ON ST. PROBUS, BISHOP OF RIETI IN ITALY.
AROUND THE YEAR 570.
CommentarySt. Probus, Bishop of Rieti in Italy.
[1] Rieti, a city of the Sabines, which is reported to surpass in antiquity both Rome and Troy, is about forty miles distant from the City. Among its earliest Bishops whose memory survives, it had St. Probus, about whom we know only what St. Gregory the Great narrates concerning his death in Book 4 of the Dialogues, chapter 12, which we here transcribe. Having recounted various things about the departure of souls from chapter 7, he relates the following about this Saint:
[2] "On this matter I shall not be silent about what Probus, the servant of Almighty God, who is now in charge of a monastery in this city called Rieti, has been accustomed to tell me about his uncle Probus, Bishop of the city of Rieti, saying: At his death SS. Juvenal and Eleutherius appear As the end of his life approached, a most severe illness weighed him down. His father, named Maximus, sending boys around in every direction, endeavored to assemble physicians, if perhaps his malady could be relieved. But the doctors gathered from neighboring places on all sides, upon feeling his pulse, declared that his death would come sooner. But when the time for refreshment was at hand and the hour of day had grown late, the venerable Bishop, more solicitous for their health than for his own, urged those present to go up with his aged father to the upper rooms of his episcopal residence and restore themselves with refreshment after their labor. All therefore went upstairs: only one small boy was left with him. While the boy was standing by the bed of the sick man, he suddenly saw entering to the man of God certain men clad in white robes, whose faces surpassed in brightness even the whiteness of their garments. Struck also by the brightness of their splendor, the boy began to cry out in a loud voice, asking who they were. At this voice Bishop Probus also was moved, and seeing them enter he recognized them; and he began to console the boy, who was shrieking and wailing, saying: 'Do not be afraid, for St. Juvenal and St. Eleutherius the Martyrs have come to me.' But the boy, unable to bear the novelty of so great a vision, ran swiftly out the door and announced to the father and the doctors those whom he had seen. They hurried down, but found the sick man whom they had left already dead, because those had taken him with them whose vision the boy who remained there could not endure."
[3] Concerning St. Probus the Bishop, Peter de Natalibus in Book 11 of his Catalog of Saints, chapter 108, Sacred veneration where he says he treats of Saints whose feast day he asserts was entirely unknown to him, copies the same things from this source. Concerning him, Galesin writes at January 15 thus: "At Rieti, of St. Probus, Bishop and Confessor, whose many deeds piously and wonderfully performed Gregory the Great commemorates." On January 16 and March 15 Again the same Galesin at March 15 has: "At Rieti, of St. Probus, Bishop and Confessor," and cites in the Notes the Records of the Church of Rieti. The same is mentioned by Molanus in his first supplement to Usuard and Canisius in the German Martyrology. In the Roman Martyrology there is this encomium: "At Rieti, of St. Probus the Bishop, at whose death the Martyrs Juvenal and Eleutherius were present." Juvenal is Bishop of the city of Narnia, which is about twenty miles distant from Rieti, and he is venerated on May 3. St. Eleutherius seems to be that Martyr whose relics, and those of his mother St. Anthia, Ughelli reports are preserved in part at Rieti in volume one of his Italia Sacra: whose birthday is celebrated on April 18.
[4] The Cathedral Church, built in honor of the Most Blessed Virgin of the Assumption, his body at Rieti is reported to have been consecrated by Pope Honorius III on September 11, 1225; in whose crypt, beneath the Confession, the body of St. Probus the Bishop was deposited together with other relics of Saints by the same Honorius, as is read in the said Ughelli. Time of death Ferrari in his Catalog of the Saints of Italy, where he has the encomium of St. Probus, judges he died shortly before St. Gregory; others conjecture this happened around the year 570.