ON S. EUROSIA, VIRGIN AND MARTYR,
AT JACA IN TARRACONENSE SPAIN.
8TH CENT.
HISTORICAL COLLECTION.
A sure account of her cult; uncertain conjectures concerning her age and fatherland.
Eurosia, Virgin Martyr, at Jaca in Aragon (S.)
THE AUTHOR BEING D. P.
One of the dioceses of Tarraconense Spain, subject to the Pyrenean mountains, and nearest to them, In the diocese of Jaca is that of Jaca. The city lies on the river Aragon (whence the name was afterwards made for the whole region of Aragon), where it, running out from the aforesaid mountains toward the South, turns its course to the West, being prevented by the obstruction of new mountains from holding the straight way to the Ebro. By an almost similar course there flows through the same diocese the Gállego, but, sooner freed from the mountains, it resumes the course begun toward the South, about to join itself to the Ebro above Saragossa, while the Aragon reaches it only near Calahorra. But across the Gállego, three leagues from Jaca, a spring and a cavern, on this side of the rivulet Bassa, lies Hiebra or Yebra, beside which a huge cavern under a rock is believed to have afforded a hiding-place to the aforesaid S. Eurosia; nor far from there is shown a spring, called by her name, as though she had elicited it itself by prayers, that she might relieve her companions laboring under want of water — which, in so great a nearness of the aforesaid rivulet, scarcely appears credible; granted that that spring is nearer to the cavern, and therefore was in use by the Saint herself, which is enough for taking the nomenclature thence.
[2] They relate that the Saint was caught in the same cavern with her companions by the Moors: but the body of her, slain there because she would not become the wife of the leader of the barbarians, where S. Eurosia is believed to have been slain was carried in a certain skin, by a shepherd of sheep admonished through an Angel, the bells ringing of themselves wherever he passed. Roused by their admonition, the Bishop of the place and the Clergy, going out to meet it, reverently received it and placed it in the Cathedral church there: where to this day it is kept with great veneration, and it began to grow illustrious with miracles of every kind. But especially is her intercession invoked for obtaining rain, as often as it is desired: for it has never happened that the sacred Relics of Eurosia were carried out processionally for that cause, and, translated to Jaca, she is invoked for rain: without abundant rain being given from heaven within three days. And the sacred Body is preserved, compacted with flesh and sinews, still breathing forth from itself a sweet odor: the head also likewise still entire, with part of the hairs, is held reverently in the above-said place of martyrdom. There are moreover about fifty or sixty years since the Bishop, Joannes de Navarra, wished to take some little particle thence for himself; the head at Hiebra drips blood. but immediately living blood came forth from the wound, which, received in cotton, is preserved with the head, and to this day persists in the same cotton and grows. And the festivity is kept on the day after S. John the Baptist, when to Jaca from the surrounding places hasten the inhabitants of more than a hundred villages, each under their own crosses; and they assist at the most solemn procession which is then led around, after which also the Saint's body itself is set forth to be seen.
[3] Thus the Spanish Epistle, which I have in the original, together with letters of credence, From an Epistle directed by the Magistracy into Bohemia in the year 1568, signed by the sworn Justiciars of the city of Jaca, Joannes de Villanova, Martinus de Sarasa, Hieronymus de Arguis, and Thadaeus de la Sala, each by his own hand, and fortified with the seal of the city, on the 19th of May, in the year 1568; and delivered to Joannes de Xavierre, a citizen of Jaca, to carry it to the Kings of Bohemia, who were then Maximilian and Maria, this latter the daughter, the former the grandson through their brother Ferdinand and son-in-law of Charles V, already then for four years made Emperor also. This embassy was sent for this reason, that those Kings might be persuaded to interpose their effort and intercession with Pope Pius V, together with Philip II King of the Spains, to this end, that he would deign to honor the Saint, when there was treatment of a solemn Canonization, the daughter of the King of Bohemia (as she was believed at Jaca to be), with a solemn Canonization of the Saints; and so that the Office, which
was recited concerning her in that city alone, might become common to all Aragon, or even to all the kingdoms of the Spains. What was afterward done, and how far the business proceeded at Rome, I nowhere find written. The aforesaid originals were sent to our Henschenius from Madrid by his friend, D. Joannes Gualterus del Bruggen, Procurator there of the Hanseatic cities, a learned man, but in that it makes the Saint the daughter of the King of Bohemia but how they came to his hands, and accordingly whether they were ever carried into Bohemia, I cannot divine. That they did not arrive may be suggested by the silence of our Boleslaus Balbinus, both in his Epitome of Bohemian affairs and in his Miscellanies, who carefully gathers whatever he learned from elsewhere pertaining to Bohemia; although hitherto unknown to the Bohemians, such as are SS. Angela and Euphrasia. But that persuasion of the people of Jaca, concerning the Bohemian origin of their Saint, whom they will have to have been betrothed to a son of the King of Spain, and to have come then, when the Moors brought over from Africa had recently occupied that whole kingdom in the year 795 — first in a particular little treatise; then, for the refutation of a certain most ignorant Apologist, with new observations most solidly, beyond his custom, did Tamayus de Salazar, Author of the Spanish Martyrology, refute, in whose Notes at this day it is enough that those things be read.
[4] The people of Jaca relied on the Lessons and Hymns of their old Breviary, not to be accepted, from which also Marieta in book 4 on the Saints of Spain, chapter 18, rendered the Life in Spanish in the year 1596. But more cautious than he, Thomas de Trugillo, in the year 1583, in the second volume of his Preachers' Treasury, page 1189, was content to write thus briefly and in Latin. In that persecution which the perfidious Abderragman, King of Cordova, stirred up in Spain against the Christians, among other Saints whom he afflicted with Martyrdom was B. Eurosia; whom indeed the impious tyrant tortured with various torments: in which torments she rendered up her glorious spirit; but the body was brought to the city of Jaca, where, by the intercession of the holy Martyr, God wrought many miracles. Following Trugillo soon after, Ambrosius Morales, there are those who thought her slain at Cordova. in book 16 of the General Chronicle of Spain, chapter 15, when he had narrated the victory reported in the year 938 by the Christians at Simancas over the aforesaid King of Cordova; and how he, imputing that success to his too great indulgence toward them, began to persecute the same in his kingdom; says, Holy Eurosia is held in great veneration at Jaca, in the mountains of Aragon, where is her sacred body, which, found by revelation, was carried to the Cathedral of that city. The Moors inflicted martyrdom upon her, cutting off her hands and feet: which, because some will have it done at this time, I wished to relate here; even if I am not ignorant that there are those who refer it to the time of King Roderick and the general destruction of Spain: but they also narrate many other things concerning her, which, because they lack all foundation, I pass over.
[5] She certainly seems to be Spanish: The Greek name, taken from τῆς εὐρώσεως eurōseōs, "good strength", a well-robust habit of body or mind, sounding nothing foreign, much less Bohemian, that is, Slavonic, makes it also probable to me that the Saint was by no means foreign, but a native of Spain, where Greek names were in use familiar enough, as SS. Leocadia, Encratis, Leocritia, Eulalia, and others prove. But although names of this Greek kind were not unusual among the neighboring Aquitanians across the mountains, as having been introduced thither by the Romans promiscuously with Latin ones; yet I see no necessity of fetching Eurosia thence. For Roderick, the last of the Kings of the Goths (under whom she ought to have come, according to the Breviary of Jaca), had no son to whom she was sought as a bride; just as neither were there Kings in Aquitaine, some one of whom she had as a parent. And this perhaps moved Mariana, that in book 8, chapter 9, he spoke of her only most obscurely, as though she perhaps suffered in the 10th century in the time of Count Garsias. nor will he please who suggests the Boii in Aquitaine, Little, therefore, to the purpose is it that Tamayus, from the Itinerary of Antoninus, shows us Boii in Aquitaine; and so it might seem that an error was made in the like name of the Bohemians, whom also many call Boii. For although Julius Caesar is read to have granted, at the request of the Aedui, that he would permit the Boii to dwell among them, and it is believed that a part of the Bourbon territory in Aquitaine was assigned to them: although also the same, their single city Gergovia being overturned, partly crossed to the other side of the Aedui, neighbors of the Lingones and Senones, in the time of Pliny; partly came nearer to the Pyrenees, dwelling between Losa and Bordeaux, when the Itinerary of the Emperor Antoninus was written in the 2nd century; yet it is altogether probable that there were none of them when the Roman power among the Gauls ceased. long before the irruption of the Moors extinguished. Nor is Aulus Haly of any avail, called in for help, a new Poetaster under an old and foreign name; nor likewise the fictitious Chronicle of Pseudo-Julian, nor the Topography of the Saints of the First Bishop of Chalon, produced by Maurolycus, which itself is not a very old figment, inscribed with the name of its author for the year 1450, in which there was no First Bishop either then or at any other time at Chalon, nay, nor in all Gaul.
[6] However, that Eurosia was Spanish, I would not therefore join her to the Martyrs of Cordova of the 10th century, known to none of the ancients; I should prefer to believe her born in Aragon. nor indeed to those whom S. Eulogius describes in the era 890, the year of Christ 852, when another Abderaman there was persecuting the Christians. I think something must be granted to the tradition of the people of Yebra, who hold that the Saint suffered and was buried among them; for it does not appear on what foundation the body should be said to have been translated from the borders of the Cordovans into Aragon. I wish also to hold the tradition by which she is said to have been slain by the Moors, and indeed about the time of the universal destruction, [that she was there in truth slain by the Moors crossing into Gaul in the 8th century] after the army of King Roderick was routed; the Barbarians penetrating even to the summits of the Pyrenees about the year 714, under, perhaps, the other Abderamen, a most valiant Leader, who afterward brought terror and devastation upon all Aquitaine even to Poitiers, until in the year 732 he was slain at Tours by Charles Martel. But I would not deny that she was slain for the keeping of her chastity, or that the Barbarian was taken with love of her; but I should wish to be taught by those to whom it has fallen to inspect the body, whether it is said certainly enough that she was mutilated in hands and feet, whether alive or dead. The rest I should prefer to be ignorant of, as well as of Acisclus the Bishop, the Virgin's paternal uncle, and Cornelius, brother of the same Virgin, slain together, because no cult of any of them is found anywhere, nor are their bodies ever narrated to have been discovered. It could otherwise easily have happened that, in the time of that desolation, the Bishop of Huesca, with his household, sought a hiding-place in the aforementioned cavern and found death, called in truth Acisclus, from the name of that famous martyr of Cordova under Diocletian, whose memory recurs on the 17th of November, and is most celebrated in all the Spains.
[7] But I say the Bishop of Huesca, not of Jaca. For the city, though ancient, but translated in the 11th century had not of old an Episcopal See: but since it was the first recovered from the Moors in the year 795, those whom the Aragonese chose for themselves as Bishops resided in the monasteries near to that city, of S. Peter of Stresa and of S. John della Peña, and were called Bishops of Aragon, until the year 1035. Then, a Council having been celebrated at Jaca, which Baronius wrongly refers to 1061, it was decided that Sancius, the last with the title of Aragon, should be called Bishop of Jaca, until Huesca too should be recovered, and the See thither restored by right of postliminy, as was done in the year 1096. If therefore there was a Bishop at Jaca when the body of S. Eurosia was brought thither; it was either Sancius himself, or one of his successors named by Tamayus at the 8th of February, namely Garsias, Stephanus, or Petrus, under whom Huesca was recovered. when Jaca had Bishops afterward brought back to Huesca. By a whole century, therefore, did he err who, under the name of Julianus Petrus, having invented the Chronicle and Adversaria, wrote that in the year 935 the body of S. Eurosia was divinely found, by a certain shepherd. But Joannes de Navarra, who, about to take some little of the Saint's head, elicited the miraculous blood; was Bishop of Huesca, from the year 1480 to 1526, as is in Martinus Carillius, Canon of Saragossa, after the history of S. Valerius, Bishop of Saragossa and Martyr; when, namely, the Bishops of Jaca had now for nearly four centuries ceased to be, until Philip II, in the first years of his Monarchy, caused them to be restored, and took the city from the Bishop of Huesca.
[8] Tamayus complains, moreover, of the ill grace returned to him by the people of Jaca, Another new figment about the Saint as a Bohemian is exploded because he disclosed to them the errors of their Breviary; and among other things he says that there was opposed to him a certain relation, esteemed authentic among them, with this beginning. On the 20th of February, in the year 1493, Fr. Joannes de Monte-oliveti, of the kingdom of Bohemia, came to the city of Jaca, to visit the body of B. Eurosia, and said: that the name of the father of the said S. Eurosia was Joannes Lodici, King of Bohemia, Sclavonia, and Albania; and the name of her mother, Eulalia: the name of her brother, Carmionus Lodici, the name of her aunt, Martiana Lodici: the name of the city, Laspicum: and they were baptized in one most holy Church, entitled in honor of S. Eusebius: and their most holy bodies rest in one most holy monastery of the Order of S. Benedict, in honor of SS. Fabian and Sebastian, near the city of Laspicum at nine miles, etc. In battering down this figment Tamayus sweats, unsuited to a Bohemian Monk, who is said to be its author. not indeed with great worth of his effort. For who, even though he be silent, does not see that there is nothing in all that barbarity which could have come into the mind even of a truly Bohemian Monk, were he dreaming? He would at least have given Bohemian names to the men; he would also have named a city, some one of the known ones. But since the whole phrase smacks of Hispanism, it cannot be doubted that the matter was fashioned by the same genius, and thrust upon the too credulous people of Jaca as an ancient treasure, in this very century, or perhaps after the controversy stirred by Tamayus. Certainly to the sworn Justiciars of the city whom I mentioned above it was as yet unknown in the year 1568, when they were dispatching their Legate into Bohemia, carefully collecting everything which they either knew, or believed they knew, concerning their Patroness.
[9] Fr. Martinus a Cruce, a discalced Augustinian Brother of the Province of Aragon, and Procurator General of the same, Miracles published in the year 1627 are desired. in the year 1627 brought to light at Saragossa, under his own name, not his own work, but (as he himself confesses) that of a certain Anonymous one, who professed the same Religion, who, compelled by the precept of his Superiors, permitted it to go forth under the hand and name of Martinus; as Antonius Nicolai writes in the Spanish Library; but the title of the work, Latin from the Spanish, is this: Spain restored in Aragon, by the virtue of the women of Jaca, and the Blood of S. Orosia. I believe that Tamayus, at the end of his Notes, calls it the Life of S. Orosia,
in whose chapter 17, folio 150, he says are recounted the rhythms of a certain Basurto, an old Castilian Poet, and also several miracles, on whose account I desire to obtain that Life. Our friend Primus Aloysius de Tattis, of Como among the Insubrians, a writer of History, a Presbyter of the Somaschan Congregation, had the book, and from it signified to us that the author is of this opinion, that he makes Orosia an Aquitanian. Perhaps the same our Friend was about to suggest more things from him, if he could have published the Life, which he wrote that he had had ready for the press since the year 1680, and that only some of the Relics from Aragon was awaited, concerning whose festive Translation he might be able to treat at the end. But death, met in the year 1686, intercepted his excellent designs, as his successor in the Prefecture, Angelus Maria Bulizius, wrote back to me, promising that he would communicate anything pertaining hither which he should find among the writings of the deceased, and would also copy from the aforecited book whatever he should find; adding that some Relic indeed was brought to Como, but so small that it does not deserve to be mentioned.
[10] Meanwhile we have, published by Aloysius in the year 1675, a Martyrology of Como concerning the Saints proper to that Church, The Insubrians chose her as Patroness against storms where at the 26th of June it is thus read: At Como, in the sacred Loretan shrine, the votive solemnity of S. Eurosia, Virgin and Martyr, etc., from Trugillo: but in the Commentary subjoined, when the Author had shown that it cannot be that she is believed Bohemian, and sister of S. Wenceslaus, whose only sister was Premislava; he inclines that she suffered at Cordova. S. Eulogius, he says, was translated to Oviedo, S. Leocritia was translated: why might not Eurosia also be translated to Jaca? Then he weighs the promise made by her, about to die, from heaven, that as often as she shall be invoked by the faithful of Christ for rain or against any storm whatsoever, their prayer is to be heard. Indeed I do not doubt at all that the experience of frequent graces in such necessity gave occasion of devising celestial voices of this kind, for the ornament of a history otherwise unadorned: and the confidence of the faithful, resting on experience itself, I praise rather than their credulity: and thus, by the same witness, and as such they keep her feast on the 26th of June: the Insubrian land in these most recent times has experienced the present help of the Virgin, which, agitated by continual whirlwinds, mourned that its glad crops were scattered in single years: scarcely had it invoked the name of Eurosia, when it found, for its afflicted affairs, the defense which it greatly desired. The religion of the Milanese territory, introduced, as I believe, by the Spaniards who hold the citadel, the Region of Como embraced; which, among others, being subject to frequent storms, bewailed its hardships with inexplicable grief. To the whole Province was added Eurosia as Patroness, in the year 1661, in the sacred Loretan shrine, by the Fathers of the Somaschan Congregation; and as Patroness she is venerated each year with solemn rite by the citizens on this day, on which not only from the city, but also from the towns neighboring the city, the peoples eagerly flock together, to beseech the Deity by the Virgin's intercession, that he would remove the impending misfortunes by her merits. From that time also they have very often acknowledged the now-falling hailstorms, by the intercession of Eurosia, as we piously believe, either reduced to nothing, or carried elsewhere.
[11] I believe it crept into Trugillo through a typographical error, that there should be read in the margin, 26 June, which Ferrarius followed in his General Catalogue: and hence the Insubrians deserve easy pardon: or is she venerated also on the 14th? but that the same Ferrarius says she is venerated also on the 14th of June, as though from the records of the Church of Jaca, seems strange, the sworn men of Jaca in their Epistle, or any Spanish writers, making no mention of such a day. The same Ferrarius says that Eurosia is venerated on the 25th of July also, from the records of the Church of Jaca. Perhaps it could be excused that July was written for June by Ferrarius through error, and hence her elogium was printed in July itself. He here cites also the Archdeacon of Arundum and the Author of the Flower of the Saints. Meanwhile I should easily believe that the very day on which the Saint is venerated at Jaca is not that of her death, but of her finding or translation. Arturus, in the Sacred Gynaeceum, following Ferrarius, also chose the 14th day; and added in his Notes, I think she is S. Euphrosyna, adorned with the glory of Martyrdom at Cordova in the year 838, in Baronius, volume 10. The words of Baronius, narrating the victory of the Christians over the Moors in that year, are these: is there some Euphrosyna of Cordova? Some add, who have pursued the affairs of Spain, that the King of the Arabs himself, having received this disaster, when he returned to Cordova, stirred up a great persecution against the Christians: which indeed I also read in Ambrosius de Morales; but not likewise that S. Victor then suffered, nor even that Euphrosyna was adorned with an equal palm of Martyrdom. I should wish that here Baronius had cited his Authors: for Tamayus in his Martyrology knows neither, nor any other Spanish writer whom I have seen. Meanwhile our Balbinus, in book 4 of the Bohemian Miscellanies, §28, moved by the authority of Baronius, was unwilling to omit her; nay, he thought he ought not to be silent about those who make her sister of S. Angela; although he confesses that the Bohemian writers mention neither, nor does it appear whose daughters they could have been, or how Angela could be ascribed to the Carmelite Order, which the Emperor Charles IV first brought into Bohemia. or sister of S. Angela the Carmelite? The same he had done in the earlier-published Epitome of Bohemian Affairs; where, enumerating the Bohemians of both sexes illustrious in sanctity in the time of King Premislaus in the 13th century; There lived, he says, also in this century Angela of the Carmelite institute at Tyre, and S. Euphasia Martyr in Spain, both of the blood of the Princes of the Bohemians; if those things are true which not ignoble writers, although ours are silent, have handed down concerning them. So hardly are men, even the best, brought to reject altogether that which by any sort of indication they understand to be believed by some, when it seems to make for the honor of their fatherland, even when they have it suspect of fiction.