ON SAINT BLASIUS
BISHOP OF VERONA IN ITALY.
Notice of the cult from Bishop Valerius and others.
CommentaryBlasius, Bishop of Verona in Italy (St.)
G. H.
Augustinus Valerius, in virtue and doctrine outstanding, ordained Bishop of Verona in the year 1565; Eulogy, and afterward created Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church, and deceased in the year 1606, left a remarkable book on his Veronese See's holy Bishops: where among others about St. Blasius, one of them, this published eulogy. "Blasius Bishop of Verona, with Episcopal virtues excelled, and in relieving
the want of the needy marvelously excelled: inasmuch as he to no one, as far as in him was, his help imploring ever was lacking. In him with the highest integrity, exceptional doctrine and a holy certain gentleness was. He died, the excellent Bishop, on the tenth day before the Kalends of July: his body was laid in the same sepulchre, in which had been laid St. Alexander Bishop of Verona, under an altar of both names consecrated, in the crypt of the basilica of St. Stephen." These things Valerius. About St. Alexander we treated on the fourth of this month June, the altar, and the body; to which day more about each we have related from the said Valerius, and indeed from an old tablet of the sacrarium we said, in the Confession of that very Church, in the altar of St. Blasius, the body of St. Blasius Bishop of Verona to be preserved; and there, both on the table and on the body of the altar to be contained these words: "Here of the holy Bishops of Verona, Blasius and Alexander, the bodies antiquity venerates." Besides on the pall of the altar is an image painted with these letters: "St. Blasius Bishop of Verona." Finally among the Relics of the Church of St. Stephen is reckoned the body of St. Blasius Bishop of Verona.
[2] Onofrio Panvinio, in book 4 of the Antiquities of Verona, chapter 7, places in alphabetical order with St. Alexander also St. Blasius among the Bishops of Verona from a Calendar, of uncertain time and Order; only adding, his memory in others. that he died on the 22nd of June, and was buried at St. Stephen's. The same commemorates Philip Ferrari, both in the New topography to the Roman Martyrology, and in the general Catalogue, and in another of the Saints of Italy; where he adds a eulogy, but from Valerius taken: which also has Ughelli in the Bishops of Verona, where after St. Alexander he sets him the 22nd Bishop, and so according to his reckoning it could seem that he flourished about the end of the fourth century.
[3] Bracci, Bishop of Sarsina, with this verse honors him: "An example of life, zeal, and chaste, Verona of her Pontiff the morals, which it may imitate, it has." On the preceding day, the 21st of June, Galesini in his Martyrology celebrates the memory of St. Blasius, Bishop and Confessor of Verona: and cites in his Notes the Tables of the Saints of the Church of Verona, and a Synodal constitution. But easily an error of one day could creep in upon a man even more accurate than Galesini was.