ON SAINT DIGNA-MERITA WITH HER TWO SONS,
MARTYRS AT BRESCIA IN ITALY.
HISTORICAL SYNOPSIS.
Their present cult; the name of the Lavellongo family gratuitously inserted.
Digna-merita, Martyr at Brescia in Italy (S.)
The two sons, Martyrs at Brescia in Italy (SS.)
G. H. & D. P.
Bernardinus Faynus, in the Martyrology of the Holy Church of Brescia, which we have published by order of Marino Giovanni Giorgio the Bishop in the year 1665, on this 17th of June reports the above-titled Martyrs with this elogium: On the fifteenth of the Kalends of July, at Brescia, S. Digna-merita, with her two sons, in the church of S. Afra. She, under the Emperor Hadrian, vexed with many tortures for the name of Christ, Notice from the new & old Martyrology of Brescia: flew to the heavens with the palm of Martyrdom: & her sons, cast down from a window, followed their mother with the palm. Concerning her, he says in the Notes, the old manuscript Martyrology of Brescia, where she is said to have suffered under the Emperor Hadrian, & to have been buried with SS. Faustinus & Jovita ad Sanguinem. In the little book of the Martyrdom of the people of Brescia, the collectors being Paulus & Bonifacius de Borellis & Archangelus de Curno, it is held that she & her two sons were buried under the high altar in the lower church of S. Afra (by translation). the bodies at S. Afra, M. The same Faynus, in the "Heaven of the Holy Church of Brescia," Catalogue 4, no. 8, asserts that the Church of S. Afra, from its most ancient beginnings, was called that of S. Faustinus ad Sanguinem, & that it is twofold; of which the lower is with three altars, where parochial functions are exercised; the other higher, which has nine altars, full of the Bones of the Saints, & the Abbatial Chair of the Canons Regular.
[2] Concerning the translation itself of the bodies to the church of S. Afra, if ancient documents are not had, I will gladly presume the time of the martyrdom uncertain. that there is a tradition, to which faith could not imprudently be given. Meanwhile it is asked, which is our concern, what argument there is from which it could & ought to be presumed that such a Passion is to be referred to the times of the Emperor Hadrian; especially one finished by various tortures preceding death. For I would more easily believe it to have happened that the satellites, bursting into the house, cast the mother & the children headlong, under Maximian & Diocletian. The old Martyrology of Brescia, which is alleged, is of the previous century. The little book of the Martyrdom alleged above betrays the levity of its Authors, when it asserts that the above-titled Saints flowed from the illustrious family de Lavellongo. I will congratulate the Lavellongo family, if I see their origin & succession led up to four hundred or five hundred years: if they wish to ascend further, I fear that the very arguments which will be assumed to establish earlier times, by their own feebleness will evidently prove the vanity of the cause, common at this time to many in Italy; where there is now scarcely any family of any name which adulation has not raised up to times much more ancient than it itself can solidly prove.
[2] If I should say that the name seems of more recent form, as is "Lavellongo"; the family name gratuitously invented the defender of those follies replies that new names are often fitted to old families. Then, furthermore, if I should ask by what reasoning he proves that it is really so ancient a family which is reckoned by a more recent name, & what was once its name, to which one ascends through so many centuries without an intermediary; he will remain more mute than a fish; & will only cry out that an injury is done to a nobility which is not believed, displaying namely fabricated origins, & these first devised in this or the previous century. Indeed, just as I would not unwillingly believe one asserting that the body of S. Digna-merita, & the bodies of her sons, are held placed under the altar, because he will state a thing palpable by the very hands; so if he should assert that, together with them, a notice was found, inscribed on stone or parchment, by which they are said to have flowed from the Lavellongo family; I will begin to hold the whole matter suspect of fiction, & faith will waver with me, that was applied to the first assertion (which is generally the fruit of excessive extension to earlier times); & I will doubt whether one who invented such a writing, prudently credible to no one, did not also slip under that altar bones, taken from wherever.