Laurence

ON ST. LAURENCE, ARCHBISHOP, CONFESSOR,

OF MILAN IN INSUBRIA.

In the year 512.

HISTORICAL COMMENTARY.

Laurence, archbishop, confessor, of Milan in Insubria (St.)

BHL Number: 4751

BY THE AUTHOR J. B. S.

§ I. His cult on this day first made known and proved from Puricelli, although he is thought to have died on another day.

Giovanni Pietro Puricelli, archpriest of the Laurentian basilica of Milan and doctor of sacred theology, very often praised in our work, most eminently deserving, if any other, of the history of his native land, among his works pertaining to the local Saints and basilicas, Puricelli's work published also that one, to which he prefixed the title: The Life of Laurence Litta, citizen and archbishop of Milan, renowned for deeds excellently and holily done, gathered and likewise dedicated to his most worthy successor Alfonso Litta by Giovanni Pietro Puricelli, etc. It is a volume in the quarto form, as we say, comprising thirty-three great chapters, of which a not small part is, with respect to the matter which alone he ought to have had before his eyes, at the least indifferent, adorned with several digressions, which are reduced to that holy Laurence only remotely and as it were by twisting; to say nothing now that the author labors strenuously to depict for us the Litta family in the fifth century, seizing that occasion by which he might inscribe his work to the new archbishop Alfonso Litta, just as not long ago someone found the kinsmen of St. Januarius at Naples who published his Acts illustrated in a large volume.

[2] Puricelli seems to have proved this more happily, which was the chief argument of his lucubration, he proves the cult in some fashion; namely, that Laurence, who had hitherto been unknown to all the sacred Calendars or Martyrologies, and indeed to Ferrarius, nor so much as numbered among the Saints, obtained by the industry of that most diligent man a place in our work, which Papebroch had long ago promised him, when in his Exegesis on the Bishops of Milan before the seventh tome of May, page 63, he left it thus written: He (St. Laurence) indeed has no place in the old or new Ambrosian Breviary, but Giovanni Pietro Puricelli, archpriest of the Laurentian basilica, in which Laurence lies buried under the principal altar, in the book which he published concerning his life, proves that his cult in it, as it now is, flourished from time immemorial, by producing the testimony of Galvaneus Flamma, who wrote in the year 1339, and an old note found under the altar, which says: of the holy confessors Eustorgius, Laurence and Theodore, 1494, on the 10th day of November — understand the bodies, then translated to that altar. Wherefore we shall treat of him without scruple on the 27th of July.

[3] and Ughelli supports him I release the promise given by my Master the more securely, because at the very same time at which Puricelli was writing, namely about the year 1652, he had Ughelli as a supporter in the Italia Sacra, tome 4, where he distinguished Laurence with the title of Saint too, expressly testifying that the chapter of his church, from the immemorial tradition of their ancestors, had been accustomed hitherto to recall the festivity of that St. Laurence the archbishop with an annual celebration. But he had premised that Laurence had ended his life most holily, as he had lived, about the year 513, on the 7th of the Kalends of August. Further, his body lay for some time in the church of SS. Hippolytus and Cassian, which even now at present exists behind the odeum of the Laurentian basilica, and which is now called the chapel of St. Francis. But perhaps before this he had lain buried in the church of St. Sixtus (which Laurence himself built): certainly now he rests in the high altar of the same Laurentian basilica (which is a very large chest of living stone) together with the relics of Saints Eusebius and Eustorgius, the second of this name, and many other Saints. Thus far Ughelli.

[4] and likewise Bosca in the Milanese Martyrology; Afterward the author of the Martyrology of the church of Milan, published in print in the year 1695, Pietro Paolo Bosca, apostolic protonotary and archpriest of Monza, followed these, announcing St. Laurence on this day, adorned with those titles which he might much better have omitted, in that he alleges the celebrated epistle of St. Symmachus, Pope, adjudged away from him by the judgment of learned men, as altogether abhorrent from the style of the holy Pontiff, from the circumstances of the time, and from the Laurentian affairs, which the most recent Venice editors of Ughelli did not neglect to observe. The words of that more recent Martyrologist are: At Milan, of St. Laurence, bishop of the same city, whose admirable virtues St. Symmachus the Pope, in an epistle written to him, and St. Ennodius in prose and in verse celebrated. The praises of St. Ennodius we readily and most willingly admit, worthy certainly to be set, in the following §, before all the rest as a base; since the deeds of our Saint, whose ordered series or history none of the ancients composed, must be unearthed almost from these alone.

[5] But the epistle of St. Symmachus, Pope, was long ago restored to its true author, and to him for whom the discourse was written or dedicated, not rightly alleging the epistle of Symmachus by Papebroch, in the place cited above by me, where he speaks thus: He who, in collecting the letters of Pope Symmachus, inserted the composition of Ennodius of Pavia, given to Stephen the Vicar, as though to be delivered to Maximus, BISHOP of Pavia, consecrated about the year 498, as though the already named Pontiff had written it to Laurence, to congratulate him on the episcopate of Milan, could have thrown the readers into great perplexity; had not learned men in the recent edition of the Councils seen the error, notable even for this, that not only does the style differ much from the other letters of Symmachus; but in the very context he is called Maximus, although, obscured by the word bent into the adverb "maxime," and that in the same place many things are said in no way suited to Laurence: otherwise it would have been necessary to defer the beginnings of this down to the pontificate of Symmachus, ordained in the aforesaid year 498, etc. But since we have here undertaken to treat chiefly of our Saint's cult, we must return to it. Thus the praised Bosca explains it:

[6] This day is not that of his death, as Puricelli shows in the Life of St. Laurence Litta, chapter 31, but more rightly distinguishing the day of death. number 8, but of his office; for according to the older authors he passed into heaven on the 8th of the Kalends of Sextilis. His name is written in the Calendar of the Ambrosian Missal, printed by the type of Innocenzo Cicognara in the year 1560, on the 7th of the Ides of June; today, however, in the notable Laurentian basilica, in whose high altar the body of St. Laurence the archbishop is stored, a solemn Office concerning him is celebrated. What Bosca here asserts concerning the name of St. Laurence inscribed in the Calendar of the Ambrosian Missal, this must be peculiar to the edition cited by him, since in our older one of the year 1522 and in our other monuments it has not hitherto been found. He then proceeds to enumerate the writers who mention St. Laurence; among other things adducing from the acts of the church of Milan, part 6, that he was a man excelling in knowledge, and most highly adorned with the gifts of the virtues. That he instructed the clergy and people of Milan, no less by teaching than by doing, to the best discipline: he meant to say, I suppose, no less by doing than by teaching.

[7] These things indeed in few words, which he pursues far more copiously

Puricelli from page 304 to 329 out of Galvaneus Flamma, From Flamma and others Puricelli argues just as Papebroch noted above. That writer recounts the feasts of the Saints whose bodies lie in the city of Milan and in its county and district, where, for the year 1339 in which he was writing, he most openly asserts that the feast of St. Laurence, archbishop of Milan and confessor, is celebrated on the 25th day of July (as we have already seen Bosca observing). He lies at St. Laurence's in the chapel of St. Hippolytus. From Galvaneus he passes to Carlo da San Pietro in Basilica, afterward bishop of Novara, who reports almost the same thing in Italian; namely, that among the sacred bodies under the high altar of the Laurentian church, the body of our St. Laurence the archbishop, who subscribed to the Council of Pope Symmachus, is also deposited. Consonant with these are the words of Paolo Morigia, also treating of the Laurentian basilica in his history of Milan, and in the Sanctuary of the same city, where among the other bodies of the Saints he most clearly numbers the sacred remains of this St. Laurence. There follow Giovanni Pietro Glussiano and Giovanni Battista Villa, confirming all the same things with their suffrages.

[8] and indeed from Baronius. Nor does Puricelli stop here, but he also argues from Baronius himself, as one who, he says, most expressly calls this same our Laurence a Saint; and he cites from the Annals, year 489, number 14, where an S is prefixed to the name of Laurence; and year 502 in the margin. But nowhere did the most eminent Annalist speak more distinctly than at the year 494, number 33. Hear him: St. Laurence of Milan, and likewise St. Epiphanius, prelate of the church of Pavia, both most holy priests of the Lord, reserved in these unhappy times, as a gift of God, to wipe away the tears of the unhappy, in order to obtain pardon for the wretched, set out to Theodoric, accompanied by the prayers of those whose own condition was at every moment in peril. In what sense Baronius took the appellation "Saint" in those places, it would be vain to inquire here at length; the arguments adduced suffice, unless I am greatly mistaken, so that concerning at least the private veneration shown to this holy Laurence in the Laurentian basilica there seems no room for doubt, although in the ecclesiastical Calendars he was so long passed over, so that accordingly I judge that the rest of Puricelli's proofs must be altogether dispensed with. Nor does it please me to enter upon a dispute concerning the title of Confessor, since from the circumstances it is so manifest that everything is referred to St. Laurence the archbishop. These things being so laid down, I think it can be safely discoursed of him as a Saint; Castellanus also leading the way, who marked Laurence among the Saints on the 25th day of July, as there among the Omitted it is noted.

§ II. The discourse of St. Ennodius is premised, from which the series of the Life is to be deduced.

No Life of the Saint exists From that oration the beginning of our Commentary must altogether be taken, or from the eulogy which St. Ennodius, already more than once praised by us, composed on the recurring birthday of St. Laurence's consecration day, peace having been restored to the Insubrian and Roman Church, and most probably delivered in his praise; which laudation is the sole fountain from which the deeds of the Saint, mentioned by no other writer, must of necessity be drawn, and which thus alone supplies the place of a Life or of the Acts of the Saint, whence Baronius especially drew his own materials, which through various years he accurately deduced. But this Puricelli, from his Sigonius and other writers, enlarged with so brilliant a commentary that he wove in almost the whole Insubrian history of those times; from whose work to have collected only the titles of the principal chapters will be almost to have collected the series of the things done by St. Laurence. Since therefore the whole of it flows from the panegyric of St. Ennodius, from it clearly our historical collection must be begun, in which we shall try to taste the principal chapters of his Acts (for it is not possible to give more). Behold, then, the discourse itself, as it was edited by our Sirmond, concerning whose style, since enough has been said elsewhere by us, to repeat the same here would be plainly superfluous: nor did we think the exordium of the oration should be transcribed, content with those things alone which are reduced to history.

[10] The rather long preface of the not great oration therefore does not at all belong here; besides the oration of St. Ennodius, its beginning is most well known: "How long shall sluggish diffidence," etc. He gradually approaches the matter, when he says: About to speak in some measure, according to my mediocrity, the good things of St. Laurence, I undertake a work indeed full of labor, but full of charity. Then, other things being interposed, he says: The feasts of the nascent year, why should I not celebrate together with a votive discourse? Why should I dishonor the beginnings of the bright birthday with the foulness of silence? … Therefore to you, holy Father, conscious of my duty, shall I not render words? Yet it pleases me to derive the beginnings of my speaking from the time of your consecration, and to grow verdant, if I am able, with the flowery discourse of the reborn year's infancy: so that you may easily gather that he, whom he had undertaken to praise, received the sacred mitre in that season of the year. Of this kind are the things which follow, similitudes drawn from the spring, of which I here weave in the last, that a progress may be made to the history itself. When the meadows grow rich, distinguished with twofold color, by the wealth of spring, and in the ordination of the supreme Pontiff the elements testify to the joy of nature. And here the oration glides down to the virtues, labors, hardships, and excellent deeds of the Saint in this manner:

[11] To you therefore, Prelate, shall I now not render what I have already learned to bestow on others? wherein first he praises the harmonious election: whom to the pontifical summit gravity, modesty, chastity, comeliness led? who, with so many endowments as it were heaped into a mass, undertook the venerable dignity of the present office, having the ornaments of as many virtues as, taken singly, their several kinds would make an approved priest? I am silent about the harmony of the whole in your election, and I do not recount the concordant verdict of the various nations; let him place these in the stead of praise, to whom there is not at hand what he can proclaim concerning morals. For the popular breeze of uncertain favor is for the most part driven by moments, and the throng of Quirites, ignorant of examination, while it is carried away by enthusiasms, loves the unknown. In your case he held the balance who showed himself either the partner or the author of your petition. The assembly of the unskilled multitude weighed your merit in the scale of a perfect man; and while the variety of ornaments in you pleases, as though you were the one heir of a most diverse institution; thus individuals judged this concerning your renown to suffice, that they approved: because all good things could by no means be known to all: and specifically you had allured all to the favor of your star, showing to one that you are pious, to another that you are severe, to another that you are a distributor of a patrimony well acquired, to another that you knew how to preserve rightly gotten gains.

[12] The whole community took this as its zeal, that, although each one surpassed in the proposed praise, then in labors and dangers his constancy; yet, by comparison in your commendations, he was surpassed by another in a better title. I do not wish to dwell longer on these things. We must come to the exercises of your labor; because I, who am not fit in your praise for the greatest things, know not how to be content with small ones. As you were still tottering on the new-laid footprints of the imposed dignity, the adversity of an unavoidable time took you up: and the wars driven against liberty made the recruit of the pontificate a most practiced soldier. You knew not to fear the savagery of the plunderer; you spat out with the shield of constancy the poisons of blandishments, which in the malicious is a more harmful weapon. How often did he who could not by contest, provoke you with insidious honor? How often, to the damage of your good repute, did he believe you to accept the fictions of his service, demanding this of you, that, with collusion employed, you should shut up the enemy within the walls of the city, and offer the limbs of your sheep to be scattered by the wolves? suggesting the examples of many who had done the like, which is a crime even to say. Which things indeed you, despising them as to be avoided, and reserving them for the vengeance of a serene time, committed to memory, retaining the detestable deeds, lest through forgetfulness they should pass unpunished, and owing greater horror to the excesses, while you fear the ruin of others.

[13] and fortitude in bearing hardships, But with the obstacles of speaking removed, let us come to those things which are worthy of religious mention. When the hostile irruption dragged the Christian people through diverse places after the manner of cattle, you were seized in all with kinds of various torments, you with paternal piety endured the torments of many gathered together, as the Apostle says: Who of you is tortured, and I am not? Yet amid these things adversity did not see you broken; the enemy felt this plucked from his triumphs, that he did not subdue the mind of the captive priest. You were still fighting for the release of very many, and, fearing nothing for yourself, you hung upon the anxiety of your people. I do not wish to dwell longer on sad things: I do not wish to open the tragedy of the malignant time; I willingly fly past some things concerning your illustrious conduct, lest by narrating I compel you again to endure what you have suffered. Although the doctor of the nations records that he was practiced in tribulation, crying out: When I am weak, then am I powerful. I am silent about hunger, cold, and injuries, and those augmentations of diseases which the mind of the enemy provided for you. But I believe these things were childish, and your limbs, robust with the sap of ancient health, could bear them. Was it not that, when your joints were dead throughout their frame, and now by long age torn away from their own capacity, the soul alone, knowing not to bend, sustained them, and with an intention to be imitated, established as a wall of constancy against the assailants, fought?

[14] and alacrity in restoring the city. After these things, Christ our redeemer, never despising pious vows, came to the reviving state of the desired liberty, and the broken forces of the Roman name, consolidated by a skillful remedy, the crushed thing returned to a health-bringing vigor. When from on high the heavenly Ruler looked with kindly eyes, the light of its own Priest was restored to the city of Milan. Then, when the inhabitant was rare, then when there was wandering in the houses, and confused running through the sweet thresholds of the bedchambers; then when everywhere there was dread and mourning, and the temples of God, assigned to the habitation of wild beasts, lay foul; when languishing neglect had shrouded the once most splendid halls with the mold of ancient damp, you gave joy to the rest by your return, you, returned to tears. Then, after the manner of birds, whose distress, while the earth is clothed with snows, is despoiled in the hope of food in some place, you might see that the remnants of the people, such as could remain, had flowed together, and that the flocks, wearied on every side by their bleating in the groves, ran to the presence of the good Shepherd. Some then, with a manifold kind of sustaining, you soothed by your address; others you restored by expenditure; others you exhorted by example. A little after, the now buried city revived into its ancient state, which is owed to you after God, and, which did not believe that what it had been could be repaired in itself, began now to emulate better things. Then, whoever's use of life it was, it was now possible to see all things invited to a more joyful advance by good successes.

[15] I run through the several matters, briefly relating things which need an ample narration; There follow his illustrious labors about to come to the contest of your life, to the celebration of your highest purpose. A second captivity, after the doubtfulness of the time, was born in the Roman Church, which drew you, as if now long idle and fugitive from labor, from the bosom of a long rest; when, scarcely with hope of peace of your labor, the arms laid down are taken up again. There would indeed be owed, did not the judgment of your praise draw me on, silence in a cause to be mourned, that in one age the nefarious deed might perish from memory. That senate of the heavenly court, summoned

there the crowd of bishops flowed together from various provinces, where that assembly brought as many varieties of opinions as kinds of men. But those in whom there was a spiritual savor of understanding held you, as it were, as the leader of the principal deliberation by the love of charity.

[16] Now by what means you tamed the onset of those threatening with the honey of blandishments, in defending the cause of St. Symmachus by what means you broke the hearts of the proud with the venerable uplifting of humility, by what means you grounded the wavering minds with the root of counsel, I am not able to unfold. I compel the one desirous to know the account of the deed to the contemplation of the fact. So many elect ones followed you alone, and the princes of so many great cities fell back into your opinion. He who by raw obstinacy revolted from you is cooked by the heats of lamentation; and there is nothing for his solace but the tears of calamity, he who was divided. Perhaps someone, a malignant interpreter of things done, may say what decision the present cause obtained concerning constancy of this kind: let him ask what ends came from the praised sweat. To this man I, confident, will reply; that it was done under your presidency, that an alien fury should not receive priests as its ministers: that the sentence of the Pontiffs should not serve a bloody indignation: that they should not, to the use of one badly moved, drag it about that what they willed could come to pass.

[17] Finally, let the loquacity of the wicked be silent, at least in the estimation of this secret; gloriously discharged against the schismatics. because the conflagrations of hatreds, which burned not from the desert of the one attacked, but from the fomentations of party zeal, could not be extinguished even by the fountain of holy deliberation. To you therefore is owed the custody of the venerable canons. To you it is owed that whatever wickedness rages in the present has come about without episcopal reproach. To you it lay open, what the accusers, in others, covered with clandestine fraud. In your case it was discovered that hatreds are not to be satisfied, as often as he who provokes is deserted by good faith. But these things are better reserved to be narrated at other times. Hail, star of the churches, and, like Abraham, approach a good old age, because it is a testimony of probity that a man be long preserved in the ecclesiastical citadel; as it is written: Men of blood and deceitful shall not halve their days. You, mature in age, and youthful for religious sweat, surpass. You, with laudable piety, furnish examples of good disciplines; restrain the wicked with severity; and, as the clasp of both good work, in the testimony of the highest glory endure without stain.

§ III. Some series of the Life of St. Laurence.

You have, in the brief tablet already exhibited by us, only a summary image of the life of St. Laurence, which would that someone had expressed for us more richly with a more generous brush. Born of an illustrious family at Milan In that poverty this is left to us, that we should try to distribute into some order the things narrated there, or received from elsewhere, and to illustrate them somewhat; not with those long digressions of Puricelli, but only with those notations by which the Laurentian history, so far as shall be permitted, may be exhibited a little more explicitly. That the Saint was born at that time of an illustrious family, and was Milanese by fatherland and origin, I shall not indeed deny; that he sprang from the family of Litta, or Litia, or of the Litingi, kings of the Lombards, who it is certain became first known in Italy many years afterward; that he sprang therefore from a Lombard race—men skilled in ancient history and in the origin of surnames and cognomens will pardon me, I suppose, if I do not so easily assent: but neither does it please me on that account to draw here the rope of contention; it has long ago been explained in our work what our elders determined concerning that antiquity and what we today think. It follows therefore that we contract within the due limits the web spun out by Puricelli.

[19] what he did before the episcopate is unknown. Concerning the things done by St. Laurence before he undertook the archbishopric of Milan, or with what office or dignity he previously discharged, I find nothing handed down anywhere either by his encomiast St. Ennodius or by others, so that accordingly it is most difficult to arrange his affairs either historically or chronologically: for what Puricelli mentions in his dedicatory epistle to Alfonso Litta, that he was taken up from being a most valiant leader of military forces to the archiepiscopal government, whence he drew it, or on what old and trustworthy testimony he relied in writing it, neither does he himself indicate, nor is it ready for me to divine. This he more rightly proves from the praised St. Ennodius, page 13, that in the year 490, Faustus the younger being then Consul, namely the one who immediately followed Theodoric's entrance into Italy, he ascended the cathedra of Milan, in which very year, with many other bishops of Insubria, he was present at the dedication of the basilica of the holy Apostles Peter and Paul at Novara, which dedication or consecration Baronius referred to the preceding year 489, writing in number 14 that Honoratus, bishop of Novara, through St. Laurence, bishop of Milan, and other prelates summoned to the dedication according to custom, took care that the aforesaid basilica be consecrated.

[20] In the dedication of the church of Novara he is adorned with a notable eulogy, It had before been a shrine of idols, purged by Victor, bishop, the predecessor of Honoratus, enlarged and adorned by this latter, of whose consecration St. Ennodius composed a discourse, but Honoratus the bishop recited it; thus perorating to God, so as to pour himself out wholly into the praises of our Saint. Behold the very words of Honoratus: Come therefore, most pious Lord, and glide down more fully to the consecration of your work: let these temples, hitherto dedicated to base patronage, be purged in place of a human breast through baptism. Institute, Lord, by turning the sacrifices; and while we heap the holy altars with pure offerings, insert the presence of your majesty, called forth by the merit of the holy priests, and, apart, by the conscience of the elect one here present, our father Laurence: who, full of so many endowments, grew to the summits of the church, as many as each single one would have made a Pontiff. In whom flourishes modesty, the prince of good work and the mother of honor, patience, the nurse of holy religion, piety, ever about to appease God. Who bestowed on the ecclesiastical members the institutes of life not by discourse but by examples: who, while he goes before as a guide, shows every path by which one goes to God; our Lord Jesus Christ helping, reigning with the Father unto the ages of ages. Amen.

[21] already then without doubt archbishop. Whether St. Laurence, who is adorned in that oration with so many eminent praises, was truly then a bishop, and thus the standard-bearer of that whole solemnity of Novara, ordained as metropolitan, as Baronius thinks in the place just cited by us; or rather only elected to the archiepiscopal dignity, as Puricelli opines on page 28; matters very little to our purpose: this looks to it chiefly, that even of a bishop at least a recruit at that time, such illustrious virtues are enumerated, deeds so excellent, St. Ennodius again being witness, from which even then is shown the most commended memory of the Man. That which in Puricelli is the title of his fifth chapter is of this kind: "Laurence is consecrated archbishop, and his consecration celebrated with an illustrious oration by St. Ennodius," seems altogether to insinuate that the oration reported by us in the preceding paragraph was delivered on the same day by St. Ennodius, which nevertheless the same Puricelli confesses in the text was first recited by the orator many years afterward, on the recurring birthday of the same consecration. It is reported there in full and distinguished with various characters, that the more important heads of the matters may be more conveniently observed.

[22] The things which thereafter Puricelli pursues more copiously in his manner, throughout the following chapters 6, 7, 8, and 9, favoring Theodoric greatly, are almost such that they can neither be more distinctly fitted to their times nor easily recalled to a historical account. From the titles alone are understood various things mingled together, which St. Laurence did and suffered throughout the two years and a little more. Have therefore the compendium of chapter 6: Theodoric, king of the Goths, with the good leave of Zeno, emperor of the Romans, enters Italy with an army; and, having overcome in three battles Odoacer, king of the Heruli, that man's tyrant, attacks Milan, besieges it, assaults it, and at last subdues it to himself, using especially the good service of Laurence the archbishop persuading its surrender. Then he adduces here Sigonius and Erycius Puteanus weaving various things, from which we understand this as the chief thing performed by St. Laurence, that, taking pity on his falling country, he most prudently persuaded his Insubrians, who at last wished rather to be conquered than to perish, to surrender, and thus both kept the citizens unharmed, and deserved the favor of Theodoric, and that in probably the same very year in which he first entered upon the government of his church, namely 490.

[23] Further, this surrender was followed by calamities to be endured by St. Laurence, he was cruelly harassed by Odoacer. which Puricelli mentions in chapter 8 with these words: A sudden defection of the Italian soldiers being stirred up against Theodoric, that man withdraws himself with his people from the city of Milan to Pavia, and there is besieged by Odoacer, but in vain. Meanwhile Laurence the archbishop, most tenacious of Italian liberty and of what is just, conquered neither by blandishments nor by threats, is at last led away into captivity; but there too, beset by many evils, he nonetheless labors not sluggishly for the liberty of his Milanese. And these are, unless I am greatly mistaken, the things which St. Ennodius wished to indicate above from number 12, and which so long wretchedly exercised the holy Prelate, until, Odoacer being plainly overcome, and at last also slain, liberty was restored to the church of Milan about the year 493, when St. Laurence was restored to liberty and to his own city, and thus "the light of its own Priest was restored to the city of Milan," which, foully overthrown and destroyed, he restored, and reduced to a better state than it had been before, which in Puricelli is the argument of chapter 10, and which we have heard Ennodius expressly testifying.

[24] The next chapter, 12, Puricelli twists to this, Whether he crowned Theodoric king of Italy. that he wishes St. Laurence the archbishop to have crowned Theodoric at Milan as king of Italy. But that this can be drawn from Jornandes, whom he cites, I indeed do not perceive; even less from the panegyric of St. Ennodius, who, I suppose, would not have passed over, among the other ornaments of St. Laurence, recounting that too concerning a coronation of this kind, which certainly must needs redound to his praise. Readily and willingly I would admit from Jornandes that Theodoric, in the third year after his entrance into Italy, and with the emperor Zeno's counsel, laying aside the private habit and dress of his nation, assumed the ensign of royal attire, as though now the ruler of the Goths and Romans: and likewise that which he recites from the same Jornandes; that, laying aside his father's dress, he took the purple and the royal insignia; nor is it abhorrent from the words of Galvaneus Flamma, although a more recent writer; that in the church of St. Michael near St. Ambrose, by the hands of the noble citizens of Milan, Theodoric wished to be crowned with an iron crown; yet that this was done by St. Laurence, the older writers being silent, Puricelli brings forth witnesses not sufficiently suitable, so that it must at once be admitted.

[25] An embassy undertaken to Theodoric I would rather praise the things suggested by Puricelli in chapter 12, namely that Laurence the archbishop together with St. Epiphanius, bishop of Pavia, went to Ravenna as legates on behalf of the rebellious Italians to King Theodoric, and obtained pardon for them, which things indeed are most certain and most fully proved from St. Ennodius in the Life of St. Epiphanius, which you have in our Acts published on the 21st of January, chapter 10, page 372: but in this the fertile historiographer seemed to run riot, that he wished to amplify too much the sincere narration of St. Ennodius from the history of Carlo Sigonio, so as to bring in St. Laurence himself perorating before King Theodoric, which

Ennodius nevertheless most openly claimed for St. Epiphanius alone, to whom, he testifies, the journey was made, who "with a healing hand had been accustomed to succor public wounds. … Who, when he said that he alone could not suffice to bear so great a burden, the venerable Laurence, bishop of Milan, is asked likewise: not as an orator, but as a companion"; so that our man labored in vain to reconcile these things rightly; which is manifestly clear from the most illustrious narration of St. Ennodius. Behold the things that follow:

[26] with St. Epiphanius, bishop of Pavia. Setting out together, they arrived at Ravenna together. After access to plead was opened to them, blessed Laurence deemed it necessary that to that one especially the opportunity of perorating be given, whose footsteps the laborious path of frequent embassies had worn, and whom, running to and fro along the track of a journey of this kind, the dust of the camp had more than once made rough, namely St. Epiphanius. What oration, then, could St. Laurence have delivered to the king? Nor should you take frigid refuge in this, that what anyone does through another is judged to do through himself: for all these are mere byways, apt for enlarging and augmenting a book, but little consonant with the truth; just as also are those things which he describes at some length from his Ripamonti, compelled at last to confess that that orator departs far both from St. Ennodius and from the sincerity of history; which is to stain paper with plainly useless digressions. This one thing Puricelli seems to have conjectured rightly enough for our purpose, page 87, that the embassy of which we have just spoken was undertaken by the most holy prelates in the year 495, about the month of February. And this may be called the first laborious period of the life of St. Laurence, to which we shall now subjoin the other.

§ IV. The second part of the Life of St. Laurence.

Puricelli's digressions rejected Thus far we have gone through, and contracted in order for the Life of St. Laurence, the things which Puricelli comprised in the first twelve chapters of his work, pursuing in the remaining twenty-one innumerable other things, of which it will be enough to have saluted some from afar. The question proposed in chapter 13, whether Laurence was really the metropolitan of St. Epiphanius, ought not to be called into doubt, nor does it belong here to discourse on that matter. No less do I wonder that it could be inquired in chapter 14, whether St. Laurence, together with St. Epiphanius, also undertook an embassy to the king of the Burgundians on behalf of the Italian captives. Let the reader hear St. Ennodius speaking in the Life of St. Epiphanius, cited by us above, chapter 11, page 373, and he will easily determine that in the said Burgundian embassy St. Laurence was not even thought of. Equally unseasonably is inserted in chapter 15 the greater monastery of the nuns of Milan built by St. Sigismund, king of the Burgundians. Nor indeed is Puricelli more fortunate when, in a long dissertation and with utterly vain labor, he contends that St. Symmachus, the Roman Pontiff, wrote to Laurence the archbishop an epistle full of his praises, which we, in illustrating the deeds of St. Symmachus on the 19th of July, thought must be passed over, but here above in number 5, with Papebroch, restored to its author.

[28] You have here nearly the middle part of the Puricellian tome, the Roman council over which he presided pertains to the Saint, in which, the first period of the Laurentian life being concluded, we begin the other from chapter 17, to which he gave this title: "Laurence the archbishop, called to Rome to the third council, admirably defends the cause of Pope Symmachus and the primacy of the Apostolic See against the schismatics and calumniators, and first of all presides over it and subscribes." The things which we disputed concerning the Roman synods held under St. Symmachus in the place just cited, are not to be repeated here; to the deeds of St. Laurence there pertains especially the administration, so to speak, and direction of that famous council, which in the year 501, with the consent of the supreme Pontiff, for his plenary purgation, at Theodoric's instance, had been convoked, as the king testified to St. Laurence himself and the other bishops, when, on their way to Rome, they deposited their complaints at Ravenna. Having landed at Rome, they did in the cause of St. Symmachus the things which have long ago been sufficiently explained; besides those which Baronius has at the year 502 from number 3, where from Ennodius he sets forth why St. Laurence and the others abstained for a while from the fellowship of St. Symmachus. Here this accrues to the credit of St. Laurence, that he presided over the council, and first subscribed to it with these words: I, Laurence, bishop of the church of Milan, have subscribed to this our statute, in which we have committed the whole cause to the judgment of God.

[29] But concerning the excellent service rendered in that council by St. Laurence to St. Symmachus, likewise a second, to which he subscribed after Symmachus. and concerning the glory won from the truth defended, Ennodius has said enough; the rest, by which Puricelli wished the life of St. Laurence to increase through twenty-two pages, pertain no more to St. Laurence than to all the other bishops who took part in the same council. Behold now chapter 18: "Laurence the archbishop takes part in the fourth Roman council under Pope Symmachus: and decrees that the Roman Church, in the election of its Pontiff, is to be restored to its ancient liberty, and other things concerning the ecclesiastical faculties, against the edict formerly of King Odoacer." Ennodius did not pass over the Saint's deeds in this council, to which it is clear from the Labbe collection that he subscribed in the second place after Symmachus, whence, having deserved excellently well of the supreme Pontiff and of the whole Church, he could rightly return with applause to Milan from the city of Rome, as Puricelli noted in chapter 19, where, with his usual candor, he observes that there is some ambiguity in the things which Baronius has at the year 502 concerning the discourse of Ennodius, written in prose, and concerning the added poem, inasmuch as they seem more aptly to be referred not to the return of St. Laurence, but to that of Ennodius himself from the City.

[30] He strongly pressed the decree concerning the Cellulani, For the rest, among the ornaments of St. Laurence this is certainly not the last, which Puricelli mentions in chapter 20 in these words: "Laurence the archbishop promulgates to his provincial bishops a pontifical decree, by which both they themselves and the priests and deacons were commanded to have companions of their dwelling, as witnesses of their chastity": which chastity the clergy of Milan too professed through those times, contrary to what afterward seemed good to some, as you have described at some length in the Acts of St. Arialdus, etc., in the fifth tome of June from page 281. This precept, spoken of the Cellulani, which among the Miscellanea of Ennodius is seventh in order in the edition of Sirmond from page 448; this, I say, Baronius adorns at length at the year 502 from number 32, and likewise our author here, calling it a pontifical decree, which Baronius acknowledges as merely episcopal, yet in such a way that the bishops who proposed to their subjects certain decrees to be observed relied on nothing but apostolic authority, as the legislator of the said Constitution, in Ennodius, professes. However these things may be, this makes especially for the point here, that to the zeal, industry, and fortitude of St. Laurence is to be ascribed the execution of a most salutary decree in his diocese, to which would that his successors had more constantly adhered.

[31] and he also took part in the fifth Roman synod. These things being interposed, Puricelli returns to another Roman council, which he calls the fifth, in chapter 21, in which the Saint took part under Symmachus and again subscribed after him, by whose decree, before all things, through an apologetic book by St. Ennodius, the calumniators of the same Symmachus are refuted, etc. All these things exist in Labbe and others, and we have abundantly treated of them in the Life of St. Symmachus. In vain, with these and other histories of this kind, is the Life of St. Laurence extended through many chapters in Puricelli. Much more closely does it pertain to the deeds of the Saint, that, returned from the aforesaid council, in chapter 22 he directed an embassy on behalf of Pope Symmachus to the archbishop of Aquileia, that this latter might adhere to him as to the legitimate Pope, as indeed at last he did adhere. These things are especially drawn from Ennodius, epistle 1 of book 4, which in the edition of Schott is the 8th, where he says: An instructed embassy was directed to the bishop Marcellianus by your brother, but what it accomplished he himself wrote back. To which words the editor Sirmond noted that that bishop Marcellianus was of Aquileia, to whom our holy bishop of Milan had written on behalf of Symmachus, whom he most rightly judges to be designated here by Ennodius.

[32] Among his praises not the least is And this is nearly the last thing which we have learned St. Laurence to have accomplished for the tranquillity of the Church, for what Puricelli says in chapter 23, that the Pontiff Symmachus asked by letter of Laurence the archbishop that he should approve by subscribing the acts of the sixth Roman synod recently celebrated, in his absence, against the invaders or unjust detainers of ecclesiastical goods, whether it be sufficiently demonstrated from the Catalogue which we know to have been published under the title "Successors of St. Barnabas," certainly seems to me nothing less than clear, in which class must be placed the rest which there Puricelli disputes from Morigia and Ripamonti, then subjoining a most prolix chapter, 24 in order, in which he laboriously inquires whether the archbishop of Milan at that time had the prerogative of his see above that of Ravenna and Aquileia; all which, why they should be fitted rather to the Life of St. Laurence than to those of the predecessors or successors of the same city's bishops, I indeed do not sufficiently understand. When Puricelli adduces St. Ennodius as surety, I at once assent, and thus I readily admit chapter 35, whose title is: "Laurence the archbishop bears the care, more excellent than a father's, of a noble Milanese youth deprived of his parents, by name Arator (who afterward was also a celebrated sacred poet), and thence is again celebrated by St. Ennodius."

[33] Namely in Discourse 9 in Sirmond, whose title is: [that he undertook the paternal care of the orphan Arator, afterward a celebrated poet] "Preface, when Arator entered the auditorium," where these things are especially to be noted in commendation of our Saint: I called him deprived of his parents, to whom, through the happy losses of nature, the common father and bishop was made his own. He, the consolation of the afflicted, the food of the hungry, the eye of the blind, the foot of the lame, so many kinds of his piety, so many degrees of his mercies, he turned to the advancement of this person. And that talent of lord Laurence, which succors the necessities of the world, is exercised in the ministry of this little child. To whom would such a calamity not be gracious (to speak truly)? Whom would it not help to have lost a father, under a lucrative exchange, if it is granted to have found such a one? The insignia of so great a man, which I cannot fill, I do not profane through unhallowed words. He it is whose authority is sweet, or whose sweetness is awe-inspiring: who fills the master in the church, the master in the house, the master at the banquet, the master in jests: who never does what he would not have his followers imitate: whose conduct, polished to the nail, shows the heavenly way to his disciples as he walks. For it is a lesser praise to teach well, unless you have shown by deed the things to be taught. For this man's ward, the youth taken up, what would my oration have profited, whom a favorable outcome awaits from the merits of his instructor; and perfection from the prosperity of his orphanhood? The prayers of this patron suffice; through which he, imbued with the best institutes, will deserve sublimely to be unlike his fathers.

[34] Nowhere is Ennodius more brilliant, nowhere more eloquent, than where he must run out into the praises of St. Laurence, he undertook the paternal care. therefore seizing every occasion by which he may proclaim his most excellent merits and notable virtues,

so that you may understand what was truly said by us above, that he is the fountain itself, and that the only one, at least the only sure one, from which the deeds of our Saint may safely be gathered. And this we have performed thus far, by distinguishing the two parts of his life, in one of which he struggled with the enemies and overthrowers of his country, with captivity and other hardships, but in the other he contended excellently for the safety of St. Symmachus, oppressed by the schismatics, and of the whole Roman Church; amid so many labors the common father and bishop, made all things to all men with the Apostle, inasmuch as he excelled in those gifts of mind which Ennodius so adorned, that although he was silent about particular miracles performed by him, yet he depicted him as illustrious and eminent by the signs of charity and the prodigies of mercy; to which if you add those things which he shows him to have contributed toward increasing the worship of God and the splendor of the churches, you will perceive that nothing is wanting to the sublime and perfect sanctity of the Prelate. This will be the argument of the following paragraph.

§ V. The temples founded or restored by St. Laurence at Milan.

The church of St. Sixtus built Here belong the following five chapters of Puricelli, from 26 to 30, so stuffed and amplified with various matters that a very small part of them can be reduced to St. Laurence. For chapter 26 there makes solely the eighth epigram of Ennodius, inscribed in this manner: "Verses made and written in the basilica of St. Sixtus the bishop, which Laurence the bishop built." And it has thus:

The prelate, strong in genius, in probity, in modesty, / adorned the gift with his merits, and, as the lights of his life, / at the great cost of the work, set up these temples. / Fame, fallen through uncertain recesses, does not scatter it, / but the law of the ancient deed lives, increased through the age, / that favorable Sixtus may receive the gifts of Laurence. / Thus remains the office which once befell the Saints; / this man offered the temple, which that one, coming, consecrates.

Sirmond noted that no other Laurence, bishop, is here indicated than our Milanese, at whom especially St. Ennodius aimed, as we have already so often said. The rest which Puricelli heaps up in that whole chapter could be passed over without any injury to the Saint.

[36] In the following chapter 27 the Saint is said to have repaired another church of Milan, another reduced to a better state; and perhaps the Nazarian one laid waste by fire, and to have reduced it to a far better state, Ennodius again being witness in epigram 9. "Likewise in the basilica of the Saints, because the buildings which had before been there had burned, and thus it was made":

The mean roofs before yielded to the blessed torches, / thus splendor comes through losses; thus the summits rise up from the flames, / about to hold God. If the lost things grow / by harmless fires, if the losses give worship: / of what kind will be the restorer, increased by the crackling ruins? / Laurence, waging your wars, conquer the fires. / The sordid earth would have lain hidden in a languishing recess, / had the ancient caverns kept the face of their state. / But after the powers above sent favorable flames / these ashes drew to a light to be worshiped. / Turn hither your pious eyes, you who foretell that all things / are to be cleansed by vapor, father, and instruct in matters / those to be taught, lest the mind, ignorant of the right, waver at words.

That the holy Laurence is here again indicated, there is no doubt: but why Puricelli suspects that the Nazarian basilica is meant, he confesses he was driven to by our Andreas Schott: on which matter enough will have been said in the Nazarian dissertation.

[37] But the abundant munificence of St. Laurence toward the churches of Milan did not stop there, the temple of St. Laurence munificently adorned; celebrated again in the verses of Ennodius, which our author reports in chapter 28 under this title: "Laurence the archbishop adorns in many ways the metropolitan church of Milan." In the first place is described epigram 10; "In the house at Milan": understand the metropolitan or principal basilica, restored by the Saint, which, although it is not so expressly stated in this first epigram, is shown clearly enough from the 12th and following ones. Hear, then, that epigram 10:

To buildings, two things are granted for their genius through the age, / whether they shine with facings, or by the merit of their Lord. / Let the grassy stones, imitating verdant pasture, / allure the eyes by a nobler deceit. / Yet let the work drive it by art, let nature govern the figures, / while it shapes the inner parts of the stones into images. / Let the master pour whiteness from a rosy mouth, / let him depict the fitting members with scattered marks. / Gold, roof, ivory, panels, ceilings, gems— / it is not granted to human goods to gleam more. / Fortune perhaps plays even without law over the cautious in price, / that you may stand by character, believe, will be the fruit of labor.

[38] Much more clearly is St. Laurence pointed out in epigram 12, under the same heading "In the house at Milan." on occasion of the metropolitan church restored.

Behold from whose streams the narrow house has drunk, / because it surpasses halls with modest porticoes. / Built by the zeal of the supreme pontiff, it shines again, / this possesses its own day, Laurence's. / Splendid roofs rise up through wealth over ruin, / that knows no fall which comes from the lord. / Scarcely does decay, attended by age, ever wear this away, / the glory of the maker which he has well founded. / Fame, never to be silent about great things, keeps in store / that, conquering the age, it may bear the name to the stars.

To the same are referred the following four epigrams, namely 13, 14, 15, and 16, in which it is supposed that Ennodius pursues the same argument, which is not equally certain to me, I candidly confess.

[39] That which is the thirteenth leaves absolutely no doubt the Saint's virtues that it expressly represents the singular virtues of St. Laurence, elegantly expressed by Ennodius, for thus the sacred poet speaks of him:

He was ever the keeper of rigid honor, / terrible to faults, and merciful to suppliants. / Whom vice never bent, but pity always, / certain everywhere, he gave judgment by his face. / He rebuked crimes with his countenance, cherished the contrite, / the mouths conscious of your secret he brought forth. / The mother poured him forth from the womb, a heavenly one, into the hall, / withdrawing the breasts, she handed him to the breasts. / The hoary ages marveled at the venerable seer: / he was in character before what he bears in office.

An asterisk being interposed, epigram 14 is thus formed:

Who, happy, left the dwellings long possessed, / which the house, thus widowed, grew for its lord. / Undertaking the palace governance, snatched away, he obtained / unbought what is sought by the price of the mind. / Now the place retains with an irrigating draught what it has drunk, / guarding once for all the prosperous deeds in its jaws. / Straightway whoever succeeded as dweller and heir / gave a favorable foot to the one who has entered. / What the partner may bestow toward a holy life, learn: / thus dedicated roofs render men to the world.

Grant, Father omnipotent, through long ages we pray, / let hope, both sure, come to the pious guests. / Let not the white threads be darkened by our merits, / nor let the prepared palm stand still at my harvest. / Let him rise who, cherished in the womb of his own mother, / comes to the taste of life through your gifts. / You pour into my heart even a slender savor, / you make the tongue a witness of the blood. / The lofty arbutes put forth leaves in shadowy luxuriance, / which the husbandman has pruned with no sickles.

But finally, says Puricelli, he thus also concludes with epigram 16:

Eloquence has stood as the certain index of nature, / for him who thirsts to seek the fountain of the perfect: / liberty is always unlocked to honorable pursuits; / unwrought nobility lies hidden from studies. / The earth would have kept the captive metal in its veins / did not the finder give what he calls into the midst. / The pale searcher yielded the tawny gold: / who polishes the talent thus makes it his own. / Thus far surveying the Ionian sea with scanty oarage, / turn my skiff to the harbor, Thalia.

[41] He founded a baptistery Concerning the baptistery founded by St. Laurence at Milan, Puricelli treats in chapter 29, rightly observing that Ennodius wisely persuaded that whoever should resolve to offer to God gifts pleasing and acceptable should take care that his conscience be purged from every stain; and deservedly he brought forth also our archbishop Laurence, as gold purged by fire in imitation of Laurence the martyr, as an example for that time in which he built the baptistery: and to these things he prefixes light with epigram 56, which is of this kind: "In the baptistery of Milan":

Cleaner, let him shine with the light of smelted metal / who disposes to give gifts worthy of God. / Before, Laurence, your life stood in the heated furnaces, / that it might ennoble the pleasing work. / Marbles, paintings, panels, the lofty coffered ceiling / he himself gave to the temple, who shines with probity. / Thus the founder adds character to the buildings as their value, / as you would bring fleeces dyed with silken purple. / As the guest light adorns the enclosed gems, / as often as the snow of the stone blushes more beautiful by art.

[42] There remains the last, at least so far as we know, monument of Laurentian liberality in restoring sacred buildings, and he repaired the church of St. Calimerius. which is described by Puricelli in chapter 30; namely, that he repaired the church of St. Calimerius, his predecessor archbishop and martyr, which, since it had before been very obscure, he opportunely freed from the darkness, alluding to the Greek name which signifies a beautiful day. Further, Ennodius celebrated both the freed one and the freer in epigram, among others, 60. "In the basilica of St. Calimerius, when it was repaired":

The free summits deserved the captive light; / the face smiles, bearing no clouds. / Here lately came the near dowry of the starry Olympus, / led by the ministry of the seer Laurence. / Of the building and of whose life there is now one figure; / as by the rays of the sun, so the form, the color is alike. / Well done, restorer of old things, proceed, founder of new, / illustrious both in face and in genius. / Under your presidency, Prelate, the roofs abjure their ancient shape, / to the perishing things a stranger genius is extended.

That here too, as above, by "seer" the bishop is understood, Sirmond long ago observed, and from him Puricelli; the things which for the rest are more obscure must be attributed to the rude Latinity of those times.

§ VI. The time of the episcopate and of his death; writings wrongly attributed to this holy Laurence.

He sat from the year 490 to 512, From the several texts of the Milanese writers, in Puricelli chapter 31, concerning the duration, beginning, and end of the episcopate of St. Laurence, it is manifestly plain that nearly all of them have strayed from the truth. Some place the beginning in the year 496, others in the year 506, others 507, so as to make out what most of them hint, that he sat under the Pontiffs Symmachus, Hormisdas, and John, and thus protracted his life beyond the year 527: as many heads, so nearly as many opinions: whence it is plain how confused was the chronology of the Milanese bishops; a little more correctly, unless I am mistaken, in the Papebrochian Exegesis, arranged before the seventh tome of May, such as Puricelli in his whole work tried to establish, to which we think it most probable to adhere, as we have also insinuated in the preceding paragraphs; and thus he must have sat two years above twenty, namely from the year 490 to 512, under the Roman Pontiffs Felix II, Gelasius, Anastasius, and Symmachus; the minutiae being neglected, which I do not see can, in that uncertainty, be more accurately weighed or determined: let there be, therefore, from the defined times of the predecessors and successors, the most probable position of Papebroch; that St. Laurence sat 22 years, deposited on the 8th of the Kalends of August at St. Cassian's.

[44] Concerning the deposition of the sacred body and its true place enough has been said in our paragraph I, most probably he died on the 25th of July. where there was need to discourse of the cult shown to St. Laurence from time immemorial. Further, concerning the day of his death

everything also seems sufficiently perplexed. Most, whom Papebroch here follows, hold that his birthday fell on the 8th of the Kalends of August, or the 25th of July: others prefer the 26th day; meanwhile it is undoubted, at least at this time, that his festivity is recalled on this 27th day of July, or the 6th of the Kalends of August, as Pietro Paolo Bosca, praised above, testifies; transferred namely on account of the celebrations of higher rank of Saints James and Anne, mother of the Blessed Virgin, of which latter, since her feast in the universal Church is not so ancient, the present solemnity of St. Laurence must belong to some more recent institution, whose beginning and increments no one could inquire, except from most uncertain conjectures, so that accordingly I think it better in this part too to adhere to the more received opinion, which I said followed Papebroch, and thus let us judge St. Laurence to have been deposited, or rather to have died, on the already said 8th day of the Kalends of August.

[45] The last two chapters of Puricelli are not to be brought forward here: the penultimate, or 32nd, is wholly occupied in proving the cult; What homilies Mabillon found in the other there is treatment of the archbishops, successors of St. Laurence; so that here an end should be put to our Commentary, did I not find in Bosca in the Milanese Martyrology a question, moved neither by Puricelli nor by any other before, namely, whether our St. Laurence wrote anything which reached the memory of posterity. Nowhere, says he, have I seen mention made of that little book or homily on the Canaanite woman, which the most learned Father Mabillon reported in book 1, tome 2, in the various little works of the ancient Analecta, from a manuscript codex of Germany. Certainly another Laurence is the author of that homily, but not he who held the archbishopric of Milan. Certainly, since Father Mabillon in most learned notes subjoins to the former book, or homily, another homily on penitence with this inscription: "Here begins the second book of St. Laurence, on the two times. There are two times appointed by the Most High, etc." Truly this homily on penitence is that very one, together with another likewise on almsgiving, which Carlo da San Pietro in Basilica, in the vestibule of his Novaria sacra, ascribes to St. Laurence, priest of Novara and martyr, whom the Roman Martyrology mentions on the day before the Kalends of May.

[46] written under the name of Laurence, This, then, is that Laurence who is falsely called bishop of Novara: since it is discordant from the truth that Laurence was made archbishop of Milan from being of Novara, since in the records of the bishops of Novara no Laurence is ever found: as also Cardinal Bona thought him to have been bishop of Novara in his notice of authors prefixed to the book on divine Psalmody. Wherefore I would wish that Mabillon dissent from Marguerin de la Bigne, and go over to the opinion of the most learned bishop of Novara, Carlo da San Pietro in Basilica, who in the exordium of the Novaria sacra teaches these things: "Concerning the homilies of St. Laurence, priest of Novara, Marguerin de la Bigne, in tome 2 of the Bibliotheca of the ancient Fathers, published two sermons, one on penitence, the other on almsgiving, which he attributes to Laurence, bishop of Novara, led by certain conjectures, which are false.

[47] these belong not to our Saint For we have no Laurence as bishop, but only as priest, who in time is far distant from Laurence, archbishop of Milan, which archbishopric he afterward thinks was obtained by him. Therefore he is not to be called bishop, but priest, on which matter there is also testimony in book 2 of the first volume of the letters of Luca Contile, when he writes to William, prefect of the Library of the supreme pontiff, on the 30th of November 1558, in an Italian discourse: Anguisciola presented to the Venetian academy the treatises of St. Laurence, priest of Novara, one on Penitence, the other on Almsgiving, etc." Nay, that sermon on the Canaanite woman the same Carlo da San Pietro in Basilica likewise ascribes to the same St. Laurence the priest in book 2 of the Novaria sacra. He is read to have published writings also on sacred matters (namely St. Laurence the priest). And when others had perished by antiquity, or by the injury of the times, the writer of his encomium testifies that a treatise or discourse on the Canaanite woman existed in his time, which is preserved in manuscript among the records of the greater church.

[48] but must be ascribed to the synonymous priest of Novara. Since therefore this discourse on the Canaanite woman is preserved among the records of the greater church of Novara, surely for the good of literary affairs, it should be compared with the manuscript codex of Germany; which labor men zealous of erudition will easily accomplish. Scarcely had I written these things, when a most friendly man, the jurisconsult Lazzaro Agostino Cotta of Novara, who had before presented me with the poem of Petrus Apollonius Collatinus, first published in print, likewise gives me as a gift the homily on the Canaanite woman, which St. Laurence the priest delivered. There are read there, in the notes to the reader, very many monuments of the writers concerning the same St. Laurence, by whose testimony Father Mabillon was afterward led into error. But Father Joseph Maria of Novara, of the most religious order of the Capuchins, dissolves all with most valid arguments, to which Mabillon cannot reply, drawn both from the reckoning of the times and from the examination of the matters: so that these homilies, as we taught before, must altogether be attributed to St. Laurence, priest of Novara.