Marina

ON ST. MARINA, VIRGIN,

CALLED MARINUS UNDER THE HABIT OF A MONK.

PERHAPS EIGHTH CENTURY.

PRELIMINARY COMMENTARY.

Marina, Virgin, called Marinus under the male habit of a monk (S.)

BY THE AUTHOR J. B. S.

§ I. The cult of St. Marina among the Greeks and Latins.

That God is to be proclaimed wonderful in his Saints, however much our Acts on the several days most openly demonstrate, nothing indeed more clearly reveals his stupendous and adorable ways than the unusual prodigies of virtues in the weaker sex, Among the stupendous prodigies of virtue of the female sex, by which tender virgins have been seen to insult even the very arts of the demon and the enticements of the flesh, having advanced so far that, leaving men behind them, they endured the most arduous monastic exercises with incredible constancy, suffering thereupon such enormous calumnies that they seem to have surpassed even any Saints in greatness of soul. Those I mean, whether virgins or other women, who, simulating the other sex, clad as monks, left us those examples of heroic acts, which certainly snatch all into admiration; but so perilous, moreover, that it does not befit to propose them for imitation. We know innumerable ones who joined the laurel of virginity with the palm of martyrdom; but these, pressing unusual footsteps, wished to afflict themselves with the harder tortures, by as much as the torments which are inflicted on the mind are more atrocious than those inflicted on bodies. A list of some our Rader wove in the Viridarium, from which Bolland took most at the V of January in the Commentary on the Acts of St. Apollinaris Syncletica (called Dorotheus), enumerating there some who, having belied their sex, if so it may be said, acted most constantly among the monks, enduring even to death reproaches and vituperations from which it had been easy for them to extricate themselves, unless that grace, with which ineffable providence heaped the souls chosen for itself, had conquered nature. A distinguished specimen will be given by Maria or Marina, called Marinus among men, of whose cult we here first undertake to treat.

[2] deservedly comes Marina, about whose name it is inquired, That the name of Marinus and Marina is not so infrequent in the ancient Martyrologies of the Church, the Hieronymian copies in Florentinius sufficiently teach, and a little more expressly our Acts, in the index of whose first semester alone, tome VII of June, several recur, both synonymous men and synonymous women, but especially those who, reckoned among the various classes of Martyrs, exhibit almost bare names. In the Greek Fasti two occur, a little more illustrious Marinas, namely this virgin called Marinus, of whom we have determined to treat on this day, and another most celebrated, the Virgin martyr of Antioch, daughter of Ædesius, who suffered under the governor Olybrius, who, by I know not what metamorphosis, transformed into Margaret by the Latins, if she is not the same as the aforesaid Marina of Antioch, certainly has the same portentous narration fitted to herself: but what besides you may wonder at, Margaret is venerated not on the day on which Marina by the Greeks, namely this XVII of July, but on the XIII and XX of the same month, as was long ago noted in the Passed-Over ones. But of that Marina, or Margaret, more things must be discussed in their place; hither the present Marina was remitted by our Elders from the VIII and XII of February, and from the XVIII of June, because on this [day] was marked by Baronius in the Roman Martyrology the translation, at Venice, of some Marina, of the confusion and distinction of whose name it must be disputed in the following paragraph.

[3] as also about the true day on which she is to be venerated. Except the Acts, related in the Lives of the Fathers, all the things which surround this Saint are doubtful, for what was her true birthday or death day, where in the world she lived, in what century she lived, is hitherto uncertain enough. Among the Passed-Over ones on the VIII of February is placed "Marina or Maria, called Marinus, with the holy monk Eugenius her parent"; from Molanus and Ferrari: and in the Life in Surius she is said to have died on that day, or at least to have been laid to rest, on the authority, I think, of Metaphrastes, from whom, as Surius is wont to say, it is said to be received, namely from Aloysius Lipomano, tome 5, folio 526, where, after his manner, that florid writer moderately amplified some things which do not on all sides agree with the Acts edited by Rosweyde among the Lives of the Fathers, as we said, since yet for the rest they narrate the very same matter, so that, after these had been edited, the praised Surius could easily forbear to relate those other Acts on the XII of February. Yet it must be confessed that Marina is celebrated not on the VIII but on the XII of February in the Menæa, whose whole narration is most like to that which is had in the Basilian Menology in Ughelli, tome 6 of Italy Sacred, so relates the marrow of the whole most common Legend, that it is vain here to heap up more texts, whether Greek or Latin. Have therefore the words of the cited Menology, whose elogium has this title prefixed:

[4] "On the same day, the commemoration of St. Maria, who, her name changed, called herself Marina." Among the Greeks some place her on the 12th of February. Then follows a compendium of the Acts, "Maria, for the zeal of salvation seeking a hiding-place, having laid aside the woman's stole, having taken the male habit, named herself Marinus, and, together with her father Eugenius having embraced the monastic life, shaved her hair. Wherefore, her sex being diligently concealed, she gave her service to the monks and to her father. But when at some time she was staying in an inn, she is accused of having inflicted defilement on the innkeeper's daughter. She bore with a most equal soul the calumny, which she could have washed away with no trouble. Wherefore, cast out of the monastery, and sitting miserably at the doors, she patiently nourished for three years, as best she could, the son whom she had not begotten. Then, admitted into the monastery together with the son, not long after she departed from this life, and, on account of the falsely imputed crime, defended not only by her sex, but also by the clamorous declaration of the innkeeper's daughter, seized by a demon, that she had been violated by a soldier, she snatched the minds of all into stupor for admiration." The sum of the whole matter you have here, explained in the Menæa in the same sense, to which in vain you would add other things, from wherever they be received. And let these things be said enough of some cult among the Greeks, now let us weigh our Fasti, from which a certain or fixed day of cult you will not easily draw out, as before me Rosweyde noted, as you will understand below.

[5] Among the ancient or classical Martyrologists you would seek the present Marina in vain on this day, Which this our one is, for what Baronius contends, that the Marina placed by Usuard on the XVIII of June, namely a virgin and martyr of Alexandria, is the same as she who was translated to Venice, cannot be admitted, will be demonstrated in its place. From the Usuardine supplements therefore and others more recent flow the things which about this Marina and others, almost at pleasure, have been consigned. She who is placed on the XXVIII of January has companions, so that she cannot be confounded with ours; no more than the other in Greven on the X of March, in others joined with Agapa, or Agapita, on the XI day of the same month. Nearer can come the virgin Marina related in the Brussels Usuard on the V of April, who is said to have died on the VI Ides of that month in the Life edited at Pavia in the year 1523, whose authority is so slight that it does not easily obtain assent. Toward the XVIII of June the manuscript Florarium gradually leads us, thus writing on that day: "At Alexandria, the passion of St. Marina the virgin, whose deeds are had toward the end of the fifth book of the Lives of the holy Fathers": for the author of that Florarium thought, as also others before or after him, that the aforesaid history could be fitted to no Marina more conveniently than to her who was known in Usuard; namely in the Florentine codices, in which it is thus had: "Likewise at Alexandria, of St. Marina the virgin, who in her boyish age secretly caused herself to be shaved, and sought the monastic life, imposing on herself the name of Marinus; after her seclusion for many years, in all sanctity she rested in the Lord."

[6] the Martyrologies make it doubtful; On the same day, the XVIII of June, that very confusion the Lübeck-Cologne edition adopts. "At Alexandria, of the blessed Marina the virgin, whose father, when he had entered a certain monastery existing in the desert, changed the habit of his daughter, so that she seemed not a female but a male, and asked the abbot and the brothers to receive his only son, who, assenting to his prayers, was received into the monastery, and called by all brother Marinus. But of how great devotion, humility, and patience and sanctity his life was, how great evils he innocently endured from the brothers, and with how great miracles after death he shone, is clearly made known in the book of the Lives of the Fathers." And these things indeed in these codices are all attributed to Alexandria: yet so that the authors of these do not seem to have consulted the Acts themselves, inasmuch as they make no mention, not even by a word, of the primary circumstance of the life, namely of the accusation of defilement, and the most hard penance which followed. To the Bishop of Equilio is owed a more exact narration of the matter, from whom at last Greven received his announcement, a little better conceived, on this day the XVII of July. "Likewise, according to the Catalogue of the Saints, here, of St. Marina the virgin. Who, her habit changed, having entered a monastery of men, falsely accused of the crime of fornication, most patiently bore it, and did penance as if she had been guilty of the crime; whose sacred body, translated to Venice in the year of the Lord 1113, is kept with due honor."

[7] in which there is great confusion, From these things manifestly appear the things which I had undertaken to explain in this paragraph; namely that the virgin Marina is venerated among the Greeks and Latins, but so that of her true birthday or true festivity it is not established; nay neither is the day of the translation preserved. For the history of the translation made to Venice expressly asserts that on the I of September the sacred body was brought, as Saussay rightly noted in the Supplement, page 1163: but why the celebration of that matter is kept on the XVII of July, there will be a place of speaking below. Meanwhile among the Gauls the festive day remained the XVIII of June, on the testimony of Castellani, soon to be related, whatever Saussay may have marked her on this day in these words: "On the same day, of the blessed Marina the virgin, whose pledges having long ago adorned the august Paris, Lutetia, it has an ancient parochial church under her patronage (to which the episcopal family is assigned)." Another day finally the praised Castellani found to which he might ascribe the Saint, namely the IV of December, where he mentions her: "On the same day, of St. Marina, who had simulated the other sex,"

venerated on the XVIII of June at Paris in the church of her name." Thus far of the cult of St. Marina in general, as we say; now there remains a knot most difficult to loose, which Marina at last she is to whom that cult is paid, and to whom that wonderful and stupendous history among the Lives of the Fathers is fittingly to be applied.

§ II. Several Virgins under the name of Marina to be distinguished.

Heribert Rosweyde, from whose Lives of the Fathers we shall subjoin below the Acts of some Marina, adorned his notation, Rosweyde inquires many things learnedly, however learned and accurate, so that he easily showed that no way lay open by which he might happily emerge from so many entanglements and windings, although he acknowledged there only three Marinas. Let us first hear him speaking: "Three Marinas I find in the ecclesiastical tables, the Alexandrian, the Antiochene, the Spanish, but greatly confused among themselves, so that it is difficult to establish whether there were only two, or three. Let us see of the several, and compare them among themselves, the authors being collated. Of our Marina, who is the Alexandrian, the memory is found consecrated on a certain day in the Menæa on the XII of February, where she is called Maria first, then, her habit changed, Marinus. No mention of her in the Menology, but of another Marina, virgin and martyr, on the XVII of July, who by the Latins is called Margaret." Of the Spanish one, whom they will have to have been of Galicia, and whose monuments do not savor of that antiquity which is required for undoubted history, here we have no controversy, inasmuch as of her it is treated separately on the following day; in the East the whole ambiguous question turns, in which part of the world most probably was born, educated, and instructed she of whom we dispute, a virgin-monk, or a monk-virgin.

[9] Whence Rosweyde made his Marina Alexandrian, not rightly establishing that the present one is the Alexandrian: I confess I do not yet sufficiently perceive, unless he too thought, with Baronius, that this virgin should be confounded with that martyr whom it is certain was marked by Usuard on the XVIII of June, as we explained there in the observations. That our Marina is altogether another, and not to be endowed with the little laurel of martyrdom, I hold most persuaded: but that she lived at Alexandria or in Egypt, or acted as a monk, the praised Baronius and Rosweyde supposed rather than proved, the former especially by this argument, that he contends she is the same as the Usuardine one; which if it is true, now not one but several oriental Marinas will have to be admitted, to whom the same Legend will be fitted. Before I undertake to demonstrate this, the following words of Rosweyde must be reviewed: "Among the Latins I fear whether anything certain can be established: for the Martyrologies, both ancient and more recent, greatly vary as to the day, as to the place, as to the laurel of martyrdom, so that this our Marina, who was only a virgin, seems to be confounded, from the affinity of the name, with some other, who was both virgin and martyr. Of which variety and confusion I think the occasion arose from this, that St. Margaret, virgin and martyr of Antioch, was called Marina by the Greeks. Hence Bede, Rabanus, and Notker, who have Marina the martyr on the XVIII of June, at Antioch under the prefect Olybrius, have the same, in the same place, under the name of Margaret on the XIII of July: and indeed Rabanus and Notker there express the same prefect Olybrius, but the Roman Martyrology has Margaret on the XX of July."

[10] Most rightly does Rosweyde observe the confusion of Rabanus, Notker, and the supposititious Bede, but which or what sort she is, is not clear enough. or rather the interpolated Ado, thrust into the Latin Martyrologies, in which before Rabanus neither Marina nor Margaret of Antioch was ever known, nor do I know whence this was summoned by him, the Acts of the former being applied to the same: nor would another Marina besides the Usuardine one alone be marked in the Roman Martyrology, unless Baronius had inserted the Spanish one on the following day, and on this day the translation of that other, as he thought. What Rosweyde subjoins about the Usuard vitiated by Molanus, and other changes introduced by him, must be examined elsewhere, and the whole matter, when St. Margaret is treated of on the XX of this month, must be brought back to the anvil. "Not yet therefore," says Rosweyde again, "do we have among the Latins the feast day of our Marina certain, the four ancient writers of the Martyrology being examined, nay not even her memory," which we taught in the whole preceding paragraph a little more fully, adducing the Usuardine supplements, of which those alone seem to have touched the matter more nearly, to which the Catalogue of the Saints of Equilio shed light, so that Rosweyde examined in vain the ancient writers of the Martyrology in which our man-formed one had been marked. For as regards the Marinas, whether related elsewhere in the Hieronymian ones, we hold it for ascertained that they are most different from ours.

[11] It remains therefore, as I was saying, that the translation alone of the present Marina is referred as received by Baronius, and thus today the Saint is celebrated at Venice, The translation noted by Baronius does not explain the matter: although he himself entered a wholly other way, thus writing in the notes on the XVIII of June, so that there is no doubt but that he confounded the present one with the Alexandrian of Usuard. Thus expressly he notes: "Of her also Ado on this day, who calls her a martyr, to whom nevertheless the ancient manuscripts contradict. For this is she who in a male habit exercised the monastic discipline, and was called by the name Marinus, whose distinguished deeds are narrated in the Lives of the Fathers, part I, chapter 144. Peter in the Catalogue, book 6, chapter 108, from whom others too received it." Thus far the words of Baronius, to which it forbids to subscribe, what I said above, that neither the true Ado, nor any classical Martyrologist at all, ever thought of that man-formed Marina: and that Rabanus and his followers played on the name of Marina of Antioch, whence we know the confusions of the more recent ones arose, as we noted in the Passed-Over ones on this day too, being about to add the rest at the XX of July. We stick therefore, to say it again, in the sole translation of St. Marina, marked by Baronius on this day, with such uncertainty, that which or whose that Marina was, where she led the monastic life and at what time, cannot hitherto be explored certainly enough. And here we enter an obscure wood from which it will not be easy to struggle out happily.

[12] Maurolyco and Galesinius mix in other things; The windings and turnings grow from the more recent Martyrologists, among whom Maurolyco thus writes on this day: "In Achaia, of St. Marina the virgin, who, under a male habit representing a monk, when, an infamy foreign to herself, she diligently nourished the son of the accusing woman, as if compressed by herself, and, scarcely at last reconciled, had most patiently sustained all the service imposed on her by the abbot, being recognized after death, left a unique and unheard-of example of conversation among the monks; whose body in the year of salvation 1213 was carried over to Venice." Equal are the things which Felici hands down, wrongly noting the same year of the translation, and adding the day I of September under Jacopo Tiepolo. But lest you think it the only example of a woman clad as a monk, he subjoins Theodora of Alexandria, doubtless received from Equilio. Quite otherwise speaks Galesinius, thus announcing Marina: "In Achaia, of St. Marina the virgin, who, decorated with divine virtues, and illustrious for miracles, went to the Lord." Achaia he borrowed from the earlier ones, but in the notes he far deviates. "Of whom," he says, "the Greeks in the Horologium and in the Menology. There are those who think that this one is called by another name Margaret, whose birthday is kept on the XIII Kalends of August." This new confusion is proper to Galesinius: for who ever dreamed that that Marina or Margaret suffered in Achaia?

[13] If to these you add what our Ottavio Gaetani writes in the Sicilian Martyrology on this day; Gaetani transfers it to Sicily: "In the town of Scanio, of St. Marina the virgin," describing her history fully among the Lives of the Sicilian Saints, tome 2, from page 109; if these, I say, you add to so many other Marinas described above, nothing will be greatly wanting to a most intricate confusion. Ferrari in the Catalogue of the Saints of Italy gave a place to Marina in the prefixed index; "Marina, virgin, from Achaia, at Venice, XVII of July. The body in her own church," yet so that among the Saints of this day he did not mention her. In the General Catalogue he first announces; "At Antioch of Pisidia, of St. Marina, virgin and martyr"; in the annotations mixing various things, from which what he means, you would not at once perceive. In the last place is related the announcement of Gaetani about the Sicilian Marina, to which he confesses that he received it himself from the Sicilian Martyrology in as many words, "although," he says, "she was not Sicilian. For she seems to be the one who in Achaia, in a monastery of men under a male habit lived, and of whom on this day the Roman Martyrology, relating her translation at Venice." Of that Marina, as Ferrari will have it, pretendedly Sicilian, and her whole history, what we think should be judged, we shall declare a little more openly in the appendix of this treatment. Gradually still the discourse grows.

[14] From what is to be said in the following paragraph it will be plain that the more certain monuments which survive at Venice hand down others devise various other things. that that Marina of theirs was translated to Venice from Romania, or from the Constantinopolitan suburb, to which she could most easily have come from Bithynia, in which region that those things happened which are more fully described in the wonderful Life, we think can be said with at least some probability. But it must be observed that a more recent opinion now prevails there, that their Marina was brought from Mount Lebanon, where namely she herself, living, inhabited the famous monastery of St. Mary of Canobim. So I find it handed down in the most recent manuscript of a certain Theodore Domadenus, a Belgian, from whom other things will be subjoined a little below, of which, as of an eyewitness, credit can be had. But what he records about the coming of St. Marina from Canobim, he doubtless received from Quaresmio, soon to be met. Moreover Domadenus reckons the ancient Marinas, of whom alone here it is treated, five in number; namely the Antiochene, the Alexandrian, the Spanish, the Roman, and the Syro-Phoenician; to which if you add the Bithynian, then the Achaian and the Sicilian, the number of eight will be adequately completed. But of the Antiochene and the Spanish enough has already been said. The Roman indeed I do not know, except her who is placed in the larger class in the Acts at the 2nd of June; so that only five remain, of whom it is inquired which was translated to Venice.

[15] This first we demand to be granted by Baronius and Rosweyde, that St. Marina the man-formed did not profess the life of a monk in Egypt, The anachoresis to be borrowed from the Greeks, lest the number of synonymous ones be increased, and so also the difficulties, from which to extricate oneself becomes altogether impossible. In the Acts certainly edited by Rosweyde there occurs not the least vestige whence into knowledge of her homeland or age one may in any way come. The Life of Eugenius and Maria or Marina, as it was edited by Surius from Metaphrastes or Lipomano at the VIII of February, expressly expresses Bithynia, which Equilio seems to have received thence. Nor does that region displease, because it is nearer to Constantinople, whence the sacred body is said to have been brought to Venice, by the Venetian monuments, from which to Baronius certainly came that memory of the translation which we here handle, of which more in the following paragraph. Tillemont, when

in tome 16 of the Ecclesiastical Memoirs he connects our Marina with Theodora, seems not much to shrink from attributing her to that Egypt, although there too he deservedly labors with doubts and scruples, especially in defining her age. It is altogether to be wondered at that the biographer, whoever he was, so studiously kept silent all the circumstances from which at least some more certain knowledge about her homeland or age could have been had. To say it in a word, if any Alexandrian or Egyptian Marina ever existed, she cannot be said to be the one who is venerated at Venice, if the history of her translation is true; to which certainly cannot be opposed those more recent ones who say the Saint was translated from Achaia, asserting it on no foundation; to say nothing that they err in several other things. Nor will it be more difficult to extricate us from the Sicilian one, we now come to the Syro-Phoenician.

[16] against which a more recent tradition, The Itinerary of Syria and Mount Lebanon, published two years ago at Paris by the author D. de la Roque, describes a famous monastery there, called Canobim, where to this day is shown the place in which the innocent Virgin is said to have washed away by austere penance the sin of another. But it is better here to set forth the matter in the words of Quaresmio, a writer a little older, as it stands in him, tome 2, book 7, chapter 4, page 890. "Outside the monastery, before the door, is a cell or little chapel, where the Patriarchs are buried. And it is said to be the place where that holy penitent and virgin Marina, in the habit of a monk, defamed by the daughter of a cowherd, that she had begotten from her a son by defilement, did penance; and after her happy passing, the calumny of the shameless woman, and the extraordinary virtue of the chaste one, was detected, and she herself honorably entombed. Her deeds, her wonderful humility, her constancy and patience in enduring persecutions and labors, you have in the Lives of the Fathers, book I. Her body was translated to Venice, as is said in the Roman Martyrology on the XVII of July, and by other writers. The village where that daughter of the cowherd, corrupted by another, detracted from the honor of St. Marina, is named Torza, always miserable and needy; and it is believed to be so on account of the crime perpetrated against the holy virgin Marina: it is distant from Canobim about six miles."

[17] to have lived on Mount Lebanon. The history here narrated by Quaresmio I for my part would not admit, nor do I grasp with what confidence he dares to assert that the body of this St. Marina was translated to Venice, of which matter he could not find even a vestige in the Canobim monastery. Add that the Roman Martyrology is wrongly cited, where Baronius contends that the Alexandrian Marina was translated to Venice. The cowherd's daughter is no more rightly adduced, so that Quaresmio must here have dozed a little. Perhaps the place Torza is more aptly related, if indeed it be near the sea. But another authority is needed, that it may be able to be persuaded that Marina, who is venerated at Venice, was brought thither from Mount Lebanon. Which if anyone could bring, he would enter the highest favor with us, and would free us from great troubles. Perhaps another penitent lay hid there, who can be confounded with Reparata or Margaret (called Pelagius); of which matter at the end of our Acts we shall subjoin some things from a manuscript, and from Equilio. Four Marinas being thus set aside, the Alexandrian, the Achaian, the Syro-Phoenician, and the Sicilian (of whom more elsewhere), we try to open for ourselves a path by which we may emerge from the entangled snares, while only Marina the Bithynian remains, in which region that there were once several monasteries of monks is established enough; whence the Saint could easily have been translated to Constantinople or to the suburb of that city, and then to Venice in the thirteenth century, as we now go to inquire.

§ III. St. Marina's homeland, age, institute, translation, and cult at Venice.

We have said that the Saint's homeland and other circumstances were so studiously wrapped in silence by the first writer of the Life, She seems to have been Bithynian, and to have flourished in the 8th century, that scarcely a place is given for conjecture. Metaphrastes the amplifier may be trusted in this, that, probably not more than a century and a half later in age than Marina, he did not not know her homeland, so that therefore we may truly believe him, that our Saint was Bithynian by origin; "In that time there was a certain man in Bithynia, by name Eugenius." More obscure is the question about the time in which she lived, which we candidly confess cannot be gathered for certain even from the Metaphrastic Life. From the last words of the earlier Life some think they have found some chink, through which they may conjecture that the Saint's age must be bound to the eighth century, so that there are not lacking those who roundly mark the year 740. The words of the Acts are: "But those who were in that emporium, and the neighboring monasteries, hearing the wonders which had been done, taking crosses and tapers, with hymns and canticles and psalms, blessing God, came into the same monastery, and, having entered the oratory where the body rested, blessed God: where even now Christ, by the prayers of the holy Virgin, does many wonders, to the praise of his name." From so express formulas of the Anonymous they think they can deduce that he lived not a whole century after the death of St. Marina, as if he narrated things which he had received all from those who had been present at those wonders; so that therefore they bring back his times to the end of the eighth century, or the beginning of the ninth.

[19] This indeed from a conjecture of this kind I would not dare to assert for certain, but that we may not say nothing in these shadows, which is somehow drawn from the Acts, let it at least be permitted to suppose for a while, and not improbably, that that first writer, of uncertain name, is not younger than the end of the eighth century, so that he had an undoubted knowledge of the things which he wrote, which he seems to insinuate by the words already recited. Metaphrastes, following him afterward, belongs to the tenth century, and he is believed to have interpolated the older Life, as it stands in Surius at the VIII of February, where St. Marina is joined with her parent, likewise a Saint, by name Eugenius. They therefore gather the age of Marina in about this manner, that if the Anonymous composed his work fifty years or a little more after her death, but Metaphrastes, who most certainly lived in the tenth century, amplified it, it can be judged that the Saint flourished in the eighth century. So let it be permitted to conjecture and suppose, until something more certain be drawn from somewhere; for what we read written recently for another homeland or age of the Saint, approaches divination rather than probability. What one might here object, that under the iconoclast Emperors many monks suffered, does not seem so to press but that several monasteries in the solitudes were immune from that persecution, Copronymus being especially hostile to the monks dwelling at Constantinople, or in the other cities. These things we wish to be so received, that if more certain things be brought forward, we shall readily and most gladly embrace them.

[20] What rule she professed, is unknown. That the holy Virgin lay hid under the habit of a monk, this indeed, if anything in the Life is certain, must be admitted as undoubted: but under what rule or institution, whether it was the Basilian or another, I wholly flee to inquire: for the authority of the Domadenus cited above in this part I hold as altogether none, who roundly dared to define that St. Marina was adorned with the habit of St. Antony, which he describes, in the monastery of St. Mary of Canobim, that is "of the Convent," because namely Canobim in Chaldaic signifies Convent. Moreover that she entered the cloister in the fourteenth year of her age, and died before the thirty-fifth, and indeed in the sixth century: all which you would say were devised at pleasure, as also those things which, for claiming Marina for themselves, have been handed down by some Carmelite writers, expressly by Manuel Ferreira the Portuguese in the book on the Saints of the Order, edited at Lisbon in the year 1645, of which it does not please at this time to dispute, nor indeed is it worth while: a little more prudent than all the rest, Philip of the Visitation, whom we commonly call Visitantinus, in the Calendar of the Carmelite Order, once sent to us to make a selection, better abstained from marking St. Marina on this day, which it may suffice to have here indicated in a word.

[21] Carried away from the Byzantine suburb, It is permitted to discourse somewhat more securely of the translation made to Venice, which first, unless I am mistaken, Bishop Equilio subjoined to the Life abridged by him, book 6, chapter 108, but not without a manifest chronological error; when he marks the year 1113, connecting it most badly with Jacopo Tiepolo or Teopolo, Doge of Venice, whom it is established first attained that dignity in the thirteenth century. Thus Equilio narrates: "But in the year of the Lord 1113, in the time of Jacopo Teopolo, Doge of the Venetians, a certain Jacopo de Bora, of the parochial church called of St. Marina, at Venice, devout to the holy Virgin, having carried off her body from the parts of Romania, directed it by ship to Venice, and ordained it to be placed in his church: by whose merits the sailors were freed from a storm of the sea. And thus the body of the holy Virgin, brought to Venice, was buried in the same church on the Kalends of September." Thus far Peter de Natalibus, who so comprehended the substance of the deed, that he suffered his diligence to be found wanting in explaining the circumstances more accurately, which he rather seemed to involve, as will manifestly be plain to one considering the several points.

[22] She is said to have been translated to Venice in the year 1230, I readily and gladly admit that the sacred body was received from the parts of Romania, but it ought to have been more distinctly expressed, from the Byzantine suburb, and that by the said Jacopo (otherwise John) Bora or Buora. I admit that the same body was laid in the church, not which was then called Marina's (inasmuch as it was dedicated to Sts. Alexius and Liberalis), but which afterward obtained its denomination from the Saint, cultivated then with a peculiar veneration by the whole Venetian republic, especially for the reason which I shall soon subjoin. Moreover that the translation happened not in that year 1113, which passed into Baronius, if it was made under Jacopo Teopolo or Tiepolo, is established from the Venetian history of Giustiniani, page 36, and from Pietro Marcello, on the Princes of Venice, where the aforesaid Teopolo is said to have been first elected doge in the year 1228. The matter Du Cange more clearly explains, Christian Constantinople, book 4, page 150, in these words: "The body also of St. Marina, kept not far from the city, and thence translated to Venice in the year 1230, Andrea Dandolo writes in the manuscript Chronicle, Outside the city of Constantinople John de Bora, from a certain monastery, the keepers being induced by price and prayers, carried off the body of Blessed Marina the virgin, who in a monastery of monks, accused of adultery, did penance, and placed it in the church of St. Liberalis, now called by her name."

[23] And this chief and most express, I might almost say the only testimony for the translation of St. Marina made from the vicinity of Constantinople to Venice, into the temple which today is called St. Marina's; which among the writers who treat of this city I have been able to find, and which I am compelled to relate on another's faith, from the aforesaid manuscript Chronicle of Andrea Dandolo, often praised by many most learned men, but not yet, that I know, printed. From Sansovino and others this is had sparely and drily, that the church which today is St. Marina's, was once dedicated to the holy

Alexius and Liberalis: but that the body of St. Marina was brought to Venice from Constantinople by John Buora, who had received it from Greek monks. These things, I say, drily and sparely, which seemed to deserve a more luminous and explicit narration. Moreover the Chronicle of Dandolo rests on solid enough authority, since it is not a whole century later than the translation itself: but no other document for any other Marina do we know which can be compared with it. Concerning the very body of the same Saint, and that solemn veneration which has for a long time and today is exhibited to her at Venice, and other things pertaining to it, the manuscript of Domadenus, cited already more than once, which we said was found among our papers, will shed some light. His words I will relate, although not sufficiently polished, and interspersed with cold allusions to the name of Marina.

[24] "The day of the death of Lady Marina among the Greeks is celebrated on the day before the Ides of February, that is the XII of that month; among the Latins on the VIII day of February (as may be observed under the day of death). by the Venetians on this day on account of the recovery of Padua, The annual day of the solemnity of the translation is fixed at Venice on the XVII of the month of July, because on that day the body, with a procession and other solemnities and ceremonies applied, was brought into the church then of St. Liberalis, bishop and martyr, although on the Kalends of September of the preceding year, namely 1233 (as is believed, and I have proved elsewhere), it was translated from the parts of Romania to Venice, but in a private manner; but remained for a while with an unarranged rite. This day too Cardinal Baronius put in the Roman Martyrology on the XVII of July, and on the same day expressed: At Venice, the translation of St. Marina the virgin. From that time … this devotion to St. Marina flourished every year, continued; but it grew famous and was celebrated with a more solemn festivity from the recovery of Padua from the power of the confederated princes of Cambrai; which happened on the XVII day of July, namely on the very light of the translation of St. Marina. Hence the most serene republic, in memory of this famous recovery, and of so great a benefit received divinely, not without the intercession of the Virgin, established in perpetuity, on that day, to visit the church of St. Marina and to grace it with its presence."

[25] "Which also the most serene prince, the whole senate thronging, the prayers of clerics and religious being added, and the vows of the schools, and the processions of all, every year observed and even now observe. celebrated with singular solemnity. They are received at the thresholds of the church with a benediction of lustral water, offered by the parish priest himself, are present at the sacred rite, and by a singular privilege the hand of St. Marina, enclosed in a silver gilded shrine, is exhibited to the most serene Doge, to the papal legate, to the legates of kings and princes, if they be present, to be kissed and venerated. There flows together on that day to the church the whole city of Venice, which is not to be wondered at, because she is Marina, and so Marina desires to salute Marina: there flow together Greeks, Armenians, Syrians, and other Asiatic peoples; nor is this stupendous, because the Virgin is from over the sea (transmarina): Marina or transmarina, she always remains Marina to all, always beneficent to all." We have said that these things are cold: nor do the things savor more which, against the related and received Venetian history, he thereupon mixes about the Syro-Phoenician Marina, and her Antonian habit, about the martyrdom which some Greek little verses, of no great value, ascribed to the aforesaid reliquary shrine, wrongly attribute to the Saint, and other things of that kind of no greater moment, which we judged should be passed over, that we may subjoin from him a little saner things about the present state of the sacred body.

[26] The present state of the sacred body. "The state therefore," he says, "in which the sacred body today subsists, and in which it is beheld, I desired to explain, partly that I might narrate the mighty works of God, partly that I might announce the singular prerogative of St. Marina. That I might satisfy this my desire, and might be able to declare true things to others, I asked to behold the sacred body more nearly, and to examine it more exactly. The favor being obtained, I approached with veneration, and saw it wrapped in a shroud, that namely, as is believed, in which it was brought hither. Then, the shroud being unfolded, I considered the head itself, which is stripped of flesh; but from the neck the remaining members of the body, clothed with flesh and skin, are beheld by an admirable prodigy. At the neck flesh, at the side toward the throat flesh, cartilages and nerves in parts adhere to the bones. From the shoulders the shoulder-blades and the space between them, down to the lower back, exhibit nothing but flesh covered with skin. The thorax itself and the breast are unharmed; hence it must be believed that they still contain all the viscera and intestines. The arms appear covered with flesh, yet the part of the right arm from the elbow to the hand seems swollen and as it were inflated. The right hand remains joined to the arm, marked with flesh, skin, and nails: the left is separated from the body; the marks of a violent separation are admired in the projecting nerves and tendons, coagulated with the flesh here and there. The hips and thighs are filled with so much flesh, that they seem moist and round. Thence the knees and hams, the shins and calves, the very hock also and the sole of the feet with the ankles and heels, with the toes and the great toe, are unharmed from corruption. Hence the skin imitates a tawny color, and tenaciously adheres to the flesh: but what surpasses all admiration, in several places it shows itself soft and tractable."

[27] and likewise the magnificent altar in which she rests. This state of the body exhibits the prerogative of eminent chastity. Now I proceed to the explanation of the hand separated from the body: it is, as I said above, the left, and, like the rest of the body, covered with flesh and skin, yet not extended lengthwise, but, the thumb removed (which is shown separately) and the four fingers bent back from the second joint, enclosed in the silver gilded shrine, of which was said above. Nothing remains, except that we describe in a few words, from Domadenus himself too, the altar itself which is dedicated to St. Marina, and in which her sacred body rests. "The structure," he says, "is great, erected of Istrian, Parian, Porphyry, green Lacedemonian, and Tiberian variegated marble, and conspicuous with beautiful segments of glittering and mossy stones, whose middle is occupied by a larger statue of St. Marina (a little infant standing at her side), formed of alabaster. On each side two other statues of St. Mary Magdalene and St. Catherine, virgin and martyr, of alabaster, of the same size as the first, yet placed in a lower position, are admired, and their sculptor Lorenzo Bregno is praised." From the described present state of the sacred body, it is plainly to be gathered that no relics of that St. Marina are findable in all the rest of the Catholic world; but since several are said to exist, whose they are, remains to be inquired.

§ IV. Relics honored elsewhere under the name of St. Marina, and the Acts.

This disquisition first and chiefly turns about the body of some holy Marina, which, I know not whence or from what time, came to Pavia or Ticinum; That some Marina, and indeed this very one, where by ancient tradition it is taken for the body of the very Marina whom we here commemorate, and to whom the whole same history is attributed, more briefly in Jacopo Gualla in the Pavian Sanctuary, but much more fully in the Compendium or Legendary of the diverse Saints of Pavia, especially of those whose bodies rest in the church of the monastery of St. Felix. Which the reverend prelate of the same monastery, for devotion and for the profit of the faithful, ordered to be extracted from the codices now falling to pieces from excessive age, and caused to be printed, at the expense of that monastery of the Order of St. Benedict of the observance, that the devout and zealots of the Saints may pray to God the Father for all our excesses, to whom be honor unto the ages of ages. Amen. Printed at Pavia by master Bernardino de Baraldis in the year from the virgin birth 1523, on the XV day of April. The title of the book is; That the soldiers of Christ may clearly shine forth by their deeds, this compendium of diverse Saints is printed, to the praise of eternal God and the immaculate Virgin, of St. Felix, and of the divine George and of others who appear below. There follow the Legends of twenty-two Saints, whose band is led by St. Syrus, the renowned patron of the Pavians.

[29] Of the Life itself, as it is edited in this little work, we shall speak a little after; here it is chiefly to be observed, what I was already saying, the Pavians think laid up with them: that the Pavians or Ticinenses persist in the opinion that the sacred body of St. Marina is laid up with them, as may be gathered from these terms: "If you desire, reader, to know the bodies of the Saints which rest in the aforesaid monastery, they are marked by the alphabet." But on the first page of the little book, to the Legend of St. Marina is marked the letter A, so that it is by no means doubtful but that the said monastery of St. Felix thinks it possesses the sacred body of the same Saint. But Gualla, treating of her, book 5, chapter 17, most manifestly shows the same, inasmuch as in the title of his Sanctuary he testifies that he treats of the Saints, both bishops of Pavia and others, whose bodies rest there. Behold a thorny controversy about the number of those, from settling which how much I shrink, I have long ago and openly professed. That the same one Saint is not laid up in two places, is clearer than the noonday sun; from what place and in what century the Pavians obtained the sacred remains, it is theirs to demonstrate; but whosever they were (for what forbids that some synonymous one was translated thither?), this is most probable, that she cannot be said to be the one of whom we here treat. The Pavian Legend asserts that theirs, whom it also calls a martyr, in a broader acceptation I think, died on the VI Ides of April.

[30] nor do the Picentines offer a dissimilar one. What? that the Picentines too offer us another St. Marina, whose body they too think they possess, wholly ignorant of her origin, age, life, or deeds: thus it was written to us not long since from Loreto: "In the March of Ancona and the territory of the city of Tolentino is an abbey, with the title of St. Mary of Chienti, once of the Cistercian Order, now of the Fathers of the Society of Jesus. In this abbey is the temple of St. Mary of Clairvaux, called of Chienti, and in the temple is a chapel dedicated to the divine Marina, whose body is believed by the most ancient memory of men to be kept here, but in what part, or in what place it is, is wholly unknown." The altar there erected to St. Marina, and besides the immemorial tradition of the existence of the sacred body, seems at least to prove this, that some notable relics of the Saint were once there exposed to veneration, of which today nothing survives. Whence they were brought, who could sufficiently divine? Certainly that they were received from Spoleto is not credible, both because the body of that blessed Marina, first translated in the year 1548, was still whole and incorrupt, and even now is; and because she herself, having professed the Order of the canons of the Lateran, had nothing to do with the Cistercians, who then possessed the abbey of St. Mary of Chienti, and built there the chapel of St. Marina. See what was said of that blessed Marina of Spoleto in our Acts at the XVIII of June.

[31] It is certain that the relics of St. Marina are honored at Paris, That we may go out from Italy, first occurs

the solemn cult which is exhibited to St. Marina in the very metropolis of all Gaul, where they say a temple was dedicated to her already before the year 1228, as Du Breul teaches in his Parisian Antiquities from page 88. Hence it is credible that Saussay received his information, who above so roundly testified that the august Paris, Lutetia, was long ago decorated with the sacred pledges of St. Marina; namely of the same Saint who under a male habit underwent the long punishments of a crime, silent and willing; so that her relics must have passed thither before the body was carried from Constantinople to Venice, and so it is necessary to find another Marina there, of whom you will be able to define just as certainly as of the Pavian and the Chienti one, to which perhaps another will be added in the collegiate church of Escoverie in the diocese of Rouen. But let us first extricate ourselves from the Parisian one. Du Breul prefixes a compendium of the Life, placing her birth and monastic life in Thrace; so that you can scarcely doubt but that that writer confounded his Marina with her whom we suppose to be venerated at Venice, and to be ours. He explains certain prerogatives of that Parisian church which do not at all pertain hither: this seems certain to us, that the relics of St. Marina at Paris, if any existed, could not have been brought from Venice.

[32] That I may now pass over that the whole body survives at Venice to this day, but whose or whence received? the matter is plainly concluded from Du Breul himself, who demonstrates that the temple existed and was dedicated to St. Marina before the year 1228, in which the body of the Saint had not yet come to Venice. Behold the instrument which is related by him, page 90: "William, by the grace of God bishop of Paris, etc. Let your whole community know, that when there was a controversy between the venerable men the dean and chapter of the church of Paris, on the one part, and Anselm, presbyter of St. Marina, on the other, over twelve pence of annual rent, which he demanded in the name of his church, for a house situated next to his church, which was of the deceased Maspinus; at last an amicable composition intervened between the said dean and chapter and the said presbyter, in this manner. That he for himself and his church, with our assent and will, wholly quitted to the aforesaid dean and chapter the said suit; and they, for the good of peace, assigned to him and his successors 12 pence to be paid each year from their chamber within the octave of blessed John the Baptist. In testimony of which matter, etc. Done in the year of the Lord 1228." From the undoubted credit of this instrument we acknowledge St. Marina celebrated at Paris in the thirteenth century, but that our Acts are rightly fitted to her, we dare not assert.

[33] But who will explain to us which is that Marina whose knowledge first suggested to Papebroch the Reverend Father Joseph Ignatius of St. Antony of the Order of Discalced Carmelites, The same is asked about the Tournai ones, by a letter given on the XX of June 1673 with various instruments pertaining to the relics of the same or a synonymous Saint which are kept in the chapel of the house of lepers called de le Valle in the suburb of Tournai, by which one goes to Lille; from the compendium of which it will be plain that the sacred, of I know not what St. Marina, notable remains exist in the collegiate church of Escouvier, perhaps Escouy, of the diocese of Rouen, whence those Tournai ones were obtained. Thus prefaces the praised Father Joseph Ignatius: "In the chapel of the house of lepers, called del Valle, in the suburb of the city of Tournai, by which one goes to Lille, founded by the most Reverend Lord Gerard, bishop of Tournai, in the year of the Lord 1153, a notable part of the relics of St. Marina the virgin is kept, namely of that Marina, as they piously believe, who under the name of Marinus the monk, accused of defilement, an innocent virgin, did penance for a crime not committed. That sacred relic was given to the said chapel of the lepers by the Reverend Lord Potier, presbyter of the metropolitan church of Paris, in favor of his sister, who there served the lepers, and of another sister of his who died there. But the said Lord Potier received the said particle of relics from the collegiate church of Our Lady of Descouvier, in the archbishopric of Rouen, as is plain from the below-written instruments (described by me below from the authentic ones)."

[34] The first instrument is of the Reverend Lord A. de Hincourt, promoter general, as he calls himself, of the archbishop of Rouen, sent from the diocese of Rouen, in which he narrates that, by the mandate of his most Illustrious archbishop, he went to the collegiate church of St. Mary of Descouvier, and there ordered to be opened the shrine in which are kept the relics of the body of St. Marina the virgin, and thence took out a part of a bone, two fingers long and broad, which he carried to Rouen to the same his archbishop, being then ordered to direct that same part to the Reverend Lord Potier, canon of the church of St. Mary of Paris, that it might be delivered to the church of St. Marina there, which he testifies he did on the VI of April 1653, although from his letter it is established that the matter was somewhat delayed, until at last it was destined for Paris on the 1st of December of the same year 1653. There follows then the testimony of the archbishop of Rouen himself, Francis, concerning the aforesaid relics, given on the same day the VI of April 1653, and subscribed by him. Then that letter of the aforesaid Lord de Hincourt by which he transmits the same relics to the said Lord canon Potier. Finally the approbation of the most Illustrious bishop of Tournai, which I here subjoin whole.

[35] and approved by the Bishop. "Francis Villani of Ghent, by the grace of God and of the Apostolic See bishop of Tournai, to all who shall see these we make known and attest, that we diligently inspected and examined the relics of St. Marina the virgin offered to us by Lord and Master N. Potier, presbyter and grand Vicar of the metropolitan church of Paris, and the authentic testimonies of the most illustrious and most reverend lord archbishop of Rouen; and also of the promoter general and canon in the same archbishopric of Rouen joined to these, making faith of the same: and because it was sufficiently established to us of the truth of the same; hence it is that we have ordered these aforesaid relics to be furnished with the appending of our seal hanging from a silk thread of red color, and have recognized and approved them for true relics, as by these presents we recognize and approve, granting and decreeing that they may publicly in the chapel de le Valle of the said diocese be proposed to the people to be venerated and to be affected with due honor. In faith of which we have subscribed these and caused them to be furnished with the impression of our seal. Given at Tournai in our episcopal palace in the year of the Lord 1665. Francis, bishop of Tournai."

[36] What can be judged of all these? And here it must be stopped, when I have indicated in a word that Raisse in the Belgian Hierogazophylacium, treating of the sacred treasure of Anchin, notes, page 58, that there is exhibited there the head of the glorious Marina the virgin: but that Gelenius, in his admirable sacred things of Cologne, among several queens, companions of St. Ursula, also found some Marina, who was a queen of Mauretania, whose sacred head, with the heads of seven others, is laid up in the church of Corpus Christi of the regular Canons. But this Marina brings with her such marks of distinction, that of her there is no need to dispute at length. Of the rest what I think, if you ask me, although I would not indeed deny that several synonymous Marinas could have existed, yet lest they be multiplied without solid and grave cause, I shall not fear to suspect for a while that the Pavian and Chienti Marinas received their name in imitation of the Venetian one, but that the bodies or relics were easily brought from Rome, just as those other Rouen, or rather Escoverie ones were received, whence the Parisian church of St. Marina obtained hers, known, I think, from the fame of a more celebrated name, which the Crusaders brought from the East. Of the head laid up at Anchin I shall judge that the same must be thought, until more certain monuments be brought forward. Of the Sicilian Marina I shall also subjoin below a conjecture as probable as I can. There remains the Legend, of which it may suffice to have noted a few things.

[37] The Acts are given as they were edited by Rosweyde. It is extant among the Lives of the Fathers published by our Rosweyde from page 393, which the posthumous edition of Surius of the year 1618 has from him, and which our Elders collated with so various manuscript exemplars, that if I should here wish to collect the variant readings, I should scarcely find one period in which several do not occur, but such indeed as neither change the substance of the matter, nor deserve to be observed from elsewhere. Nor did Metaphrastes introduce so great a change, that for the rest the older writing of the anonymous does not agree with his phrasing a little longer. The Pavian edition displeases more, of which we treated above, because, less accurate than the rest, it turned the inn (pandochium) into the proper name of Pandotius and Pandocis, whose daughter Marina was accused of having corrupted, and mixes other like things, worthy of commiseration rather than of criticism. Lest therefore in these and many things of that kind, to be compared in Jacobus of Genoa and others, we lay out useless labor, it has seemed better to describe here the very genuine edition of Rosweyde, wonderful enough in itself, so that it needs not to be wrapped up and entangled with other supports, shall I say windings.

ACTS

BY AN UNCERTAIN AUTHOR.

From the Lives of the Fathers edited by Rosweyde, page 393.

Marina, Virgin, called Marinus under the male habit of a monk (S.)

BHL Number: 5528

FROM THE LIVES OF THE FATHERS.

There was a certain secular man having an only little daughter. He himself, desiring to be converted, commended her to a certain kinsman of his, The father, solicitous for the salvation of his daughter Marina, and went to a monastery, which was far from the city, thirty-two miles. And, having entered, he performed every work which was of the monastery, so that his abbot loved him more than the rest who were in the monastery, because he was faithful and obedient. But it happened after some time, that he remembered the love of his daughter, and began to be saddened and afflicted within himself. And when for many days he did this, his abbot saw him troubled, and said to him: "What have you, brother, that you walk thus sad? Tell me, and God who consoles all will give you help."

[2] Then he, falling with tears at his feet, said: "I have one son in the city whom I left little, [that he may be received into a monastery of men, he changes her habit, and calls her Marinus.] and, remembering, I am afflicted for him." And he was unwilling to indicate to him that she was a girl. But his abbot, ignorant of what she was, and unwilling to lose him, because he was necessary to the monastery, says to him: "If you love him, go, and bring him hither, and let him be with you." And going he brought her, and she was called Marina. And he changed her name, and called her Marinus. And he gave her to learn letters within the monastery, and was with her: and none of the brothers knew that she was a girl, but all called her Marinus. And when she was fourteen years old, her father began to tell her the way of the Lord, and said to her: "See, daughter, that no one know your mystery until your end, and be solicitous of the snares of the devil, lest you be seduced by"

him, and this holy monastery be seen to be dissolved through us, so that in the sight of Christ with his holy angels we may receive a crown, and not with the impious eternal damnation." And many other things he taught her every day about the kingdom of God.

[3] But when she was seventeen years old, her father died. The father of Marinus dies. And she remained alone in her father's cell, and she kept herself in all the teachings of her father, and was obedient to all in the monastery, so that she was loved by her abbot and by all. But the monastery had a yoke of oxen and a cart, because it had the sea near, where was an emporium at three miles; and the monks went, and brought the things which were necessary to the monastery. But one day her abbot says: "Brother Marinus, why do you too not go with the brothers and help them?" Who answered: "You commanded, father." But there was in that emporium an inn ^a. Brother Marinus therefore began to go frequently with the cart, and if he was late in returning, he remained in that inn with the other monks.

[4] Marinus is accused of fornication. But it happened, by the snares of the enemy, that that innkeeper had a virgin daughter. Into whom some soldier entering, lay with her, and the girl conceived from that soldier. And when it had been known by her parents, they began to afflict the girl, saying: "Tell us, of whom did you conceive?" She answered them: "Of that monk who is called brother Marinus, who often stayed here with the cart, he oppressed me, and I conceived." And at once her parents went to the monastery, and say to the abbot: "Behold, lord abbot, what your monk Marinus has done? How he deceived our daughter." The abbot says to them: "Wait, let us see if the things you say are manifest." And when he came, his abbot says to him: "Brother Marinus, did you work this crime on their daughter?" Standing a long while he considered within himself, groaning he said: "I have sinned, father, I do penance for this sin, pray for me."

[5] [The sin which she did not commit, she acknowledges as if committed by herself. She is cast out of the monastery, and does penance at the gate.] But the abbot, moved to anger, ordered her to be bruised and afflicted. And he said: "In truth I say, that you who worked this evil shall not remain in this monastery." And he cast her out. But she never confessed her mystery to anyone, but going out cast herself before the doors of the monastery, and lay upon the ground in penance, afflicting herself as if she herself had sinned, and from the brothers entering she begged that even one morsel of bread might be given her. Doing this for three years, she did not withdraw from the monastery. But the innkeeper's daughter bore a male son, and weaned him, and the girl's mother brought him with her, and cast him there before the monastery, and says to him: "Behold, brother Marinus, how you know how to nurse your son." And she left him there, and departed. The holy virgin, taking him up as her own son, from the very morsel of bread which she received from those entering the monastery, nursed the alien son. This was done for another two years.

[6] She is again admitted into the monastery. She undergoes the vilest services. But afterward the brothers, seeing, compunct with mercy, having gone in to the abbot began to ask that he would receive him into the monastery, saying: "Abbot, pardon and receive brother Marinus. Behold, it is five years that he lies in penance before the door of the monastery, and has never withdrawn hence. Receive him into penance, as our Lord Jesus Christ commanded." But they scarcely compelled him, and he ordered him to enter, and called him to himself, and said: "Your father was a holy man, as you know, and introduced you little into this holy monastery, and did not work anything of evil, which you thought and did: nor anyone in this holy monastery. But now you have entered with your son, whom you have from adultery, whence it behooves you to do penance. For you have done a grave sin. And this I command you, that you alone daily do all the cleaning of the monastery, and carry water to purge the necessaries, and the shoe-cleaning ^b for all you perform every day, and serve all: for in this you shall have my grace." But the holy one, receiving with a willing mind, performed every work which had been commanded her.

[7] But it happened within a few days that she slept in the Lord. [Marina dies, and her sex is recognized. The abbot afflicts himself that he had afflicted Marina.] But the brothers, going, announced to the abbot, saying: "Brother Marinus is dead." The abbot says to them: "See, brothers, what kind of sin it was, that he did not even deserve penance. But nevertheless go, wash him, and bury him far from the monastery": and going, while they wash him, they recognized him that she was a woman. And all began to send forth cries, and, beating themselves, cried out, because such a conversation and holy patience was found in her, whose mystery none had recognized, and so she had been afflicted by them. And coming with tears they say to the abbot: "Abbot, come and see brother Marinus." He says to them: "What is this?" The brothers say again: "Come and see the wonders of God, and see what you do about yourself." He, terrified, went, and came to the body. And lifting the pallium with which he was covered, he saw that she was a woman: and at once he fell, and struck his head on the ground, and cried out, saying: "I conjure you by Jesus Christ the Lord, do not condemn me before the sight of God because I afflicted you, for I did it in ignorance. You, lady, did not tell your mystery, and I did not truly recognize your holy conversation." And he ordered her holy body to be laid within the monastery in the oratory.

[8] But on the same day that girl, seized by a demon, [The fornicatress, seized by a demon, is freed at the body of Marina. Her sanctity is proved by miracles.] came to the monastery, and confessed the crime which she had committed, and of whom she had conceived. And on the seventh day of her repose in the Lord, there within the oratory she was freed from the demon. But those who were in that emporium, and the neighboring monasteries, hearing the wonders which had been done, taking crosses and tapers, with hymns and canticles and psalms, blessing God, came into the same monastery, and, having entered the oratory where her body rested, blessed God. Where even now Christ, by the prayers of the holy Virgin, does many wonders, to the praise of his name. Who with the Father and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, God, through all ages of ages. Amen.

ANNOTATIONS.

APPENDIX I.

On Reparata or Margaret, called Pelagius.

Marina, Virgin, called Marinus under the male habit of a monk (S.)

BHL Number: 5323

BY THE AUTHOR J. B. S.

She, fleeing her spouse, clad as a monk, Two appendices I here subjoin on account of the similarity of the argument, about two Virgins, likewise the other sex being simulated, clad in the monastic habit, of whose cult since I have nothing certain, I did not think a fitter place could be granted them than if they were subjoined to our St. Marina. The Life of the former Peter hands down in the Catalogue, book 9, chapter 37, under the name of Margaret, in a style differing only a little from another which Henschenius describes from codex 22 of the Queen of Sweden, where at the beginning she is called Reparata, but toward the end she herself testifies that she was called Margaret in the world. Who is the author of the history, who she herself was, of what sort, of what country she was, where and when she flourished, cannot be drawn from our manuscript: in Equilio Egypt is indicated, but the rest are equally obscure. She is described as a beautiful, rich, and noble virgin, who, given in marriage to a noble youth, when all the nobility together before the bridal-chamber now prepared were celebrating the festive joys of the nuptials, she herself, God inspiring, considered the loss of virginity, and in the middle of the night, her hair shorn, in a male habit secretly fled … to a certain monastery, and calling herself Pelagius … held herself so modestly and so holily, that, the provider of the nuns being dead, though unwilling, she was set over the monastery of virgins. But when the doorkeeper had fallen into adultery, Pelagius alone, as being the provost and familiar of them, without judgment and examination, was condemned and expelled by all.

[2] she suffered a like calumny, so that you almost doubt of the identity. But shut up in a certain cave of a rock, he had appointed a most severe monk, ministering barley bread and water most sparingly. How long that most grievous penance held, is not expressed, but she bore it most patiently, comforting herself by the examples of the Saints. But the time elapsed, knowing her end to be at hand, she revealed all things to the abbot and monks by letters; and after death, Pelagius being carried back to the nuns, is recognized by the women as a female and an untouched virgin, and, all doing penance, is honorably buried in the monastery of virgins. All these things, if they rest on due credit, and are not borrowed by someone from the Life of St. Marina, and transposed into another form, offer another example of stupendous strength in a Virgin, not much inferior to the Marinian; but I find that Reparata or Margaret, called Pelagius, marked among the Saints neither in the Greek Fasti, nor in the Latin anywhere, so that I am almost compelled to suspect, what Papebroch noted in a word somewhere, that she should be confounded with St. Marina, unless one prefer to transcribe her to the monastery Canobim of Mount Lebanon, where to this day the place is said to be shown, where she did hard penance. Let him teach us who shall have found other monuments, from which it may be established that she is truly to be ascribed to the Saints: which we also demand from the Sicilians, that their Marina of Scanio, as different from the others, be reckoned in the same class.

SECOND APPENDIX.

On Marina of Scanio in Sicily.

Marina, Virgin, called Marinus under the male habit of a monk (S.)

This is the last Marina, whom indeed I know, but of whose cult I am compelled to doubt equally as of Reparata or Margaret, Marina of Sicily pleases no more: because she was unknown to all the ecclesiastical tables, both ancient and more recent, before our Ottavio Gaetani, praised above, inserted her into the Sicilian Martyrology on this day, producing a Life quite long, which he records he had written in Greek from the manuscript parchments of the monastery of St. Saviour

near Messina, of the Order of St. Basil. The source whence the Acts came forth does not please, from which I remember to have read that the Acts of the Saints emanated not sincere enough; certainly the things which Gaetani relates could easily have been culled from others, and Ferrari long ago noted that that Marina, such as she is, is either to be confounded with her whom we illustrated above, or is none. That the present festivity is not the proper birthday of that Marina among the Sicilians (if indeed she is truly venerated there), the today's festivity borrowed from the Roman Martyrology sufficiently proves, since whoever composed that Life, or rather panegyrical oration, plainly did not know the day of her death. The age of that Marina, bound to the eleventh century, and unknown for so many centuries down to Gaetani, brings no great weight of authority: however much I confess him immortally deserving of the Sicilian Saints, I am not yet led to admit new Saints on his sole credit.

[2] The Greek oration our Francesco Carrera contracted quite elegantly into an epitome, in the Sicilian Pantheon edited at Genoa in 1679, nor does he greatly commend the matter, more solicitous about the elegance of the speech than about establishing the credit of the Acts, as from his words it is easy to gather. Thus he has on this day: "This girl, having obtained a countenance painted with the brush of the Graces, rendered an image of chastity and sanctity. For, sprung from a most honorable stock and piously nourished, she put on the rites and morals befitting a spouse of Christ; and so burned with the fire of love toward her divine husband, that from her childhood she sighed for the labor of undertaking the Jerusalem pilgrimage, as her delight. By what pious guile she could, she fled mortal nuptials. By a dream inauspicious to the nuptial torches, she terrified first her parent, then, by a simulated madness, that he might not agitate in mind the marriage of his daughter. The voluntarily admitted foolishness of Marina turned to her commendation; and there praised her the distorted mouth of a certain girl, on account of a slap inflicted by an evil spirit, when from Marina she received soundness. Meanwhile weaving from her shorn hair snares for the heavenly spouse, she lay hid in a certain retreat. Nor was the hunting of her prayers vain. What she sought, the necklaces of all virtues, she obtained. This noble ornament of the mind a medical power, divinely obtained, disclosed, by which from the bodies of others she at once drove off all diseases: but that she might make for herself a most healthful amulet against vainglory, she sailed into Palestine, clad in the ornament of a man and the name of Marinus."

[3] the elegance of his encomium. "Into the sea by the sailors, thinking that a huge quantity of gold was with her, she would have been thrown, had not the crime invaded the sailor first attempting it, a hellish executioner, whom the Saint at once relegated to hell. When she came to Tripoli of Syria, she is kindly received by a most holy bishop, foreknowing of all the things which were to happen to Marina, the heaven-dwellers warning him, and, at last bidden farewell, she visited the tomb of Christ and the Jordan. Then for three years in a certain monastery she lived, addicted to whatever lowly services. After returning to her homeland, she flew back to the same ascetery, and there, having stayed five years, again to her native soil, divinely warned in mind, she betook herself. Here, weary with so many pilgrimages piously performed, she wearied heaven itself with her sighs, that she might rest in the embrace of the heavenly nuptials. But seeming not even in heaven to have rest; she migrated back to her homeland a third time, and ordered a little chapel to be built there for herself. Nay she was present at her own tomb, about to inflict a slaughter on diseases again. A saving remedy for them she wrought with the juice of her lily, if you know it not." I in these, to say it once, miss the first and chief thing: of the true and stable cult exhibited to that Marina, let the Sicilians first teach me, before they demand that she herself be placed among the Saints. I seem here to have done enough, in that I have mentioned her in this place. If arguments for that matter be supplied, since of the certain day of her death it is not established, the Acts can be illustrated on any other day.