Two Monks and Deacon of the Marsican Church

ON THE HOLY TWO MONKS AND DEACON OF THE MARSICAN CHURCH, MARTYRS IN THE PROVINCE OF VALERIA.

SIXTH CENTURY.

Two Monks, Martyrs in the Province of Valeria (SS.) Deacon of the Marsican Church, Martyr in the Province of Valeria (S.)

[1] The furthest part of interior Latium at Lake Fucinus, now incorporated into Abruzzo, was the ancient region of the Marsi, from which the Bishops of the Marsi are also named, whose residence Ughelli says was wandering and uncertain, although for their Cathedral, where they were accustomed to exercise episcopal duties, they used the church of St. Sabina, which was adjoined to the noble monastery of St. Benedict, which is said to have partly fallen into ruin along with Valeria. Ferrarius in his geographical Lexicon calls Valeria itself the city of the Marsi: whence the province of Valeria and the province of the Marsi, which St. Gregory the Great mentions in book 4 of his Dialogues, chapters 21 and 23, would not need to be distinguished. In these places the Martyrs were slain, whose sacred veneration is set forth in the Roman Martyrology on March 14 in these words: Veneration in the Roman Martyrology, In the province of Valeria, of the holy two monks, whom the Lombards killed by hanging on a tree: on which, though dead, they were heard singing psalms by the very enemy. In that same persecution also a Deacon of the Marsican Church was beheaded in confession of the faith. Of the same and under the same title Ferrarius treats in his Catalogue of Saints. The slaughter of these is related in the aforementioned chapters as St. Gregory recounts:

[2] The venerable Valentio, who afterwards, as you know, the two slain monks sing psalms: presided over my own monastery in this city of Rome, previously governed his own monastery in the province of Valeria. When the raging Lombards came there, as I learned from his own account, they hanged two of his monks on the branches of a single tree, and having been hanged, they died on that same day. And when evening came, the spirits of both began to sing psalms there with clear and open voices: so that even those who had killed them, when they heard the voices of those singing psalms, were exceedingly astonished and terrified. Which voices indeed all the captives who were present there also heard, and afterwards became witnesses of their psalmody. But almighty God willed these voices of the spirits to reach the ears of the embodied, so that all the living in the flesh might learn that if they strive to serve God, they live more truly after the death of the flesh.

[3] He who slew the Deacon These things are from chapter 21, but in chapter 23, concerning the death of the Deacon of the Marsican Church, the following is read: There was also in the province of the Marsi another Deacon of very venerable life, whom the Lombards found and seized: and one of them, drawing his sword, cut off his head. But when the body fell to the ground, he who had beheaded him, seized by an unclean spirit, is possessed by the devil, fell at his feet, and showed that because he had killed a friend of God, he was delivered over to an enemy of God. Of the above-mentioned Abbot Valentio we treated on March 7 in the Life of St. Equitius the Abbot in the same province of Valeria, and on March 12 in the Life of St. Gregory the Great: and with both of these holy men, these two monks are inscribed in the Benedictine martyrologies of Wion, Menard, Dorgany and Bucelin. Brautius, Bishop of Sarsina, celebrates them in his Poetic Martyrology with these distichs:

Two brothers, hanged by ropes from a tree, With alternating voices sing sacred songs.

The Levite guardian of the Marsican temple, slain For Christ, united with his companions, enters heaven.