ON THE SAINTS PICTUS, ARETIUS, DACIANUS,
MARTYRS AT ROME ON THE APPIAN WAY.
Their cult, and Spanish fabrications about the place of their martyrdom.
Pictus, Martyr at Rome on the Appian Way (S.)
Aretus, Martyr at Rome on the Appian Way (S.)
Dacianus, Martyr at Rome on the Appian Way (S.)
D. P.
The four ancient copies of the Hieronymian Martyrology, already so often cited, suggest these Martyrs to us in these words: "At Rome, the birthday of Pictus, Arecius, Dacianus." In the Ms. of Monte Cassino and another of Queen Christina of Sweden, "via Appia" is added, Names in the Martyrologies and indeed, as is read in the Mss. of Tournai and Liessies, "in the cemetery at the Catacombs," and in the Ms. of S. Peter's Vatican, it is said to have been at the fourth milestone from the City. Of the Catacombs on the Appian Way Aringhus treats in book 3 of "Subterranean Rome" chap. 12. S. Gregory in book 3 epist. 30 seems to place them at the second milestone; and the cemetery, begun there, may have extended for some thousand paces further. The names of these Saints are variously written: Pectus, Pastus, Pietus in place of Pictus; then Arecus, Aregius, Aretius in place of Arecius: finally Dacianus is also written with the letter t. In the Roman Martyrology Aretius and Dacianus, Martyrs at Rome, are listed. But Pictus and Dacianus are in the Mss. of Augsburg, Gellone, S. Gall, and Labbé.
[2] How Dacianus was ascribed to Emerita: It seemed sinful to the authors of the pseudepigraphic Chronicles in Spain, of whatever sort, if this day passed without some Spanish Saint. What then? They seized upon this S. Dacianus, and finding a certain Decianus, friend of the poet Martial, and celebrated by him with many praises, of whom Emerita boasts as born among them in Book 1 Epigram 62, they made their Julianus thus write in the pseudo-chronicle no. 287: "The memory is still celebrated of S. Dacianus or Decianus, a Stoic philosopher of Emerita, whom Martial so much celebrates, who suffered under Hadrian at Rome with others, on the 4th day of the month of June." Lest the chorus be wanting, Tamayus in the Spanish Martyrology adds a poem which he dreamed up under the name of Aulus Halus, as if writing while the Saracens still ruled, addressed to Bl. Dacianus, Martyr of Emerita, in which it is said that he drew the true dogmas of the Christian faith from Pope Evaristus, and flew to the stars as a Martyr before him. But since Baronius ascribed Evaristus's martyrdom to the year 121 (I judge he died in 108), Tamayus himself, supported by no reason or authority of an autograph, and how to Lusitania, rejected his martyrdom both in the Annals and in the Notes to the Martyrology to the times of Diocletian. Meanwhile he himself, leaning on the fiction of Pseudo-Julianus, compiles rather prolix Acts, from various sources, as he says: and Cardosus, somewhat more concise, follows him in the Lusitanian Hagiology, because Emerita, now reckoned a city of New Castile, commonly called on the river Anas in Extremadura, is Lusitanian to Pliny and Strabo, a city once celebrated as a juridical convention of many cities and Archiepiscopal; wherefore the same Cardosus calls it the capital of Lusitania in his Notes.