ON ST. VALERIUS OR VALERIANUS, BISHOP AND CONFESSOR,
AT NICE IN THE PROVINCE OF GAUL.
5th Century.
A collection concerning his cult, age, and deeds.
Valerius or Valerianus, at Nice in the Province of Gaul (St.)
BY THE AUTHOR J. B. S.
In the "Passed Over" on the preceding day, St. Valerianus, bishop of Nice, or, if you prefer, of the old city of Cemenelum (Cimiez), or rather of both, marked by Claude Castellan in the borders of the Province and the territory of Monaco, In the monastic [Martyrologies Valerius is marked,] and there known only by the title of some homilies written by him, we referred hither, because we had thought, and now even more judge, that he is altogether to be identified with the nearly homonymous St. Valerius, whom in his Tree of Life Arnold Wion, the precursor of the monastic Martyrologists, suggested on this day in these words: At Nice in the Province, the laying-to-rest of St. Valerius, bishop and confessor, who, taken from a monk of Lérins to the episcopate, strove to fulfill the office of a good shepherd, and, introduced into the joy of his Lord, deserved to hear, Well done, good servant. And the note is of this kind: Concerning whom [see] the Lérins records. His deeds are hitherto hidden from me, both because those records do not report when he flourished, and also because I have not yet chanced to see the Catalogue of the bishops of that city. Which records Wion here calls the Lérins ones, I could wish he had explained a little more distinctly, since Vincent Barralis, in the Lérins Chronology, had nothing to bring forward except the words of Wion himself just recited.
[2] by Ughelli both names are rightly combined. A catalogue of some sort of the bishops of Nice, which Wion had not seen, Ughelli composed in volume 4 [a], where, among others, he speaks thus about our Saint, and plainly according to our mind. Thus Ughelli has it: St. Valerius, or Valerianus, from a monk of Lérins made bishop, a man of remarkable sanctity, whose feast-day is kept on July 25 among the people of Lérins; concerning whom Ferrarius in the Catalogue, [and] the Gallican Martyrology of Andrew du Saussay at this day. At what time he flourished, the monuments do not hand down: yet that he was a learned man, his homilies teach, most recently brought to light from the library of the monastery of St. Gall in Germany. Let the remaining monastic Martyrologists follow, who judged that the Saint was to be treated of, not on the 23rd or 25th, as some mark, but on this day, with their standard-bearer Wion. Most briefly Dorgan: Of St. Valerius, bishop and confessor. A little more fully Menard: At Nice in Gaul, of St. Valerius, bishop and confessor, who from a monk of Lérins, etc., which he copied word for word from Wion. Bucelinus's longer discourse coalesced from the eulogies to be cited below, swelling with mere phrases, and, besides the rest, infected with a base error, that it confidently draws the holy Prelate of the 5th century back to the year 800.
[3] Let Ferrarius and Saussay rather be heard, however much they too retail almost nothing but phrases. The eulogies of Ferrarius and Saussay, Thus the former writes at this day: Valerius, having professed the monastic life in the famous monastery of Lérins, endowed with letters and morals, when he had spent several years in the exercise of regular observance and discipline, and excelled the rest in it, being called to govern the church of Nice, presided over it most holily; nor yet did he relax anything of the austerity of his former life; since he gave attention to vigils, prayers, fasts, pious meditations, and other religious exercises, as before his episcopate, as much as was permitted by his pastoral occupations: and when he had piously administered that church for some years, at last, full of merits, he migrated to heaven on the 10th day before the Kalends of August, illustrious for miracles. He alleges Wion in the notes from the Lérins monuments; but he did not sufficiently notice, which nevertheless he ought to have observed, that July 24, on which he rightly places the Saint, coincides not with the 10th but with the 9th day before the Kalends of August, as the monastic Martyrologist had rightly written. But it is not so unusual for Ferrarius to blunder in the Roman Kalends.
[4] Now receive Saussay's encomium: At Nice, under the metropolis of Embrun, they teach nothing about his age or deeds. of St. Valerius, likewise bishop and confessor. He, from the monastery of Lérins, in which he had dedicated himself to the yoke of Christ, on account of the illustrious ornaments of wisdom and sanctity, being unwillingly raised to that see, so fulfilled all the parts of a good shepherd, that the times in which he had lain hidden under a bushel, a bright lamp of faith and piety, he made to be lamented by his flock; but the times in which, placed under a candlestick (or is it not upon a candlestick?), he shone before it, he left to be longed for by posterity. When, therefore, he had reached the summit of sanctity, distinguished by the glory of his sanctity declared by many miracles, he passed to everlasting beatitude. But all these things, however neatly embellished, can be called mere commonplaces, familiar enough to Saussay as well as to Ferrarius; from which you would hammer out not a whit either about the Saint's age or about his deeds done for certain, so that consequently you could not even divine the century in which St. Valerius existed in the nature of things. Nor did Claude Robert dig out more; but by the Sainte-Marthe brothers a little more light was shed, and it was spread a little more amply in the last edition of the work of the homonymous Father Denis, volume 3 [a], whence we shall opportunely cull the things which pertain to the illustration of the matter.
[5] A title is prefixed concerning the bishops of Nice and Cimiez, and, St. Bassus being excluded, first is numbered Amantius, In the most recent Gallia Christiana, second our Valerianus, concerning whom he asserts it to be established that in the year 439 he was present at the council of Riez, in which the business of Armentarius was treated. The letter of St. Leo to Flavian having been received, he wrote to him, with very many others, extolling it with the highest praises, and professed that he assented to it in all things. He was also one of those to whom the holy Pontiff replied, congratulating the faith of those orthodox bishops, and signifying that Eutyches and Dioscorus had been condemned in the council of Chalcedon. A grave controversy having arisen between Theodore, bishop of Fréjus, and Faustus, abbot of Lérins, which then depended on that diocese, and a very great scandal having emerged from it, so that the bishop seems to have cut off the abbot from his peace and from the communion of the church: and when our Valerianus and Maximus, bishops of Riez, had embraced sides in that quarrel — and indeed those of the people of Lérins — Ravennius, bishop of Arles, about to bring a remedy to so great an evil, convened a council in his city on December 30. Eleven prelates were present with him and with Rusticus of Narbonne; Maximus and Valerianus also came together with the monks of Lérins; yet they are not named among the judges, perhaps because they were present as parties. The suit was at last amicably settled. In precisely what year it was held is unascertained, [but] certainly between the years 449, in which Ravennius was raised to the episcopate, and 461, in which he migrated to immortal life. Sirmond assigns the year 455, earlier Tillemont. Rivier the Carthusian notes that mention is made in the year 451 of Valerianus, bishop of Nice.
[6] and his written homilies There exist twenty homilies, with a letter to the monks, which James Sirmond of the Society of Jesus first published, and after him Theophilus Raynaud of the same Society, which are now confessed among all to be Valerianus's. Certainly the first, which is On the good of discipline, is established to be his; but the first editor conjectures the rest, from the similarity of style and subject, to be own sisters of that first one, and the rest thereafter admitted his conjecture. Sirmond asserts that they are full of a grave and splendid eloquence, replete with dignity and sap. They seemed to learned men to breathe the error of Semipelagianism; Theophilus Raynaud undertook their apology, notwithstanding which, the eleventh cannot, it seems to Tillemont, volume 15, in the article on Eucherius, article 3, page 126, be wrested to a Catholic sense. Let him be allowed to abound in his own opinion. The author continues:
[7] and some deeds Heribert Rosweyd, in Joffredus, thinks that this our prelate is that Valerianus, kinsman of Eucherius of Lyons: a man of most illustrious nobility, to whom the holy prelate Eucherius wrote that eloquent paraenetic letter, which begins: "They are well bound by the bond of blood who are associated by the bond of love." But he is mistaken, for that Valerianus seems still to have served the world in the year 456, in which Sidonius Apollinaris sends to him the panegyric of the emperor Avitus. Other reasons for this our assertion see in Antelmi, On the Beginnings of the Church of Fréjus, page 212. He seems to be the same as Valerius the monk of Lérins, who is venerated at Nice as bishop on July 24: which Theophilus Raynaud also thinks, with whom the monastic Martyrology of Arnold Wion agrees.
[8] they are better restored to their own times. Certainly it can scarcely be denied that our Valerianus was a monk of Lérins, if he is, as he is believed by all to be, the one who was present at the Third Synod of Arles; for so it is said in the letter by which the bishops are invited: "To those who are from that island"; for so it is to be read, but not, "to those who are in that island": for the letter is written, not to the monks, but to the bishops; and this the following words hint: "It behooves your Blessedness especially to be present, whom the island itself, cherishing as in a certain bosom of a mother, has brought forth, the Lord instigating, to that grace which is now in you"; the last words of which openly signify the episcopate. Nay, at the beginning it says that there is a cause between Theodore
of Fréjus on the one part, and the bishops Valerianus and Maximus, and Faustus, the letter sufficiently indicates: "the cause which has arisen between the holy bishop Theodore and the holy Valerianus or the holy Maximus, likewise bishops, and the abbot Faustus, and also the rest of the brethren of the island of Lérins." This, moreover, if it be so, is plain from the letter which he wrote, namely that he, absent, was elected abbot of a certain monastery by the common votes of the monks, gave them an answer, and exhorted them to piety. About these times the union of the sees of Cimiez and Nice seems to have been made by St. Leo, and both dioceses governed by Valerianus.