ON ST. JULIAN THE MARTYR
PATRON OF RIMINI IN ÆMILIA, A PROVINCE OF ITALY.
PRELIMINARY COMMENTARY.
On the Acts of St. Julian of Anazarbus wrongly applied to him, on the Translations, the church, and the cult.
Julian Martyr, at Rimini in Italy (St.)
AUTHOR D. P.
The Via Flaminia, drawn from the City to the Adriatic Sea, as it runs toward Æmilia in the direction of Insubria, St. Julian is here joined with the Martyr of Anazarbus is joined to Ariminum, commonly Rimini, an episcopal city under the Archbishop of Ravenna, and from it begins the Province called Æmilia by the ancients, and in modern times Romandiola. The Patron of this city is most solemnly venerated on the present day, St. Julian Martyr, whose body is believed to have arrived there by sea in its own coffin, in the tenth century of the Christian era, in the time of Otto the Great; as the Acts have it, transcribed from an old Rimini manuscript together with two proper Hymns, and given to us, when we were going thence to Rome in the year 1660, by the then Rector of our College there, the Reverend Father Francis Via. At the beginning of these the Martyrdom is narrated, plainly similar to the Martyrdom of St. Julian of Anazarbus, distinct, with the surname "Istrian" who suffered in Cilicia, and was carried to Antioch in Syria, where St. John Chrysostom adorned his annual Panegyric with a remarkable homily, illustrated by Henschen on the 16th of March. The only difference is that this one is said to have been a Cilician, that one an Istrian; yet by the same Governor Martian, in the city of Flaviada (which itself was also a Cilician city), he was brought to judgment, and sewn into a leather sack just as the other was, but carried by the waters all the way to Proconnesus in the Propontis, where there it is supposed to have been honored for several centuries, until, the rock that supported the aforesaid coffin having rolled into the sea, the coffin itself reached Rimini floating upon the waves; by a miracle similar to that which we have elsewhere seen the people of Ancona and of Altino believe, that the bodies of SS. Liberius and Theonestus were conveyed to them.
[2] Why I cannot believe such a miracle of theirs, I said on the 27th of May and the 21st of June: His body is said to have come across the sea in a stone coffin, why it should be believed of the people of Rimini, nothing on the side of the circumstances opposes— circumstances that would plainly betray a fiction: for no such circumstances appear here: and the thing could have happened as it is narrated; although, to establish firm faith in it, something more seems to be required than a simple tradition, first committed to writing only some centuries afterward. Furthermore, just as that could have happened, so too it can be conceived to have happened, that the same St. Julian, who in the time of St. John Chrysostom had so celebrated a cult in Syria, when matters there went to ruin, but this is scarcely credible from Proconnesus; was carried by an overland route through Asia Minor into Proconnesus, and thence to Rimini. But to confirm this conjecture there stands in the way the silence of the Constantinopolitan Synaxaria, none of which makes mention of any cult of St. Julian having been brought into Proconnesus, a peninsula so near to Constantinople. There stand in the way also the Acts themselves, since between the place from which and the place to which the coffin is said to have been carried they interpose the breadth of the Adriatic gulf alone, and expressly name an Istrian Julian.
[3] I would not therefore, relying on so weak a conjecture, believe one and the same man to have been venerated formerly at Antioch and now at Rimini: but rather that, on account of the similarity of the name, it pleased those [or because there was found in the coffin a little book of the Passion such as is narrated.] who first received the body to be venerated, to apply to him the passion of the Martyr of Anazarbus: for as is said in number 5, that Bishop John, who lived about the year 1100, opening the coffin found a little book in which the contest was written; this proves nothing else than that this confusion of the two Julians is older than the eleventh century. For it was far from the custom of the lictors, to whom were handed over the Martyrs who were to be sewn into a sack, in order to abolish all memory of them, to engrave their names and acts on lead or stone, or to receive them so engraved from the Christians, to be enclosed in the same sack. Anazarbus or even Flavias, cities of inland Cilicia indeed, yet situated upon rivers which would roll the bodies cast into them down to the sea, are not so far distant from Ægæ, a maritime city of the same Cilicia, that it could not at once be known there by the Christians who had died sewn in a sack there, by what name he was called, what torments and under what judge he suffered: but concerning the Patron of Rimini, washed up to the Italian shore only in the tenth century, There is also another St. Julian of Dalmatia who suffered in Latium. nothing similar can be presumed. It seems therefore that it must be held, that he was born and honored in Istria, until the time of the translation into Italy: where, if his Acts, known of old and written within the coffin of the sacred body, had lain hidden, other names of places and persons would without doubt be indicated, and another manner of passion, and perhaps also seven companions, whose heads were found within the same coffin. But here there also comes to my mind St. Julian, whose martyrdom, suffered among the people of Sora or Atina in Latium, Bollandus rendered from Italian into Latin, and published on the 27th of January; who is said to have come from Dalmatia to Anagni, himself also young in age, and to have suffered under Flavian, Governor of Campania, the things there narrated. Istria is near to Dalmatia; so that it would not be surprising, if something passed from one to the other, as often happens among several persons of the same name, whose Acts are not sufficiently distinguished.
[4] Under these cautions, therefore, I shall give the Acts which I have brought from Rimini; and under the same condition there may be read into his Catalogue of the Saints, book 5, chapter 141, Yet the Acts are given from a manuscript. and thence transcribed into the Spanish Martyrology of Tamayo, and the Lusitanian Hagiology of Cardoso; lest, namely, the rest of the narrative—concerning the translation and miracles and the various inspection of the sacred coffin, which constitute the chief part of the Acts and could be written with more certain knowledge— should lack a head, however badly stitched on. Those Acts assert that the Athlete of Christ flew to heaven on the tenth day before the Kalends of July, and on such a day he is even today venerated, as is clear from the Calendar which we have, edited in the year 1643 according to the prescription of the Roman Breviary, not the 23rd of June by order of Bishop Angelo Cesi; where there is prescribed for St. Julian Mart. the Patron Natalibus is manifest, by which he reads that he suffered on the 9th day before the Kalends of July. Yet Philip Ferrari followed this error, in his Catalogue of the Saints of Italy, although he professes to take the eulogy from the monuments of the church of Rimini: Tamayo and Cardoso, cited above, also followed it, but the 22nd, on which he is venerated. persuaded to ascribe him to the Spanish Flaviobriga, on the authority of the Pseudo-Dexter, which we sufficiently rejected in our March volume. Ferrari, moreover, being persuaded that he is the same as Julian of Anazarbus, who according to the Greeks suffered on the 16th day before the Kalends of April, judges this day to be that of some Translation. The people of Rimini also could, from a similar persuasion which they hold to this day, in the fourteenth century, in which the Acts seem to have been written, have chosen this day, the 10th before the Kalends of July; because in the old Latin Martyrologies, as we shall presently see, St. Julian was reckoned among the Martyrs of Antioch, formerly unknown to the Latins for the month of March: for they then either knew nothing of the Calendars of the Greeks or cared nothing for them.
[5] Ferdinando Ughelli, in volume 2 of his Italia Sacra, sets among the Bishops of Rimini, as the fourteenth, John; asserting that he gave law to the people of Rimini in the year 961; and that in that very year the Angels conducted through the waves to the shore of Rimini the marble tomb, The coffin washed up at Rimini in the year 960 in which was enclosed the body of St. Julian the Martyr; and that they bore it honorably into the church of St. Peter, which afterward they called the church of the older St. Julian. So he; following, as to the year, the historical Collection of Cesare Clementini on the origins of the people of Rimini, printed in Italian in the year 1617, page 241: where, however, the bringing of the body into that temple is ascribed not to Angels, but to the Bishop, just as it is also had in the Acts. But from these Clementini dissents, when he joins the times of Otto I (who in the year next following received the Imperial crown at Rome, and is said to have passed through Rimini on his return) and of John; between whom the Acts themselves, in number 5, carried about the year 1110 into the church of St. Peter place a great space of time. Adhering to this phrase, I seem to myself able to place this John between the first Obizzo, elected in the year 1061; and the second Obizzo, who died in the year 1143; for no more fitting place occurs in that whole Catalogue; nor are any monuments produced of either of the two, by which it might be established that they immediately succeeded one another, and at the same time held the Chair for 82 years: thus the coffin which had stood next to that very temple for a century and a half, would have been brought into it about the boundary of the 11th and 12th centuries; and from then a more certain knowledge would have begun to be had of the matters pertaining to the cult of St. Julian among the people of Rimini.
[6] On the northeast side of the city there is a most ancient bridge, laid over the Ariminus, now the river Marecchia, a work of Octavian Augustus and Tiberius Caesar, by which one crosses from the Flaminia into Æmilia, from the city into the Borgo or suburb, called St. Peter's, from the old church of St. Peter there. They wish the founder of this church to be St. Gaudentius, who held it as his Cathedral; now called St. Julian's; in the borgo, afterward called St. Julian's. and Clementini asserts that it was variously endowed by the aforesaid Otto, out of regard for the Saint deposited nearby; but when it began to have Benedictine monks he does not indicate; he names only two Abbots there,
Lupicinus and John, whom he makes succeed one another in turn: but a suspicion came upon me, that Lupicinus was contemporary with Otto; and John, equal in time to John the Bishop, just as the Acts make him his equal; so that the one saw the sacred body carried across the sea, and the other brought it into the church then opportunely restored. But the body remaining there a long time without any special adornment, as you have it in number 6, Peter the Abbot took care to place it in a more honorable place, perhaps in the fourteenth century, when the Acts seem first to have been written for the use of the proper Office.
ACTS
From a manuscript of the College of the Society of Jesus at Rimini.
Julian Martyr, at Rimini in Italy (St.)
BHL Number: 4537
FROM THE MANUSCRIPT
[1] In the times of Decius Caesar, in the city a) of Flaviada, while Martian held the proconsular seat, Julian the Istrian, sprung from a noble family, when he was eighteen years old, brought before the Governor Martian at eighteen, conspicuous in faith and prudence, is accused before him as a Christian: brought to his tribunal, the Governor addresses him thus, saying: Sacrifice, Julian, and obtain salvation for your youth; for otherwise you will receive the end of your life amid torments. To whom he replied: I am a Christian. To him Martian: Your reply is not lawful; but rather sacrifice to the gods, and keep the precepts b) of our Kings. And he: I adore Christ, whom I have worshipped, and in whom I shall always believe: and then do not say "gods," and having confessed Christ, since all the gods of the nations are demons, but the Lord made the heavens, and whatever is contained within the compass of the heavens; and he created man, to whom he also gave a law, that he should love and fear the very Creator of all. But Martian said: There is indeed one God, who made the gods also: wherefore you ought to yield to the most victorious Princes, and obey their commands. To whom St. Julian replied: Acknowledge justice, Consular, for it is more fitting to obey God than men: for I am subject to God the omnipotent King of the heavens, whose teaching I learned from boyhood, whom I also serve in my very youth.
[2] The Governor said to him: And are you perhaps a Presbyter c) or a Deacon among the mad Christians? To whom he: I am not of such rank. he is said to have been beaten with cudgels: And Martian: Of what kind are you? He: I am a Christian. Then the Governor, moved with anger, handed him over to the attendants to be punished, so that the demon mingled in him (he said) might thus depart. And he: I do not have a demon. And Martian: Be mad no longer, sacrifice to the gods: but if not, since you are wicked, you will die most miserably: and he said to him: Have you a mother? He has one, he said. And the Governor: Where is she? And he: Where you d) seized me. Then Martian ordered her to be brought to him, but he himself to be guarded. And when Asclepiodora e) his mother had come to the Governor, he addresses her thus, saying: then by his mother brought to him, Instruct your son, that he may sacrifice: for you see how great torments he suffers. Then she, turning to her son, said: Son, you know that I have always taught you the best teaching: now therefore keep my words, that you may be saved. Then she said to the Consular: Release him to me for three days, that thus I may be able conveniently to instruct him. And Martian: In these three days you ought to give him poison to drink. To whom Julian: It is better to receive all evils from you, encouraged for three days in prison, than that I should be my own slayer. Then the Governor: If I grant the respite you ask, will you afterward sacrifice? Blessed Julian answered: In this time I shall become wiser. The Consular, assenting to their wishes, ordered both to be shut up in prison; where, comforting one another and praising the Lord together, they happily remained there for three days.
[3] But on the fourth day the Governor again orders them to be presented before him, and speaks thus with them: Now your respite has passed, therefore offer oblations to our gods. sewn into a sack and drowned in the sea. To him Julian: By unanimous counsel, my mother and I have decreed that we will meditate on the law of the Lord until death, and not walk in the counsel of the ungodly, sitting in the seat of pestilence and of death. By these words the Prefect, moved with anger, ordered that he be sewn up in a sack with serpents, and be sunk into the deep sea. With words of this sort scarcely finished, But that the body washed up at Proconnesus, the most impious henchmen, seizing him, put an end to the most cruel sentence. Crowned therefore with such a martyrdom, the glorious Athlete of Christ flew up to heaven on the tenth day before the Kalends of July. But his body, cast into the sea, was marvelously thrown by the waves onto the Island of Proconnesus f), and by the Christians near a rock of the sea, in a marble coffin, was very honorably buried.
[4] But when now for a long time, whether because of the persecution of the Christians, or through the ignorance of the inhabitants, no honor was paid to the blessed body; it came to pass that, while all things were silent, and night in its course held the middle of its journey; in the time of Otto the Elder, in summertime, contrary to its usual custom, g) the Adriatic Sea began to be shaken with the greatest waves, no fury of winds driving it. By the assiduous blows of the sea, therefore, the rock being broken, and thence to Rimini in a stone coffin, the waves gently received the coffin upon themselves. But the inhabitants, astonished at the noise, when they had seen the coffin fall there, thought it had remained beneath the waves: but because of that unusual disturbance of the sea, the people of Rimini also were all amazed; for some of them, awaiting the happy hour of the day with great joy; others, coming to the shore, and continually marveling toward the sea, wonderfully perceived a very great splendor in the Adriatic gulf. As they marveled more and more at the gleaming light, they understood that there was a marble coffin, like a ship, there: and as all watched, without any external aid, it at last marvelously reached the land, and great calm was immediately made.
[5] By divine grace, therefore, the coffin being brought to the shore, rested at the Monastery of Blessed Peter, near the city, with a stone of red marble h) placed beneath it, and there was a great throng of people of both sexes. But after a long i) space of time, John the Prefect of the city k) tried to drag the very coffin, with the whole clergy and the citizens, and various teams of oxen and others, which John the Bishop tried in vain to bring into the city, to the Episcopate: which they not only did not obtain, but could not even move it at all. But desiring to see what was in it, they began to attempt to open it; and this too was done by them in vain. While all therefore remained astonished, the coffin remained there for some time. At last John the Abbot of the aforesaid Monastery, having called together the Monks and friends, having undertaken a fast, and having implored God's help, that if they could they might bring the coffin to their monastery, placed it in the suburban church of St. Peter, with the consent of the Bishop they betook themselves thither: which they accomplished with easy labor. When this was heard by the Bishop, he and the clergy, and all the people of Rimini, immediately came down; and the cover being lifted, looking within, they found plainly exposed the most beloved and most chaste body of Blessed Julian, adorned with l) the integrity of his pallium, and a little book m) describing his contest; n) and also seven unknown heads, which however they supposed to have been those of Martyrs.
[6] But the coffin remaining there a long time without any special adornment, yet illustrious by various miracles, the fellow-citizens took care to place it most fittingly in a more honorable place of the temple. And Peter o) the Abbot of the aforesaid Monastery opened the coffin, from which a most sweet and fragrant odor came forth: and when at night the wonderful treasure was guarded by the citizens, p) lest it be carried off by thieves, a great abundance of Saints was present, and then Peter the Abbot opened it. in the midst of whom Blessed Julian shone forth crowned; and such and so great a splendor gleamed in the dwelling, that the astonished guards scarcely fled outside. When morning came, the guards related the vision to very many; and from day to day great wonders gleamed forth. For among the multitude of those coming, a certain woman, Gerberia q) by name, a noble widow, As this immodest matron approaches him she is terrified, though unequal in morals and of obscene life, came to see the most blessed body: and when she wished to approach it, soon the coffin began to heave and to be marvelously raised up like a leaping stag. For fear all fled: whence, she also having gone out, the coffin soon rested. Then, while men were laboring at the building r) of the very Church, the best wine richly gushed forth from an oak. But on another day, while the Monks were chanting Vespers, a lamp full of oil fell furiously from the roof onto the stone pavement, a lamp falls without harm, and also the lead, by which it was drawn to the bottom, fell upon it, the cord being broken. When this was heard, all immediately ran together, and perceiving that neither the fragile glass was broken, nor a drop of oil spilled, but finding it whole and upright, they greatly marveled.
[7] Another woman also, abounding in riches in the city, when she had now become barren from old age, to whom previously very many children had already died; a barren woman is made fruitful, very often wept most sorrowfully over the loss of offspring. Therefore Saint Julian appeared most splendidly by night to a certain farmer, and said: Go to your mistress, and say to her: If, coming to my tomb, she devoutly implores the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ; she will receive joy from a male offspring now conceived, and let the boy be called Julian after my name; and let this be a sign to you. For on this present day, at the ninth hour, a certain house set on fire will, with great labor, be freed from the burning; and when it is at last extinguished, you will find a man named Dominicus, dead by a sudden death. When at last all these things had been fulfilled on every side, she obtained most bountifully what was promised to her; and surviving, and likewise her descendants, long happily served the Blessed Martyr.
[8] There was moreover also another woman, dwelling within the walls of the city, having a son contracted, deprived of the capacity for movement of all his limbs, a cripple is cured, who could not move himself unless carried. Wherefore on a certain day his mother brought him to the tomb of the Saint, and there devoutly, and with great crying, and at last with many tears poured forth, she prayed to the Saint, saying: Receive, most Blessed Julian, the son whom desolate I leave with you; and whom his sad mother is not able to help, do you, holy Father, deign to help. When she had said this, and gone out of the church, she heard her son crying out to her: Now even now I follow you: wait for me therefore, most loving mother. And she, turning, waiting for him, and seeing him walking, gave immense thanks to almighty God and to most blessed Julian.
[9] On the day too on which the feast of St. Julian was celebrated, it happened that a certain rustic woman, while she adorned herself, she is punished for violating the feast, and took care to curl her hair; her hand was bound with such tenacity to the comb, that the one could in no way be torn from the other. When this therefore was noticed, with a great cry she called out to her neighbors for help; and having taken counsel, she came to the tomb of Blessed Julian, to ask for mercy; and there praying and weeping, the Monks also intervening, she received health. a paralytic is healed A certain youth too, for thirty days was oppressed by such great paralysis, that he could scarcely move his tongue; and afflicted his parents with such great grief, that they rather longed for his death
than to behold him living in such a condition. At last, bringing him to the coffin of Blessed Julian, and weeping and praying there for two days, and offering him in service to the Saint, they obtained the health of their son.
[10] There was also another man, a farmer, s) in a village called Mustiana, who on the same feast went out in the morning to reap the harvest of his field: and while he was ardently laboring there, he was immediately deprived of sight. the punishment of a peasant reaping on the feast and the cure of the penitent. Whence the neighbors, running together at the cry, led him to the church of Blessed Julian, built in the same village; and there pouring out prayers and tears to God, they marvelously saw him recover his former health. And very many, devoutly coming to the tomb of the holy Martyr, daily deserve to receive some other graces: for God is wonderful in his Saints.
NOTES OF D. P.
a) Flavias, otherwise Flaviopolis, now Fliopoli, 30 miles from the sea: nor is it absurd that one sprung from Anazarbus should have completed his Martyrdom there, whom St. Chrysostom says was led about through all Cilicia for a whole year; but to bring an Istrian Julian thither, as the title of these Acts has it, and presently the text also, seems less fitting. What things the Spaniards invent about their Flaviobriga, as if the Saint was born there, for the following day, it was not worth the trouble to refute again, having already been touched on and incidentally rejected on the 16th of March, where we treated of Julian of Anazarbus.
b) The name "Kings," usual to the Greeks, not to the Latins (who would have written "Emperors"), persuades that this beginning was made into Latin from the Greek.
c) This question does not suit the age of 18 years.
d) Namely at Anazarbus: but as aptly as Julian the Cilician could have said this, so ineptly is the same attributed to the Istrian, transported into Cilicia; for this may be thought of a youth enrolled in the army, but cannot be thought of a woman, whom Roman discipline did not allow to follow the camp.
e) So too Peter calls her; Ferrari writes Asclepiodota.
f) Julian the Cilician is said to have washed up at Ægæ in Cilicia; the Istrian, having crossed the Ionian and Aegean seas, would have swum through the Hellespont to Proconnesus; but I have already indicated the reasons, taken from the Acts themselves, for which it is scarcely credible that the Saint was carried from Proconnesus.
g) Here the author as it were begins to awake from sleep, and to speak as of an Istrian having his burial in Istria; when he attributes to the waves of the Adriatic Sea the rock torn from the mainland, upon which the Martyr's tomb stood. For Istria and Æmilia lie over against one another, separated by the intervening Adriatic: and the whole coast of Istria is fenced with rocky islands, whereas the whole shore of Æmilia is flat and smooth. There lies near Istria also the island of Cherso, to which from its shape the name of Proconnesus could have been fitted, or which clings to it and to that part of it like a peninsula, and is called Lezina, and is turned more directly toward Rimini.
h) They wish this stone to have served as the base of the coffin, and to have swum along with it likewise: which however does not follow from the context: for it could have been placed beneath by the people of Rimini, that the coffin might stand higher from the ground.
i) These words indicate at least a century and a half.
k) Below, "Bishop" and "Prelate."
l) The Italian manuscripts put "Sack" instead of "Pallium," to confirm, namely, by that reasoning, that their Patron was sewn into a leather sack, just as concerning the Anazarbene's sack or leather sack, both sand and serpents are said to have been found together with the body, and likewise kept for proving the kind of martyrdom.
m) This, namely, the earlier Monks had written and placed upon the coffin after it was carried there, according to the small skill in such matters that they had, and from the persuasion thence arisen that this was the Julian so celebrated in the East: nor indeed is it credible that the coffin, washed up by so great a miracle, had not been opened until that time. Peter says that the Abbot read aloud before all the Epitaph of the Passion that had been written and found there.
n) Clementini says this was done on the 25th of June.
o) The time of this Peter, hitherto unknown to the people of Rimini, we can somewhat define from the little word "long"; and assign it to the 14th century, in which the Acts and Hymns were composed.
p) I would believe it was the custom that on the feast day, and throughout the Octave, the coffin should be opened for the comfort of the crowd flocking to it; and meanwhile, guards being employed at night, it was kept in the usual way.
q) I think it better written, Gerberga.
r) That it was a most beautiful church, we shall see below from Clementini. The Italian manuscript, more fully setting forth this miracle, says it happened to men working outside in the wood and cutting timber: which is credible.
s) The same manuscript says "Musen" today, perhaps the same as that which is called Misanum in the maps, 7 miles from the city toward the south-east.
APPENDIX
From an Italian manuscript and the printed History of Clementini.
Julian Martyr, at Rimini in Italy (St.)
[11] In the year 1454, in the month of February, when the Reverend Father Brother Natale of Otricoli, of the Order of Preachers, a storm calmed by invoking the Saint, was tossed with eighteen companions by a most grievous tempest; a vow being made in honor of St. Julian, the storm ceased, and they were freed. And this was written by the hand of that Father himself, at the end of the history of the Saint himself.
[12] Likewise in the year 1478, a certain man named Menghino, from Castel d'Abbate (it lies on the seashore toward the northeast, 5 miles away), lost his speech, speech restored to a man mute for three days. yet keeping his hearing. When he was persuaded to make a vow to God, to the Virgin Mother of God, and to St. Julian, concerning three Masses to be sung at the altar of the Saint, if he should recover health; the vow being made, he betook himself to bed in the evening, and that very night he had the most blessed Virgin appear conspicuously to him, bidding him go to the coffin of St. Julian; where, dozing a little, he was to be freed from the trouble that he suffered. Awaking therefore, and somehow recalling the vision, he betook himself to the city, and first visited some other churches for his devotion, and returned home. Then for the first time there came to his mind the command to doze at the miraculous coffin: and there upon a small cushion he slept about one hour. Then awaking, he stood quite astonished with a violent pain of the stomach; and soon he vomited a certain foam and cried out, St. Julian, help me: and thenceforth his speech remained free to him, who for three days had been mute. This miracle was written by the own hand of the Reverend Father and Commendatory Abbot of the aforesaid monastery, Brother Antonio of Aquila, on the 23rd of April 1478.
[13] Thus far the Italian manuscript, from which you might conjecture that the church of which there is here mention was restored by Peter the Abbot probably one century earlier, the Abbey given in Commendam in the year 1430, than the Abbey fell into Commendam: which Clementini writes was done in the year 1430, and so about the end of Pope Martin V; who, Simon of Rimini being dead, after Francesco Gualdi was Abbot there, conferred it on Gabriele, Cardinal of St. Clement. Before that calamity, how powerful in jurisdiction and possessions the same Abbey was, the same Clementini declares, from a Bull of Innocent VI, for the recovery of the rights and goods there enumerated, given at the request of Angelo, Abbot of the monastery of St. Julian of Rimini, of the Order of St. Benedict, pertaining to the Roman See without any intermediary: which Angelo in the year 1363 also governed the Nuns of St. Euphemia, and had many, both ecclesiastics and seculars, of both sexes, subject to him by title of emphyteusis, of whom one may there read the enumerated places and the professions of their dependents. The same mentions a Donation, made in the year 1061 to Uberto the Abbot by Bishop Opizo, and of various churches, by the concession of several Bishops and Pontiffs, in the year 1363 it was immediately subject to the Apostolic See, depending on the said Abbey as on a head: but concerning the church itself, restored under Peter, perhaps the immediate predecessor or successor of the aforesaid Angelo, he writes that within it the coffin was placed in a more becoming place, an altar being erected over it in honor of the Saint, in that place where now is the altar of St. Mustiola: for there the church ended, where the present one begins; and the stone of red marble, which had served as the base of the coffin, was turned into the table of the altar of St. Lucy; and so they remained, until that church was destroyed to its foundations, and a new one erected, such as is seen today. Concerning the old, or rather the medieval church, Clementini writes thus.
[14] From a delineation, depicted above the lesser door, it is understood that the structure was most beautiful: which the elders also report who saw the part of it still surviving, a most beautiful structure of the new church under Peter the Abbot, adorned with marble columns, supporting many arches, and porticos both within and without the temple, which added a wonderful appearance to the work, especially around the Confession. Such therefore it stood, even under the Commendatory Abbots; who after Gabriele their first were, Francesco Condulmer, Cardinal Bishop of Porto and Vice-Chancellor of the Holy Roman Church, by the concession of Eugenius IV; Cardinal Bessarion, by the indulgence of Nicholas V; it passes to the Canons Regular in the year 1496 Sacramoro Sacramori of Rimini, Bishop of Parma, by the benefice of Sixtus IV. Through his death, moreover, the same Abbey passed to the hands of Marco Coccapani of Carpi, Apostolic Protonotary, who resigned it to Alexander VI, to be assigned to the Congregation of the Canons Regular of St. George in Alga, as was done in the year 1496, as is clear from the Bull of the same Pope. From that time, therefore, they administered it, with great religion, solicitude and diligence, and the best example. Indeed, when in the year 1551, that part of the aforesaid church for which, as it was about to fall in the year 1551, the present one is built, which our elders remember having seen, was itself also threatening ruin, by the zeal and care of those Canons Regular the foundations of the larger chapel and the new church were laid on the 26th of March; and the work being completed within two years, there was added, on the 15th of July 1553, the bell tower; and at the same time almost the whole convent was renewed, having been most wretchedly treated by the soldiers in the latest siege of the city, just as all the workshops of the Borgo were then likewise restored.
[15] At the beginning of the work the coffin was drawn back from the high altar: for the earlier church stood in that place, where now is the cemetery, with part of the convent, toward the royal road, and its door faced the West: consecrated in the year 1578 but in digging up the ground, several arches were discovered, with long stones of squared marble, and fragments of tessellated work, which showed that a temple of the Gentiles had been there; and the frontispiece of the principal gate disclosed itself, inscribed with these letters, "To the Genius of the people of Rimini." The new church, with its chief altar, was consecrated with solemn rite, in the year 1578, on the 19th of January, then a Sunday, by Giovanni Battista Castelli of Bologna, Bishop of the people of Rimini: but the other altars, in the year 1583, were dedicated by Giovanni Francesco Sormani of Milan, Bishop of Montefeltro.
[16] In the year 1584, the third Sunday of Lent falling on the 11th of March, the Prior of the monastery, Dom Gabriele of Venice, with the whole College assisting him, The coffin is opened in the year 1584. and the things to be observed on such an occasion being observed, lifted the marble cover of the coffin, as much as was needful that one of them might enter there, with surplice and stole on, namely Dom Marino Millani of Rimini; and there appeared many Relics scattered throughout the coffin, and among them a wooden box, fitted with three locks, but opened, and an iron grating
rather thick, with a little window, the head is shown; which had a single lock, but that too open, at the end where the holy head of the Martyr lay. Then through the aforesaid little window, by order of the Prior, Dom Marino brought forth the holy Head, and offered it to the Prior outside the coffin; who, having received it reverently upon the surplice, offered it to be reverently kissed by us all who were present (says the author of the manuscript). But when they looked at it more closely, there appeared some yellow hairs, like golden threads, clinging to the back of the head; and the jaws whole with all the teeth. No other part of the holy body could be seen from outside because of the aforesaid obstructions: and the left side of the body is examined by touch. yet Dom Marino asserted that he had seen and touched the shoulder, arm, and left hand, and did not doubt that the other limbs too could be seen and touched, if the whole box were opened. Afterward the holy Head was put back in the place where it had previously lain; not diminished even by a single hair, but a little silver coin was removed, found sticking between the bone and the skin of the skull, precisely in that part where the hairs were. Concerning all which a public instrument was requested and written, by the Notary who was present, Domenico Vannucci, in the year and on the day aforesaid, in the 12th year of the Pontificate of Gregory XIII.
[17] In the year 1585 the Japanese Legates passed through Rimini, returning from having exhibited, in the name of their Princes, obedience to the Roman Pontiff; namely Mancio, nephew of the King of Bungo; Michael, kinsman of the King of Arima; From the same coffin a scraping is requested by the Japanese Legates in 1585, and their companions Martin and Julian: who, when with singular devotion they visited the holy coffin, earnestly asked (which they had heard that Princely men commonly did, who passing this way perhaps as pilgrims to Rome or Loreto) that something of the scraping of the coffin itself be given them: which, when it was excused for lack of a suitable instrument, and it was promised them that it would of itself be sent to their lodging; they did not cease by repeated turns to press for the promise, until they obtained it on the 19th of August. That such scrapings are usefully employed against colic pains and any other infirmities whatever, frequent experience has taught. In the year 1586, on the 16th of February, the high altar was dismantled, and the coffin drawn back into the wall, the same is moved in the year 1586 on account of a new altar. as it remains to this day; and a new altar was consecrated in the year 1587 on the 4th of May, the 6th Sunday after Easter, by Vincenzo Tofanini our Bishop, in honor of SS. Julian, Innocentia and Margaret, Virgins and Martyrs, whose Relics were then likewise enclosed there; just as they had been previously found in the body of that altar, when it was dismantled. Thus far Clementini, supplemented from the manuscript: to which I have nothing to add, except that the aforesaid Congregation of the Georgian Canons Regular was dissolved by command of Clement IX, in the year 1668, and in their place succeeded the Benedictine Monks.