the writings of the Saint, Sirmond has sufficiently taught in the letter to the distinguished man Nicolas Fabri prefixed to his edition, to which it is better to remit the readers than to the recent French bibliographer, most well known by his not few marks, whose bold criticism burst forth to such a length of rashness that he did not blush to relegate the orthodox opinion of St. Ennodius about grace and free will to Faustus and the Massilians. This passage at least it has been permitted to take from the Saint, from book 2, epistle 19 to Constantius; whence let the novators of today be taught what the most holy and most learned bishop of Ticinum once thought of their dogmas. Let him be heard: "Therefore, as you testify by your writing, a man has been found who, under this occasion, would sift the servants of Christ, as he himself promised was to be done, asserting that, of the freedom of choice, license of choosing has been given to man in one part only, which is the worse? O schismatic proposition, which according to the Apocalypse has blasphemies written on its forehead! What is that liberty, let him explain, if he can, where this alone is given, to will what may punish: or why does he name a choice, where he asserts that one part only has been granted? Which if it subsisted in truth, the divine judgments would have no place. For what good would our God rightly seek from us, who had withdrawn the appetite for it from the will?"

[24] his opinion about grace and free will deserves a place: "But according to the Apostle, Is God unjust? Far be it. Among men he departs from the affection of the right, who exacts from his subjects what he has not granted in their power. With what conscience this is thought of God, consider. Where is that of the Apostle crying, and testifying for the freedom of choice, To will is present with me, but to accomplish I find not? What is it, but to say, I know how to choose the right way, but unless the supernal grace help me entering upon it, I shall grow weary? No one doubts, no one condemns, that, the author of grace bestowing, the path itself of equity is opened to men. For grace is the leader of good things and the forerunner, when we are invited from heaven to rest by manifold exhortation, when it is said; Come, sons, hear me; Come, blessed of my Father, possess the kingdom prepared for you: Where I am, there also shall my minister be. But unless to such admonitions both our will, which is free, and labor render obedience, we are rolled down to danger and gehenna, not by any command, but of our own accord. And so either devotion works a reward, or contempt a punishment: otherwise the retribution will not be just, which either is repaid through torments by necessity to sinners, or offers a good reward to a work to which they are dragged unwilling. Therefore we owe to grace that we are called; we owe to grace that, by hidden ways, unless we resist, the vital savor is poured into us: yet it is of our own choice that we follow the benefits shown": and the things which there follow, and which may be seen in the source; as also the other writings of the Saint, such as the Didascalic Paraenesis, the Precept concerning the cell-keepers of bishops, and others from page 437.

[25] As regards the elogia of St. Ennodius, the not sufficiently digested praises of the Pavian writers, but by the laudations of the Ticinenses, related above, and hallucinating in many places, are not to be summoned hither, nor are those things to be examined by us which they more speciously display about the singular privileges obtained through the same Saint from the Roman See, of which thus in few words Gaspari: "Ennodius, returned to Rome, was received by the same Hormisdas with the highest gladness, and soon, for the sake of gratitude and in testimony of the merits of so great a man, honored with the use of the pallium and the cross, and very many other archiepiscopal privileges, was dismissed. Who, returning glad to his see, decorated with most ample and perpetual honors, discharged the episcopal office most studiously." The rest let the curious reader see most fully drawn out in Sacco from page 231, under the title, on the dignity of the Pavian church, subject to no metropolitan, which is not of our forum here to discuss at length. A little more illustrious and more solid, and pertaining more nearly to St. Ennodius, are the elogia which we already touched above, and which from the V Roman Synod and Pope Nicholas I Sirmond suggested, to impose a coping-stone on this whole Commentary.

[26] Far to be preferred is the elogium of St. Pope Symmachus, Thus speaks the synod of Pope Symmachus, praised long ago. "Let the booklet which, by synodal authority, against those who presumed to mutter against the fourth synod, which was held at Rome, the Palmary, was written by Ennodius, be brought before all, and in the presence of all be read and confirmed. Which being recited, and confirmed by all with consonant voice, the holy synod said; Let these things be preserved for future times, and be held by all, and in all things kept. Let this booklet be held most entirely, synodally, by all, and be reckoned among the decrees of the fourth and fifth synods, because it was written and confirmed by synodal authority." To which the thrice most blessed Pope answered; "Let it be done according to the will of you all." But thus Pope Nicholas I writes to Michael Augustus. "As the great confessor of Christ Ennodius, bishop of Ticinum, who, sent by Hormisdas of Apostolic memory to Constantinople, innumerable miseries from the madness of the Greeks, for the faith

of Christ, and the state of the Church, endured more than once, from the Prophet makes mention of all these: 'Shall the axe glory against him who cuts with it? Or shall the saw exalt itself against him who saws with it?'" More or more excellent things in Miraeus and the other bibliographers we do not find, nor are there others at hand which should be added to these.