ON ST. FAUSTINUS THE CONFESSOR,
At Todi in Umbria.
CommentaryFaustinus, Confessor, at Todi in Umbria (St.)
J. B. S.
The city of Todi is already sufficiently known in our Acts: but of the Martano or Martulano episcopate, long since antiquated, Ughelli treats, volume 10 of the new edition, column 129, whose first bishop, St. Brutius, we related at the 9th of this month; Of his cult at Todi of the second, St. Felix, we shall say a few things on the 30th of October. These lead us to St. Faustinus, who is supposed to have been the disciple of St. Felix, by origin, as they will have it, a Martano man, but honored at Todi; of whose age or deeds nothing has anywhere been handed down, so that Ferrari plainly noted gratuitously that he lived under Diocletian and Maximian. Nor indeed in our sacred Calendars would you find even the memory, except in the Roman Martyrology alone, in this part augmented by Baronius, who in the annotation alleges nothing besides the ancient monuments of the church of Todi, which, he says, "were brought to us": those, indeed, which Ferrari presently used in the Catalogue of the Saints of Italy, expressly asserting that he received them from the Offices of the church of Todi, recently approved at Rome; say about the beginning of the past century, to which neither Jacobilli, on the Saints of Umbria, nor Possevino, on the men of Todi, had much of anything to add, teaching us only this—that the Saint is there venerated with a double Office, under that lesson which we here subjoin from Ferrari:
"Faustinus, disciple of St. Felix, bishop of Martano, when he had learned that his master was to be put to death by martyrdom, the lesson is extant. coming to him, exhorted him to endure death bravely for Christ. But when he had buried his master, remaining at his sepulchre, he deserved to have visions of Angels. He completed the basilica begun in honor of St. Felix by the bishop of Spoleto. At last, after great persecutions and calamities, which, living most holily, he endured, illustrious for miracles, he migrated to heaven on the fourth day before the Kalends of August. To whose name, by the citizens of Todi, in a field not far from the castle which the common people call the village of St. Faustinus, a church was built and dedicated."