ON ST. SERAPHINA,
From the Martyrologies.
CommentarySeraphina (St.)
BY J. B. S.
I here bring forth a bare name, without any title of virgin or martyr, because I have not found it expressed, nor a word anywhere of her deeds, country, or age. That she is named of Mamia, this I confess, but sought by me in vain, even in Lesser Armenia itself, where Ferrari, by divining, I suppose, had placed her. Known by her name alone Still less can I perceive what moved Castellanus to note in the margin "about the year 462," inasmuch as, of her of whom I have already spoken, nothing was found by me besides the bare name, and that after a long and tedious inquiry. That Baronius was altogether ignorant of what Saint was there treated is manifest from this, that he noted only these words: "Both in the ancient Roman Martyrology and in an old manuscript there is mention of her on this day." What that manuscript is, I know not; unless he saw the Strozzi codex, which you have in the additions to Usuard. Further, the ancient Roman, as he calls it, is nothing other than that of Belinus according to the custom of the Roman curia, in which it is read plainly thus: "In the city of Mamia, of St. Seraphina." Greven for "Mamiensi" substitutes "Mamerti": worse still, Maurolycus "Hamiensi," from which, as also from Molanus, you would draw just as much light.
And here I had withdrawn my hand, wearied of further investigation, when, doing another thing, she is wonderfully depicted by Tamayo. I lit upon the Spanish Martyrology of Tamayo, where, in the very first announcement of the entry, I vehemently wondered that so many things, so foully, could be feigned. Hear the fiction, pure and unadulterated: "At Mamia in Galicia in Spain, of St. Seraphina the virgin, who, when she received the rudiments of the faith from Blessed James the Apostle, and afterward gave herself to prayers, fasts, and works of charity, migrated to her Spouse in the flower of chastity." So he, wont to range over all obscure matters, and, his Julian favoring, to bend geography and topography to his own nods. And his notes indeed he began from a new lie, when he says that she, namely St. Seraphina, is commemorated in the ancient Roman Martyrology of Rosweyde, which I know not whether he ever saluted from the threshold. But then, forging other things from his fellow-mystagogues, he turns all things topsy-turvy, which it is irksome here to refute at length. Aulus Halus I do not delay over, nor the series of Acts shamelessly pieced together from Julian of Toledo, so far that he did not hesitate to sew on even the year of her death, namely 56, from the conjectures of Dexter.