ON S. MAXIMUS THE MARTYR,
BISHOP OF NAPLES IN ITALY.
BEFORE THE YEAR 360.
A discussion of his exile, death, cult, translation.
Maximus, Bishop of Naples, Martyr in Italy (S.)
BY THE AUTHOR D. P.
A most certain and most ancient testimony of the Martyrdom undergone for the faith in a wretched exile by S. Maximus, Bishop of Naples, S. Maximus driven into exile for the faith, is furnished by two most lying, but contemporary writers; and while they seek a defense for their schism, they defend the truth, under the veil of falsity not entirely covered. I mean the Presbyters Faustinus and Marcellinus, who in their calumnious little book against S. Damasus of prayers to the Emperor Theodosius used these words: he excommunicates Zosimus, substituted in his place, and dies, The holy man Maximus the Bishop, vindicating the right faith, and reprobating the fellowship of heretics, was led into exile. In his place the transgressors ordain one named Zosimus, who also himself formerly indeed vindicated Catholic things. This matter was done in the city of Naples in Campania. S. Maximus learns of this, and writing from exile pronounces sentence against him, not only by Episcopal authority, but also enjoying the emulation and virtue of martyrdom unto the divine glory. But after some years B. Lucifer, going to Rome from his fourth exile, entered Naples
of Campania, to whom Zosimus tried to come: but Lucifer the Confessor was unwilling to receive him, S. Lucifer confirms his sentence not being ignorant of what he had done; indeed, by the fervor of the Holy Spirit, he most firmly executes the sentence of the Bishop and Martyr; saying that he would not have, by a special judgment of God, that very Episcopate which he claims for himself as an adulterer, and that thus too he would feel the punishment of his impiety.
[2] whose force he experienced by a miracle, and withdraws from the Episcopate. But not long afterwards the same Zosimus, when in the assembly of the people he wished to perform the offices of a Priest, in the very midst of the Sacerdotal words his tongue is thrust out, nor is he able to draw it back within the passage of his mouth, because contrary to the manner of nature it hung outside his mouth like that of a panting ox. But when he saw that he had lost the office of his tongue, he goes out of the basilica: and—wondrous thing!—outside, his tongue was again recalled to its office. And at first indeed it is not understood that the sentence of the Martyr Maximus and the Confessor Lucifer is being fulfilled upon him: but when he suffers this same thing as often as he tried to enter the basilica on different days; he at last recognized that for this reason his tongue was denied to him amid the solemn words of the Pontifical office, in order that he might prove the sentence laid upon him by the holy Bishops. Finally he yielded the Episcopate, that the tongue which had failed might be restored. We do not relate ancient matters, which by some reasoning are wont to come into doubt: for Zosimus too is even today in the body, no longer losing the use of his tongue, since he preferred to live with the loss of his Episcopate, grieving over his impieties.
[3] How Maximus is venerated as a Martyr. These things they relate, wrongly twisting the very miracle to the confirmation of their schism; whereas Lucifer foretold the punishment of Zosimus, not because after his lapse he persevered in holding the Episcopate under the title of penance, but because an adulterer occupied it, having been ordained while S. Maximus was still living, just as Auxentius of Milan while S. Dionysius was living; whence not even after the death of SS. Maximus and Dionysius were they ever acknowledged as legitimate, and Lucifer deservedly abhorred him, whose sanctity we proved on the 20th of May, with a copious Commentary on that matter, using at that time those very words. Now from the same we draw out the cause and time of S. Maximus's being driven into exile, and the death undergone therein, for which he is called and venerated a Martyr; just as S. Eusebius of Vercelli, to be commemorated at the Kalends of August. And the cause of the exile indeed is brought forward, that he vindicated the right faith, and reprobated the fellowship of heretics; not of those whom Faustinus and Marcellinus wished to be repelled from communion even after penance (for such men first began to be marked after the Council of Rimini, celebrated in the year 359, by the indiscreet zeal of certain men, which at last degenerated into schism) but of those who, under the appearance of pacifying the Church, The time of the exile. in the Milanese Pseudo-synod of the year 355, wished the Homoousion abolished, and S. Athanasius condemned. I would believe this was done after SS. Dionysius, Lucifer, and Eusebius were cast into exile: for when these are treated of, there is nowhere any mention of S. Maximus; indeed it was done after the dismissal of the assembly of Bishops, when he more confidently reprobated the things done by force. But soon I believe Zosimus was substituted by the heretics, against whom Maximus continually pronounced sentence from the place of his exile, unknown to us, which after his death Lucifer confirmed in the year 362, when Julian the Apostate had permitted the Bishops exiled for the cause of the faith to return to their Churches.
[3] [The chronology of his successors disturbed by the author of the Life of S. Severus,] By how many years the death of Maximus preceded this return, or how long he prolonged his life here in exile, I have nothing whereby to define: but it could not have preceded by so many as the beginning of S. Severus requires—wrongly attributed to the times of S. Silvester by John the Deacon, who from this point begins to combine the names of the Roman Pontiffs with the names of the Neapolitan Bishops; perhaps by the example and lead of him who presumed to write the Life of S. Severus, who immediately followed S. Maximus, in the 8th century—erring (as I showed there) by the whole heaven, and perhaps led into such an error because he saw S. Maximus venerated as a Martyr; and so he opined it to follow that S. Maximus suffered at least under Maxentius, the last of the tyrants raging at Rome and in Italy, in the final years of Pope Melchiades. Concerning his successor S. Severus, then, to whom he found 41 years attributed, he says that he was in the times of Pope Silvester and Constantine Augustus, and continued up to Pope Damasus, leaping over these Apostolic ones, and hence in John the Deacon Mark, Julius, Liberius, and Felix. Consequently John the Deacon writes that his successor Ursus died after only four years of his Episcopate under Damasus; then that John presided, under the Roman Pontiffs Siricius and Anastasius and the Emperor Honorius: Timasius, under Celestine and Sixtus up to Pope S. Leo, with Valentinian III and Theodosius the Younger, son of Arcadius, reigning: then Nostrianus, who sat 17 years; and Felix, who sat 9 years, 3 months, 6 days; and finally Soter, who sat 21 years, namely in the times of Hilarius, Simplicius, and Felix, Roman Pontiffs.
[4] These last, as the very words of John the Deacon, Ughellus sets forth in a distinct typeface; it is argued from the age of S. Fortunatus the predecessor: but the rest, concerning Ursus and his successors, he indeed cites the same man, but without such a mark: wherefore in those last I plant my foot, to prove that that Author of the Life of S. Severus erred by the whole heaven, and that S. Severus was not ordained long before the year 366, between whom and S. Maximus only Zosimus, wickedly intruded by the Arians, intervened. The same error is effectively refuted by the age of Calepodius and Fortunatus, of whom the former in the year 347 attended the Synod of Sardica, with Hosius the Legate of the Apostolic See; to the latter, in the same or the following year, and ten years after the death of S. Silvester, was directed the pseudo-Synodical letter of the Arians, who falsely claimed the name of the Synod of Sardica at Philippopolis; and both were Bishops of Naples, this one Latin and principal, that one Greek and secondary, as we shall show on the day of that S. Fortunatus, the 15th of June. This is an evident argument against the aforesaid reckoning, on which rests the foregoing comparison of the Neapolitan Bishops, Severus, Ursus, and John; and of the Roman Pontiffs, Silvester, Damasus, and Siricius. But from the same it is not yet had in what year Zosimus yielded the wrongly occupied Episcopate: but he could not have yielded before the year 362; although the death of S. Maximus could, indeed ought to, and from the years attributed to each by John, have happened some years earlier; just as the abdication of Zosimus somewhat later. Furthermore, that this, on which the beginning of S. Severus depends, may be more certainly defined, it is pleasing to rest upward from Soter, the last of the aforenamed Bishops from John the Deacon, through the years attributed to each of them by the same John; namely from a more ancient Catalogue, long ago written in the likeness of the Catalogues of the Pontiffs; such as we have found also handed down from of old for the Milanese Church, and successively augmented for posterity, illustrated before the last volume of May.
[5] John says, then, that Soter sat 21 years, in the times of Hilarius, Simplicius, and Felix. We have shown that this man was ordained in February in the year 483, and died at the end of January of the year 492. And that Hilarius began at the end of the year 461. Let us grant, then, that Soter, ordained in the 2nd year of Hilarius, thus it is corrected, so that S. Severus succeeded the abdicating Zosimus in 366 died in the year 484, the 4th year of Pope Felix; and let us ascend upward from Soter, leaping over the times of the holy Pontiffs, Innocent, Zosimus, and Boniface (or rather, coming to a more certain composition of the Pontiffs and Bishops through the years in which John says Timasius sat) we shall find that Felix, the predecessor of Soter, could not have begun earlier than the year 455; Nostrianus, 441; Timasius at least about the year 429, who was the sixth to Pope Celestine; but the same year is the 28th from the death of Pope Anastasius, under whose Pontificate nevertheless, by the foregoing reckoning of John, John, the predecessor of Timasius, must have died. Therefore, that erroneous composition of John with Siricius and Sixtus being dismissed, let us compose the same man with the times of the Pontiffs Zosimus, Boniface, and Celestine, and let us say that he was ordained in the year 416, and sat 13 or 12 years; then we shall see that the 4 years of his predecessor Ursus, and the 46 years of S. Severus his uncle; will make Ursus indeed ordained about the year 412, as Ughellus determines; but Severus about 366, when, with Valentinian, the successor of Julian the Apostate, it was permitted to relieve the Catholic cause in Italy; and, the schismatic and intruded Zosimus yielding, to substitute S. Severus in the Neapolitan See, after S. Maximus, deceased seven or eight years before, to be held legitimately and canonically.
[6] nor let another Maximus be interposed, Baronius, having understood otherwise the account of Marcellinus and Faustinus, substituted to Zosimus another Maximus, likewise ordained by the Arians, whose communion Lucifer turned away from; and Bartholomeus Chioccarellus followed Baronius, in the Catalogue of the Prelates of the Neapolitan Church, which he published in the year 1643; and therefore he judged that the number of years attributed to the Episcopate of S. Severus should be restricted; believing it enough if that be the number of the years of his life. But he does this rather, in order to find a place for Ursicinus, whom—driven from Rome—Anastasius, in his account of Damasus, says was made Bishop at Naples, in the year 366. Baronius indeed strongly denies this, because in the Imperial decree of the year 381 it is read, "Gaul restrains Ursicinus, &… the secession of Cologne checks him." But Chioccarellus suspects but neither let the designation of Ursicinus asserted by Anastasius be exploded: lest Anastasius, sent to Naples as legate by Hadrian II in the year 872, when he had found it written that a certain Ursus had been Bishop around those times, by an undigested matter suspected and opined that that Ursus was the schismatic one. But I see nothing why Ursicinus, to be sent away from Rome, could not have been designated for the See, left vacant by the yielding of Zosimus; just as Symmachus appointed Laurentius—ordained contentiously in rivalry with himself, and, his cause being discussed, deprived of office—as Bishop in the city of Nocera, in the regard of mercy, in the year 498. Yet this Ursicinus was either not received by the Neapolitans, who demanded Severus; or refused to go to Naples, not yet having laid aside the hope of the supreme Pontificate, to which he repeatedly tried to return, not once, but often, having been driven from the City: and thus his authority remains whole for Anastasius, nor yet is any Bishop of Naples of true name interposed between SS. Maximus and Severus.
[7] S. Maximus formerly venerated on the 11th of June, now the 12th The aforepraised Chioccarellus grieves that the Acts of S. Maximus have perished through the voracity of time; since he is reckoned among the chief Prelates and Martyrs of his Church, and the Neapolitan Church was accustomed to celebrate his feast with a solemn rite, as we discover from the ecclesiastical Offices, written in Lombard letters; from which we have perceived that the feast of S. Maximus, Bishop of Naples, is venerated on the 11th day of June. That this was made obsolete, and the 12th of June assumed, the more weighty festivity of S. Barnabas brought about, according to Cæsar Eugenio Caracciolo: there was beheld nevertheless, as the same Chioccarellus says, a most ancient effigy of S. Maximus, in Pontifical vestments and with a halo
distinguished, painted in the Greek manner, in the church of S. Fortunatus. his body variously translated John the Deacon of Naples, moreover, who flourished toward the end of the 5th century, mentions that Bishop in his Chronicle of the Bishops in these words: Maximus, the 10th Bishop, from his early age vigorous and in every way temperate, served the holy Church as a soldier: and he himself was first buried in the church of B. Fortunatus, Priest and Confessor of Christ; but now, in the oratory of the Stephanian church, on the left side as one enters, having obtained a sacred altar, he exults. Whoever shall have published in full so ancient a Catalogue will have done a thing worth the effort.
[8] We shall make the memory of B. Fortunatus on the 15th of June. Indeed, concerning the recent finding of him and of Saint Maximus, in the church of S. Euphebius, we have already treated on the 23rd of May: recently found in the church of S. Euphebius. where also concerning the body of S. Euphebius likewise then found. Since these things are common to the three, there is no point in repeating them here. There, however, we would wish certain things corrected, and to establish the common rest of the same in the Stephanian church, from about the year 763 (when Paul—called the First and Elder, of two of that name, with Stephen intervening, succeeding one another—brought those two thither) up to the times of the Norman Kings; under whom they were translated to the Euphebian church, then restored, together with S. Euphebius. But this correction will be more conveniently explained at the memory of S. Fortunatus.