ON ST. AUDITUS OR OVIDIUS
AT BRAGA IN LUSITANIA.
CRITICAL COMMENTARY.
The translation of the bones under the name of Auditus from the old to the new chest: recent fictions received under the name of Ovidius, and discussed.
Auditus, or Ovidius, at Braga in Lusitania (S.)
BY THE AUTHOR D. P.
Diego de Sousa, from being Bishop of Porto made in 1505 Archbishop of Braga, in the nearly thirty years in which he governed his Metropolis, deserved so well of it, that he was reckoned almost a second founder, and was said to have made a city out of a town. The bones of S. Auditus translated into a new chest in 1527 Among other works of his magnificent piety, he erected, in his Cathedral church, a remarkable stone monument, on the wall which meets those entering on the right, two cubits above the pavement, on which he caused these words to be inscribed: The bones of B. Auditus the Bishop. D. S. Archbishop made this 1527. Above he composed an image of the Saint, vested pontifically, and surrounded the whole work with an iron grate, for its more certain preservation and greater veneration. To the same Saint throughout the Kingdom of Lusitania many ancient hermitages are found dedicated, all on the loftiest mountains or in those places where vestiges of Roman antiquities are seen. Of the same Saint also miraculous images are found there, representing him either in long Roman habit, or in the form of a Hermit, or finally with mitre and other Pontifical insignia; but all show the book of the Gospels inserted in the left hand, while the right is raised above the shoulders, with a finger pointing to the ear; which more likely was done on occasion of the name, which caused him to be everywhere invoked against diseases of the ears and defects of hearing, with the best success; just as for a similar cause from the neighboring name Mamma, S. Mames is invoked as Patron by women destitute of milk.
[2] This is the earlier and more certain notice of the above-titled
Saint, from another much older one, where help was sought for the ears, taken from the Notes of George Cardoso to the Lusitanian Hagiologium on the III of June. He adds that in the same Cathedral, beside the treasury, even now there is to be seen, inserted in the wall, a large stone pillar, wholly bare and plain, except that there are in it two holes, through which those laboring with deafness are wont to insert their fingers, and apply them to their ears, and in this way frequent benefits are experienced divinely through the merits of the Saint himself: but because this position seemed less decorous, with women laying themselves down prone before it, that they might insert their fingers into the holes, the counsel of the aforesaid Translation was undertaken by the Archbishop to be cared for. So now a twin burial of one body is seen; namely the old and the new, and both are held in veneration, and the ancient cult is amply proved. without any certainty or argument of an Episcopal title attributed to the Saint there, much less of martyrdom or origin, later also defined. That could have sufficed, for believing that S. Auditus, from every retrograde memory, had his cult in the Bracarensian Church: had not curiosity, as it seemed pious, of knowing something more distinct about the Patron, otherwise unknown, made certain persons come to mind of devising something, beyond what the Bracarensians held as handed down from their elders.
[3] The same was rashly taken for S. Alvitus, Bishop of León, The first in this genre was Fr. Hieronymus Roman, an Augustinian: who (as Nicolas Antonio writes in the Hispanic Library), when he had proposed to himself the business of his leisure, to obtain the highest erudition of all ancient history, both sacred and profane, and to transmit much of this study to a long age by published commentaries, from the year 1569 began to publish many works in the Spanish idiom, by which he obtained the title of General Historian of the Eremite Order; and he left many other manuscripts (of which the last is inscribed History of Braga), making an end of writing and of living at the same time in the year 1597; yet, says the same most learned author of the Library, he was not able to acquire for himself solid praise among the Spaniards for his immense reading and diligence; who, in so vast a mass of things treated by him, desire more judgment and examination, not estimating him perversely or unjustly. He certainly bore no great praise from saying that the Bones, translated by Archbishop Sousa under the name of B. Auditus, were not taken from that old sepulchre; but were brought from León, by the gift of Peter Emmanuel, then Bishop there, who was transferring to a more decent chest the body of S. Alvitus, Bishop of León, to be commemorated on December 27; who, having been sent to the Saracen King, tributary to Ferdinand I, in place of the body of S. Isidore Bishop of Seville, and the author asserting this said to have dreamed, died in that effort, and likewise with him merited the cult of a Saint, as we have related more fully on April 4. That Translation of S. Alvitus, made at León, did indeed happen in the same year in which S. Auditus is found to have been translated at Braga: but since the Secretary of Archbishop Diego, Tristão Luís, in the Summary of the works of his Master in Cardoso, nowhere mentions any excursion from the diocese, much less of Relics brought from León; how easily is both denied, until more certainly proved; so silly does it seem, what is supposed, that this could have crept upon the same Archbishop, namely the name of Auditus for the name of Alvitus, so that he caused that to be inscribed on the chest erected by him, and that within the brief interval of a few days or months. Rightly therefore could Cardoso call such assertions of this Hieronymus dreams; and marvel how Augustine de Castro, Archbishop of Braga, suffered them to be obtruded on him.
[4] At the same time when this Augustinian was writing in Lusitania; another of the same name and surname was applying his energy to a similar license of writing among the Castilians, as must rightly be exploded, namely Hieronymus Roman, called de Higuera, from the year 1590 to 1611: see whether he has borne a splendid (as someone calls it) Eulogy from Nicolas Antonio, writing thus: Indeed our men commonly extol his industry and diligence to the heavens with the highest praises (who, since they know not how to deceive, do not easily believe that they can be deceived by others), because he is said to have enriched us with certain ancient Chronicles, and with other monuments of Spanish antiquities not previously seen; to which it is exceedingly wonderful how addicted and reverent the men of this age have risen up, and among them not a few of our own, as well as of foreigners, the learned and sagacious: yet others, namely the most erudite of foreigners, and of ours, those who are led more by reason than by prejudged opinions, whether knowingly or unwittingly by him to have been fabricated, and supposed under those historians whose names they bear, which is read in the Pseudo-Dexter Chronicle, convinced by clearer arguments daily, do themselves clearly believe, nor less hope easily to persuade others, who have brought to the matter a mind desirous of learning. I speak of the Chronicles of Flavius Lucius Dexter, of M. Maximus Bishop of Caesaraugusta, together with the successors Heleca and Braulio; the fragments of Liutprand Deacon of Ticinum, and of Julian Archdeacon of Toledo, and likewise of the Adversaria of the same Julian and Liutprand, which are all published; and of other unpublished works, which Hieronymus himself and others warned by him have mentioned — the fragments of S. Athanasius first Prelate of Caesaraugusta, the work of Festus Avienus On the Inland Cities of Spain, the Temporal Epitome of Isidore of Pax, the additions to Julian's Chronicle by John Egidius of Zamora, and others of this kind; concerning all which and the disgrace of the supposition, if God shall give us leisure, we shall accurately treat at another time.
[5] Higuera indeed did not publish any of his compositions; and gradually expanded by others, but pressing them at home, he supplied to many others, deceived by that specious mask of antiquity, matter for writing; and especially to Roderick Caro and Francis Bivar, who 14 and 16 years after his death published the Dexter Chronicle received from him and other things foretold, the former with shorter, the latter with longer Commentaries and Apologetics; where the suppositious Dexter, when he had brought back the beginnings of the Bracarensian Episcopate to the age of the Apostles in the year of Christ 117, assigning to it as first Prelate Peter; thus pursues the begun fable: S. Ovidius, a Roman citizen, Bishop of Braga, succeeds S. Basileus; this latter S. Peter on the Kal. of November. To which words Caro noted: In the same year I find Ovidius, a Roman citizen, celebrated by Valerius Martial: but of the Bracarensian one Julian alone occurs to me in the Chronicle, where he writes; At Braga after Ovidius S. Polycarp of Braga, to the year 130. Bivar dares to go further; and says, I would believe that Ovidius was he, who was a voluntary companion to Caesonius Maximus, when he was sent into exile by Nero, on which matter Martial gave two Epigrams.
[6] Scarcely had these hyperbolical Chronicles of Dexter and his followers come forth, as if for confirmed truth it is narrated in the Bracarensian History, when immediately throughout all Spain the hands began to itch of all those who desired the antiquities and histories of their country illustrated, and in nearly all provinces and almost in every city to be coined Annals, Hagiologia, and new Offices of the Saints, according to the Decrees of Popes Pius V and Gregory XIII, permitting each Church to honor with ecclesiastical cult its indigenous Saints (or, as the Spaniards call them, natives). Nor were the Bracarensians sluggish: for their Archbishop Rodrigo da Cunha, after he had ordered the first title of the tomb erected by his predecessor Sousa to be erased, and for it to be written, The bones of S. Ovidius the Third Bishop of Braga; also ordered the old pillar, hitherto bare, to be inscribed The bones of B. Ovidius, M., Roman: then in the year 1635 he published the Ecclesiastical History of Braga in two volumes, as if Q. Ovidius, friend of Martial, had been 3rd Ep. of Braga, and in part 1 chapter 22 dealing at length with S. Ovidius III, Bishop of Braga, follows up whatever Martial has of his Q. Ovidius, and how he preferred the friendship of Caesonius to the Consular fasces; then as a most certain thing he puts forth, how the same one, after Nero's death, returning from Sicily to Rome, and made a Christian, was ordained by S. Clement and sent as Pontiff to the long-vacant Bracarensian Church, and baptized the seven holy Virgin Martyr daughters of King Catellius, and at length, after he had presided 35 years, died a Martyr on November 1; the observance of which day, however, having been blotted out by the tyranny of the Moors, the Bracarensians substituted this III of June, free for them from the cult of any other Saint. All these things, as henceforth indubitable, Tamayus inscribed in the Spanish Martyrology, on the Kalends of November: Cardoso preferred to retain on the III of June, following the example of the new Bracarensian Breviary, published between the year 59 and 66 of this century. Of the old Bracarensian Breviary meanwhile the same Cardoso, being silent, sufficiently indicates that no place was had in it for the Saint either Auditus or Ovidius, if any proper one that Church had, or in its Calendar, even if it had on such day a feast in the Hermitages of his own name.
[7] Further when the Archbishop had imagined to himself, that the Kalends of November, marked by whatever Dexter, made a Martyr on November 1: pertained to the feast day of his S. Ovidius (which yet so does not appear from the context, that rather seems noted the day on which S. Basileus succeeded S. Peter), he believed this enough to say that he died a Martyr, who had a feast in the age of Dexter, that is, in the IV century, in which rare or no Bishops not Martyrs were decorated by the Church with such honor. The specious fable of the daughters of Catellius we have shaken out on May 22, dealing with S. Quiteria, (as is pretended) one of them: nor let the Hymn alleged by some move anyone, as if received in ecclesiastical use, in which it is said:
Rejoice, priest Ovidius, you Bracarensian Pontiff, / Who deserved to send so many daughters to the heavens.
For this Hymn was first given to the light in 1610 by Prudentius de Sandoval, in Antiquities of Tuy, stuffed by Higuera; but, alleging the use of no Church, he simply confesses it to be the composition of Higuera himself.
[8] This same Higuera, when a few years before his death, afterwards no better confused with S. Evodius, successor of Peter at Antioch, in the old Chronicle of Alfonso the Wise he had found S. Evodius, successor of S. Peter in the See of Antioch, (probably by a typographical error) written Ovidius; in a letter seen and alleged by Cardoso, to Alvares Lonzada of Belmonte, in the year 1606, with too much confidence pronounced: This one is doubtless the Bracarensian Saint, whom Eusebius and Nicephorus name Evodius; who after several years from his ordination returned to Rome; and although he was second Patriarch of Antioch, he did not refuse to be made third Bishop of Braga. I do not know whether such a letter of Higuera became known to Archbishop Roderick: at any rate he thought it was to be dissimulated here, foreseeing that it would follow thereon, because that one through a copyist's mistake appears somewhere as Ovidius, that he who, according to the opinion and reckoning of Baronius, had been ordained Bishop in the year of Christ 39, could not have died a Martyr at Braga in the year 135, unless born more than 160 years before. Would that Cardoso, just as he rejected this last figment, had had enough spirit
to reject also all the previous things, and the whole Pseudo-Dexter; he would have given us a much briefer but far purer Hagiologium; and perhaps would have finished the whole more quickly, of which now only half is held.
[9] Meanwhile from himself I gladly learn that, before the works of Flavius Dexter and Julian Peter came forth into the world, and the Latin Auditus, by the Lusitanians is called Ouvido. it was unknown by what precise name the Saint ought to be called, who lay in the Bracarensian church; some calling him Alvitus, Ovinus, Avitus, Ivo, Adauctus, Evodius, Auditus, and Ovidius. I would have wished, however, that he had named the Authors, who used such names before the Pseudo-Dexter, and confused the true and only anciently known Auditus, with Saints so diverse in age and country. But because the Latin word Auditus, whether taken substantively or adjectively, in Lusitanian is called Ouvido; I would easily believe that this name was also in popular use, and therefore I have not thought it altogether to be cut out from the title; especially since the Bracarensian Church now so calls him in the Collect, which it recites of him thus: O God, who gavest to thy people B. Ovidius as minister of eternal salvation, etc. Nor would I doubt that this promiscuous appellation, introduced in the preceding century, gave occasion to the makers of the Dextrine fables, to ascribe to him a Roman origin, and indeed a most noble one. That they did this I marvel so little that I rather marvel that there did not occur to them the name of P. Ovidius Naso, in the Augustan age a celebrated Poet, and most well-known even to boys; who if he could not from his Tomitan exile be brought to Braga, already old and a Christian (as happened to Caius Plinius Secundus, whom the same fabulators brought from Crete to Como, to be crowned with martyrdom), could certainly his grandson or great-grandson be feigned to be Q. Ovidius, so dear to Martial that he thought the Kalends of April, the Birthday of Q. Ovidius, were to be cultivated by him in preference to the Kalends of March, which had given only life to Martial; not a friend, more precious than life.