ON SAINT JOHN
PRESBYTER AND MARTYR AT ROME.
IN THE YEAR 362.
HISTORICAL COMMENTARY.
John, Presbyter & Martyr at Rome (St.)
AUTHOR. D. P.
§. I. On his cult, Acts, and Relics.
That some Acts of this Saint existed,
commonly known in the 9th century, Usuard
and Ado persuade us, neither knowing anything
of the other, and yet in
their Martyrologies of that age consigning a distinct
notice of the Martyrdom, as though
from the same source, on this day. The manner & place of the Martyrdom from Usuard.
The earlier, Usuard, in all the copies, whether by hand or in print,
both older and more recent, has thus: The Vigil of St. John
the Baptist, on the same day the feast of St. John the Presbyter,
whom the impious Julian, the man being unheard,
ordered to be beheaded on the Salarian Way, before the image of the sun.
The same have Notker, Bellinus, Maurolycus,
Galesinius, Molanus, and others. Ado,
and from him the spurious Bede with Molanus, add:
Whose body was gathered by Blessed Concordius the Presbyter
and buried near the Councils of Martyrs;
and the same Ado notes him slain not simply on the
Salarian Way, but on the old Salarian Way.
Thus at Rome the memory of St. John the Presbyter, The year from Baronius.
with the rest of Ado's words, is found inscribed
in the present-day Roman Martyrology. Baronius in the Annals refers the martyrdom
of John to the year 362, as also
that of all the others who suffered at Rome under Julian,
who through his new Prefects there vexed the Christians
on various pretexts; for although he himself,
having gained the Empire, came to Rome to collect
soldiers against Constantius; yet there
he conducted himself as a Christian, and first laid aside the mask
when he Constantius died on the 3rd of November, while he was then in Moesia
with his army; whence soon he came to Constantinople,
and gave thence various rescripts entered
in the Code; nor did he see Rome again,
but proceeded to Antioch, intent on the Persian expedition,
in which the following year he soon perished, as the unhappy
Apostate had deserved, on the 26th of June. He, therefore, who
is said to have been beheaded by his command in the month of June, must have
received the sentence of death in the intervening year 362,
as has been said.
[2] The same Baronius, in the Notes to the Martyrology,
fully and learnedly proves the opinion of Molanus, expressed in
the edition of the year 1568, by which he judges that "Councils
of Martyrs" is the name of a place where the bodies of many Martyrs
rest: and to this make St. Jerome
to Heliodorus in the Epitaph of Nepotian,
and the Life of St. Damasus the Pope in Anastasius the Librarian:
but the matter is especially illustrated by
the Sermon of St. Gaudentius, Burial at the Councils of Martyrs, from Ado: at the dedication of a Council
of Martyrs: for hence it is understood that the meaning
of "Council" and "Cemetery" is not the same, which
at the beginning of his Roma Subterranea, page 3, Aringus
seems to think. For Cemeteries the Christians had
from the beginning of the Church laboring under the persecution of the heathen:
but "Councils of Martyrs" first began to be so called under
Constantine the Great; and they were places more decently
built and adorned, into which bodies raised from the Cemeteries,
placed in marble tombs,
were honored by the faithful; wherefore also
their Dedications were celebrated and annually
recalled, just like the Dedications of churches;
which we do not read of the Cemeteries, although these too
were wont to be prepared, not without sacred prayers and certain rites, for the burial of the faithful. Of the Blessed Concordius
here named no notice is found elsewhere; several such [places seem to have been at Rome,]
and probably the title "Blessed" is here used in that
sense in which it was given to any Presbyters
while they were still living. No more is known of what
afterward became of that holy body, or
in what place of the city or territory of Rome the aforesaid
Councils of Martyrs were: but it is probable that there, where
there was so great an abundance of Martyrs, several of this name
were erected, which Damasus adorned with verses, one in one way, another in another.
[3] It is a wonder, meanwhile, that no church of Rome at all
claims for itself any part of this holy body. The body gratuitously assigned to Spain
And this perhaps gave occasion to
Tamayo de Salazar, in his Spanish Martyrology,
to assert so confidently that at Madrid, in
the monastery of the Friars of the most holy Trinity Discalced,
is celebrated the deposition of the remains
of this St. John of whom we treat, which Urban
VIII, with other sacred relics, gave to this Order.
The Reader is referred in the Notes to the 2nd of March,
where the autograph of the donation is recited. I read
and reread the Document, and indeed I find the bodies of other
Saints, each with its day and place of deposition,
accurately noted; but John and
Madrid nowhere. And so if the Madrid Fathers have
anything under this name, let them see whence
or how they received it, and as they received it
let them venerate it; yet let them not persuade themselves that the Romans,
if they had found the body of this St. John of whom we treat
anywhere by certain indications, would have so easily let it go,
and would have allowed it to be reckoned among those which, mostly without a name,
are dug up from the cemeteries, and named at the finder's
discretion without further notice. The same
I would say of the Arm which Cardoso says is kept
in the Convent of St. Albert, among the Carmelites of Lisbon.
[4] With greater probability can the Monks of Centula of St.
Richarius in Gaul claim for themselves that treasure; more probably it will be said to have been received from Rome in the year 858
in whose Chronicle Hariulph
writes thus, book 3, chapter 14. While Nicholas the Pope
presided over the Roman Church (he presided over
it from the year 858 to [8]67),
a certain Monk of holy Richarius, a prudent man,
by name Ansegisus, by the command of Charles the Bald,
the most glorious King, carried a message to the
supreme Pontiff himself, for the common utility of the holy
universal Catholic Church. Which Ansegisus,
honorably received by the munificence of so great a man,
and the matters for which he had been sent being laid before the Pope,
obtained from a certain Roman, both by prayer
and by price, and on the 1st of December it was brought to Centula. almost the whole body of St. John the Martyr,
and also the arm of St. Urban
the Pope, and the arm of holy Alexander, the fifth
successor of the Apostolic See; and at the same time the head
of Blessed Felicity, together with the Relics of her four sons,
and the Relics of very many
Saints, whose names, on account of their multitude,
we do not recount. Carrying back with him these
riches, therefore, he brought them into the treasuries of his own monastery.
At last, a body of the Monks going out to meet him,
and adoring, with bodies prostrate to the earth
in the manner of a Cross, on the Kalends of December
he received the same, and with the head of the most holy Richarius
honorably placed them.
[5] Would that the Centula Martyrology were now at hand,
which Henschenius used at the 26th of April for St. Richarius;
I do not know where he laid it away; there perhaps
I would find the anniversary of that Translation.
Yet it would be more to be wished that this treasure should still
survive, and that it had not been dispersed by the heretics in the common
destruction of sacred things. For passing that way in the year
1662 on the 27th of November, we saw nothing but
the wretched ruins of the once most splendid temple and monastery,
entrusted to the Congregation of St. Maur,
but in the sacristy nothing at all of those things
with which it was once enriched.
§. II. On the Head, which at Rome is believed to be that of St. John the Baptist; whether it is not rather that of the Presbyter Martyr?
[6] The Head, whence is named the church of St. Silvester at Rome. The aforenoted ignorance of the Romans about the place in
which the body of St. John the Presbyter lies hidden,
ought not to stand in the way of anyone's judging probable
the conjecture of our Sirmond, concerning the Head
of St. John, which is at Rome in the church of St. Silvester
in the Campus Martius, thence also called "ad Caput" "at the Head";
but not the Head of the Baptist, although it is so
commonly believed. Yet that belief is there
very ancient: since Baronius alleges as its witnesses,
in the notes to the 29th of August, the Apostolic letters of Boniface
VIII, seen by him in the Vatican Library,
by which he bestows Indulgences on those visiting
the aforesaid church on that day on which that
most sacred head, in another most ornate vessel,
then skillfully made, although Boniface VIII thought it to be the Head of the Baptist. was placed within a silver
tabernacle, which (as the elder Nuns
of that monastery recalled in memory)
at the time of the Bourbon disaster was plundered by the soldiers;
but the Head with its vessel, in
which it is seen today, (says Baronius) separately
placed and hidden, by the sacred Virgins
was kept unharmed. Nothing indeed was easier
than that that Head should be believed to be St. the Baptist's,
because it was chiefly exposed on his day
on the altar, although such an exposition had its beginning
from the day of the martyrdom, concurring with the Vigil of the Baptist,
and worthily celebrated through the Octave, on account of so notable a Relic.
[7] And here from Giovanni Giacchetti Serrano,
who published a History of the aforesaid church in the year 1629,
I would observe; that that church does not
seem to have obtained such a treasure before the 12th century: since
not before the year 1130 is found that name
"of the Head," That church in the 10th century was still called Catapauli, which in the 7th year of John XII,
according to a bull given on the 8th day of May, that is in the year
of Christ 962 (for I prove he was ordained on the 13th of January in the preceding year [9]56), was still
called Catapauli. But in the intervening time
that Head could have been, not brought from Constantinople,
as is assumed without any proof; but found at Rome,
and carried to the aforesaid church;
when there now remained no more distinct notice of the one
to whom the Saint properly belonged, but only the memory
of a cult concurring with the festivity of the Baptist.
Therefore what Serrano says about that Head seems
able to be reported, from chapter 4 of the aforesaid History, numbers
2 and following, where in Italian the following are read.
[8] For the Confession or Sacristy of the holy Head,
after it was brought, a proper place was designated in
the aforesaid monastery, and it began to be named after the Head under Innocent II, and that
separated from the one where the other Relics were kept,
which place is to this day called the Oratory
of St. John. There within a certain subterranean
altar it was kept, among certain surrounding
cells assigned to the uses of the Mansionarii or Custodians,
until, whether on account of the Tiber more frequently
overflowing, or the disturbances ever and again arising at Rome,
and the danger of loss to be feared on both sides,
it was decreed to transfer that sacred pledge
within the monastery: of which
matter an indication is given by an old document there marked with these
words: It was translated (the Head, namely,
of St. John, it being carried thither from its own Oratory, to which such a document once seems
to have been affixed) when Innocent II was Pope, not
sitting, but reigning; that is, while the Antipope Anacletus
occupied the See, and so within the first
three years of Innocent. From this time the aforesaid
Oratory remained desolate and profaned;
especially because in the course of time
it was divided from the monastery by other buildings interposed;
until, an image of the Mother of God found there
about the year 1586, on account of her frequent
miracles, it was cleansed, and began again to be frequented,
and at last in the year 1628
was given to the Reformed Fathers of the Order of Mercy of the redemption
of captives.
[9] Moreover, since the Roman people was most devoutly
affected toward the aforesaid Head, and the
more so as they believed it to be of a greater Saint; the custom
prevailed that on the greater festivities, or
on account of some more urgent necessities of the city,
to be relieved, The rite of carrying it about in processions it was carried about in procession,
raised on the shoulders of four Archbishops.
And this observance lasted until the 25th of
April (when, namely, the greater Litanies proceed)
of the year 1411; for then, at the suggestion
of the Colonna family, last used in the year 1411 always the chief patrons
of the church and monastery, it was begged
with great clamors that it not be done, because
it was said that the sacred Head would be seized by force by the Florentines, not
without the tacit consent of the Pontiff John himself
(the 22nd according to Baronius, but according to others'
usage the 23rd), as
the Continuator of Cencius Camerarius writes,
Sebastian in his Fissura, why was it abolished? and Pietro-Antonio,
Beneficiary of St. Peter's. The latter says he was present at the said procession,
and that the Pontiff then indeed wished
to proceed with the Head itself,
but to increase the guard to remove from himself
the aforesaid suspicion; but thereafter
that they should refrain from that bier, lest something similar
could be attempted at another time.
[10] Here deserves to be commemorated as well as
praised the confidence Small caps placed on the head heal headaches, which many have placed in that
most sacred Head, by bringing small caps
and other coverings of the head, that they may be placed
on the crystal covering the aforesaid Relic,
with the sure hope of obtaining liberation from headache and
catarrhs. Others with similar affection in
their infirmities and bodily pains touch
the veil of its tabernacle: and very many
graces are reported divinely obtained in that way;
of which, however, no reckoning is made,
because they are almost daily. Yet for the
confirmation of all it pleases [me] to report what
happened on the 4th of last April,
on the 4th day Wednesday about the 13th hour, and the veil of the case helps a woman in difficult labor in the year 1629, when I was writing
the present History (in the year 1629), desirous
of confirming the aforesaid by some most recent favor.
Magdalena Ciali, a native of Siena, but
living at Rome near the Oratory of St. John,
which from the preceding year the Reformed
Fathers of the Order of Mercy hold, when
she drew near to childbirth, the fetus appeared with its head protruding for
three continuous hours, and unable further
to come into the light. The midwife, therefore, and
the other women who were helping, seeing the danger
lest it die before the whole
infant were born, judged it should be baptized in the womb itself,
when there was brought to the woman in labor
one of the veils of the aforesaid tabernacle,
which, placed over the lap of the laboring woman, suddenly
and without pain the delivery proceeded, and there came forth
a male child, sound and vigorous, without
any danger to the mother.
[11] Some too devoutly use the cotton
which is wont to be arranged above and around the aforesaid crystal:
the same virtue is in the cotton applied to the crystal of the Reliquary. and this too they send into distant
regions enclosed in little boxes.
This custom proceeded from an ancient tradition of the monastery,
by which it is said that a certain Bishop, on account of the great
devotion which he bore toward St. John,
under pretense of kissing his head, wished
to carry off something near the right ear with his teeth:
but when in the bitten part fresh
blood appeared, the Bishop, dismayed and humbled,
applied cotton to stop the blood;
which, adhering to the injured part, fixed with blood
as if with glue, no one ever
dared to remove, nor even to touch.
Considering therefore, the faithful devoted to St. John,
that that sacred Head still lives
before God, receive with great devotion
other cotton (provided it has touched the crystal
in which the head is enclosed): and while it is
distributed almost daily to those asking, very many
confess that various graces of the health sought
have been conferred upon them.
[12] Nor is the devotion of the supreme Pontiffs
toward the venerable pledge to be kept silent, Martin IV orders a silver tabernacle to be made for it and
in particular that of Martin IV, who sat from the year
1282 to [12]86, and saw to the making of
a silver tabernacle, for preserving
the sacred Head: which, though thirty pounds
heavy in silver, is yet more precious from art than from
material, encircled with little columns of most beautiful carving,
and in the base with engraved emeralds depicting
the mysteries of the nativity, life, and decollation
of him whose Head it is thought to be,
the Forerunner of the Lord: but while the work lay
under the hands of the craftsmen, to be ornamented around
with many precious stones and gems,
the completion of it was somehow protracted
until the times of Boniface VIII, elected and ordained nine
years after Martin; who, which Boniface VIII completed.
according to Baronius, proposed an indulgence to those who would gather
for the solemnity of the Translation. Upon that tabernacle
rested a Pontifical tiara of triple
crown-work, elegantly wrought and adorned with gems,
with these words round about: the head
of Saint John the Baptist. But when in
the Bourbon plundering of the city certain of
the Nuns, But a Bourbon soldier plundered, obstinately choosing to die in the place itself
rather than to retire to a safer place offered them by the Colonna
Nobles; more solicitous for that sacred
Relic to be preserved, than for themselves;
substituted a head taken from elsewhere
for the aforesaid tiara,
after they had hidden the true Relic in
a place divinely shown to them. But it happened
that the soldiers, having entered, the Head having been first removed, found it empty. and struck I know not with what stupor,
were content to divide the tiara with the tabernacle
among themselves, searching nothing further.
But afterward another tabernacle was made,
in material indeed and sculpture far inferior
to the former, but so dense with gems and jewels,
which are daily brought to adorn it,
that it may seem able to equal the price of the former.
[13] Thus far Serrano, concerning the Head (as he himself
indeed thinks, This cannot have been the Baptist's, and Baronius in the Notes to
the Martyrology strives to affirm) of St. John
the Baptist; but no older documents being adduced
which prove that from Constantinople (where it
is certainly established it once was) it was carried to Rome in the time
of the Iconoclasts; while, on the contrary, persuading
the opposite are the letters of the Emperor Alexius Comnenus, to
Robert the Frisian, Count of Flanders, written about the beginning
of the 12th century. For here, among other
arguments for hastening aid, he asserts that at that very
time at Constantinople the Head of Blessed John the Baptist was held
by him, [because his Head about the year 1100 was still at Constantinople, and in 1206 was translated to Amiens,] and that to this day, as if of one living,
it was marked with hair and skin, as is read in Guibert the Abbot, book 1 of the History of Jerusalem, toward the
end: which Head then, a century later, the city being captured,
how it was carried to Amiens in the year
1206, see in the special treatise on that matter of the most erudite
Cangius. There also in chapter 12 you will read that
when Robert Viseur, Doctor of Theology and Canon
of Amiens, about to write on this subject,
had consulted Baronius, the reasons adduced by him
for confirming the Romans' tradition being compared, and
his own for the cause of the people of Amiens; from the same, Baronius unwilling
to enter into a further discussion of that question,
he received no other answer than
that the controversy about the time the head was carried from Constantinople
had always been judged a most difficult one to settle,
and accordingly, by the formula used by the Praetors, he said,
Possess as you possess.
[14] Acknowledging the same uncertainty of the Roman Head,
Pope Clement VIII sent to Amiens
in the year 1606, whence Clement VIII in the year 1606 sought a particle. one who should ask for the Lateran Basilica a small
part of the Relic kept there, and obtained it,
as is there narrated. Wherefore I do not believe it will be
reckoned a fault in me, that, the past tradition,
though confirmed by a possession of several centuries, being set aside, I have proposed
a conjecture, so probable, and one that would set the Romans
outside disputes, if they should wish to hold it.
For it is not a question of some particle, but
of an almost whole head, which cannot be in several places:
but as the Amiens head, at least as to the front part,
is whole, so also that which
is seen at Rome resembles a whole head, says
in the Epitome of the Annals, in a special little addition to the year 1025,
Henry Spondanus, an eyewitness: but from Rome Parts are said to have been brought to Aosta
but in both places the chin is lacking, which Baronius too acknowledges
in the Notes: and The Chin, he says,
which the Head lacks, is reported to be held at Aosta in the territory
of the Subalpine people: this, therefore,
if it was received from Rome, will undergo the same conjecture as the Head which is there,
without prejudice to a more certain notice if any can be had thence. The same
I would say concerning three particles of the head which Hynko,
or Henry, the first Bishop of that name of
Olomouc, a Prince of royal blood,
received as a gift at Rome in the year 1146, enclosed in crystal
within a silver gilt case,
as also concerning other particles which in the year
1355 and [13]70 the Emperor Charles IV brought
from Italy: and to Prague. all of which are indicated in the Diary
of the holy Relics of the Metropolitan of Prague.