Martyrs

ON THE HOLY MARTYRS

SIMPLICIUS, FAUSTINUS, AND BEATRIX

AT ROME.

Under Diocletian.

PRELIMINARY COMMENTARY.

The cult of these Martyrs; their relics; their Acts.

Simplicius, Martyr at Rome (St.)

Faustinus, Martyr in the same place (St.)

Beatrix, Martyr in the same place (St.)

BY P. B.

The most ancient and at the same time constant veneration of these Martyrs in the West is shown both by ancient monuments and by present-day usage: for they are read as inscribed on this day in the Hieronymian Calendars, according to all the most approved copies, published by Florentini and others; Their cult in the Roman Church in which, however, I would wish it observed that the name of Beatrix is sometimes dislocated; as in the Epternach codex it is written Biatrix, in the Blume codex Viatrica. There are extant also proper prayers, once to be recited during the Sacrifice on their birthday, which may be seen in the Books of the Sacraments, both the Gelasian in Thomasius, book 2, chapter 37, and the Gregorian in Pamelius (whose codex the same Thomasius praises above the rest in the preface to the work which we cited), Liturgica, volume 2, page 321. Consult, if you please, also Menard in his observations on his edition of the same work, page 171 and following. But those prayers in Thomasius and Pamelius are entirely the same, except that in the latter the names of the martyrs Simplicius, Faustinus, and Beatrix are recited entire; but in the former more barbarously, Simplicius, Faustinus, and Viatrix. This too is altogether peculiar to the Gelasian codex, that it alone places the birthday of our Martyrs not on the fourth, as all others, but on the fifth day before the Kalends of August.

[2] There follow the ancient Calendars of Fronto and Allatius; the most ancient is proved and likewise the Martyrologies, as the old Roman, that of Wandelbert, Rabanus, Ado, Usuard, Notker, and (that I may pass over the rest) the present-day Roman; but all at this day which we have said, the fourth before the Kalends of August. Of these, lest they be tedious, let it suffice to have assigned the text of each one; take one for all, that of Ado, whence you may understand the antiquity of our Acts; for thus it has: "Likewise on the same day (the fourth before the Kalends of August), the birthday of the holy martyrs Simplicius, Faustinus, and Beatrix, in the times of Diocletian and Maximian: who after many and diverse punishments were ordered to undergo capital sentence; and, a stone being bound on their neck, to be cast through the bridge which is called the Stone bridge, into the streams of the Tiber. Whose bodies, by the nod of God, were found by their blessed sister Beatrix and by the blessed presbyters Crispus and John, and were buried in the place which is called the Sixth milestone of Philip, on the Portuensian Way, on the fourth day before the Kalends of August."

[3] But Beatrix, the sister of the Martyrs, while she dwelt with the venerable Lucina, it happened from the Marlys and the books of the Sacraments. that a certain neighboring landholder, Lucretius, coveted her little possession. For this, therefore, he had holy Beatrix seized and led to sacrifice. Then blessed Beatrix cried out: "I am a Christian; I do not sacrifice to demons." She was therefore led away and committed to the custody of the prison. And when she freely acted in the name of God, the ambitious Lucretius had her strangled by night. Whom the venerable Lucina buried beside the holy Martyrs, her brothers, on the fourth day before the Kalends of August. After this, Lucretius, having entered the estate of the Saints, while he was feasting there, a certain woman was suckling a little infant. Which little infant, before all in the banquet, uttered a voice: "Hear, Lucretius: thou hast slain, and hast invaded; behold, thou art given into the possession of the enemy." At this voice he was invaded by a malignant spirit there in the banquet, and, vexed for three hours, gave up the ghost. These things he relates about the middle of the ninth century, from the Acts, as will appear, to be produced below.

[4] The same cult various translations of relics prove; St. Leo the Pope, the Second, translated their bodies to the Church of St. Paul, one of which Anastasius the Librarian relates of St. Leo the Pope, the Second, of whom he thus writes: "He made a church in the city

of Rome beside St. Bibiana, where he also laid up the bodies of the holy Simplicius, Faustinus, and Beatrix, and of other Martyrs, and dedicated it to the name of the blessed Apostle Paul on the twenty-second day of the month of February; where he also offered gifts"; and this in the year, as Pagi contends, of Christ 683. But since here no mention is made of the place whence these bodies were then brought to the church of St. Paul, it is uncertain whether this was their first translation, or whether others preceded it: and that this was the first, Ottavio Panciroli indicates in the Hidden Treasures of the gracious City, region 2, church 45, which is St. Mary Major, page 261; when he asserts that these bodies were then drawn by the same St. Leo from the cemetery already mentioned on the Portuensian Way, where they had first been laid. But we require an older witness of this matter.

[5] It is more certain that this translation was followed by others, but at a long interval; when it collapsed, they were carried partly to St. Mary Major, which the relics themselves testify, now placed in other places: for, by the testimony of Aringhi in the Roma Subterranea, volume 1, book 2, chapter 20, no. 5, when the church of St. Paul had already collapsed with age, thence the bodies of the holy Simplicius, Faustinus, and Beatrix … were carried into the basilica of St. Mary Major, together with the very marble ark in which they were kept, and were there deposited to be henceforth guarded with the pious and religious cult of the faithful. Of that ark, in the same place, no. 1, he had written these things: "Whose (namely Simplicius and Faustinus) marble ark, in which they had first been deposited, we once diligently beheld in the sacrary of the basilica of St. Mary Major, marked with this inscription, namely:

THE MARTYRS SIMPLICIUS AND FAUSTINUS

WHO SUFFERED IN THE RIVER TIBER, AND

WERE PLACED IN THE CEMETERY

OF GENEROSA

ABOVE PHILIP.

Thus Aringhi; and Baronius too, almost, in his notes on this day in the Martyrology. From this otherwise sufficiently barbarous epigraph it seems to be gathered that the tomb was not common to St. Beatrix with her Brothers, since it bears only the names of these latter. The other things there noted will receive light from the Acts and the notes.

[6] The same translation to the place just assigned Panciroli recounts, partly to St. Nicholas in Prison, and St. Andrew of the Valley. but he also adds a third at the same time; when he narrates that the said three bodies are not entire at St. Mary Major, but that the middle part of them is kept in the church called St. Nicholas in Prison. Meanwhile he confesses that the time both of this division and of either translation is altogether unknown. To these may be added a fourth, by which a notable part of the relics of St. Beatrix came to the church called St. Andrew of the Valley; as in the Sacred Hemerologium of the City, on the 29th of July, Carlo Bartolomeo Piazza relates in these words: "The feast (of SS. Simplicius, Faustinus, and Beatrix, of whom he discourses there) is celebrated in the basilica of St. Mary Major, where a great part of their bodies is kept; and in the church of St. Nicholas in Prison, where is the other part; and at St. Andrew of the Valley, where the notable relics of St. Beatrix are exposed." And these indeed are celebrated at Rome, although they must also have been communicated to foreign churches, since Masini found some at Bologna; and, if we believe Nicolas Bertrand, the body of St. Simplicius, or at least a notable part of it, reached Toulouse in Gaul. And even to Tamayo, most greedy for pledges of this kind, I would not grudgingly grant a not ignoble part, if he would rest content with that; but by no means, since he claims for himself the whole body of St. Beatrix—and indeed of this one—found, as by his own authority he dares to assert, under Gregory XIII; which afterward, namely in the year 1649, Innocent X sent to Maria Anna, queen of Spain, at Milan through Cardinal Ludovisi. I would not indeed deny that some sacred body, under that name, easily applicable to any holy women, was given as a gift to that queen, but that it was of this St. Beatrix, whence even remotely it can be gathered, I altogether do not find: so that therefore I do not think this turgid announcement of Tamayo is at once to be admitted: "In the royal monastery of the Escorial, of blessed Beatrix, virgin and martyr, sister of the holy Simplicius and Faustinus, who, when, being strangled in prison, she had completed her contest, was found under Gregory XIII the supreme Pontiff, and honorably buried with her brothers. But now her sacred remains our most holy Lord Innocent X the supreme Pontiff sent to the most serene Maria Anna, Catholic queen of the Spains, among other gifts of piety, for the safeguard of her journey; which, being conveyed into Spain, found a place in the royal monastery to remain for ages." Compare with these things what is found in the Martyrology of Como, that you may form a conjecture concerning an older possession.

[7] [The manuscript Acts were already from the ninth century separated from the interpolated Acts of St. Anthimus, presbyter and Martyr,] The Acts of our Martyrs, such as Mombritius published in print, volume 2, folio 293, are extant in very many and very ancient manuscript codices; as are those in our Museum marked Q Ms. 6, Q Ms. 7, and others, but less ancient; then several elsewhere, as in the archive of the church of Saint-Omer, in the monastery of the Premonstratensian canons of Windberg in Bavaria, from which we long ago received transcripts of the same Acts; likewise others, against which these transcripts were examined, in the monastery of the Charterhouse of Bruges, in the monasteries of St. Maximin and St. Martin at Trier, in the once famous Belfort library; add to these the Roman codices, the Vatican and the Vallicellian, which here agree with the rest, as appears from those fragments of our Acts which Aringhi, cited above at no. 5, produces. What more? That Ado saw and transcribed these same, hardly anyone will doubt, when he shall have compared the elogium given from him with these Acts.

[8] The same, although a little more briefly, you have in the Acts of St. Anthimus, presbyter and martyr, [into which they had before been inserted, perhaps by some interpolator of the Acts;] which we gave at the 11th of May, nay rather in the appendix of those Acts, or the third chapter. And although they occur everywhere in the codices thus, as they are now to be produced, separated from the Acts of St. Anthimus or their appendix, and in most of those codices the Acts of St. Anthimus are not read at all—not even in that which Ado followed (inasmuch as he proposes the bare memory of St. Anthimus on the 11th of May, adding nothing of an elogium)—we think nevertheless that the Acts of our Martyrs were by no means composed separately, as they now exist, but together with the Acts of St. Anthimus, or their appendix, or third chapter. This is made manifest by the things which, according to all the codices, are narrated at no. 2, concerning the two little crows daily bringing single nuts to SS. Lucina and Beatrix; which so entirely regard those things which precede in the Acts of St. Anthimus, chapter 3, no. 12, that without them they cannot be understood; and therefore they were perhaps omitted by Ado, Notker, Peter de Natalibus, book 6, chapter 153, and Jacopo da Voragine, chapter 99, in their epitomes of our Acts; because none of them had seen the Acts of St. Anthimus; without which they could not divine what the little crows meant in the Acts of our Martyrs. We believe, therefore, that these were first torn from those, and thus afterward passed separately into various codices. Unless someone wishes that in the Acts of St. Anthimus and his companions many things were first written separately concerning various Martyrs, which then coalesced into one mass not without interpolation, from which again these our Acts were abstracted, vitiated by the episode of the little crows.

[9] I said "episode," to act more mildly than Tillemont, note 1 on St. Lucina, Ecclesiastical Monuments, volume 4, Whence also now they are not incorrupt; nevertheless in most points trustworthy. page 758, where he calls it a "fable." Of it certainly there is nothing in the Acts of better note of St. Sebastian the Martyr, on the 20th of January, page 278; where nevertheless there was occasion to indicate the same matter, if it had really happened, at least by a single word. The same Baronius omits at the year of Christ 302, no. 114, where he relates our Acts in compendium, adding in the margin that they are in some points to be corrected; which he seems to have understood first indeed of this very episode, since he himself suppresses it; then of certain syntactical faults or the like of lighter moment: for as concerns the substance of the narration, he himself uses it, correcting nothing. And indeed I do not see what in them could deservedly be censured further; at least if the Acts be considered in themselves, cutting off those things which precede and follow in the Acts of St. Anthimus, chapter 3, and which do not properly pertain hither. For that to Tillemont, Ecclesiastical Monuments, volume 4, page 560, the narration of the slaying and the seized estate of St. Beatrix by Lucretius, a man, as he puts it, private, seemed to displease, that is a light matter: for that Lucretius was not a private man the Acts sufficiently disclose at no. 2; although a minister, from his public office everywhere perfidious, is said to have pursued his private advantage. We think, therefore, that this monument of antiquity is indeed to be corrected with Baronius; but by no means is Tillemont to be assented to, who on page 559 denies that it is fit to establish any credit; since nevertheless he himself there uses it; and to what end, I pray, unless to establish credit? Here, then, are the very

ACTS

From the printed text of Mombritius and very many manuscripts.

Simplicius, Martyr at Rome (St.)

Faustinus, Martyr in the same place (St.)

Beatrix, Martyr in the same place (St.)

BHL Number: 7790

BY P. B.

In the times of Diocletian and Maximian, most wicked emperors, many of the Christians were slain in the city of Rome on account of the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Beatrix the sister buries her brother martyrs Simplicius and Faustinus, But at the same time it happened that a certain woman, Beatrix by name and by deed, who was the sister of the holy Simplicius and Faustinus, who, for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ had undergone many and diverse punishments, which were inflicted on them by the executioners, were ordered to undergo capital sentence ^a; and their bodies, a stone being bound on their necks, were thus cast ^b through the bridge which is called the Stone bridge ^c, into the streams of the Tiber ^d: whose bodies, by the nod of God, were found near the place which is called the Sixth milestone of Philip ^e, on the Portuensian Way ^f. Then blessed Beatrix, together with the blessed presbyters Crispus and John ^g and other Christians, lifted the bodies of the holy martyrs Simplicius and Faustinus from the river, and buried them there at the Sixth milestone of Philip ^h, on the fourth day before the Kalends of August. And this blessed one, as we said, Beatrix by name, their sister, after she had made burial for her brothers, the Martyrs of Christ, came to the venerable Lucina ⁱ, and dwelt with her for seven months

^k, during all which space always two little crows came with single nuts ^l.

[2] where she herself was afterward buried as a Martyr, But it happened that a certain estate, which had been common to blessed Beatrix with her Brothers, a neighboring landholder coveted. Then, therefore, he had blessed Beatrix seized and led to sacrifice to idols. Then blessed Beatrix said to them: "I do not sacrifice to demons, for I am a Christian." Wherefore Lucretius said to her: "Approach now, and sacrifice to the great goddess Diana, and free thyself from the diverse punishments which await thee." And so blessed Beatrix cried out with a loud voice, saying to him: "May it never be well with thee ^m, Lucretius; I have already told thee that I am a Christian, and a handmaid of my Lord Jesus Christ; and to thy reprobate idols I never sacrifice." Which being heard, Lucretius ordered her to be committed to the custody of the prison, until he should take thought concerning her ⁿ. And when she had stood firm in the name of God, the ambitious neighbor Lucretius had her strangled by night by his servants; and thus she gave up her spirit to the Lord: whom also the holy and venerable Lucina, together with her most holy Brothers, buried there at the Sixth milestone of Philip, on the fourth day before the Kalends of August ^o.

[3] But after these things Lucretius entered the estate of the Saints, and made a banquet, God avenging her death; and through her revealing the end of the persecution. in which, insulting the Saints of God, while they feast, and there being there a woman who was suckling her son, that little infant, wrapped in swaddling-clothes, uttered a voice in the banquet before all, saying: "Hear, Lucretius; thou hast slain and hast invaded: behold, thou art given into the possession of the enemy." But at this voice Lucretius grew pale, and trembling and fear invaded him; and straightway Satan also entered into him, and there in the banquet for three hours vexed him, until he took away his spirit. But so great a fear rushed upon all who were present that all together took refuge with the Christians, and, being made Christians, related to all the passion of the holy and blessed martyr Beatrix, virgin of Christ, avenged in the banquet. But Lucina, the venerable woman, when she fled, terrified by the harshness of the passion, the holy one of God, Beatrix, appeared to her, saying: "Do not depart: for in this month peace shall be given to the churches of Christ [p]." Which was done, the Lord aiding, and our Lord Jesus Christ reigning, to whom is honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.

ANNOTATIONS.

ON THE HOLY ROMAN MARTYRS ON THE PORTUENSIAN WAY,

ABSEODUS, RUFUS, ABDO, PONTIANUS, AND NICETUS.

From the Hieronymian Martyrologies.

Abseodus, Martyr at Rome (St.)

Rufus, Martyr in the same place (St.)

Abdo, Martyr in the same place (St.)

Pontianus, Martyr in the same place (St.)

Nicetus, Martyr in the same place (St.)

J. B. S.

I have already said that the standard-bearer of these is set down in the Epternach codex as Philip, who is to be referred not to the proper name of a Martyr, but to that of the cemetery, to the Sixth milestone of Philip: where this too is to be noted in the same codex, that it has confused this class with the three brothers already related, Simplicius, Faustinus, and Beatrix; but in the Lucca and in the Blume codex some Felix is mixed in, who recurs better below with the position in Africa. Purer is the Corbie announcement, where nevertheless for Nicetus is read Dicetus.

ON THE HOLY AFRICAN MARTYRS,

FELIX, NICETA OR NITICA, POSTINIANA OR POSTUNIANA, AND PHILIP,

From the Hieronymian Martyrologies.

Felix, Martyr in Africa (St.)

Niceta, Martyr in Africa (St.)

Postiniana, Martyr in Africa (St.)

Philip, Martyr in Africa (St.)

J. B. S.

That these four Martyrs are Africans, the Lucca and Corbie codices compel me to gather: although the Epternach codex has the particle "elsewhere" inserted after the name of Felix, differing besides from the rest in this, that between Postiniana and Philip it intrudes Patruina, who by others is referred to the last class; so that therefore this whole troop is restricted to only four martyrs, with that sole difference which we expressed in the title itself, that for Niceta the Corbie reads Nitica, but the Epternach alone Postuniana. Nothing besides recurs that is worthy of observation.

ON THE HOLY MARTYRS OF UNCERTAIN PLACE,

ANASTASIA, PHILIP, SATURNINUS, CÆLESTIUS, PATRUNIA, AND PELAGIA.

From the Hieronymian Martyrologies.

Anastasia, Martyr of uncertain place (St.)

Philip, Martyr of uncertain place (St.)

Saturninus, Martyr of uncertain place (St.)

Cælestius, Martyr of uncertain place (St.)

Patrunia, Martyr of uncertain place (St.)

Pelagia, Martyr of uncertain place (St.)

J. B. S.

The Saints, variously disposed in our various codices, seem to be recounted in the order here described. I have already noted that Patruina was transposed in the Epternach, who in the Lucca codices is called Patrunia. The Corbie recedes still more from the genuine text, when for Pelagia, who closes the column, it substitutes one Jocundinus, I know not whom, altogether unknown to the rest. It is exceedingly manifest that the authority of the other codices is here to be preferred.