Martyrs

ON THE HOLY MARTYRS

FANTIUS AND DEODATA.

AT TAURIANA IN CALABRIA, OR AT SYRACUSE IN SICILY.

Perhaps in the persecution of Diocletian and Maximian.

PRELIMINARY COMMENTARY. Their memory in the Calendars; their Acts, mixed with those of others, discussed here; what things are given here.

Fantius, Martyr, in Calabria or in Sicily (St.)

Deodata, Martyr, in Calabria or in Sicily (St.)

J. P.

The more recent Martyrologists do not mark the memory of these Martyrs on the same day: for Molanus, in the additions to his Usuard published in the year 1573, on this day, the 31st of July, after Maurolycus, has it thus: In Calabria, in the town of Tauriana *, of St. Fantinus, confessor, of Syracuse; The memory on various days whose parents Fantius and Deodata, beaten at Syracuse with leaded scourges, since they were unwilling to sacrifice to the gods, were beheaded. Ferrarius, in his new Catalogue of the Saints who are not in the Roman Martyrology, on this same day indeed hands down the following: At Syracuse, of the holy martyrs Fantius and Deodata, under Diocletian; and he adds in the notes that he gives them from the Records of the church of Syracuse; but in almost the same words he mentions them again on the 31st of August, and again cites the Records of the said church, with this added, that it venerates them as its own citizens. Finally, a third time, he repeats the same holy Martyrs on the 14th of December, citing, besides the Records of the church of Syracuse, also those which are of Lentini; which, he says, we received at Rome from Agathinus, a priest of Lentini. But we do not hold the age, trustworthiness, and authority of those Records sufficiently explored: let us nevertheless believe Ferrarius when he affirms that the church of Syracuse venerates these Saints as its own citizens; but whether they were truly such will presently be discussed.

[2] Our Ottavio Cajetano, in the Lives of the Saints

of the Sicilians, volume 1, [related among the more recent hagiologists: the Acts mixed with the Life of St. Fantinus,] page 122, assigns them to this 31st day of July; of whom he had also made mention before, in the Plan of that work, page 89; and afterward our Francesco Carrera, in the Sicilian Pantheon, where from page 189 he wove an elogium. Now, however, if you seek the first source from which these more recent little streams of announcements have flowed, we answer that no other is known to us than the Life of St. Fantinus, son of Sts. Fantius and Deodata; which we produced at the 24th day of this month, from page 553; where they are treated of in chapter 1; and in chapter 2 it is said that, when they refused to obey the proconsul and to burn incense to the gods, their heads were struck off. It would furthermore be altogether desirable that that Life were of a better stamp, and more purged of certain filth: which matter we indicated for the time in its Preliminary Commentary, §1, no. 7; likewise §2 at the beginning: from which Commentary many other things also are to be fetched, which then, on occasion of St. Fantinus, were treated in advance, scattered, as happens, about these two Saints of ours in that same place: namely concerning their proper names, no. 11; concerning the nobility devised from the trifles of an idle wit, from no. 5; concerning the time of the martyrdom, no. 11 at the end; but at no. 14 it was said that the reckoning of the time remains uncertain, as not sufficiently proved: whatever Cajetano may append in the margin of the Life of our Saints, which he published, the year of Christ 304.

[3] [from whose Commentary various things are here dug out concerning their age and fatherland] We reckon, says Cajetano, cited at the same no. 11, that the parents of Fantinus were carried off by the external persecution which was stirred up by the emperors Diocletian and Maximian; but that what he reckons he by no means proves, we indicated in that same place. Their deeds and Martyrdom are read interspersed in the Life of St. Fantinus in Petrus de Natalibus, bishop of Equilino, book 6, chapter 160; but which Life is corrupt, as you will find in the alleged Commentary, no. 25. Another question may be raised here, whether our Saints were of Syracuse. That they are ascribed to Syracuse in the more recent announcements of the Martyrologies; that they are venerated as Syracusan citizens likewise by the Syracusans, on the testimony of Ferrarius, we have now seen; but just as we by no means envy the Syracusans that glory, so we would congratulate them on a solid reason, if indeed it were brought forward by them. The single foundation, so far as we think, of this matter seems not able to be drawn from anywhere else than from the Life of St. Fantinus, in which at any rate, no. 1, he is asserted to have been born at Syracuse; and in no. 5 of the same Life mention is made of the Syracusan field, in which he hunted. Finally, those things which are presently related concerning his captivity, and the martyrdom of Fantius and Deodata, we reckon are to be understood, from the circumstances of the matter, to have happened in the city of Syracuse; if the author says true.

[4] of these Saints, at Syracuse or at Tauriana? This is the single foundation, as we judge, on which the Syracusans can rely, to venerate Sts. Fantius and Deodata as their own citizens. Which, although single, would nevertheless here be sufficient, provided it were established solidly enough by the authority of a better writer of the Life, I say, than that anonymous one. Then, since in the several-times-alleged Preliminary Commentary of the Life of St. Fantinus, from no. 5, many difficulties having been proposed and discussed concerning the place of his birth—whether that place was Tauriana in Calabria, or Syracuse—we at last reckoned that that Saint should for the time be given to the people of Tauriana, until the Syracusans should teach us more certain things; therefore we also for the time give the holy Parents of Fantinus to the people of Tauriana, either as inhabitants or citizens of that place; yet in the title of this our present Commentary we have announced them disjunctively at Syracuse or at Tauriana; both because the Syracusans are in possession, and because our opinion, which for the time favors the people of Tauriana, is not altogether certain.

[5] Since these things are so, it follows that a certain man of Lentini in Cajetano's Animadversions, volume 1, St. Deodata was wrongly ascribed by someone to the Saints of Lentini. page 103, ought neither to detain, much less to move us, who, moved by love toward his fatherland and by piety toward the Lady martyr Deodata, took care to have her image engraved in bronze at Rome with this inscription, which is there set forth: Saint Deodata, martyr of Lentini, mother of St. Fantius of Syracuse. But he soon rightly observes that that man believed Deodata to be of Lentini, deceived by the corrupted Acts into which Petrus of Equilino stumbled; whose passage he there adduces, together with the words of the Madrid codex, containing similar trifles. It is wearisome to transcribe the words of either text. Meanwhile there may be seen the things we said in the Commentary of St. Fantinus, no. 5, where the reader will find the hallucination of a certain man of Lentini—nay, of the same man, if I am not mistaken, as above—who ascribed Deodata among the divine ones of Lentini, indicated in passing from the praised Cajetano, as the matter then bore.

[6] The same Cajetano, in the cited volume, page 122, wove the Acts of Sts. Fantius and Deodata from the Life of St. Fantinus; The Acts which are here given. which therefore can have no more authority than the anonymous author himself from whom they were taken, deserving certainly no great credit, as is given to be understood partly from the foregoing, partly from our often-cited Commentary, from no. 34. But although those Acts composed by Cajetano have nothing for which they deserve to be reprinted here; yet because they are very brief, and exhibit the deeds of our Saints as it were under one view, otherwise to be sought in the Life of St. Fantinus, therefore it has seemed good to us not to withdraw those Acts here from the reader's eyes, lest one must have recourse elsewhere for them; which we have also in some places corrected. Thus therefore they run.

* Read: Tauriano.

ACTS

From the Life of St. Fantinus, volume V of July, from page 553, by the author Ottavio Cajetano, S.J., volume 1 of the Lives of the Sicilian Saints, page 122.

Fantius, Martyr, in Calabria or in Sicily (St.)

Deodata, Martyr, in Calabria or in Sicily (St.)

FROM THE PRINTED EDITION.

Fantius and Deodata, a married pair, illustrious among the Syracusans ^a by the splendor of their lineage and by their riches, while they were still heathen, and were held by a wondrous desire for children, whom they had long lacked; [While the Saints were heathen and desired children, it is promised to Fantius in a vision] demanded them from their gods by liberality toward the poor and by prayers. On a certain night Fantius seemed to himself to see in his sleep that he was set, together with his wife Deodata, at the judgment of God the Father, and condemned by the crime of impious superstition to the eternal fires of hell; but that the Son sitting by, Jesus Christ, was present to the married pair, and, his wounds being set before his Father, at once obtained for them pardon and offspring; and soon also promised that the parents would receive the right faith from their son. By which prayer of Christ the Lord, the sentence already pronounced was revoked by the supreme judge.

[2] a son; who is baptized, Terrified and roused by the vision, Fantius, and Deodata having heard it, kept the reverence of the divine power stored in their mind, and nourished it by right deeds: but the dream found credit from the outcome. It was a happy omen to the parents, a boy born, to whom the name Fantinus. He, on the day he was completing his twelfth year, while he was hunting in the Syracusan field, following a doe by chance offered (was it by divine will?) fleeing into a cave, met a holy hermit, by whom, together with his servant Leontius, he was instructed in the faith of Jesus Christ, and baptized.

[3] and converts his parents to the faith. The boy, returned home, having narrated what had befallen him, teaches his parents the ordinances of the Christian life. They indeed, since they rightly recalled in mind the things Fantius had seen in his sleep, eagerly took up the faith with their household. At the same time the blessed Parents distribute all they had to the needy. From this, accused of the Christian religion, and seized together with their son, they are set before the consular official; interrogated who they were, they answered that they were Christians.

[4] [They are beaten with leaded scourges, and, an angel confirming them, are crowned with martyrdom.] For this word, by the command of the angry consular official, all were bruised with leaded scourges; but since by no force of pain, and by no atrocity of blows, did they change the constancy of their noble voice, they are cast into prison, where, an angel having glided down by night with light, refreshed them with food and confirmed them for martyrdom: and having foretold that Fantius and Deodata would undergo martyrdom on the next day, he permitted the boy Fantinus, his chains loosed and the doors thrown open of their own accord, to go free, whither God should lead him. When day arose, Fantius and Deodata, dragged back to the consular official, since they refused to obey his commands and to burn incense to the gods, were beheaded; and having offered their necks for the name of Christ, they flew away to the laurel of immortality.

NOTES.

ON THE HOLY MARTYRS

DEMOCRITUS, SECUNDUS, DIONYSIUS, AND THYRSUS,

MORE PROBABLY IN AFRICA.

From the Hieronymian Martyrologies.

Democritus, Martyr, more probably in Africa (St.)

Secundus, Martyr, more probably in Africa (St.)

Dionysius, Martyr, more probably in Africa (St.)

Thyrsus, Martyr, more probably in Africa (St.)

J. B. S.

The things which we left undecided in the Observations on Usuard on this day—both concerning the true arena of these holy Martyrs, and concerning the fourth companion to be joined to the three former, although in Usuard he is not expressed—What was doubtful concerning the arena, must now be weighed a little more diligently. In the Usuardine text it is read most expressly thus: In the city of Sinnada, of the holy Democritus, Secundus, and Dionysius: where, whether Usuard studiously drew it away from the region, though it be not altogether clear, certainly he did not dare to ascribe the Martyrs either to Phrygia or to Africa; so that it deservedly remains to be asked whether Baronius transformed the Usuardine text rightly enough, writing thus: In Phrygia Pacatiana, of the holy Democritus, Secundus, and Dionysius—which announcement he nowhere found in any Martyrology known to me at least, whereas rather in the classical ones which made mention of the Saints, as in Rabanus and Notker, it is expressly given: In Africa, in the city of Sinnada, as also all the greater Hieronymian codices note, excepting only the Epternach one, in which an unskilled amanuensis has doubtless fashioned Phrygia out of Africa—that such transmutations not rarely occur in that codex is most well known from things very often said elsewhere. What of the fact that Bede too, in the Plantin edition, places four Martyrs in Africa?

[2] Moreover, how much the codices—not only the Hieronymian, but also nearly all the rest—differ among themselves in assigning the place of the contest, as Florentinius once observed, it now seems able to be resolved, you will understand from the enumeration in the most illustrious bishop of Otranto in his topographical disquisition on the Roman Martyrology: for some write Synnada, others Cinnada, then Sindana, Sinenda, Sinnenda, Synoda, Cinoda, Summanda, Sumada; yet in such a way that the region added everywhere and throughout savors not of Phrygia but of Africa, so that accordingly the true arena is to be sought not in Asia, but in that other part of the world; where, if not under that form, certainly under some form closely approaching it, a place is to be found to which the Saints may be attributed, which the praised Florentinius assigned aptly enough, by substituting for Synnada

the neighboring African city Sinita. In the Carthaginian collation indeed, he says, and in Victor of Utica, the place Sinitensis is expressed in Africa. Synica and the Synicensian bishopric was in Africa, which St. Augustine mentions in book 2, chapter 8, and the Sinistensian tract the same mentions in epistle 128 to Donatus.

[3] by attributing the Saints not to Phrygia but to Africa; Then he subjoins: To the same Augustine Africa is full of the bodies of holy Martyrs, as Galesinius here notes, and in our older manuscript they nearly abound above the rest of other regions, so that it would not be difficult to claim these too for Africa, not Phrygia: which indeed, considering the authority of our codices, cannot but seem far more probable. Besides that this argument also accrues, certainly not ungrounded: for since these Martyrs seem illustrious enough, if they were truly Phrygians, nay even merely Asiatics, they do not seem likely to be so easily passed over by the Greeks, those diligent collectors of Saints of this sort; while meanwhile neither the Menæa, nor the Menologia, nor other Greek monuments are known ever to have brought forth their memory. It cannot therefore be turned to fault in us that, leaving the text of the Roman Martyrology, we have judged it should be restored according to the trustworthiness of the more ancient codices, in the manner in which in the title both the names and the number of the Saints and the arena itself are more probably expressed.

[4] and by adding a fourth companion. Now, that we may say a few things also about St. Thyrsus: it is no more doubtful whether he is to be joined to the three others, than that which we have shown in a plainly probable manner, that all are to be attributed not to Phrygia but to Africa, and to be vindicated more probably not to Synnada, an unknown city of Africa, but to Sinita. Thyrsus therefore, or Tyrsus, we have judged should be ascribed to the text, and those words consequently rejected which Florentinius read in the manuscript of the Queen of Sweden, and likewise Holstenius in his Animadversions, At Tyre in Syria, of Tirsus—which words in our manuscript of St. Columba, which we call the Queen of Sweden's and published in the seventh volume of June; which, I say, are not found in that manuscript, but rather the reading preferred by us is confirmed, that Africa is to be substituted for Phrygia, for thus it is there expressly held: In Africa, in the city of Sinnada, the birth of the holy Democritus, Secundus, Dionysius, and Tirus: where it is clear enough that Tirsi should be read, whence other contracted codices could be led into error, so that they thought Tyre to be the arena. Concerning the four companions Rabanus and Notker remove all doubt, when they announce thus: In Africa, in the city of Sinnada, the birthday of the holy Democritus, Secundus, Dionysius, Thyrsus.