ON ST. FANTINUS, CONFESSOR,
AT TAURIANUM IN CALABRIA.
Perhaps in the time of Constantine the Great.
PRELIMINARY COMMENTARY.
Fantinus, confessor, at Taurianum in Calabria (St.)
BY THE AUTHOR J. P.
§ I. The cult and native land of St. Fantinus.
In vain have I sought this St. Fantinus among the classic or ancient Martyrologists. We must therefore have recourse to the more recent ones, that his sacred cult may be established from their announcements. Of St. Fantinus the confessor Peter de Natalibus treats in book 6, chapter 160. The cult is established from the Martyrologies, Greven at July 31 has thus: Of St. Fantinus the confessor. Who, from a boy of holy conduct, when in the 12th year of his age he had converted his father Fantius and his mother Deodata to the faith, is held with them for the faith of Christ, is beaten with leaded whips, and cast into prison. At last, his parents completing their martyrdom by the cutting off of the head, Fantinus, loosed by an angel, shining with miracles, rested in peace. Maurolyco at the said day, and from him Molanus in the second edition, announce the Saint a little more briefly: In Calabria, in the town of Tabritanum (read Taurianum), of Fantinus the confessor of Syracuse; whose parents Fantius and Deodota, beaten with leaded whips at Syracuse, since they would not sacrifice to the gods, were beheaded.
[2] Ferrarius, in the Catalogue of the Saints of Italy, in a note to the eulogy of St. Fantinus the abbot on the same 31st of this month, makes mention of Fantinus of Syracuse from the praised Peter de Natalibus. and from other documents, Our Octavius Caietanus, in the Idea of the Work on the Lives of the Sicilian Saints, on this day, July 24, thus records: At Syracuse, of St. Fantinus the confessor, under Constantine the Great. From whom Rocco Pirri received the same, and reported him in the second notice of the church of Syracuse, at the year 303. The Sicilian Pantheon, published by our Francis Carrera at Genoa in the year 1679, sets down on this same 24th day St. Fantinus the confessor of Syracuse, attending him with a long eulogy from an old Syracusan manuscript codex and other authors; which is a compendium of the Acts. The cult of the Saint, and that from the most ancient times, Peter the bishop, the writer of the Life and miracles of the Saint, makes far most attested; who below, among the miracles, number 52, speaks thus, both teaching the cult and determining the day of the cult:
[3] The feast-day was kept for St. Fantinus, on which a numerous multitude of people, as is customary, gathered, as also by the author of the Life; some things likewise are noted adorning by public assemblies and with great celebrity the memory of the holy Man, which is observed on the twenty-fourth day of July. But either not always on the same day, or rather, as I think, on more than one day each year, the solemn cult of the Saint returned, as one or the other is openly indicated in the same place, number 46, in a miracle which is narrated to have happened when at some time the feast-day of St. Fantinus was drawing near, and the holy Saturday of the greater week was at hand; which is called by the Greeks Μεγάλη Great, or of the σωτηρίου πάθους, of the health-bringing passion, as you may see these and more in Leo Allatius, in the dissertation on the Sundays and weeks of the more recent Greeks, published after his three books on the perpetual agreement of the Western and Eastern church; and that week, both to Greeks and Latins, is the one which immediately precedes Easter; and therefore it is indicated there that the feast of St. Fantinus was celebrated immediately after Easter. See meanwhile what we observe in the annotations concerning the translation of the passage, from the biographer just produced.
[4] concerning the day of the cult. Both these days, sacred to the cult, the praised Caietanus either did not observe, or, having observed them, was unwilling to note, speaking thus of one only, in the Animadversions on the first Life of St. Fantinus, volume 1 of the Lives of the Sicilian Saints, page 138: Peter, bishop of Taurianum, records that the memory of St. Fantinus and the feast-day was wont to be kept at Taurianum on the 9th day before the Kalends of August; the same Jerome of Policastro hands down; adding that on this same day he is venerated in the church of Syracuse. Among the proper Offices of the Saints for the kingdom of Sicily, published at Messina in the year 1624, I find nothing noted about St. Fantinus. The ancient cult of the Saint is besides established from a Greek hymn to be commemorated afterward, which, however, expresses neither the place nor the day of that cult. Thus it is read in the same place: Wherefore, celebrating thy holy commemoration, etc. We honor thy memory… I will bear thy most illustrious commemoration to heaven today with worthy praises… We faithfully celebrate thy memory. From these words which follow in the same place, "thou art risen to us from the WEST," there would somehow seem to be afforded a foundation for suspecting that this public veneration was propagated from the West into the East, unless it were said in the same hymn: Today we celebrate thy most sacred memory, gathered around thy sepulchre; which certainly existed in the West. To this also makes this: And we embrace the tomb of thy relics. These things concerning the cult, once solemn enough; for the Greeks are not wont to attend a common saint with hymns so solemn as this is. Now let us discuss his native land.
[5] It is disputed whether the Saint was of Taurianum, Peter, bishop of Taurianum, number 17, says: he was born in this native land, at Taurianum on the river Metaurus, concerning which he had discoursed at length from number 9. And at number 24 the same Peter, bishop of Taurianum, hands down this: He is ours: for he draws his origin from us. At number 58 likewise he invokes St. Fantinus; as being, he says, ours. But on the contrary the anonymous author
in the first Life begins thus: Fantinus was born at Syracuse. Caietanus also calls him a Syracusan, in the Animadversions on that Life, page 137, commenting thus on this passage of the Life: The Madrid codex has it thus, he says: Fantinus was the son of Fantius, distinguished among the nobles and barons, of the house of Modica, a citizen of Syracuse… Together they proceed (Fantius and Fantinus) to Deodata in the castle called Modica, which is the head of that barony. Then from Equilinus Peter de Natalibus he adds: Fantius of the house of Demadica; but he Equilinus calling Deodata a noblewoman of Lentini. Then Caietanus notes the hallucination of a certain man of Lentini, not expressing his name, who referred that ("of Lentini") to her native land, and therefore inscribed Deodata among the Saints of Lentini.
[6] But it is a slight argument, as Caietanus rightly continues, drawn from corrupted Acts. or a Syracusan: But the Syracusan codex, which is cited in him, calls Deodata a noble woman, of the house of Comonius; but Caietanus most rightly pronounces: These trifles have been mixed into the Acts by some idler: for they are not from the ancient customs. For the age of Fantinus, Diocletian and Maximian reigning, I would hardly believe there was at Syracuse a family Demadica or Modica. Jerome Marafioti of Policastro, in the Chronicles of Calabria, book 1, chapter 35, affirms that he was of Taurianum; but he by no means proves it, having fallen into more than one error, because of the two Fantinuses of the same name he took the one for the other, as will be said afterward. The whole matter, therefore, now comes to this, whether our Saint was of Taurianum or of Syracuse; and to Peter, bishop of Taurianum, he was of Taurianum, but to Caietanus a Syracusan; the latter asserting, against the former, that this writer is mistaken in the native land of Fantinus; as is given to see in the Animadversions on the Life written by Peter the bishop.
[7] For Fantinus, he says, was born at Syracuse in Sicily; which last as has been proved by me in the notes on the earlier Life, that is, the first one, already assigned. But let us examine whether, and in what way, he has given it as proved. He brings forward there Equilinus, Maurolyco, and Galesinius, whom we too gave a little before. He brings forward besides, from the Madrid and Syracusan codices, those things which we also cited above; but because he roundly confesses that in those codices partly some things are taken from corrupted Acts, partly trifles, as he calls them, have been mixed in by some idler; he will grant, as I hope, both to fair readers and to us this pardon, that we do not immediately acquiesce in codices of this kind without a fear of weak credit, even when they denote the native land of some Saint. For why should not, by the same operation by which imaginary names seem to have been intruded there for establishing the Syracusan native land of the Saint, the Syracusan native land itself also perhaps have been intruded there? Especially then when another, plainly different, native land is assigned by an author of, if not greater, at least equal — to say the least — authority; by that author, I say, whose text is nowhere accused of being of suspect credit, as is accused the text of the other, which records a different native land.
[8] Hence Caietanus, proceeding as if the matter were settled, says: it does not seem there could be a twofold cause of error for the writer. The first, that Fantinus died at Taurianum. For which cause Taurianum could be called the native land of Fantinus, because from it he was born to heaven. And he brings in the example of a Syracusan encomiast in a laudation, which is of St. Marcian, born at Antioch of Syria, but who died at Syracuse; which laudation he produces in the cited volume from page 4, the anonymous author thus addressing that Saint on page 6 at the end: Thou washest thy flock, and sanctifiest thy fatherland. For this most celebrated city of the Syracusans, and, for thy sake, most famous, we rightly reckon thy fatherland on earth, where thy bier and thy temple remain, and are illustrated by perpetual miracles. But that thou hast a fatherland in the heavens, we are not ignorant that it is that one which the divine Paul called the heavenly Jerusalem. Thus concerning this, but also concerning another cause, he conjectures in this manner:
[9] The other cause of error for the writer could be a report corrupted among the common people: Caietanus [does not seem sufficiently to prove:] for this narrative was composed by Peter the bishop from those things which, handed on from hand to hand, still resounded about and existed among the common people, as he himself affirms at the beginning of the narrative. But that report sometimes errs is sufficiently established, especially from those things which are far removed from their origin, and which it is glorious for us to claim. But these conjectures accomplish nothing else than that Peter the bishop could have erred; but that he actually erred, they by no means persuade. But now the example of that anonymous Encomiast makes little to the purpose: for he expressly indicates that he is treating of the heavenly fatherland, taking that word in the anagogical sense, as the interpreters say, not in the obvious and natural sense; Peter the bishop, on the contrary, seems clearly to speak of the Saint's native land in the proper, obvious, and natural sense: for "he was BORN in this native land," and "he drew his origin from us," no one, I think, unless ineptly, would understand to mean that the Saint was born to heaven at Taurianum. I ask likewise of Caietanus: 1. Whence does it seem to him more probable that Peter the bishop erred from a report corrupted among the common people, than that his own anonymous biographer [did]? 2. Why does he here rather assent to the copies in which, by his own confession, partly some things are taken from corrupted Acts, partly trifles have been mixed in by some idler, than to the other copy, which he does not accuse of this fault?
[10] and therefore we give the Saint to the people of Taurianum for the time being. 3. That report indeed sometimes — add, even very often — errs, we know well, especially from those things which are far removed from their origin. But does not that anonymous biographer stand — I will not say wholly or nearly equally, but more remotely — from the origin of the things which he narrates, than Peter the bishop? 4. Whence does he know that the same biographer was not a Syracusan, and did not rashly pronounce those things which it is glorious for himself and the Syracusans to claim? 5. Is not the authority of the bishop Equilinus, of Maurolyco, and of Molanus too recent, standing at the interval of so many centuries from the Saint's origin, to be able to decide anything probably about that origin? 6. What if someone should object that Caietanus, a Syracusan, here determined the matter too easily in favor of the Syracusans, and believed those things truer which it is glorious for himself and his own to claim? And these arguments proposed against the Syracusans we leave to the learned Syracusans to examine and dissolve, not moved by even the least partisan zeal, so that nothing is more in our wishes than that they should prove that St. Fantinus, whom they wish to be their citizen, was their citizen, against the people of Taurianum, on whose side we shall stand for the time being, until the Syracusans teach us more certain things.
§ II. His parents, name, age, day of death, manner of death; the Saint distinguished from another of the same name.
Those things are illustrated which regard the Saint's parents; who were Martyrs. Our anonymous biographer affirms that Fantinus was born of Fantius and Deodata, parents noble and rich in family estate, whose wonderful conversion from idolatry to Christ, and their death afterward, namely martyrdom for him, he describes. Caietanus treats of them in the cited place, page 122, handing down their Acts from the Life of St. Fantinus, written by the praised biographer, concerning which, with Caietanus, it will be possible to treat, after others, on the 31st of this month. But the things which regard our Saint's parents, set forth in that Life so at length, and not less useful than fitted for the fuller knowledge of the same Saint's deeds, are not touched by Peter the bishop even with a single little word; because perhaps he found them nowhere (for he had very few things, as he himself attests, to say of him), composing rather a homily than a history of the Life, in the things which he brings forward; if you except the miracles, which he collected in fair number. The names of Fantius and Deodata we do not wish to call into doubt; although we cannot dissemble that the corrupted Acts, and the trifles mixed into the Acts concerning their family, somewhat harm them; as we said just now. Caietanus, in the Animadversions, page 137, hands down the following about the time of their martyrdom: We judge, he says, that the parents of Fantinus were taken away in the last persecution, which was stirred up by the emperors Diocletian and Maximian. But that he so judges, he by no means proves.
[12] Concerning the genuine and true name of Fantinus it seems sufficiently established, The etymology of the name Fantinus is examined expressed constantly and distinctly by each ancient biographer, and afterward adopted by others who made mention of him: whose etymology, if you consider it, signifies just as much as bright, splendid, illustrious, from φαίνω, "I shine," which in the third person singular of the passive verb has πέφανται; whence, the syllabic augment being cast off, as the Greeks call it, becomes Φαντῖνος. But that word I do not find to have been known among the Greeks, either in this or in another meaning, much less in use; however much the Greek Life of Peter the bishop alludes to it, from which I taste this: Οὗτος τοίνυν ὁ ἀοίδιμος τοῦ Θεοῦ θεράπων Φαντῖνος ἔκ τινος προμηθείας οὕτω κληθεὶς· καὶ γὰρ ἔπρεπεν τὸν ἐκ κοιλίας μητρὸς πρὸ διαπλάσεως ἐγνωσμένον τῷ Θεῷ, κατὰ τὸν θεῖον Ἱερεμίαν, φανεινῷ τινι ἐπικεκλῆσθαι ὀνόματι, ἵνα καὶ ἐξ αὐτῆς τῆς προσηγορίας δῆλον τοῖς πᾶσι ᾖ, ὡς θείου φωτὸς μέτοχον εἶναι τὸν φερονύμως τῷ ὀνόματι τούτῳ καλούμενον εὐλαβέστατον ἄνδρα. That is: "This, then, the renowned servant of God, Fantinus, was so called by a certain foresight; for it was fitting that he who from his mother's womb, before his formation, was known to God, according to the divine Jeremiah, should be called by a certain bright (phaneinos) name, so that even from the very appellation it might be clear to all that this most devout man, called by this name aptly to his name, was a partaker of divine light."
[13] Which the Latin translator rendered from the Greek from these words at number 3: "Therefore this most celebrated servant of God," etc., the etymology, up to and including "and to bear the meaning"; Caietanus here noting, sufficiently conformably to the mind of that Greek author, and from these his words "to be a partaker of divine light," that the writer here seems to have derived the name from a fore-name, which among other things means "to shine." However the matter stands, this etymology of the name is indeed not displeasing; for in a subject of this kind the interpretation is wont to be freer, and not rarely so far-fetched that it seems forced and twisted rather than offered. Perhaps someone would come nearer to the genuine etymology of the name, if he should say that this proper name was afterward derived from the Italian appellative "fantino," which denotes an infant; whose feminine φαντίνα is found in the Greek-barbarous Glossary of Du Cange.
[14] The time in which Fantinus lived is gathered from the epoch of his parents, the time of his life, provided it be true. Whence Caietanus concludes, page 137, that he reached the times of Constantine, under which prince peace was restored to the Church. But the reckoning of time of the parents is as uncertain as that which is deduced from it, since neither seems sufficiently proved, no sufficient indication at all betraying itself in either of the two Lives, whence you might elicit that time. Although I will not deny that some crack is opened in the Life of the anonymous author, where the following are had at number 11: In the time of the Saint, Messina served the idols; and afterward, number 12, on account of the fear of the heathen, our Saint hid the faith committed to the secret of his breast. To these can be added what you have at the same number 11: He is sought after by the Mamertine magistrate,
about to give the penalty of his faith. Which things seem somehow to indicate the times of the heathen emperors, or about the beginnings of Constantine the Great. And these indications perhaps afforded sufficient conjecture to the Martyrologists whom we gave above, and to Caietanus; to them, indeed, of placing him under the times of Constantine the Great; to the latter, of marking him at the year 336. What I might say beyond this, nothing is at hand. Concerning the year of his completed age the anonymous Life reports more certain things, indicating that he died as he was entering the thirty-third year of his age. From this or from the other, Peter de Natalibus makes him 33 years old.
[15] and of his death; The day of his death is noted variously by various writers. The anonymous Life, or the Madrid codex, says: on the last day of the month of July … he foretold on the Lord's day that he was soon about to depart from this life … and, the day foretold by him dawning .. he rendered up his soul to God. Peter de Natalibus says this: On the Lord's day, in the church … he migrated to Christ on the day before the Kalends of August. If the day of his death is the same as that of his cult, from this it will then be able to be confirmed, by reducing hither what we said above. More things are hidden from us, Peter the bishop confessing, number 18: But what the departure of this blessed and most celebrated Man was, or what the end of his life, is not sufficiently clear. Furthermore, whether the praised author is sufficiently consistent with himself, when, from number 19 rightly proving that, from the fact that he excelled in the greatness of miracles, it does not follow that he was a martyr, at last, number 24, he adjudges to him a double crown, of miracles, as I at least understand, and of martyrdom. But when, he says, would he not gladly have given himself to martyrdom, God calling him?
[16] likewise the manner of his death. And indeed those things which he there premises next; namely that if, besides those divine actions and virtues, and the efficacy of unheard-of miracles, and athletic contests, the holy Man, the enemy being laid low, and his own blood being shed, meeting death, was girt with the crown of a martyr, that should indeed seem no wonder to anyone; those things, I say, whither else do they pertain, if not to martyrdom? In one place, therefore, the Man's departure and the end of his life is uncertain; but in the other, martyrdom is asserted. In which he is opposed to the anonymous author, who at number 19 says the Saint died a natural death; but also by the Martyrologists above he is called not a martyr, but a confessor. For indeed Caietanus calls him a confessor, not a martyr, as we saw above from him. It is therefore a wonder that in his Animadversions he left this passage of Peter the bishop unobserved.
[17] Today's St. Fantinus by Marafioti and Ferrarius Besides today's St. Fantinus there is venerated another of the same name among the Greeks on August 30, on which day he is also noted in the Roman Martyrology; in Ferrarius, in the Catalogue of the Saints of Italy, for what reason I know not, drawn back to July 31. As regards this, he is entirely distinguished from ours by his parents, his profession of a rule, his pilgrimages, the age of his life, and the day and place of his laying-to-rest, as will become clear when we shall give him with the Roman Martyrology. Jerome Marafioti, in the Chronicles of Calabria, book 1, chapter 35, does not distinguish the one from the other, since he mingles both the Acts and the rule of life of each, saying that one and the same Fantinus was a servant, a keeper or manager of a horse, then a monk, and at last an abbot. The praised Ferrarius likewise makes his own Fantinus an abbot and confessor of Taurianum, and, his eulogy being given from the Menologium of the Greeks, notes that the history of Fantinus is narrated differently by others, since there were two, one a Calabrian, the other a Syracusan. Then, he says, their Acts are confounded.
[18] But while he indicates the confusion of others, he himself committed a confusion, wrongly confounded with another; when he presently adds that the OTHER is treated of in the Roman Martyrology at August 30, who is the very same Fantinus the monk, whom he himself commemorates with a eulogy on the said July 31; who, whether he was of Taurianum, and an abbot, will be able to be examined on August 30. And indeed the same Ferrarius most clearly opens his mind, or rather his hallucination, in the Catalogue of the Saints who are not in the Roman Martyrology, again on July 31, at that announcement "At Taurianum in Calabria, of St. Fantinus the abbot"; and, the sources being produced from which he gives him, namely Maurolyco, Galesinius, and Peter de Natalibus in the catalogue, book 6, chapter 160; this one, he says, seems to be different from the one who is treated of in the Roman Martyrology on August 30. Which, what is it other than to cook over again the error of confusion once committed?
[19] Rocco Pirri, in the second notice of the church of Syracuse, page 125, as also by another. treating of our St. Fantinus, says that Caietanus, in the Idea concerning the Lives of the Sicilian Saints, page 90, relates that he has a genethliac poem on St. Fantinus the Thaumaturge, translated from the Greek speech; but it is sufficiently clear that Caietanus distinguishes this one from ours: for after he had indicated, on the said page, the Life of St. Fantinus the confessor of Syracuse, and the narration of Peter, bishop of the West, concerning the Life and miracles of the same Saint, he presently subjoins the aforesaid poem on St. Fantinus the Thaumaturge, by which surname is called by the Greeks the monk Fantinus praised above; but ours, although he deserved that title, and somewhere, as we saw, it is given to him, did not, however, so make it his own that he is commonly called such. Because Pirri does not appear to have sufficiently observed this, therefore he seems to have confounded the one Saint with the other, and to have fitted to ours that poem which belongs to the other; and indeed Caietanus sufficiently guarded against both of these, nowhere mindful of that poem when he treats of our Fantinus.
§ III. His posthumous fame from the sacred building, the relics, the sepulchre, the miracles, and the sacred hymn; the authors of the Life. When was Taurianum destroyed?
That a sacred building proper to St. Fantinus once existed, together with a monastery, and that his sacred remains were memorable by public veneration and by a most frequent concourse of people, The Saint anciently had a sacred building, famous for his relics. is given to be understood from ancient monuments. The anonymous author, in what is published in Caietanus, among the miracles which he subjoins to the Life of our Saint, treats of a certain Theodore, a citizen of Taurianum, whose house was contiguous to the temple of Fantinus. Likewise, he says, the archdeacon of the church of the people of Taurianum … ordered himself to be carried into the building of St. Fantinus. Peter the bishop, number 18, speaks thus: Since the sacred relics of his body are preserved with us, he says, etc.; into whose praises he then runs out excellently. The same, number 47, sets up a discourse about a girl brought by her parents … to the building of St. Fantinus, and led in to the altar by her father, where was the tomb of the most holy Man; whom the abbess, having received her, brought up in the monastery.
[21] whose site is given Of the same building he treats at number 48. Again at number 49 is narrated the altar illuminated, where the most venerable relics of St. Fantinus are preserved … thence, when the light vanished, with a great and sweet odor … the whole building was filled. Concerning this temple and the nuns one may also consult number 44. This temple, therefore, stood among the people of Taurianum, and, as is set forth at number 50, was situated on the slope of a mountain… But the natives had built this building for St. Fantinus where the report was that he had dwelt while he pastured the mares: and there also they say is the threshing-floor of the Saint, whence they call that place even today the threshing-floor of St. Fantinus.
[22] The miracles done there are established. But the posthumous fame of the Saint grew wonderfully illustrious from very many miracles, which were wrought at his sacred remains, established with so solid an authority that he would be obstinate who should dare to deny or call them into doubt. Whence in the sacred hymn he is called a thaumaturge, a title certainly which is wont to be given only to great and unusual workers of prodigies. And from this hymn will be confirmed and illustrated the things which we have just now brought forward concerning the Saint's celebrity after death. But that hymn is a certain monument to posterity of the ancient cult of Fantinus, as will become evident from the time in which it is handed down to have been composed; likewise of the solemn cult, which is rightly gathered to have been such from instruments of this kind, wont to be sung in honor of the Saints whose memory was held venerable above the rest. That hymn, moreover, we shall give after both Lives; concerning whose authors these things occur to be forewarned.
[23] [The author of the first Life is hidden from us; whose text was not sincerely enough printed.] The author of the one which we give in the first place is wholly hidden from us, and was hidden from Caietanus also; who nevertheless, from the fact that it is reported in it, concerning the chains broken by the Saint, that these "are shown to the present day in the church of Syracuse," tries somehow to elicit the time in which that Life was written, namely before the domination of the Saracens in Sicily, when the Saint's chains were shown: for by their barbarity all things afterward went to ruin, in the 9th century, indeed, somewhat advanced. The coming of the Saracens into Sicily Baronius connects, from John Curopalates and Cedrenus, to the year 827, against Leo of Ostia, who places that entrance in the year 820, and adds that Palermo was captured by them, as you may see in book 1, chapter 23 of the Cassinese Chronicle. That Life Caietanus published, transcribed, as he notes, from an old book written by hand of Joseph of Madrid, jurisconsult of Syracuse, the diction being a little polished, and certain slight things cut away, both wrongly; for lovers of antiquity desire to see such things untouched. And indeed that history, both for this cause, and for what was said above, and for what is to be said a little after, much displeases us.
[24] Morabitus carps at certain things in it, Charles Morabitus, in the Annals of the church of Messina, rather immoderately and sharply inveighs against our Peter Salerno, who contributed his labor to the completing of the Lives of the Sicilian Saints, already praised several times; as if all his works were vitiated, and he had always spent all his zeal against the people of Messina. Why so? The polishing of that codex certainly afforded Morabitus a handle for complaint, as if, by polishing more, he added, as he imputes to Salerno, things which are not consonant: namely, that rather hard morsel in it, that "Messina even then (that is, in the time of St. Fantinus) served the idols," he could not digest, no more than this: "Fantinus, therefore, is sought after by the Mamertine magistrate, about to give the penalty of his faith"; as if at that time Messina had not yet been converted to Christ; concerning which matter there will be a brief mention in the annotations. Meanwhile it wearies [me] to recount all the things here with which that author arraigns Salerno, to be set forth here at no worth of the labor: for whether Equilinus was drawn from the Madrid manuscript, or on the contrary the Madrid manuscript from Equilinus, or whether each copy came forth separately from elsewhere, it matters not much, since each is of the same bran in substance.
[25] For, as it is in the notes in Caietanus, Peter Equilinus the bishop indeed narrates the same history more concisely; he himself to be carped at. but let us add, corruptly; so that Morabitus has not much reason why he should praise the word "stradichone," most probably corrupt, in that Life, as though it conciliated antiquity. I will not omit, he says, the word "stratigoti"
the name of the supreme jurisdiction of Messina (which belongs to it alone in the absence of the prince), from antiquity and always through the succession of times unchanged. For he has in the Life of the Saint which we mentioned: When he was sought after by the captain Stradicho, that he sacrifice to the gods, etc. But either the text says the same thing twice, or it obtrudes a corrupt word: for Morabitus adds: Which name indeed is not proper, but of an office, by which the people of Messina call the CAPTAIN, or leader of the militia. Let us hear what Ferrarius, in the Catalogue of the Saints of Italy at July 31, thinks about that Life: He names the places corruptly, he says, and mingles in some improbable things; which last he would seem about to have pronounced concerning the Life of our anonymous author, if he had seen it, with the same or a stronger right, since it narrates the same thing in substance with more words. What Ferrarius adds — that, as it seems, Peter Equilinus wove the Acts of one from the Acts of two — does not so seem to us, since the Acts of our Fantinus differ by the whole heaven from the Acts of the monk of the same name.
[26] Concerning the other author, Peter the bishop, as it is written in Caietanus in the title of that narration, The author of the second Life seems to have been a bishop of Taurianum: or, as it is noted in the same in the Animadversions, page 138, "Peter, bishop of the West," this is observed in the same place in the preface of the Life: He was bishop of the church of Taurianum in Calabria. Many things persuade of this: the very discourse delivered to the people of Taurianum: he says that he was not only an eyewitness of certain miracles, but a minister: he calls Nicetas archdeacon of his church; and he was archdeacon of the church of Taurianum, from the Syracusan Acts. Finally he plainly calls Taurianum his native land. By some Greek he was called bishop of the West, that is, in the West: because perhaps he doubted or did not know what city was subject to him. But although these things so persuade the Taurianum mitre, that — as, however, is said above by Caietanus himself to be done — they do not altogether persuade, yet they afford sufficient foundation for it to be prudently believed.
[27] As regards the age of that author; it is discoursed thus in the same place: That writer lived, as he says at the end of the narration, concerning whose age under the emperor Leo the heretic, to whom, in the third year of his reign, he was sent as a legate with certain Sicilians by the praetor of Sicily. Now from the year of Christ the Lord 716 to 814 three Leos held the empire: Leo the Isaurian, Leo Porphyrogenitus, and Leo the Armenian, who were all heretical iconoclasts. Which of these Leos the heretic was, under whom Peter of Taurianum lived, I am in doubt: since no light shines from the narration. But my mind inclines to Leo Porphyrogenitus, whose third year of reign fell in the year of Christ 778. It moves me that he, only in the fifth year of his reign, which was his last, in the vengeance of his crimes, vomited forth the hidden poison of his mind, and openly began to persecute the venerators of images.
[28] here Before that year the approach to him was safe; to Leo the Isaurian and Leo the Armenian the approach was not safe, who at the beginning of their reign declared war on the sacred images. But the conjecture is slight. What is certain: Peter, bishop of Taurianum, lived after Africa was occupied and possessed by the Saracens; whom the same Peter narrates to have overturned Taurianum in great part. But the Saracens utterly occupied Africa in the year of Christ 698, on the authority of Cedrenus. Leo the Isaurian hid the impious poison under a deceitful mask of piety, and for more than five years, which he at last openly vomited forth against the sacred images, as you may see in Baronius at the years 716 and 723. Leo Porphyrogenitus likewise dissembled, in the same place at the years 775 and 780; but Leo the Armenian began his persecution with his reign, in the same place at the year 814: accordingly we see well enough that he is excluded above by Caietanus: but we do not sufficiently perceive why that Peter the bishop rather betook himself to Leo Porphyrogenitus than to Leo the Isaurian, since each was a heretic; each feigned orthodoxy, and indeed for long enough, that Peter's journey could fall in the third year of either.
[29] it is discussed. But if it happened under Leo Porphyrogenitus — concerning which, however, it is not established — it follows, according to the earlier reckoning of Baronius, that Peter could have set up his legation from the year 716, in which he fixes the beginning of Leo the Isaurian the emperor, against Theophanes, who is gathered to defer it to the next following year, from the fact that he assigns to him the 15th Indiction. Caietanus errs, therefore, when he thinks that Leo the Isaurian declared war on the sacred images from the very beginning of his reign; which error was the cause why he rather fitted Peter's legation to the reign of Leo Porphyrogenitus. Of Africa utterly occupied by the Saracens in the year 698 — whence Caietanus above determined the epoch of Peter's life — Baronius makes mention at that year. Hence it follows that what Marafioti hands down in the Chronicles and Antiquity of Calabria, book 1, chapter 35, at the end, about the time in which Taurianum was destroyed, is false: which he will have happened in the year of the Lord 1075, as far, he says, as we gather from ancient writings. But of what stamp and time are those ancient writings which he alleges?
[30] When Taurianum was destroyed. The same epoch, from his Description of Calabria, book 1, chapters 20 and 25, Caietanus produces in the Animadversions, page 137 (of that destruction I find nothing in the Chronicles of Calabria in the chapters just now assigned by him, so much that I suspect he meant to indicate another work of Marafioti), rightly correcting him, from the reckoning of the time in which Peter the bishop lived, in these words: Taurianum .. was overturned by the Saracens who held Africa before nearly the year of Christ 800, when they had not yet occupied Sicily, as is established from Peter, bishop of Taurianum, a writer of those times; as you may see his narration, number 10. But how long before that year the destruction of the place was made, he leaves undetermined: for its remains, he says, and monuments, remain up to our own time, standing here and there on either side of those rivers … although now the other part is uninhabitable and uncultivated, on account of those destructions which that place has now for many years suffered. But the things which were disputed a little before concerning the biographers will be able to be illustrated from what is to be said in the next paragraph, on the occasion of the Lives, of which we give both the notice and the merits.
§ IV. Notice of the Greek Life; a critique of the Latin one; both — of the Greek, however, as also of the hymn, only the Latin translation is here given.
The Life which we shall give in the second place — or rather you would call it a eulogy, a narration, or a homily, Of the Greek Life it comes to the same thing; that Life, I say, the often-praised Octavius Caietanus published in print in Latin among the Lives of the Sicilian Saints, volume 1, from page 152, indicating the source thus in his Animadversions: This Narration (for so it is entitled) we transcribed from a Greek manuscript codex of the monastery of St. Salvator at Messina. It was translated into Latin by Father Francis Raiato of our Society. The Greek copy itself we have, transcribed doubtless from the same codex or from some transcript of the same; which, as is prefixed to that copy of ours, Father Joseph Denti procured in the year 1697, if I read the man's surname rightly. For the rest, it is prefaced with this title: Διήγησις εἰς τὸν βίον καὶ εἰς τὰ θαύματα τοῦ ἁγίου καὶ ἐνδόξου θεράποντος τοῦ Χριστοῦ πατρὸς Φαντίνου ἡμῶν. That is: A narration upon the Life and miracles of the holy and glorious servant of Christ, our father Fantinus. That title is reported more concisely thus in Caietanus: The narration of Peter the bishop concerning the Life of St. Fantinus.
[32] That old version we collated with our Greek copy, and found it faithful enough and consonant enough with the Greek text, and of the version, so that we judged it superfluous to substitute a new one for it: although some things in various places have been contracted for greater brevity, which our Greek manuscript recounts with more words; whether the translator himself so contracted them, or found them contracted in the copy from which he composed his version: for it is not plainly established to us that our copy and his version came forth from the same Greek copy. Whatever it be, that contraction is so slight a matter, and conducing little to the substance of the thing, that it did not deserve to be pointed out again and again with outstretched finger in our annotations; where, however, you will find some things observed, several other minutiae being passed over; concerning which matter to have forewarned the reader is more than enough. The whole matter, moreover, we have divided into new titles and numbers, after our manner; the ancient numbers being also added in the margin, which were prefixed to the miracles in the praised Greek manuscript, but not their titles, which likewise preceded them in order.
[33] And from these miracles not only is the posthumous glory of the Saint chiefly illustrated, but the poverty is somehow supplied, as also the notion of the miracles is given. with which, as the author himself is compelled candidly to confess, he labored in recounting the deeds done by the Saint; therefore here chiefly deserving praise, because to some of those miracles he adds the highest weight of authority, narrating them now as an ear-witness, now as an eyewitness, nay somewhere even having experienced in his own person the patronage of that same Saint. It seemed good to us, moreover, not to separate the miracles from the context of the narration which precedes them, but to subjoin these to it, following our Greek copy, and the Latin one which Caietanus published. But now, concerning the miracles after the Life of St. Fantinus (for it is of these that our present discourse is), a few other things offer themselves to us to be observed, on the occasion of the anonymous author who wrote the Life.
[34] A critique of both Lives, The first miracle, which treats of a bond lost and found, that anonymous author contracted; but he received it from Peter the bishop: for he Peter adds, "from whom we also received these things"; which words the anonymous author does not have. This anonymous author besides contracted from him the second miracle: for where Peter speaks as it were in his own person, "the archdeacon," he says, "while he was archdeacon of our holy church, recounted to us another miracle worthy indeed to be committed to writing"; the anonymous author narrates it in the person of another. Then he leaps to the miracle which is in Peter sixth in order; and then again leaps back to that which the praised Peter reports in the fifth place; each the anonymous author again contracted. And these things indeed he drew from Peter, Caietanus adding that the rest are wanting in the manuscript book. Whence we perceive that this anonymous author either presents a greater youth than Peter the bishop, or at least wrote after him, and is indeed worthy of greater credit when he agrees with him (having followed, as I suspect, the same guide in some other things too, whom he had as his forerunner in the miracles) than when, walking alone, he affirms not a few things which the other does not have:
[35] authority. And indeed he seems to affect a texture of unexpected and marvelous things; so everywhere does he obtrude prodigies, unexpected events, and apparitions; things trimmed rather for the stage and theatrical display,
as it appears to us, and invented, than fitted for a sincere narration; so long as it is hidden from us from what source he received them, distant from his own times by an interval of so many centuries; especially where Peter is so meager, not to say mute, in narrating the Life and deeds of the Saint; content to have tasted a few things about them, wholly ignorant of the rest. But now, whence, I pray, could that anonymous author derive a history stuffed with so marvelous events; of which Peter the bishop says not even a single word? To whom Peter, however, some circumstances seem to favor above that other, so that he came the better equipped to speak: whether you consider the time, to which his age and so his writing can somehow be fitted; or the place in which he held his episcopate, which was the spectator and witness of the things done by St. Fantinus while he lived among the living; and the theater of his miracles, once he had put off his mortal body, and of his posthumous glory; or you consider the name, which is expressly prefixed to his narration.
[36] and value. But none of these three prerogatives supports our anonymous author; who, great as he is, from wherever he comes, is hidden from us. I remember indeed that from the chains broken by the Saint, and preserved up to the writer's times — of which matter we spoke above in §3 — an argument is drawn by Caietanus, by which his time is fixed. But since the context of the Life, as it is read published in Caietanus, is not published wholly as it lies, and from elsewhere, on more than one count, seems suspect even to Caietanus himself, as is clear from what has been said: why should that passage about the chains be immediately free of all suspicion? especially since Peter the bishop makes no mention of them, Caietanus confessing that in the anonymous author some things are taken from corrupted Acts, and trifles have been mixed into them by some idler.
[37] Yet let no one think those things said by us to this end, it is proposed. as if we wished to take away all credit from his narration: for we have not sufficient reason for daring this; but that we may candidly indicate our opinion, namely that, as the things which the anonymous author ascribes to him are altogether glorious for the Saint, so they need a somewhat more solid strength, if the defenders and patrons of those matters wish all of them to be immediately believed by the learned. There will perhaps be (we heartily wish there may be) learned Sicilians or Calabrians who will shed a little more light and authority both on these and on other things, if it be allowed to hope for more about the Saint. Meanwhile, because it could have happened that that anonymous author, of whatever age and stamp, drew somewhere from ancient documents which Peter did not see the facts which he reports, if not all, at least not a few of them, therefore we also exhibit the Life, as written by him under an unknown name.
[38] Concerning the hymn, which in the last place we are about to give from the printed text in Caietanus, Some things are also observed concerning the hymn, we would wish the following to be observed. It was transcribed by me, he says in his Animadversions, from a Greek manuscript codex of the monastery of St. Philip of Fragalà, near the town of San Marco, in the diocese of Messina (which monastery is of the family of St. Basil, as is to be seen in him in the Animadversions, page 64). It was rendered into Latin by Father Augustine Florito, of our Society, known for several other things translated from Greek into Latin, both with us on April 3, pages 239 and 269, and in Caietanus just cited, pages 35, 37, 64, and 67. I would believe, with the same author in the Animadversions, that this hymn was composed by St. Joseph the Hymnographer, whose Acts were illustrated at April 3; who, since he died in great old age, the ninth century verging to its end; it follows that, at the time in which the memory of the Saint and especially of his miracles still flourished in the minds of posterity, he could have composed that canon for the sake of the Calabrians or Sicilians — himself a Sicilian by native land, and according to some a Syracusan (but this last was rejected by us on the cited day, page 267), just as he composed a canon or odes about St. Pancratius for the sake of the people of Taormina, according to what was said on the same April 3, page 238, where there was treatment of him, and on June 14, page 788, on the occasion of St. Marcian, bishop of Syracuse and martyr. Various things meanwhile which regard this St. Joseph you will find in the Sicilian Library, by Antonino Mongitore, published at Palermo in the year 1708, volume 1, from page 384.
[39] Furthermore, whether that Joseph the Hymnographer, or another of the same name, and its author: the bishop of Thessalonica, own brother of St. Theodore Studite, was the author of this canon, it matters little: for both flourished in the ninth century; and this one indeed about the beginning of that century, but the other toward the end. Meanwhile there may be consulted the things which we most recently said about each in volume 4 of July, page 247. If we had had a Greek copy of the praised canon, we could, I think, have observed a few other things about it: for we do not doubt that its composer, in a manner elsewhere customary, interwove it with acrostic letters, expressed in a metrical acrostic prefixed to it, which he then fitted to their own places, that is, to the initial letters of the odes and strophes. The odes were perhaps followed by a certain colophon or clausula of that acrostic, as it were, formed from the letters of the author's name; by which indication it could have been established to us a little more certainly about him. (Consult the cited page 247.) But because those aids fail us here, it remains that the reader acquiesce in the conjectures alone which we give, in an uncertain matter.
[40] Finally, we judge this one thing must besides be added; which perhaps was once a part of the Greek Office that we are strongly led to believe that, as other canons, interspersed in the printed Greek Menaea, were wont to be employed in the ecclesiastical Office of that nation, of which they constituted no small part; so this hymn, inserted in the Sicilian or Calabrian Menaea, was wont to be used there every year on the festivity of St. Fantinus, for the sake of greater solemnity, as an ancient — as we said above — argument of the former veneration toward him.
THE LIFE
From the Syracusan manuscript, published by Octavius Caietanus, S.J., among the Lives of the Sicilian Saints, volume 1, from page 149, by an anonymous author.
Fantinus, confessor, at Taurianum in Calabria (St.)
BHL Number: 2824
From what is published in Caietanus.
CHAPTER I.
The birth of St. Fantinus; the conversion of himself and his parents to Christ; their torments; his liberation from prison.
St. Fantinus, to sterile parents, At Syracuse a was born Fantinus, of Fantius and Deodata b, parents noble and rich in family estate. These, although they were entangled in the worship of idols, were yet by nature inclined toward the poor, and relieved many from their own goods. Which they did the more liberally and the more gladly, because by that means they came into hope that they would obtain from their gods children, of which they were destitute. But the gods gave them none indeed; but the true God, who wills none to perish, and imparts the light of truth to all, and does not allow the sowing of alms to be unfruitful, gave gracious ears to those praying, and cast this vision into both of them while sleeping.
[2] seeing themselves in sleep set before the tribunal of God, They seemed to themselves to be set before the tribunal of God, as on an appointed day, and, accused on the charge of idolatry, to be condemned to the extreme punishments. In great trepidation, and unexpectedly, Jesus Christ was present to the wretched ones as a patron; whose appearance was such: over his whole body he was marked with blows and wounds, whence there stood out no blood indeed and no horror, but very much splendor. He, standing in the sight of the judge, prays in this manner: These have indeed deserved the punishments which thou dost purpose against them, O Father; but forgive them these, first for my sake, then for their alms: and I beg of thee that thou grant them life, and children.
[3] a son to be born is promised; And turning to the surviving accused, To you, he says, a son, whom you desire, shall one day be born, who, when he has reached his twelfth year, shall conceive faith in me and in my Father; then he shall teach you this faith, and shall open the way to martyrdom. And by his admonitions many shall be led into the way of truth. Afterward permission of departing was granted to Fantius and Deodata, and it was commanded that they should impose on the son to be born the name Fantinus, and that from his twelfth year they should be obedient to his word. Waking from sleep, when they had told each other their visions, they take joy together with hope. In time a son was received, and, as was commanded, they give him the name Fantinus.
[4] At his birth, and his calling into the light, there were two things worthy prodigy more than one accompanying his birth. for us to wonder at. One, that the Infant's breast on the left side was marked with the sign of the cross, not slight and small, but deeply impressed, and, in proportion to the little body, drawn out longer to the breadth of three fingers. Its color was like blood. The other, that in his most tender little age he often rose from his little bed, and, creeping over the bed-rail, let himself down to the ground; and so lay down. When they inquired the cause of this thing, I wish, he said, to be a soldier for Christ. In which indeed this is full of wonder: that this boy, when he called upon the name of Jesus Christ, made mention of that name; which, spoken by another, he himself had never before heard.
[5] Meanwhile the twelfth year of his age drew near for Fantinus, In a wholly wonderful manner and when at that time, being fond of hunting, he was pursuing wild beasts with one companion, he came upon a stag of wondrous and lofty height, and remarkable also by a new miracle. This one had many crosses standing out between its horns: and a human voice came forth from its mouth, by which it exhorted him to follow it, and, It is time, it said, that thou both be captured and capture; that thou hunt, and again that another hunt thee. So after they had followed the stag going before them for two miles through the Syracusan field, they see themselves near a certain cave.
[6] And so, when they had dismounted from their horses, they came upon in the cave an old man and hermit. he is led to a hermit; To this one, on the past night, Jesus Christ had announced that on the next day the most noble youth Fantinus would come to him, that he might teach him the right faith, and instruct him concerning his own divinity and humanity; for it would come to pass that by his work not a few would attain salvation. But the next day's light brought Fantinus into the hermit's sight; whom, when he had raised him up as he fell at his feet, he recites to him his parents' vision about his birth, manifests the sign of the cross impressed on his breast, and, Over and above these things, indeed, Fantinus, he says, thou owest great thanks to Christ, the restorer of the human race, who, before thou wast conveyed to life by the sacred river of baptism, marked thee with the seal of the most holy cross.
[7] Here the Youth, his breast bared, when he had disclosed the signs received from Christ the Lord, [and by him is instructed in the faith, a cross appearing in the sky, and is baptized together with Leontius.] the occasion being again seized, the old man said many things far into the night about our Savior, both when in
his life, [and] then also, after his death, the mysteries being accomplished. And indeed a wondrous cross, surrounded with light and seen near at hand in the sky, dispelled the darkness of the night. And this being received as it were as a messenger of light from God, Fantinus and his companion Leontius, washed in the sacred font, were made Christians: and when they had passed the rest of the night in sacred conversations among themselves, and in supplications to God, the sun now risen, they return to the city.
[8] But when Fantinus had met his father, he received him with a greeting by which he made mention of Jesus Christ. The Saint's parents follow with the household, except one wretched man. But the father, wondering at the new kind of words, asked the Son why he presented him with that greeting. He, filled with the light of the Holy Spirit, when he had explained the principles and secrets of the faith taken up a little before, and at the same time recalled to his father's memory the former visions, brought his father to this, that he most gladly gave his hands to Christ through baptism. But both afterward taught Deodata about the religion taken up, and the whole household imitated their Christian masters, except one obstinate man, who, seized by a most foul demon into the punishment of his obstinacy, threw himself headlong into the river.
[9] [They distribute their goods to the poor, and, accused before the proconsul, are beaten:] When these were made Christians, they began also to be mindful of, and even obedient to, the sayings of Christ: Unless a man renounce all that he possesses, he cannot be my disciple. So, all that they possessed being sold off, they gather a great sum of money from their fields and fortunes, which they paid out lavishly, day by day, for the aid and sustenance of the needy. For these reasons their name is reported to the proconsul. He, when they were brought into his sight, asks of what religion and sect they were. They answer that they are Christians, and that they worship Christ crucified. On account of this, by the proconsul's order, they are beaten most violently with leaded whips; then they are cast into chains and prisons.
[10] [but they are refreshed by an angel; who foretells that martyrdom hangs over them, but that Fantinus is reserved for other things.] But behold, when night had darkened all things, an angel of the Lord flies down into the prison, and after he had illuminated the place with light, food being set before them, he bids the prisoners be refreshed and strengthened. From the table he foretells that Fantius and Deodata would indeed die for the faith on the morrow; but that Fantinus was reserved for other things: wherefore he should depart from that place, and betake himself to other parts. Then Fantinus most easily broke the chains he seized; for the divine power had made them most soft, like wax. These are shown to the present day in the church of Syracuse. Then, when he found the doors opened of their own accord, he goes out gradually with his companion the angel, up to the gates of the city, which he unlocks by the sign of the cross impressed on them, and makes an exit for himself.
ANNOTATIONS.
CHAPTER II.
St. Fantinus's parents crowned with martyrdom; his journey into Calabria, his care of the beasts of burden, his mercy toward the poor proved by a miracle; the conversion of his master, and his death.
Meanwhile day dawned, and those two, being brought forth, when they refused to obey the proconsul and to burn incense to the gods, [The Saint's parents become martyrs; he, a miracle being wrought in Sicily, seeks Calabria.] their heads were cut off. Fantinus put in at Messina a, and, received into the hospitality of a certain woman, restored again the light of sight to her son, blind in his eyes, whom, while he was sleeping, a most black figure of a man had violently deprived of his eyes. This was the cause that the whole household gave their name to Jesus Christ. This matter spread the fame of Fantinus at Messina, which even then served the idols b. He is sought after, therefore, by the Mamertine magistrate c, about to give the penalty of his faith; but he, by divine warning, a little boat being boarded by night, although without oars and sail, nevertheless held his course over the strait toward Reggio d, by heavenly guidance: nor, when an armed trireme pursued him, could it ever overtake [him], for he had hindered it by opposing the sign of the cross.
[12] When he was brought to Reggio, he withdrew himself from the forum into the house of a certain matron, He turns water into wine at Reggio, and, a despiser of himself and makes the cold water given him to drink into pure wine: and he makes the mistress of the household, overcome by the miracle of the thing and falling at his feet, a Christian. Thence he withdrew farther, and on the third day after enters a town whose name is Taurianum e, and hires himself into servitude to Balsamius, a wealthy man. But desiring to be despised and held cheap for God, the contrary happened: for by that means he was held the more known and dearer to all. Fantinus was docile in wit, not inelegant in speech, endowed with the highest chastity and honorableness of manners, most loving of fasts and abstinence: but on account of the fear of the heathen, he hid the faith entrusted to the secret of his breast.
[13] And so he is sent away by his master to the country, to pasture the beasts of burden, he pastures the beasts, and at the same time [feeds the poor from them, intent on the meditation of heavenly things.] which he performed indeed briskly and faithfully, mindful of Moses leading forth the flocks, and of that Apostolic saying: Servants, be subject to your masters in all fear. It had begun to be the height of summer, at which time the grain is gathered on the threshing-floors for threshing. Fantinus thought this given to him as an occasion for relieving the needy. So he hires out a part of the beasts for threshing the grain: he bestows the price of the threshing upon the poor f. This was Fantinus's frequent custom, while the floor was being threshed, to pour forth prayers behind the beasts with heart and mouth, and to praise God: then, freed from the care of threshing, and the beasts grazing, to look up to heaven on bended knee, and assiduously to meditate on heavenly things.
[14] Meanwhile, the demon instigating, a report is brought to Balsamius He is accused before his master, as if managing his affairs badly: that the beasts were badly treated by Fantinus, that instead of pastures they were lent out to thresh the ears; that this was done out of avarice, and hope of gain, which he was keeping for himself. Balsamius, since he would not believe this of the upright Youth, preferred to test than to hear, and at once proceeded into the field, to sniff out what wild thing was being done. And he would have caught Fantinus unawares, had not God come to the aid of his servant at the right time. For when Fantinus saw his master approaching him, he fell on his knees, and commended his deed to Christ, for whom he labored: while praying, he is overcome by sleep, and to Balsamius approaching nearer, although the beasts were going round the floor and treading out the ears, yet they seemed to be in rich pastures, and to be grazing a meadow altogether green and grassy.
[15] [but with his attempt at first frustrated; then he flees the sight of his angry master] Wherefore he praises Fantinus, awakened, for his diligence, and encourages him to take good care of the beasts committed to his trust and care. Thence he returns to the city, gladder; but when Fantinus persisted in his undertaking, a more certain report about the matter is again announced to Balsamius by certain persons: to which, although at first he lent no ears, and turned away from those reporting, yet he could not but at last incline somewhat to what he heard. So he went to inquire, with this mind, that if he found true the things which they alleged, he would afflict Fantinus, cast into chains: but if otherwise, he would reject them all, convicted of envy and lying, from his household with infamy, and would present the innocent servant with greater honor and reward. The coming and the thoughts of his master Fantinus, although absent, nevertheless foresaw by the divine spirit, and, to give way to his master's anger, took refuge in the forest.
[16] by a remarkable miracle, and escapes his hands. And when he had come to the Metaurus, and had no means by which to cross the river, he stopped, casting his eyes here and there, and searching for a passage. Meanwhile he sees his angry master approaching. Then he besought God again and again not to forsake him in that hour, and, the prayer being finished, striking the waters with a rod, Metaurus, he said, in the name of Christ, stay a little from thy course. At this command, the waters parted into two parts, and made a way for Fantinus to the farther bank: he being carried over, they came together again.
[17] Which being seen, both he himself and his household When Balsamius saw all these things, he straightway laid aside his wrath, and, stretched on the ground, began to beseech Fantinus from the opposite bank with outstretched hands, that he would not wish him to be left in the darkness of ignorance; saying that he knew he was a servant of the true God; that he desired to be bound to the obedience and service of that same God, who bestows so great power on his own; and that he asked pardon from him, and in turn wished to be, and to be called, his servant, and to obey his precepts. At these things Fantinus greatly rejoiced, and, the readiness of his master being known, he preaches to him the law of Christ Jesus, and instructs him, converted, in the faith.
[18] are converted to Christ. Not much after, the wife Mathilda g, and their children, and the whole house followed the example of the head of the family. And thenceforth Balsamius's life was such that he led that city over to the true faith h. And God adorned him with many miracles. Fantinus was not slower than Balsamius, for, an assembly being gathered, he often taught the people about divine things, and sustained the poor and needy with the means procured, so that in a very short time he destroyed the shrines and groves of the idols; but built churches to God, and to his true Son Jesus Christ. While he does these things, he enters the thirty-third year of his age: on the last day of the month of July he orders the people to be called to an assembly.
[19] And when he was most vehemently discoursing about divine things, he foretold that on the Lord's day next he would depart from this life, The Saint, the day of his death being foretold, piously expires: when the priest had finished the sacred rite. A little after he is seized with a fever, and, the day foretold by him dawning, he ordered himself to be placed within the choir of the church, on a bier. The sacred rite being completed, his hands raised to heaven, when he testified that Jesus Christ was seen by him with bodily eyes, and thereupon repeated, Into thy hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit; he rendered up his soul to God, as free from pain in death as he was from crime and baseness in life.
[20] His body was bathed with so great a light and splendor whose sepulchre was glorious. that for two hours it could not even be seen by anyone. But a most sweet odor filled the church for thirty whole days: and from the sepulchre a certain oil began to overflow, of such power that it met both every kind of disease, and also all the temptations of the soul.
ANNOTATIONS.
it will be able to be persuaded that Messina was converted to Christ long before the times of St. Fantinus. But both these and other things pertaining to that holy Pontiff will be able to be examined on December 8, on which he is inscribed in the Roman Martyrology.
THE OTHER LIFE, OR NARRATION OF THE SAINT'S LIFE AND MIRACLES.
By the author Peter, bishop of Taurianum, published in the praised Caietanus among the Lives of the Sicilian Saints, volume 1, from page 152, the translator being Francis Raiato of the same Society of Jesus, collated with the Greek.
Fantinus, confessor, at Taurianum in Calabria (St.)
By Peter, bishop of Taurianum.
PROLOGUE.
[The author deeming it perilous to conceal, but honorable to reveal, the works of God,] To hide the mystery of the king, as we read it written, is good: but to reveal and confess the works of God is honorable. For not to keep the king's mystery, as it is truly perilous, so is it also pernicious. But how great a peril to the soul it creates to keep silent about the works of God, is incredible a. We, therefore, fearing evilly to use silence in divine matters, and holding suspect the peril hanging over that servant who hid his master's talent in the earth; to whom it was said: Wicked and slothful servant, thou oughtest to have committed my money to the bankers; it was not [our] purpose to hide by silence a sacred and most useful narration, resounding not obscurely indeed, but most openly, and which has come down even to us, but rather to make it known to the common people by a discourse, and to hand it down in monuments of letters, and, as it were, to set it on the table, as we have heard, and known, and our fathers have narrated to us, that it be not hidden from their children, as we have learned in the sacred Scriptures, but that the knowledge of so great things be propagated even to their grandchildren. And lest the good things be blotted out, or, darkened by the deep of oblivion (which one, inspired by the Deity, said excellently and most illustriously), they shut them off.
[2] He undertakes to unfold the deeds of St. Fantinus. It is indeed base that the lives of impious men should be handed down to memory; but, on the contrary, that the virtues of those whom we know to be true servants of Christ should be covered with silence; the sacred oracle so warning: Open thy mouth with the word of God. And we too, having dared beyond what was lawful, and opening our sordid and useless mouth, thus set about the narration. The memory of the just with praises, which was the sentence of the most wise Solomon: The blessing of the Lord is upon the head of the just. For at his praises the peoples will exult b. Since, therefore, the annual memory of the holy Man is to this people a cause of joy, come now, and let us too, according to our strength, not certainly following the law of laudations by an amplification of words, but paying what is due to truth, set forth the deeds of the man in a certain pedestrian and by no means trimmed discourse, putting that very thing as praise, namely a testimony of the things done by him, to the profit of those reading and hearing. For this is to the prudent a true joy, which they certainly take, while the memory of the just is celebrated, gathering thence a certain spiritual gladness, thence an emulation and imitation of good things; incited by those things which they duly hear.
ANNOTATIONS.
CHAPTER I.
The Saint is employed by the master whom he serves in pasturing the herds of horses; he practices prayer and works of mercy; he is accused.
Therefore this most celebrated Servant of God was called Fantinus by a certain divine counsel. For it befitted him Who, having obtained a great name, serves a certain Balsamius, who, before he was formed in his mother's womb, had been known to God, as the divine Jeremiah says, to be named by some illustrious name, so that even from the very appellation it might certainly be perceived by all that this most pious Man was a partaker of divine light, and that by his character he bore the force and meaning of his name. For he, having divinely obtained his name, was serving a certain Balsamius a, I know not whom, then perhaps administering the commonwealth. But on account of the illustrious disposition of his nature, or rather because of the illumination of the divine light inspired in him by God, foreknowing of all things, he attained to a certain firmness and the highest love of discipline b.
[4] For the Lord knows how to render his own famous c. But whom he predestined, fulfilling all the parts of a most upright life. says the Apostle, these he also called, conformable to the image of his Son. But he was a secret, yet a true, worshipper of Christ, keeping the commandments of the Lord, and never departing from them, abstaining from every evil work, unceasingly persisting in fasts and prayers, keeping himself pure and whole from the delights of the world, conversing with God through prayers by day and by night, leading his life altogether according to the monastic norm. Furthermore, just as we have received the divine Scriptures teaching about Moses, that while he pastured the sheep of Jethro his father-in-law, in the wilderness of Midian d, he was made worthy to behold God himself appearing through the fire in the bush, and, having used divine familiarity, to have performed formidable miracles: so plainly it happened also to this one. [He is employed in pasturing the herds of horses; whence he seizes an occasion of praying more freely,]
[5] For when a herd of horses had been committed to him by his master to pasture, he himself dwelt with them in the mountains and solitary places. Thus, fleeing the company of men, he rather chose solitude and quiet; so that, being least distracted, he might pour himself out more freely into divine prayers. So, driving the mares, he now led them from pastures to pastures, now from waters to waters, and to the grassy fields, that he might exhibit them beautiful e, fat, [and] choice f to his own master. And so he discharged this office faithfully and reverently g, hearing the divine Apostle teaching: Servants, obey your carnal masters with fear and trembling, in the simplicity of your heart, as Christ: not serving to the eye, as pleasing men, but as servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart, serving with good will not only the good and modest, but also the froward: as the Lord, and not men: knowing that whatever good each one shall have done, this he shall receive from the Lord, whether servant, or free, or glorious h.
[6] and of practicing works of mercy. The blessed Man, therefore, so conducting himself in these things, and at the same time endowed with purity and temperance, and persisting in prayers and abstinence, was distinguished also with other gifts from God. For to so great goods, which had been heaped divinely on the man, this also accrued, that he was both excellently disposed toward the poor, and very merciful, according to that saying of the Lord: Be merciful, as your Father also is merciful. For he was moved by mercy, most of all, toward the needy, whom, since he had resolved to do good to, and yet, being a servant, could not easily do so, overcome by compassion, when nothing else was at hand which he might bestow on them, at harvest time he threshed the sheaves of the poor and beggars with those horses which he pastured: and that indeed by night, lest he should seem to desert his master i, or to stir up the crowd.
[7] Whence he is accused before his master, For he was not, by night, led by a certain vain hope, detained by nefarious works and actions, as it is written in Isaiah: He who [is] in the night, he says, [has] an evil hope; but rather, on the contrary, the hope of a good work toward God sustaining his mind, by night he spent his help on those laboring in want k. But meanwhile, while the holy Man practices these things, the demon, enemy of good men, striving to deprive the poor of quiet, and to call away the blessed Man from his purpose and zeal of doing well, subjects him to the calumnies of malevolent men: who, going to his master, accuse Fantinus, as if he were afflicting the mares, while, for the sake of friends and kinsmen, he uses their labor by night for threshing. When he Balsamius had heard these things, inflamed with fury, he rises up; he goes off to inspect whether the matter is so.
[8] as if he had discharged his office badly. But when blessed Fantinus, the spirit teaching, perceived his master now approaching thither, he beats the mares with hand and whip l over the sheaves: then indeed you would have seen these sheaves as it were green grass in a field: and they the mares lay reclining as if resting beneath the grass. But he himself, lying on the ground, was sleeping. So when the master had arrived, and had seen him sleeping, and the mares lying upon the grass, addressing the blessed Man, he said: What, Fantinus, are thy mares doing, what are they about? Here he, as if roused from sleep by his master, rising up, said: Behold, as thou seest, master, they are resting upon the grass. Which being heard, and the matter perceived with his own eyes, thence, the man being left, he withdraws. But the holy and divine Man by no means ceased from a work of this kind, since it was good, but continued to practice it diligently. So again those sycophants, to whom the honorable was hateful, but detraction was a care, going to his master Balsamius, say: Why dost thou thus suffer thy servant to wear out the mares in the labors of others? For behold, by his work it has now come about that they are both ugly in appearance and thin in body, plainly so that now they are henceforth useless for work.
[9] Since he indeed bore this very ill; If it please thee, [Therefore the master, about to learn the truth of the matter, departs to the river Metaurus,] the wicked ones add, to know the matter for certain, [go] now, and see m. At these things, rising, a horse being at once mounted, he goes off, about to perceive plainly whether the truth agreed with the things now said by them. But Fantinus had already finished his work; and when he perceived his master now approaching, he sets out on his accustomed horse, driving the mares, that they might cross the nearest river, whose name is Metaurus n, which flows down headlong from a high mountain, and, swift in its course, roars terrible with the very din of its waters: for its gliding waters are at times, but especially in winter, borne with such an impetus that they can scarcely be held back. Furthermore, it was called Metaurus, as I think, not only because Meteoros o, that is, lofty, it rushes from on high from rocky and precipitous places; but also because "meta auras" [p], that is, together with the breeze of a violent blast from the mountain whence its waters flow down, it is driven, and, as if provoked, makes its flow from that very departure
more vehement, and often without rain it overflows, and rushes with a most violent impetus, plainly so that you could not easily cross it.
[10] Or certainly because many rivers flow together into it, it is here described at greater length. from which comes a huge force of water; and therefore someone might have called it Metaurus, as it were Metaphris [q], that is, so to speak, confluences; for receiving all the waters of the rivers flowing into it, and again distributing them into the sea, it alone is called Metarrhus. Unless indeed there be also some other conjecture about this name. For there was a certain Taurus [r], founder of the city, who, captivated with love of it, named it after his own name Taurianum [s], by no means an ignoble one, nay indeed a most illustrious one: whose remains and monuments remain up to our own time, standing here and there on either side of those rivers, and showing the ancient splendor and its magnificence: although now the other part is uninhabitable and uncultivated, on account of those destructions which that place has now for many years suffered. Since, therefore, the river flows through the middle of the city of Taurus, it was accordingly then called Metaurus, and it retains the same name at present.
ANNOTATIONS.
p. This etymology has little savor: for αὖρα properly means a breeze, or a gentler wind.
q. What "Metaphris" means, the translator may not have sufficiently understood, nor do we understand it sufficiently. From our text, not quite rightly expressed, we elicit this: Καὶ διὰ τοῦτο Μέταυρος, ὡς ἂν εἴποί τις, μεταῤῥοῦν ἀπὸ τοῦ ῥεῖν· τὰ γὰρ πάντα τῶν εἰσρεόντων ἐν αὐτῷ ὕδατα δεχόμενος ποταμῶν, καὶ μεταδιδοὺς εἰς τὴν θάλασσαν, αὐτὸς μόνος λέγεται Μέταυρος. That is: And therefore Metaurus: someone might have said "metarrhoum" (a passage, a confluence) from "flowing." For, receiving all the waters of the rivers which flow into it, and distributing them into the sea, it alone is called Metaurus.
r. The city of Taurus was called Taurianum, on the testimony of Baudrand in the description of this place; and it is called the "city of Taurus" below. Whether from its founder, who is here indicated, or for another cause? To us certainly, the author being so copious in conjectures about the etymology of that place, it is not agreeable to add new ones.
s. It was once a city of the Bruttii in Further Calabria, or Magna Graecia, in the tract of the Hipponiates; and quite a notable one indeed, as our author presently attests. That it was episcopal, under the archbishop of Reggio, before it was destroyed by the Saracens, and that the city of Mileto succeeded it in the episcopal dignity in the year 1087 (perhaps it should be written 1078), you will find in the praised Baudrand; yet neither city do we find among the suffragan bishops of the metropolitan of Reggio in Ughelli, volume 9 of the Italia Sacra, column 422; from whose jurisdiction the city of Mileto is asserted to have been exempt, as the same author noted at the word "Mileto," and that the Taurianum episcopal see was translated thither by Pope Gregory VII in the year 1075; which epoch seems to conflict with the earlier one; unless perhaps the said succession, or rather the right of episcopal succession, and the translation of the cathedral see itself, happened in different years. However it be, that succession certainly could not have occurred in the year 1087 under Pope St. Gregory VII, who had already then died, dead in the year 1085, on the 25th day of May, as you have with us at that day. In the Collection of Councils, most recently published, after Labbe, by our John Harduin, volume 3, column 1130, George, bishop .. of the church of Taurianum, of the province of Calabria, subscribes in the Third Council of Constantinople, which was celebrated in the year 680. Other bishops of Taurianum likewise subscribe to other councils in the same place; namely Laurentius to the Lateran Council in the year 649, in the cited volume, column 929; to the Second of Nicaea, in the year 787, Theodore, volume 4, column 459; finally Paul, after Leontius bishop of Reggio, to the Fourth of Constantinople, in the year 870, volume 5, column 929.
* nights
CHAPTER II.
A remarkable miracle of Fantinus; his native land and deeds; his sacred remains most illustrious for miracles; is he thereby proved a martyr?
Therefore, while Fantinus desires to cross this river with the horses, as has been said, that he might lead them back to the accustomed place; seeing it then greatly overflowing along its whole bank, With a rod he divides the waters of the Metaurus, that he himself may cross, and knowing that he could not easily convey them across; and, moreover, having caught sight of his master following close behind, girded with the arms of prayer, like that great Moses, receiving, as I think, with the ears of his mind that divine voice, "Why criest thou to me?" he drove his horse gently, and, stretching out the rod in his hand, and striking the water of the river with it, as if it were animate, he said, Stay, Metaurus, for Fantinus, the servant of God, is crossing. And indeed the waters stood on this side and on that: [and] so the holy Man crossed over with the horses, as if over dry ground. But the master, like Pharaoh, while he pursues the man from behind, beholding this miracle worthy of all admiration, cried out after him with a great effort of voice, and said, Have mercy on me, servant of the Most High God, and bid me come to thee.
[12] then also the master, pricked by the miracle of the thing; For his heart had not, as of old Pharaoh's, grown hard; although he pursued: but, struck with fear of the new and unwonted thing, he suddenly, on the spot, came to the knowledge of God. And Fantinus, moreover, when he had also poured forth prayers for him, brought it about that he, as it were over dry ground, crossed with dry foot, the waters meanwhile returning to their own place. Here, the miracle being seen, Balsamius, astounded and seized with horror, fell at the feet of the holy Man, asking pardon of him, and weeping, said, Now at last I have truly known thee to be a servant of God. Now, therefore, thou shalt be my lord, thou my master. And this also, which happened in this miracle, is to be considered. For by the rod which was borne by the holy Man, not a simple one indeed, but bound with leathern thongs (since those who pasture horses are wont to bear thongs of this kind; and these they call "taureae" a), a very great miracle was wrought.
[13] which the author of the Life For by the rod indeed of Moses b, but by the leathern scourge, the deed which was wrought by the holy Man was like the miracle of Elijah c and Elisha d. For as they — the one striking the Red Sea e with a rod, the other the river Jordan with a sheepskin — crossed with dry footsteps; so no otherwise did that plainly admirable Man. Nor indeed is this a wonder: for the Blessed one had expressed the virtues of these, and therefore was affected with like gifts also. For the name of servitude harmed him in nothing, as one who served God with his very mind, and had his soul's desire fixed on him whom he also imitated. For he (which is his supreme kindness and mercy) took the form of a servant for our sake, and himself humbled himself, for the salvation of us all, even unto death.
[14] with deserved praises For nothing hinders him who has resolved to live rightly, although it may sometimes happen that he is driven about, pressed by the yoke of servitude. Thus Joseph, when he had been sold into servitude, yet had led his life chastely and piously,
was made prince of all Egypt; having attained and obtained the glory of the kingdom. So also that Onesimus f (I speak to those who know), who certainly was such that he deserved to be approved even by the testimony of the Apostle himself, as a most apt instrument of piety, most ready for obedience; nay even [as] a free man, and noble in his very birth. For God esteems these of more worth in glory, he who chose the things that are foolish of the world, and ignoble, and contemptible, and the things that are not: and ennobles them in his heavenly kingdom. For there is no acceptance of persons with God. For in Christ Jesus there is not, says the divine Apostle, Gentile and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, servant, free; nor male and female; but Christ is all, and in all.
[15] For each one's work shall be made plain on that dreadful day, he continues, and each shall receive his own reward, not according to the dignity and nobility of this world, but according as each shall have labored, account being had, namely, of the observance of God's commandments, in what manner he shall have fulfilled them. Then indeed not the rich, not those excelling in brightness of blood, but the just shall shine forth, as the sun, in the kingdom of their Father. He that hath ears to hear, let him hear, says the Lord. For the rest, this is the life, this the way of life, these the miracles above human thought and the heavenly endeavors of the most celebrated and thrice-blessed man Fantinus.
[16] In these labors of the virtues he persisted bravely and constantly, as also the Saint himself. and with lofty spirit fought against the opposing enemy: and received the reward from the hand of the Lord: Well done, good and faithful servant (he heard the Lord speaking) g: because thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will set thee over many things, enter into the joy of thy Lord. Enter now, and in heaven lead the choirs together with the heavenly minds h, having attained rewards worthy of thy labors. And before indeed thou didst pasture the animals devoid of reason, but now pasture the people of the Lord i. But now the narration concerning the man's life, which he lived in the body, has been thus far completed; hence let us now turn our discourse to his greater miracles.
[17] This excellent Armor-bearer of piety, and adamant of endurance, His native land is indicated; was born in this native land: for although he was born of servile condition, yet he is certainly ours. Whence we attend the Man with a still greater love, and embrace him with our mind; since he is our domestic honor and ornament. For as fruitful trees set before their native soil, as it were for a banquet, the fruits which they have nourished, so also he, existing from our soil, and raised to the highest summit of glory in the working of miracles, and, like a flourishing palm, or the cedar which is in Lebanon, grown great, rendered to the land, which had both brought him forth and nourished him, the reward of piety, the fruit of himself, exciting those who are willing to the emulation and imitation of his life.
[18] But what the departure of this blessed and most celebrated Man was, [but the departure of his life is hidden, yet the sacred remains grow illustrious.] or what the end of his life, is not sufficiently clear. For we have not perceived by hearing, except that the sacred relics of his body, since they are preserved with us, are a remedy for all diseases and languors, and everywhere recall very many to health. Accordingly they are as it were a fountain of admirable works set forth, or a medicine of divers sicknesses. For not, as the sepulchre of Moses, so also the sepulchre of this blessed Man, is uncertain; but his Moses's death indeed is manifest, but his tomb is hidden k from men. In this most holy Man the contrary happened; for his death, precious, according to David's sentence, made in the sight of the Lord, has hidden itself from us even until now: but his burial is now illustrious and famous, which, in his temple, up to this present age, as a certain perpetual fountain of remedies, sends forth health-giving waters to those who, upright in faith and burning with desire, run to it.
[19] Whence some, astounded at the greatness of the things From the greatness of the miracles which, above the force and order of nature, he works after the rest of death, came into this opinion, that he was made worthy of the place of the martyrs. For, looking to those miracles, they judge that there was no light action of this blessed and most celebrated Man, in proportion to the grace conferred on him for accomplishing so many and so great works. For unless he, they say, ended his day through a contest, how was he divinely ennobled with such and so admirable works? Not, I think, judging rightly. For what work of virtue do we find in Moses before he had seen God in the bush l? What in Elisha, before his frequent approach to Elijah; when, having received a double m spirit from him, he performed those wondrous miracles?
[20] that it does not follow that the Saint was a martyr, But what contest had he undergone then, when even after his death, by the mere touch of his bones, one who had died was suddenly recalled to life n? For even the blessed Elijah himself, the courier of heaven, who has not yet died, what battles do we know him to have accomplished before he wrought so many and so great miracles? Nothing else assuredly had preceded, than a sure faith in God, and an excellent mercy toward his neighbors and the needy. Of which matter certainly the divine Scriptures are witnesses. Although some other things also are perceived to be in them specifically: in Moses indeed meekness, as also in David; but in Elisha simplicity, as also in Jacob: but in Elijah zeal. For the discourse will suffer it to be said that he, although needy, was certainly eminent and foremost in piety and intimate familiarity with God. All which summits of virtues certainly are no less arguments of shed blood than of a sure, as has been said, inseparable, and fiery faith, through which they were able to accomplish such great works of virtue.
[21] the author proves For this the saying of the Lord in the Gospels indicates, saying: Amen I say to you, if you have faith as a grain of mustard-seed; you shall say to this mountain: Remove hence thither, and it shall remove, and nothing shall be impossible to you. Which indeed is to be seen also in this blessed Man. As also Abraham the patriarch was reputed just from faith alone; for so it is written: Abraham believed God, and it was reputed to him unto justice. Jeremiah likewise, one among the Prophets most apt for knowing mercy, was both known to God before he was formed, and, before he came forth from the womb into the light, endowed with sanctity, attained a great power over nations and kings. For Amos indeed the goatherd, but endowed with the gift of prophecy, we will willingly pass over: as also David, likewise a prophet and king, of whom it is not permitted now to speak one by one.
[22] from induction For the things which could be set forth about him, those know, from whom the mysteries of the sacred Scriptures are not hidden: how the Lord called him from pasturing sheep to pasturing Jacob his servant, and Israel his inheritance. But it is worth the labor to understand this also, namely that God holds acceptable not the multitude of gifts or labors, but the unhesitating faith of a sincere mind. For that widow, of whom there is mention in the Gospels, bought the heavenly kingdom with two small mites. But five virgins, after their sweats, and the very many labors undertaken for guarding their virginity, because they were touched by no compassion for another's ill, or by humanity, were thrust out from it the kingdom. For disturbances of this kind argue a wild and impious mind. So also John the Baptist compares the unbelieving and ungrateful Jews, because they were moved by no mercy toward others, to vipers: and exhorts them to make fruits worthy of penance.
[23] Likewise, of two tunics let them give to the needy; and the same of foods, of very many others; although it is not to be wondered at, he bids them do. But what made the thief, although he hung from the cross, an heir of heaven in a moment of time, but the true knowledge of God, with which, at that very hour, he was illuminated, and an unhesitating faith, and an upright and sincere purpose? It is, therefore, not of him that wills, nor of him that runs, but of God that shows mercy: For I will have mercy, he says, on whom I have mercy, and I will show mercy to whom I will be merciful. But if, besides those divine actions and virtues, and the efficacy of unheard-of miracles, and athletic contests, the holy Man, the enemy being laid low, and his own blood shed, meeting death, was girt with the crown of a martyr, that should seem a wonder to no one.
[24] He was indeed a servant, we do not deny it. But how would he not gladly have given himself to martyrdom, if he had been a martyr: God calling him, since he was such and so great in virtues and in the sublimity of miracles, strengthened by the power and grace of the Holy Spirit inhering in him? Wherefore, if these things are so, as has been said, a double glory of exultation comes to us hence: for double is the crown of our Athlete. Besides, he is ours: for he draws his origin from us. But since we have also made mention of the other miracles which the blessed Man performed after the laying-down of his tabernacle body and his ascent to the seats of heaven: come, let us produce also certain other things wrought by him, that by these the discourse may confirm to be true both these and those which we have mentioned before.
[25] For we do not say and write these things following old-wives' fables, of some of whose miracles the same who is the writer is also an eyewitness. but of some of them we are eyewitnesses and ministers o. But what these are, hear. The cleansing of lepers, the restoration of paralytics, the health of those vexed by demons, the cures of the sick, sight restored to the blind, the erect posture given to the lame; but if anyone should add also the raising of the dead, he would not indeed stray from the truth. Besides this, visions in dreams, and speeches, admonitions and precepts of useful things, and the resolutions of calamities; and that he appeared, in sea perils, to those in danger who invoked him by name, and afforded them help: and, they being snatched from perils, freed them from various calamities, as we have said. But this [is] the beginning of his miracles.
ANNOTATIONS.
CHAPTER III.
Part I of the miracles wrought by the Saint's aid.
Miracle I.
A certain Theodore, illustrious in civic dignities, when he had asked and received gold as a loan from him who then held power, [A certain Theodore, the money being paid but the receipt lost, is compelled to pay again,] used it at his pleasure. But thence, no long time having passed, the debtor paid the gold to the prince who demanded it back, having received besides a receipt that he had now discharged the debt. But again, not much after, the prince, whether having forgotten, or acting on purpose a, demanded the gold, denying that it had been returned to him by Theodore: and demanded the receipt, by which it might appear whether he had received it. Here Theodore suddenly runs to his own writings, searching out the prince's bond. When he had scrutinized and ransacked many things, he could by no means find it. Then he began to consume himself with tears and grief, and, groaning and sighing most gravely, to supplicate God that he would vindicate him from that calamity, and, invoking the name of the holy Man, he said: Be present here to wretched me, holy Fantinus of God, and free me, hemmed in by this peril and constraint.
[27] he sees St. Fantinus in his sleep, Thence, when night came on, and sleep crept over the man, he sees in his sleep Fantinus coming to him, presenting the appearance of a horseman, and his horse drenched with sweat, as if he had at last arrived there after a long journey and a most vehement course. Who thus addresses the sorrowful man: Tell me, what ails thee, or why, lord, dost thou waste away with so great grief? To whom he: I am tormented in mind, he says; because gold, which I in no way embezzled, is exacted from me, and I gravely fear lest, together with all my household, I be sold off on account of the gold. Here Fantinus, taking up the trembling man, says: God knows best that I have come hither for thy sake, having traversed so many miles. For behold my horse, as thou seest, drips with much sweat. But who art thou, then, Lord? he added.
[28] I am thy neighbor, answered Fantinus, who shows him the receipt. a dweller of the city of Taurianum b: for the writing which thou wast seeking is in that volume, at the end of the sheet. Which said, he departed. O admirable thing! for, asked who he was, he concealed his name, manifesting his own temple only from the place, where his precious relics are preserved. So Theodore, rising up, and searching for the sheet indicated by the holy Man in his sleep, found the receipt which he was seeking, written at the bottom. So, having set out, and producing it before the judge, he went away unharmed, duly praising God thereafter; for he recognized the divine Man whom he had invoked to be the very one who had appeared, and had extricated him from the peril. Wherefore from then on he observed the memory of the holy Man every year, supplying oil abundantly for tending the lights of the temple: and treating most courteously and liberally those who were received at a banquet with him on that day c. So great, indeed, was his faith in and love for the holy Man; so ardent and immutable the desire by which he was held toward him.
II.
[29] Furthermore Nicetas, the son of this man d, from whom we also received these things, while he was archdeacon of our holy church, A scabby man recounted to us another miracle worthy indeed to be committed to writing. And thus he said: When I was a youth, I chanced to fall into a grave disease, so that my whole body, from a fierce scab, swarmed with ulcers. So, in this condition, my household, setting me on a horse, brought me to the holy Man. And by night at some time I see in my sleep the Saint standing, and as companions two men, august in episcopal dress, whom he addressed by name, this one George, but that one John.
[30] Now these holy bishops had discharged their office in the place of the holy and catholic church, by the Saint appearing to him not without testimony of exceptional piety: whose relics also are preserved in the building of St. Fantinus. These I saw, as it were come forth from their own tombs, cleaving to the Saint. He therefore said to me: Rise now, he says. Then I, rising up on the spot, stood on my feet. Again he: Strip, he says. Then, while, trembling, I carry out the command, and take off one shirt, but leave the other, clinging to my body, he repeats: Strip.
[31] When I blushed to do this, speaking more harshly, he is healed in a wondrous manner. Strip, he says. So, stripped of that shirt, I stood naked, all bristling with ulcers: but he, when he again commanded me to strip; Why dost thou speak to me so harshly? I said. But when he repeated the same, then I, having grasped the skin of my body with my own hands, tried to draw it off; and when I had stretched it with my hands, I took it all off from there like a garment, and threw it on the ground. Then the Saint: Behold, he says, thou hast recovered; put on now thy garments, and return to thy home. While he was still speaking, being awakened, I knew myself, the disease being driven off, wholly well. For when I had suddenly risen up cleansed, I went to my house, giving immortal thanks to God.
III.
[32] When a certain man had received three coins as a loan from I know not whom, A certain man, abusing the name of St. Fantinus by perjury whose name, moved by horror of the deed, I will willingly pass over, and, some time having passed, the debt was demanded back by the creditor, he flatly denied it, repeatedly asserting that he had received nothing at all from him. But when he the creditor noticed him denying it, and less able, and not even willing, to pay the debt: Here, he says, if by an oath thou wilt make St. Fantinus witness that thou owest me nothing at all, I desist from the controversy: I will now trouble thee no more about this. So when both had gone to the building of the Saint, the unhappy man swore, by the sepulchre of the holy Man, that he owed him nothing. Thence, departing, each went off to his own affairs.
[33] he is punished with a violent death. But a few days afterward, it fell out that he who had perjured himself set out to dispatch a certain business of his own. Having set out, therefore, the matter being done, he wished to return; but when he was in the middle of the journey, and had turned aside a little from the public road, and, leaping down from his horse, had tied it to a tree (whose trunk, with its root, still stands, a proof of the deed), he stood mute, and as if out of his mind, and bristling with much ulcer, looking round here and there. So at last, an inarticulate voice being uttered, and invoking the name of the holy Fantinus, as if he were being tortured by him, dashed against the tree, he fell down upon it, and the wretch suddenly breathed out his soul, having become an example to those who would perjure themselves.
ANNOTATIONS.
CHAPTER IV.
The second part of the miracles.
IV.
Another, one of the nobles of the city, sick in his feet, One laboring in his feet is cured. and worn out with vehement pain; and no longer able to bear the force of the torment, comes to the Saint, and that very same night, while he sleeps together with others who were with him; one of his servants sees in his sleep his master's feet bound with certain thongs up to the legs. This servant hesitates, and considers within himself what this was, or who had bound about the feet of his master. While he ponders these things within himself, he catches sight of a certain man, terrible and venerable in aspect, standing beside his master, whom also a certain boy accompanied. To whom he who had appeared said, Who is this that lies here? To whom he the servant, supplying the man's name, said, He is such a one; but he labors in his feet. Then, when he who had already presented himself to be seen, the august Man, had sat on a certain seat, Loose, he says, his feet. At once he begins with both hands to take the thongs off the man's feet: and when he had freed one, Loose the other also, says the Saint. The servant obeys. Then the Saint: Let the man go; now he may depart. And, these things said, he vanished. So when he immediately rose in the morning, well and rejoicing, he went off to his house. For the rest, his intimate friend narrated these things to us.
[35] A certain little girl, of most tender age, being nearly in her second year, while she slept by night with her mother, A certain little girl, deprived of sight by the power of a demon, was at some time struck, and cast out into the middle of the house. The parent, awakened, and not finding the girl in the bed (for she had felt nothing of how she had been taken from her own bosom, the demon namely doing this), leaps up in haste, and sees her sitting, as has been said, in the middle of the house, and deprived of her sight. She was moreover in doubt what this was; but her father, delaying nothing at all, took his daughter, seized in his arms, to the Saint. So on the first night, while the girl's father and grandfather slept in the building of the Saint, they hear a huge noise at the doors of the temple, as of someone pushing them, or bursting through them. Here the father, roused with fear, and embracing the girl, lay down with her. But the grandfather, more confident in mind, went off to inspect who was pushing the door.
[36] When he had unlocked it, and had seen no one, made whole by the Saint, she is restored to herself and to her own. he returned, the door being again shut, and lay down in his bed. But at once the doors began again to clash against each other a; he recognized that it was a demon, whom the Saint kept from the entrance of the temple; so he now made no account of it. For the rest, on the next night the doors of the temple were shaken. Then by the maidservants, who had come into the temple, in the deep of night, the demon was seen, as it were a huge dog standing outside the door. Then on the third night after dawn, the day now lightening, her eyes being suddenly opened, the girl recognized her father. So the father, gladly receiving her well, returns home, gratefully rendering praises to God. But afterward, when this girl had grown up, and, by the grace of God, had advanced in her rule of life, in virginity no less than in age, being nearly in her thirtieth year, she was judged worthy to be made abbess of the sacred virgins in the monastery of the Saint himself; and her name was Gregoria.
VI.
[37] A certain David, a physician by science, a Syrian by birth, a Christian by religion, when at some time he labored under a sharp pain of the eyes, Another is freed from a pain of the eyes and the peril of blindness, so that he could not see even a wall, on account of the excessive thickness and density of his body; was tormented vehemently with pain. And when, by that means by which
he was strong in his art, and had tried many things, he certainly could not heal himself. Wherefore, when, because of the long and grievous sickness, he foresaw that he would be wholly deprived of his eyes, he hastens his journey to the Saint, and, descending to the sepulchre, which was placed below, in which place the precious and venerable relics of the holy Man were said formerly to have been kept, he found a little water, flowing out from a certain hole. (For the place is damp:) When, therefore, he had received it b, and rendering praises to the Deity, he departed; not unlike, namely, him who, when he had washed in Siloe, rejoiced, his blindness being driven off, in his recovered sight.
VII.
[38] A certain eunuch, illustrious in the dignity of a priest, as also another, [freed from a most grievous disease,] himself relating these things to us about himself: When I had not yet passed out of my youth, he says, I once fell into a most grievous disease, which vexed me six whole months. So, brought to the building of St. Fantinus by my kinsmen, I remained there not a few days. But, pressed by the gravity of the disease, I supplicated the holy Man that he would look upon me and have mercy. So I asked: O holy Man, especially most dear to God, who hast had mercy on many and hast saved them, do thou now, having had mercy on me thy servant also, kindly save me. Then on a certain night, I seem to myself to see in my sleep the holy Man, presenting the appearance and figure of a most beautiful young man, girt with a cloak, and shod.
[39] commanded to rise by Fantinus appearing to him. Now a certain boy went before him, carrying a lit torch in his hand. When he had ascended from the sepulchre, he hastily enters to the altar, and, prayers being poured out, he came to me. Presently, to the boy carrying the torch before [him], Who, he says, is this? To whom he: He is sick, Lord. But the Saint: There is nothing wrong with him, he says. And while he says these things, he offers me fragrant incense: and adds: Rise, now thou art well: then he went off to the door which looks to the west. Here I, awakened from sleep, and smelling, felt a most fragrant odor breathed from my hand, and immediately, rising up, I went off to my house, my health being restored, praising God.
VIII.
[40] Another, dissolved in his whole body and carried on a sheet by four men, Dissolved in his whole body, he recovers: and not able even a little to turn himself over in his own bed by himself, being at last brought by his household, was placed in the portico of St. Fantinus; whom we too saw miserably suffering. He, within a few days, his health being recovered, returned home on his own feet, [and] gave thanks to God. And thence we too saw the man working: and, taught by him the manner in which he had obtained health, we offered praises to God, using that Davidic saying: God is wonderful in his Saints.
IX.
[41] But that miracle also, illustrious, in an illustrious man. an illustrious man, rashly prattling about Fantinus's sanctity, is punished; For a certain Andrew, flourishing indeed in exceptional dignity in the city, but swelling with an elated and proud mind, came to such a pitch of audacity that, holding of little worth the famous miracles of St. Fantinus which were everywhere published, he even rashly prattled this: Who then is this Fantinus? For we know him to be a servant, and moreover a pastor of mares. And indeed I too, if I please, can shortly gather for myself an equal fame of sanctity. Thus the wretch raved, against himself no less than against heaven: and declared by these words that the glory divinely given to Fantinus was not great. So, having gone out hunting at some time, he gave just penalties of his impious rashness: for, falling headlong by chance from his horse, his thigh being broken, the wretch was vehemently afflicted; but, his body being grievously afflicted, his mind returned to health: for the memory of St. Fantinus, despised by him, touched his mind, and he reckoned this the one cause of so great a calamity.
[42] So he began by repenting to correct his error and impiety, but, repenting of the deed, he obtained his former health. and more bitterly to accuse his own unbelief. Then to pour forth humble prayers to the blessed Man, and again and again to ask that he would kindly spare him, and heal his broken thigh. Suddenly the awaited help was present. Whatever there was of pain and disease was relieved and driven off. So he, when he had recovered, gratefully rendered due praises to God; and extolling Fantinus according to his strength, he said: Truly, excellent is the sanctity of this Man, incredible his power. Nor indeed did his grateful mind afterward cool at all. For from then on he thenceforth honored the memory of the holy Man every year with the highest religion and faith, preparing on that day a splendid and joyful banquet, and keeping up great gladness with his intimates.
[43] A certain girl, unmarried, and rather tender in age, when she was vexed by an impure evil demon, was led to the holy Man by her mother, A girl [freed from an evil demon,] and delivered to the superior of the monastery; who, while she implored the aid and help of the holy Man, together with the whole company of sisters, that the wretched girl might be freed from the evil demon, sincerely pitied the girl. So when she had poured forth prayers, oil being taken from the extinguished lamp of the holy Man, anointing the girl, they shortly received her sound and unharmed c. For the rest, she, having put on the monastic habit, bound herself to the monastery, leading a monastic life in it with the rest, praiseworthy in purity and virginity: and diligently persisting night and day in the service of St. Fantinus.
XI.
Another likewise, seized by a most wicked spirit, having entered the building of the Saint, as also another are freed. and stayed in it a few days, presently attaining health, went off home, paying the just debt of thanks d.
ANNOTATIONS.
CHAPTER V.
The third part of the miracles.
XII.
They called a certain man Theoctistus, a eunuch and a monk a; The Saint seen by someone in sleep, he narrated to me that he had at some time gone to St. Fantinus, and, having prayed, had returned home. But night drawing on, when he had lain down and slept, it seemed to him that he was in the Saint's temple, and singing the accustomed praises together with the sisters. But then, while they were singing together, a certain young man, he says, of my own age, stood by, with black and curly hair, of altogether exceptional appearance. He, holding a staff in his hand, stood by the abbess, and sang together with them, leaning on the staff, on which was inscribed: Arise, O Lord, help us, and free us for thy name's sake. Then, when he had sat on a certain seat, he sang.
[45] to sing the praises of God with the nuns. To whom the abbess: To us, she says, that has not been handed down by our father, Lord. But I, answered the young man: I know that well too; but with me it is thus wont to be done. But whence art thou? says the abbess. To whom he, his right hand stretched out toward the temple: I am from here, and this building is mine. So, rising up, he went off to the right part of the temple, toward the East. Then she: Dost thou then depart, Lord? I depart now, he says, since I have been sent forth to a ministry; which I now proceed to discharge. But presently, returning, I will abide together with you. Then the abbess: By thy prayers, Lord, render God propitious to us. So he, turning, and they being sealed with the sign of the venerable cross, went off to that part which looks to the East. Here I, says Theoctistus, who had been a spectator, being awakened, wondered greatly, and praised God. Which things, when I had received them from that monk, I noted down b.
XIII.
[46] Once, when the feast-day of St. Fantinus was drawing near, He succors one in peril at sea, and the holy Saturday of the greater week c was at hand, when the superior of the ascetics nuns was greatly distressed in mind, because there was no oil at all in the monastery, neither for the lights of the temple, nor for the use of the sisters: behold, about the sixth hour of the day, some man I know not, brings a vessel, full of oil, of about twelve sextarii d. When he had offered it: The most holy bishop of the city, he says, sends this oil to St. Fantinus: for when he was in peril at sea, and tossing on it, when he had come into the sight of the Saint, having prayed to him, he felt present help, and escaped from the sea's waves. For this reason he sent this oil. So the abbess received the oil, gave immortal thanks to God, and brought it about that the church shone with its accustomed splendor, and that the need of the sisters was sufficiently provided for on the holy and festal day of the reviving Christ. When we had perceived and received these things, we praised God, who governs all things by inexplicable providence.
XIV.
[47] But a girl of nearly four years, when she had once been brought by her parents to the building of St. Fantinus, and he appears to the girl about to die. and led in to the altar by her father, where the tomb of the holy Man was, the abbess, having received her, brought her up in the monastery, and taught her sacred letters and the monastic rule, and joined her to the sisters. And when she had passed some time in the monastery, she was involved in a disease, which was also the last of her life. So her parents, receiving their daughter, that they might render her the due offices in her infirmity (for they were not far from the monastery), ministered to her. But when she was now about to die, turning to her mother with a cheerful countenance, Mother, she says, behold St. Fantinus. But where, O daughter, is St. Fantinus? says the parent. To whom the girl: Behold, where he stands; dost thou not see him? And immediately she breathed out her soul. So they committed her remains, brought into the monastery, to burial. These things being received by us from her parents, we extolled the divine Deity.
XV.
[48] The force of a disease, raging rather bitterly, had so afflicted a certain woman that she seemed now about to breathe out her soul. He heals a woman struggling with death: So her household lead her to the building of St. Fantinus, to entreat for health; but the fever did not then depart at all; nay rather it had so exhausted all the strength of her body that almost all use of the senses seemed lost. For she could neither take any food, nor at all taste water: but she had no hearing or sight: you would have called her altogether rather a corpse, had not merely a very slight breath survived to her. So she seemed to be soon consigned to burial. But indeed God, the founder and restorer of nature, in a certain unwonted manner displayed the power of his Fantinus. For when the household, mourning, had carried the sick and afflicted woman home, lest she should rather die there; behold, suddenly well and unharmed, she springs up: she hastens joyful to the venerable building of St. Fantinus, gives the greatest thanks she can to him who deserved most excellently of her: and hangs up an offering at his sacred tomb, a monument of her grateful mind.
XVI.
[49] When once the abbess of the sacred virgins, and her company, entered the temple at dawn
had entered, his relics are illustrated with a miraculous light; to render the accustomed hymnody to God, and it was now completed, and all had pronounced "Christe eleison," as is wont in the morning absolution, suddenly there was seen from the altar as it were a fiery lamp, and small, which, gradually growing, as was reported to us, filled the whole altar with light, where the most venerable relics of St. Fantinus are preserved. When the nuns beheld this, struck with fear, they were utterly struck dumb, not able at all to sing, or even to speak, for the huge astonishment. Then, when the light vanished, the whole building was filled with a great and sweet odor, as of very much ointment. So at once the nuns burst forth from the temple, affected no less with dread than with immense gladness: for the admirable spectacle had cast fear and astonishment upon them.
XVII.
[50] Nor, moreover, was that unlike which happened to a certain man, by name Solomon, whom we heard relating it. but the building sacred to him For when he once, as he said, was descending from the mountain with a certain friend; and, evening drawing on, turning aside from the road, they had come to the temple of St. Fantinus, situated on the slope of the mountain, to take pleasant rest there (now the natives had built this building of St. Fantinus where the report was that he had dwelt while he pastured the mares: and there also they say is the threshing-floor of the Saint, whence they call that place even today the threshing-floor of St. Fantinus). So those whom we mentioned before, having entered this temple for rest, see clearly, in the dead of night, in a vision, several men clothed in white garments, sitting on horses; and descending from them, entering the temple: presently they see the whole building filled with abundant light, and them singing with a clear voice. And the horses, standing outside, neighed.
[51] is honored by the heavenly citizens. But I, says Solomon, when, terrified, I looked at these things, being astounded, was struck dumb, then to my companion next to me, who was sleeping, Dost thou hear? I say. Rise now, and see a miracle. But when he lay still pressed by heavy sleep, again striking the man with my hand, I say; Come, wretch, rise up at last, and behold the mystery. So, the space of about three hours being passed, and the singing being finished by those men who had appeared in white, I see the temple closed on all sides, and no lamp lit, [and] the men who had been seen at last vanished. Here I, How terrible, I say, is this place! There is here nothing else but the house of God. Then, rising up immediately, thoroughly terrified, I departed, praising God. These things he narrated to us with tears, the memory of the miracle producing, as I think, fear as well as joy. But we, when we had received these things, inquired accurately into the time and the day, and so found it plainly as he had taught.
XVIII.
[52] For [now] that, which was little short of escaping me, of the Saracens raging against the Christians let me add as it were a colophon to the narration; that, namely, which nearly all the natives of this city have in their mouth, and, received from their elders, hand down from hand to hand to their grandchildren as a certain inheritance. And it is of this kind. At the time when the impious Saracens, like monstrous beasts, were raging against the Christians, they burst forth from Africa at some time with a great army to depopulate and devastate all the places of the Christians, and to make plunder, on that very day, of spoils and of peoples — that day on which the feast-day of St. Fantinus was kept, on which a numerous multitude of people, as is customary, gathered, adorning by public assemblies and with great celebrity the memory of the holy Man, which is observed on the twenty-fourth day of July.
[53] a ship put in at Taurianum is burned by the Saint appearing; So a certain ship of those impious ones by chance put in at this city, and appeared over against the temple of St. Fantinus; where suddenly the sea is stirred by a whirlwind, and a great storm being roused, then the ship, driven by the force of the storm-clouds and waves, and dashed against the rocks, was suddenly shattered and broken up. But of the enemies who were in it, some perished in the deep abyss; others were captured by the Christians who had run together thither: to whom they also related this, that when they had put in with that ship, they had seen a certain man on the rock, younger in age, carrying a lit torch in his hand, and near him a certain woman clothed in purple standing by, at whose nod, when he had hurled the torch which he held in his hand into the neighboring ship, all were suddenly burned up.
[54] for which cause the Saracens who survived captured are converted to Christ. When those who had flowed together to keep the feast-day heard these things from the Saracens, they extolled the divine Deity with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, [him] who had saved them beyond expectation through the patronage of St. Fantinus. So, triumphing with the greatest joy and gladness, they completed the feast-day. But the Saracens who had been captured, taught by what had happened to them that the mysteries of the Christians were great and health-bringing, being illuminated with faith and washed in the sacred baptism, gave their names to Christ, and no longer wished to seek again their own homes.
[55] But why should I recount and number the individual miracles of the holy Man? Very many miracles of the Saint passed over by their writer. For time would fail me as I narrated: for many, great, and unwonted things the holy and most happy servant of Christ, Fantinus, performed: which, because they are nearly innumerable, can by no means be narrated or committed to writing. But these few of many we write, that it may hence be established how freely and familiarly he dealt with God, on account of the purity of his life.
ANNOTATIONS.
* read "Now."
CHAPTER VI.
The fourth part of the miracles.
XIX.
[56] But the things which happened to me, however humble and slight a man, from the grace and kindness of God, and the intercession of St. Fantinus, to wrap in silence I deem altogether unjust. The writer of these miracles Wherefore, what these were, or how they happened, I will explain in a few words. At the time when Leo the heretic was now reigning in his third a year, it was commanded to me, and to certain other Sicilians, by him who at that time acted as leader of military affairs in Sicily, that we should go as legates to the emperor, concerning certain matters pertaining to the province to be corrected. So, having obtained a ship, about to set out for Byzantium, we embarked: and, sailing from Sicily, a favorable wind blowing, we came to the Adriatic Sea.
[57] Where there was roused against us a turbulent wind, which is called Euroclydon b, as it is written in the Acts of the holy Apostles: tossed by a horrible storm at sea, which appellation is certainly a true one; for this wind, blowing widely and violently, raises over the whole sea a great storm, and one which, as I think, can scarcely be endured; for "eury" or "eureos" means widely; "clydon" c means a storm and a tossing. So when the sea swelled, and the waves, the wind driving, were now raised up, and ascended to the very mountains, now descended into the depths and plains: the sailors furled the ship's sails, and, the rudder being carried inboard, they left the ship to be tossed by the sea. So while we are vexed by so great a storm, and are in peril for three whole days and as many nights, and, together with those rough waves, are now raised up to the very sky, now thrust down into the lowest, near to Tartarus, we were afflicted with no slight distress and grief of mind.
[58] and without hope of safety, For now all hope of our safety was taken away. For as we read in Jonah: When the ship was in peril, the sailors feared, and cried out to their God. So nearly the same thing happened to us also. For those who were carried in the ship, each invoked God. Likewise the Saints whom they knew, and also St. Aemilian d, as is the custom of sailors. But we, together with God, implored also our Lady, and holy Mother of God, and the other Saints, likewise holy Fantinus, since he was ours. While we do these things, and pour forth prayers with tears, the sailors believed that I was lying down asleep. So the steersman, whose name was Elias, crying out to me, Rise, he says, lord, and pray, and entreat safety for us from God, the present peril being driven off.
[59] by the patronage of St. Fantinus Having heard these things, I was indeed struck with greater fear, turning my mind and spirit upon myself: for I knew myself not sufficiently fit for these things, nor able to do anything. But yet we by no means departed from hope in God, and although we acknowledged ourselves defiled with vices, we certainly did not cease at all from supplicating. So we entreated the kind and merciful God that he would have mercy on us, and, through the intercession of his Saints, extricate us all from that distress, wearied as we were with much fasting and grievously afflicted. Now on the third day following e, the deacon who was with me (of whom there is mention in the last chapter), when he had lain down a little, sees in his sleep the Saint, in exactly the same dress and figure in which he was wont to appear to mortals, quickly running to the waters, sitting on a noble horse, then standing at the prow of the ship, [and] striking the waves with the whip which he carried in his right hand.
[60] he is freed from destruction; So at once the deacon, being awakened, narrated the vision to us all. But we, when we had received these things, being astounded, praised God, and, exulting, began to send forth voices of thanks, and, food being taken, restored our strength: and whatever there was remaining of dread, we drove it all off. So on that very day, the storm being driven off, the sea was calmed; and the highest tranquillity succeeded the tempest. Thence we finished our course, a fair wind blowing, rendering thanks and praises to God, who had freed us, through the patronage and help of St. Fantinus, from a sad death.
XX.
[61] But now, if I shall have recorded only one miracle of the holy Man, as also [freed from a calamity threatened against him by malevolent men before the emperor at Constantinople;] I will make an end of narrating. For, though it be the last, I certainly deem it worthy of memory. And it happened at Constantinople. For when we, and likewise other legates, were gone to the emperor, and, having arrived at Constantinople, and been received at a banquet by the emperor, had eaten with him; certain envious and spiteful men, the emperor's mind being stirred against us, strove to ruin our affairs, but especially mine, namely because I was the author of the cause. So they contrived against us exile and a sad punishment, such as indeed we did not yet expect. Here indeed I began to be greatly saddened, and to supplicate God that he would drive that calamity from our heads, lest we should be exposed to public ignominy and infamy on foreign soil, whence the unbelieving enemies would exult with joy.
[62] When I had pressed on with these prayers for some days, and, worn out with sadness and cares (since I was placed on the edge of a razor), had entreated God according to my strength, while he takes refuge in God and the patronage of St. Fantinus, I turned my prayers also to holy Fantinus, and supplicated him that he would be present to me in that cause, and vindicate me from the most grievous calamity by which I was now hemmed in. So I besought him thus from the inmost feeling of my soul: O holy Fantinus, most dear to God, since I have known thee to be truly holy, show me now the power
of thine, and I shall have known that thou canst be a help to mortals.
[63] Then on that night a vision of this kind was presented to the deacon who was with me. another vision being premised, He seemed to himself to be in the palace, and to see the emperor sitting in that hall which is called the Magnaura f, with an angry and truly much troubled countenance, and me standing by him, and him bitterly threatening me, and saying: What thou hast given me, now receive back: I owe thee nothing at all. Presently, when he had said these things, the emperor threw some silver coins from his bosom. While the emperor did these things, the deacon sees a certain old man, bearing the appearance of I know not what glorious saint of our own countrymen.
[64] Who, when he had approached him; Go, he says, empty all fear and grief from thy mind, he escapes safe, and is honored by the emperor. only forbear: for I myself will speak to the emperor on thy behalf, and will take care of thy affairs. And, these things said, he vanished. There the deacon, being awakened, the day now lightening, met me, and set forth the dream. Thence I, brought into good hope, hastened to the palace cheerful and eager, feeling the grief gradually and secretly evaporate from my mind. So immediately, being summoned by the emperor together with my companions, and presented by him with many gifts, gold [and] garments, we were dismissed by him with immense joy; praising God, who keeps unharmed those who place their hope in him. To whom [be] all glory, honor, and adoration, to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, now and always, and unto the ages of ages: Amen.
ANNOTATIONS.
HYMN
Composed perhaps by St. Joseph the Hymnographer, or another of the same name, and contemporary with him;
Published from the Greek manuscript codex of the monastery of St. Philip of Fragalà, in the same Caietanus as above, from page 161.
Fantinus, confessor, at Taurianum in Calabria (St.)
from what is published in Caietanus
The author of this hymn Illustrated divinely in heart and mind with the most splendid light of virtues, thou didst dissipate the darkness of wicked lusts, O admirable Man; and, enriched with the perennial grace of miracles, thou curest deadly diseases, O Fantinus. Wherefore, celebrating thy holy commemoration, we piously venerate thy sepulchre, and with one voice cry out together: Obtain from Christ the Lord the forgiveness of our sins. Blessed Fantinus, whom divine grace inspired, thou didst afford on earth a light brighter than the sun itself; illuminating all the ends of the earth with the splendors of thy virtues and the rays of thy miracles, and dissolving the thickest fog of evils. Wherefore we honor thy memory, and embrace the tomb of thy relics.
[2] he touches on in a few words Most blessed Fantinus, divinely illustrated, thou didst restore sight to the blind, walking to the lame, health to the sick: thou didst keep many unharmed from the fierce storm of the sea: thou didst bring great splendor to thy house: thou didst work new prodigies on the earth. Pray, I beseech thee, to God, that he may help us who honor thee. Fantinus, most blessed on every side, and most wise, mingled with the heavenly company, and ineffably cleaving to God with a happier lot, increased with joy and incomprehensible glory, be mindful, guard, [and] keep us by thy prayers from all misery and calamity. Since thou shinest forth with the light of the Holy Spirit, O Fantinus, drive off the darkness of my heart; flooding my mind and spirit with light, through thy prayers, that I may bear thy most illustrious commemoration to heaven today with worthy praises.
[3] Divine love kindled thee, Fantinus, from a boy, under whose guidance thou didst perfectly subdue the wicked pleasures of the body, and didst offer thyself to thy Redeemer as a most pure vessel. The virtues of St. Fantinus; Since thou didst show thyself obedient to the divine precepts, thou wast deservedly endowed by the all-powerful God with the grace of miracles, for procuring cures of the difficult diseases of men, and for expelling demons from possessed bodies. And therefore we proclaim thee blessed, and faithfully celebrate thy memory. Like a great sun, increased with the splendors of virtues, thou hast risen to us from the West: namely that thou mightest illuminate all of us with thy light, who venerate thy memory with faith. Moved with remarkable compassion for him who invoked thee, O blessed Man; thou didst not hesitate to show [his] innocence: for in his sleep clearly and distinctly thou didst show the man the receipt.
[4] Clothed in the shining garment of immortality, thou didst show thyself splendidly to be seen by him and not a few miracles, who was struggling with a grave disease, commanding him to strip off all the corrupt matter of the disease like a sack. Thou didst bravely lay aside all the pride and haughtiness of the Tartarean enemy, casting down and lowering thyself from the highest summit of thy virtues. Because the keenness of thy mind was illustrated with divine light, thou didst restore, by divine power, the use of sight to one long blind. For healing the diseases of men, and putting to flight wicked spirits, the most sacred tomb of thy relics, O Fantinus, is set forth for all.
[5] A man wasting with a long disease, such was thy compassion, in the narration of Peter the bishop the incense being received, thou didst restore to his former soundness. In compassion thou didst excel wondrously, O Fantinus: and since among men thou didst lead a life like an angel, alien to the dregs of matter, thou didst draw mercy from the most merciful God: by whom also thou wast most munificently enriched with the grace of cures, as with certain rays. Not obscurely didst thou show thyself to him who defiled thy divine grace by perjury, commanding the wicked man to be suddenly snatched and taken away from the company of men; by which deed, namely, thou mightest repress the most foul obstinacy of arrogant men.
[6] A man deprived of the use of his feet, laboring under a grave disease, recounted at greater length and wearied by the many pains with which he was tormented, thou relievest; and thou restorest health for walking rightly, by that grace with which, most blessed Fantinus, thou wast endowed by the Holy Spirit. When by the things gloriously done by thee thou hadst honored God the Best and Greatest with honor, thou wast honored by him with the great force of miracles; which daily flow forth from thy relics. A man held by paralysis, when he had come to thy relics, was freed from it. By which relics also he, being violently worn down, obtained mercy, who had inveighed with sacrilegious mouth against thy gifts by blasphemy.
[7] he indicates in a few words: A girl, from whom thou hadst cast out an unclean spirit, is betrothed to Christ. And, appearing to a man in a vision, thou didst disclose admirable mysteries. Imitating the meekness of Moses, the zeal of Elijah, the simplicity and innocence of David, O Fantinus, thou didst obtain from heaven the grace for healing the diseases of men. In the temple which was built for thee, a huge light was seen at night by those who were singing praises to God; by which they clearly recognized thee. Surrounded on every side with rays, appearing to the Agarenes Saracens, thou didst plunge them headlong into the sea, a monstrous storm being raised, while yet thou didst free the sons of regeneration safe and unharmed from the same peril, O Thaumaturge Fantinus.
[8] and with deserved praises Thou didst wondrously save the people, worshippers of God the Best and Greatest, from the sea's waves, being seen under an angelic appearance, and quickly calming the sea, disturbed by a storm, O Fantinus, author of prodigies and servant of Jesus Christ. Those tossed by wicked motions of the soul, and miserably vexed by all manner of temptations as by waves, thou dost daily lead by divine power to the harbor of salvation, O most Holy one; and with great confidence, O glorious Fantinus, we celebrate today thy most sacred memory, gathered around thy sepulchre, and piously drawing the healings which flow from it.
[9] extolling them, Lord Jesus, who hast made thy servant admirable to all, by his prayers, I beseech, work wondrously thy mercies in me, O Christ, and give us the entire forgiveness of our sins. Thou pourest forth cures of every disease, and dost soothe and moderate the difficult sicknesses of souls, working wondrous prodigies, and showing thyself a most skillful physician of souls and bodies. Great is the grace of thy soul, wondrous the beauty and appearance of thy house, where thy venerable body, laid to rest, recalls the sick to health, illuminates those covered with darkness, heals putrefying wounds, drives off pains, cures diseases.
[10] and invoking the Saint, he concludes the matter. Now thou art joined in heaven to the holy company of the Prophets, Apostles, and Martyrs, who didst imitate on earth their holy manners, fighting bravely, and showing thyself obedient to the divine commands: and therefore, O Fantinus, God the Best and Greatest distinguished thee with excellent titles. Thy sepulchre exhales a life-giving odor, and thy memory shines forth like the sun of the earth, and wondrously illuminates the souls of the pious. Duly honoring which, we pray thee, O Fantinus, that thou mayest deign to obtain from our Creator the pardon of [our] sins.