ON ST. DARIA,
AT CONSTANTINOPLE.
From the Martyrologies.
CommentaryDaria, Martyr, at Constantinople (S.)
J. B. S.
This St. Daria is most expressly noted in the Hieronymian copies of Lucca, Corbie, and Blume, and in some of the lesser ones, with the position even expressed, At Constantinople, the birthday of St. Daria; from whose reading the most ancient Epternach codex here differs, She is asserted to be at Constantinople, writing Daretia; but one must recognize confusion in it, since at Constantinople, together with its own Daretia, it joins other martyrs, who seem certainly to be assigned to Antioch, as we shall explain below. Nor can it be said at all that here some Daria is understood who is known from elsewhere, such as she who is joined to Nicander on the 17th of June, or she who is joined to Chrysanthus on the 25th of October, celebrated on other days in the Hieronymian copies. Nor that the announcement concerning St. Daria is an addition, the codex also shows which Notker had before his eyes, where it is clearly expressed: At Constantinople, of Daria, just as the manuscript Florarium also reads; then the Lübeck-Cologne edition and Grevenus, in which the title of Virgin is added: but Maurolycus wrote more simply what he had found in the Hieronymian copies. And these things abundantly demonstrate that this St. Daria, such as she is, is not to be excluded from the series of the Saints, whatever, besides her name alone and the palm of martyrdom, all the rest be unknown concerning her.
Although the Greeks did not make mention of her. But the Greeks, you will say, nowhere in their sacred Fasti made mention of St. Daria, which they do not seem likely to have omitted in the Menologion or Menaea, if she had ever truly been venerated at Constantinople. That objection does not strike those who know how many Greek or Eastern martyrs and virgins are referred to here and there in the Hieronymian codices, of whom among the Greeks no commemoration whatever was ever made in the Menaea, Menologia, or Synaxaria, inasmuch as these were composed rather late; a thing which can be observed on no day of our Acts by those curious about matters of this kind. All these things Castellanus was not ignorant of, nor yet did he dare to number St. Daria among the Saints of this day in his universal Martyrology; marking Daretia in the index as somehow to be commemorated on this day, whom nevertheless he indicates as omitted: justly indeed too scrupulous, while he did not fear to summon Saints from the Copts and others, concerning whom he ought to have doubted more than concerning St. Daria, noted in so many Martyrologies and so expressly, whatever, to say it again, besides her name alone, be found handed down to memory concerning her.