CONCERNING SAINT VICTOR, DEACON OF PLACENTIA IN ITALY.
ABOUT THE YEAR 444.
CommentaryVictor, Deacon of Placentia on the Po in Italy (Saint)
[1] The Placentine territory, on the side that faces east and the river Nure, has a place three miles distant from the city, which the people call le Mosie from the pools frequent in the low and marshy ground, and which earlier centuries called Moxiae; In the Moxiae near Placentia as is evident from the writing which, hitherto unpublished, the monk Ruffinus of the monastery of Saint Sabinus composed about the year 1253 concerning the building and restoration of his monastery. The reason for the name will be easily understood by anyone who wishes to learn that the ancient language of the Gauls, whether dwelling beyond or on this side of the Alps, before it was converted into Latin, had roots or primordial words in common with the Teutonic language, many of which escaped the power of time that changes all things and still survive preserved in modern languages. For it is evident that this is one of them, since Mose signified a marsh to our ancestors, as Cornelius Kilian attests in his etymological dictionary; indeed the same word still signifies mud to us, whence those everyday compounds: Mos-gat, the drain through which mud is directed from streets and houses into the public sewers; Mos-meyer, one appointed to collect mud, etc.; Mos-karre, the cart by which such filth is carried away.
[2] In this place Constantinus and Opinianus built the church of the Moxiae, The church of Saint Sabinus, "who were from Rome" (says the above-named Ruffinus in Ughelli's volume 2 of Italia Sacra), "in honor of the twelve Apostles, which was consecrated by the most blessed Sabinus; from whose body, transferred there by Saint Maurus, Bishop of Placentia, it began to be called the monastery of Saint Sabinus." Concerning this translation and the other bodies of saints, partly translated to the same place and partly first buried there, the following words are read in Ruffinus from some ancient stone or parchment: "I, Maurus, the last Bishop, from the Kingdom of Lothair, and on account of an angelic vision I came to my own city, Enriched with the bodies of saints, and I buried the body of Saint Sabinus the Bishop on the sixteenth before the Kalends of February; I consecrated this altar in his honor and that of Saint Antoninus the Martyr. On the day before the Nones of February I buried Saint Gelasius. On the day before the Nones of March I buried the body of Saint Victor the Deacon. On the Ides of May I reinterred the body of Saint Domnius. On the tenth before the Kalends of January, Saint Victoria departed this world. After their death Bishop Maurus lived six years; on the Ides of September he departed. I, Abbot Ephrem, buried his body beside the body of Saint Sabinus on the left side, and I wrote with my own hand, and I deposited it here."
[3] Since therefore the said Saint Maurus, according to Petrus Maria Campi, Before the year 449. historian of Placentia, and Ferdinando Ughelli who followed him in the Bishops of Placentia, departed this life in the year of Christ 449, the death of Saint Victor will pertain to the year 444 of the fifth century. Concerning his veneration, and indeed under the semi-double rite approved at Rome, as is abundantly clear to us from the Proper Offices of that Church, from Philippus Ferrarius, and from the authors already cited: Among these, Saint Victor the Deacon. thus concerning his life, virtues, and miracles by which he merited it, all confess that nothing is found anywhere -- although Ferrarius indicates that certain Proper Lessons about him used to be recited in the Church of Saint Sabinus before the introduction of the reformed Breviary; from which he composed this eulogy in the Catalogue of Saints of Italy for this day.
[4] "Victor, born of honorable parents at Placentia, cultivated piety from his earliest age, and having become a cleric, Eulogy from Ferrarius was ordained Deacon by Saint Maurus, Bishop of Placentia, on account of his most approved character. In which office he was so inflamed with zeal for the faith and applied himself with such diligence that, admirable to all, he turned the eyes of all upon himself. Since, moreover, he led a most innocent life, the Lord on that account hastened to lead him away from the midst of iniquities. When he had therefore departed this life, his body was buried with fitting honor in the Moxiae outside the city; which Bishop Everardus, together with the bodies of other saints, transferred to the Basilica of Saint Sabinus, Translation in the year 903 built by himself near the walls of the city in the year 903 -- having abandoned, that is, the plan he had previously proposed to a Synod convened for this purpose, of attaching a monastery to the ancient church of the Moxiae, because there came upon them the wretched and terrible race of unhappy pagans, who, slaughtering bodies with a hostile sword and burning the churches of God with the fire of their fury, burned likewise the aforesaid church of Blessed Sabinus," as Everardus says in the instrument of foundation composed by himself in the sixteenth year of King Berengar.
[5] From this and many other public instruments, which recognize no Bishop Conrad in the year 933 or 943, Was a new translation made in the year 933? but rather Guido and Boso, that inscription is convicted of error which, I know not whether or when it was carved, is reported and refuted by Ughelli, as if a bishop of such a name and time had deposited in one tomb the bodies of Saints Victor, Domnius, Gelasius, and Peregrinus. By the same arguments Locatus is refuted, whom Petrus Maria Campi at the year 917 and Ughelli at 911 say mentioned this translation. Furthermore, the same bodies were examined in the year 1481 and translated to a more decent place, Ferrarius adds, Examination in the year 1481. by Fabricius Marlianus, who had been elevated from the Bishopric of Tortona to the See of Placentia five years before; in which he conducted himself for thirty-two years, according to Ughelli, such that having rebuilt the episcopal palace, recovered very many properties that had been alienated, and celebrated ten Synods for the restoration of ecclesiastical discipline, he departed with a great reputation for virtues, among which his devotion to the saints could also deservedly be counted.