CONCERNING S. CRESCENS,
DISCIPLE OF S. PAUL THE APOSTLE.
ABOUT THE YEAR OF CHRIST.
HISTORICAL COLLECTION.
On his cult among the Greeks and Latins, and on the Apostolate ascribed to him over the people of Vienne and of Mainz.
Crescens, disciple of S. Paul the Apostle, Martyr in Galatia (S.)
BY THE AUTHOR D. P.
S. Paul is believed to have written the second epistle to Timothy at Rome, not long after his arrival there, which Henschen refers to the fifty-sixth year of the first century. In the Synopsis of Dorotheus he is said to be Bishop of Chalcedon. In this epistle he instructs him concerning the condition of certain of his disciples who had accompanied him on his journey; and, "Demas," he says, "is gone to Thessalonica, Crescens to Galatia, Titus to Dalmatia, Luke alone is with me." This is the one and most certain notice of him which we have in the sacred Scriptures, and upon this is founded solidly enough the cult which the Greeks render him on the 30th of July, and the Latins on this 27th of June.
The Greeks do not seem to have had any further notice of him, except from the Synopsis of Dorotheus, in which he is said to have been Bishop of Chalcedon; how very slight is the credit which that spurious work has on this matter, let it rest with itself. Yet from this it may have come about that the Church of Constantinople, very near across the strait, took him up to be honored, together with SS. Silvanus and Silas, Andronicus and Epænetus, likewise disciples of Paul, and he is honored by the Greeks with the others on the 30th of July, in an Office composed by S. Joseph the Hymnographer: in whose Canon, Ode VI, Strophe VI, it is thus sung: "Christ, strengthening thy mind, O Crescens, with the unction of exultation, declared thee, as His disciple, to be Archpastor of Chalcedon, fit to show the way to them that wander." Concerning his death there or his Relics the Greeks say nothing further. to whom also Gaul is ascribed.
But neither do they constantly name Chalcedon: for the Catalogue bearing the name of Hippolytus the Martyr in a Vatican Manuscript makes Crescens Bishop of Carche in Gaul; while the Dorotheus of the Ducal Library of Munich makes Crescens Bishop of Chalcis in Gaul; but in the Gauls there is no Carche nor Chalcis; nor are these, nor even Chalcedon, in Galatia; but the latter is in Bithynia, the former in Eubœa and Ætolia; to say nothing of Syria, for three places called Chalcis are found.
[2] Ado, Bishop of Vienne, says: "In Galatia, Blessed Crescens, disciple of S. Paul the Apostle, who, making his way into the Gauls, In this the people of Vienne lay claim to him for themselves, converted many to Christ by the word of preaching; [and he sat for some years at Vienne, a city of the Gauls; and there he ordained his disciple Zachary as Bishop in his stead]: but returning to the nation to whom he had been specially given as Bishop, the Galatians, he strengthened them in the work of the Lord even unto his blessed end." The words enclosed in brackets [] are wanting in the Lobbes Manuscript; and Usuard, without them, transcribed all the rest verbatim, being accustomed to abridge Ado, to correct him, and to augment him with new Saints; as became more clearly evident to us when we re-examined him at the suggestion of Claudius Castellanus; whereas before, we judged that neither knew anything of the other, and therefore that both used the same source. Yet that those words are truly Ado's appears; for he says also in his Chronicle that Paul, released from his free custody at Rome, where he had remained two years, was sent to preach, Nero not yet having broken out into so great a persecution as the Histories relate of him, and is believed to have come to the Spains; and to have left at Arles Trophimus, at Vienne Crescens, as his disciples to preach.
[3] We have from a Manuscript of Vienne a Sermon on these matters to be recited on his feast-day, where it is said that his entrance and arrival is celebrated on the 4th of the Kalends of January, which is today, but his Martyrdom on the 5th of the Kalends of July. Then, having recited the words of Ado concerning S. Paul leaving Crescens at Vienne, the Author adds: "Our Church merited to receive the Relics of this Vessel of Election through John the Pope, as his subjoined Letter shows. John the Bishop to Eoaldus Bishop of Vienne. with the assent of John Pope VII, Concerning the offices of the Masses, about which you have inquired in your letters, let your Charity know that they are performed variously among the diverse Churches. The Alexandrian Church does it one way, the Jerusalem Church another, the Roman another: whose tenor and institutions thy Church ought to keep, which took the foundation of its holy habit from her. We have appointed to thee the use of the venerable Pallium through Felix, the holy priest of Blessed Peter, our own, not wishing thee to be deprived of the ancient gift of Blessed Peter: endowed by the same and by Pope Constantine with Relics: sending at the same time some of the Hairs of S. Paul, that it might be a solace to your Church by his intercession, through whose disciple it received the first honor of religion. And in another hand. May the reading of the Apostles guard you from the shower of the malignant." But Pope Constantine also (the successor of John, through the mediation of Sisinnius, Pontiff of 20 days, down to the year 625) wrote to the same Eoaldus, Archbishop of Vienne: "I have appointed Relics of the Saints to thy Church, as thou didst ask, through thy Archdeacon, from the sponge of the Lord, from the garments of the Lord, from the chains of the Apostles, from the brazen frying-pan of the Maccabees, from the Ashes of S. John the Baptist. All which we have enclosed in a silver casket, and committed under seal to thy Sanctity. We ask that they be venerated with the same zeal with which they are known to have been transmitted to thy Sanctity from the gift of Peter. And in another hand. May Jesus Christ keep thee, Brother, sanctifying thee."
[4] Both Letters, because they are not found elsewhere, it has seemed good to add here, for the sake of that Church which rejoices to confirm the Apostolate of Crescens among itself by this Pontifical testimony; Yet they confess that he returned into Galatia, nor yet does it deny that he returned into Galatia, the province of Asia; just as neither does the present Roman Martyrology, concluding with the above-cited words of Usuard, taken I know not whence: "At length under Trajan he consummated his Martyrdom." With this addition cited, Baronius refers Crescens to the 19th year of Trajan, which for us is the 116th year of Christ: about which I would not dispute without an author. The people of Mainz, in Serarius, wish the Saint to have come to them from Gaul, and make him their first Bishop, and dead among themselves. Hence in the new and splendid chapel of the citadel of Mainz, says Serarius in book 2 chapter 2, these verses are placed with the painted image of the holy Prelate:
"The sacred Page made the name of Crescens illustrious, While he was a faithful companion to thee, Blessed Paul. The people of Mainz say he came thence to them, Thence he departed to the western shores of the Gauls, That with ready lips he might scatter the faith of Christ. And twice eleven years he presided over the people of Mainz, Illustrious in life, illustrious also in eloquence. And he bore Martyrdom under Prince Trajan, when one triad Had added ten decades to the years of Christ."
Which, according to this reckoning, would be the year 103.
[5] Meanwhile, in the place just cited, Serarius confesses that there is nowhere any mention of S. Crescens in the ritual books of the people of Mainz, and that he was buried among them in the church of S. Hilary, in the Breviaries, Missals, and the like. Some indication of his commonly believed sanctity and cult is afforded by the Life of S. Maximus the Bishop, from Trithemius, illustrated in the aforesaid Serarius, from chapter 10 of book 2 to chapter 17. He had died (as Trithemius writes) in the year of Christ 378, on the 18th of November, on which day we shall examine the Chronology of Trithemius; for now we take from him and that in the year 935 he was translated to S. Alban's: that the body of the most blessed Pontiff Maximus was buried with due honor by his disciples in the church of the holy Prelate Hilary, afterwards called "in Dalheim," where the city of Mainz is read to have been built at that time, next to the tomb of S. Crescens the first Bishop: in which place it remained buried five hundred and fifty-seven years, down to the times of Hildebert, the twelfth Archbishop of Mainz after S. Boniface, who, in the year of the Lord's nativity 935, in the 8th Roman Indiction, on the fourteenth day of the month of March, translated the bones of ten Pontiffs of Mainz from the aforementioned chapel of S. Hilary, with a solemn procession of clergy and people, to the church of the holy Martyr Alban, and placed them in the choir with the highest reverence.
[6] Concerning the destruction of the city of Mainz under Attila King of the Huns in the year 451, but this Crescens was perhaps another than the disciple of Paul, I have treated in the Acts of SS. Aureus and Albanus, on the 16th and 21st of June: but through that destruction, and the long desolation of the place thereafter, I think it came about that, with only the episcopal succession preserved (if indeed this too is rightly preserved), the notice of the first 18 Bishops perished to such a degree that (although all are named Saints) yet not a day either of death or of cult is found assigned to any of them in the Fasti; not even of S. Hilary, whose name nevertheless the first old Cathedral church of Mainz bore; so that we should not so much wonder concerning S. Crescens, but rather wonder by what confidence someone presumed to define the years of the See of each one. Indeed, to whatever tradition I would not unwillingly grant Crescens as the first Bishop: but that I should also believe this man to be a disciple of Paul,
which was anciently believed concerning the first Bishop of Vienne—the people of Mainz will persuade us with much more difficulty than the people of Vienne, inasmuch as they bring forward witnesses not so ancient. For if perhaps the identity of name could lead the people of Vienne into error, much more easily could this have happened to the people of Mainz; and the opinion will always stand stronger in favor of the Asiatic Galatians, namely, that, sent back to them by Paul or having of his own accord set out, he grew old among them, and died among them in peace, and therefore was less celebrated by posterity, and less honored by it, than if he had died a Martyr.
[7] Franciscus Bosquetus, Prætor of Narbonne and afterwards Bishop of Lodève, in book 1 chapter 5 of the Histories of the Gallican Church, writing thus, so as to show that what is held concerning him hitherto is sufficiently uncertain: "Paul himself," he says, If indeed Crescens ever went to the Galatians, "says to Timothy that he sent Crescens into Galatia: which place Theodoret interprets as Gaul; and Epiphanius accuses those of error who understand Galatia or Gallo-Greece, not Gaul. But this mission of Crescens falls in the first year of Paul, after he had been brought to Rome: therefore he could not have been left at Vienne by Paul as he passed through, unless he had already returned from Vienne to Rome before. Which indeed is not unlike the truth, nay rather seems most fitting, that the holy Apostle, intending to go into the Spains through Gaul, while still placed in chains, sent ahead one who should sound out the minds of those peoples beforehand, and what disposition there was in them for receiving the Evangelical preaching with fruit; on which occasion Crescens penetrated as far as Vienne, or having surveyed Mainz and, returning, advised his master to come to the same place, and, some there having already been converted or being ready to be converted, to set in order a Church. In whatever manner, however, the matter stood," says Bosquetus, "the Martyrologies relate that Crescens, destined for the Gallo-Greeks, in his passage through the Gauls, established the church of Vienne and then of Mainz, with which the records of both Churches agree." Concerning the people of Mainz we have already seen that these are either none, or very recent: of the records of Vienne the first author can be reckoned to be Ado, who, or some one of his predecessors, since he did not doubt at all concerning the Apostolate of Crescens among the people of Vienne, and yet it was not believed that he had died among them, but that he had been sent into Galatia (by which name no one there thought that Gaul itself was to be understood), ascribed his death to Gallo-Greece.
[8] he passed into Gallo-Greece, Bosquetus continues: "But Crescens did not go straight into Gallo-Greece, having his journey through the Gauls and Germany: and those astounding miracles, wrought by Crescens on a far too winding pilgrimage, have lessened the credit of the history. And so obscure was this narrative concerning Crescens, that the Latins and the Gauls affirm with one voice that Crescens died in Gallo-Greece; but the Greeks go into diverse opinions, and some of them relate that he died in Gaul under Nero." Would that he had named these! for they wondrously favor the people of Mainz, since it is most constant among all, from S. Jerome and others in Serarius book 1 chapter 2, that whatever is enclosed by the Ocean and the Rhine is called Gaul: and the people of Mainz are reckoned among the Bishops of the Gauls, in Athanasius and other ancient writers, since some Greeks make mention of Gaul alone, equally with those of Trier; and the first and second Germany, to which they belong, are reckoned among the Gallican Provinces. But just as from Vienne to Gallo-Greece by way of Mainz is a winding journey; yet from Mainz that journey can be held to be most direct all the way to the Euxine Sea, beyond which Gallo-Greece lies, as will be evident to one who considers it. But there will be no need of so vast a course, if it be permitted to retain Crescens at Mainz with the Greeks, who in his case put Chalcis for Chalcedon. and to believe that Chalcedon or Chalcis crept in for it. Meanwhile I would gladly see those astounding miracles which Bosquetus mentions: for hitherto I have not been able to find any trace of them. For even from such things some light of history is now and then drawn out, like a spark from flint.