CONCERNING S. PIGMENIUS THE PRIEST, MARTYR AT ROME,
YEAR 363.
HISTORICAL COMMENTARY.
Pigmenius the Priest, Martyr at Rome (S.)
[1] The genuine Martyrology of Bede is silent for this day. But the author of the Dijon supplement, for March 24, has only this: At Rome, of Pigmenius, Priest and Martyr. Nearly the same is found in the Vatican manuscript of the church of S. Peter, the Centula of S. Richarius, the Milan of S. Ambrose, and others. In the very ancient Roman of Rosweydus are these: Sacred veneration. At Rome, of Pigmenius, Priest and Martyr, buried in the cemetery of Pontianus. In the present-day Roman Martyrology these are read: At Rome, the passion of S. Pigmenius the Priest, who under Julian the Apostate, for the faith of Christ, was cast into the Tiber and put to death. Bede, Usuard, Ado, and others are cited in the Notes. Concerning the genuine Bede we have treated: in what was printed under the name of Bede, the eulogy was taken from Ado: that of Usuard is briefer, which Baronius did not dare, as he usually does elsewhere, to present in full, although he had found it in the Martyrology of Bellinus, according to the custom and usage of the Roman Church. Ado, Notker, and others add more; but of suspect reliability. For, as Baronius adds in the same Notes, The Acts were formerly corrupted: his deeds are contained in the Acts of S. Bibiana, although these are exceedingly corrupted. S. Bibiana is venerated on December 2, on which day in his Notes Baronius again states that her Acts contain some things that need correction; such as those that are superadded concerning Pigmenius and Julian the Apostate. Again Baronius writes concerning the martyrdom of Pigmenius in the Ecclesiastical Annals at the year 362, number 253: At this time Pigmenius, a Priest of the Roman Church of the title of the Pastor, remitting nothing under the impious Emperor of the vigor of spirit in detesting the gods of the Gentiles, as he had done under Christian Emperors, was cast headlong into the Tiber by the violent hand of the Gentiles, and obtained the crown of martyrdom he had long desired on the ninth day before the Kalends of April: on which day his memory, inscribed in the Ecclesiastical records, remains intact: but his Acts of martyrdom appear to be somewhat corrupted.
[2] First (as Baronius has it in his Notes on August 7, on which S. Donatus, Bishop of Arezzo and Martyr, is venerated) those things are displeasing which are narrated about the education of Julian at Rome under Pigmenius together with Donatus. in those things the education of Julian is wrongly attributed to him, For where Julian as a boy lived together with his brother Gallus in Cappadocia, where as a youth he was educated at Athens, and where finally in Gaul he was placed in command of the armies, is sufficiently established from the ancient records of the Greeks and Latins, and especially from the epistles of Julian himself. So says Baronius there, who pursues these matters more extensively from Sozomen, Eunapius, Ammianus, and the epistles of Julian himself, at the year 337, number 55, and following. Hence those things were omitted in the Roman Martyrology which in Usuard, the printed Bede, Ado, Notker, Bellinus, and others are thus expressed: He nourished Julian from boyhood and instructed him in sacred letters. Which in the corrupted Acts are variously amplified, and the aforesaid S. Donatus is added as a companion in studies, and it is said that S. Pigmenius promoted this one together with the same Julian to sacred Orders, and that Donatus was made a Lector and Julian a Subdeacon. It is indeed true that Julian was initiated into the Clergy, but in the East with his brother Gallus, as is established from the first oration of S. Gregory Nazianzen against Julian.
[3] It is also entirely contrary to all reason (these are the words of Baronius in the same Notes on August 7) that in the time of the persecution of Julian, who did not reign for an entire two years, the same S. Donatus is said to have been a lector, and thence consecrated Deacon, and after many years ordained Priest, and finally, still during his reign, on the death of Bishop Saturus, to have been appointed in his place; moreover, that while the same Julian was still living, he was crowned with martyrdom. Similar are the things that are read in the corrupted Acts concerning S. Pigmenius, and some of them are inserted into the following eulogy in Ado in these words: Julian, made Emperor, after he abandoned the worship of piety, a fabricated dialogue with the same Julian at Rome. having heard that the bodies of the holy Martyrs who were killed by him were buried by the same Pigmenius, commanded him: Go wherever you wish: for here your life will not prosper, yet I render payment for your services, not to you. Then S. Pigmenius departed to Persia, where having stayed four years, he became blind. Thence he was admonished in sleep by the Lord to return to Rome. And after four months, having returned, as he was ascending the hill of the Sacred Way with one boy, begging for alms, it happened that he encountered the Emperor Julian sitting in a golden chariot: who, seeing Pigmenius from a distance, ordered him to be called, and said to him: Glory to my gods and goddesses, that I see you. To whom the man of God, Pigmenius, immediately replied: Glory to my Lord Jesus Christ the crucified Nazarene, that I do not see you. At this word the enraged Julian ordered him to be cast from the bridge into the Tiber. So says Ado, and nearly the same is read in Notker, and has also been inserted into the third edition of Surius: but the times and places at which the Emperor Julian lived, especially after he abjured the faith of Christ, are obstacles. After Constantius died on November 3 in the year of Christ 361, Julian, who was not Emperor there. who was then in Illyricum, flew to Thrace, and on December 11 entered Constantinople: and he who in the said year had still celebrated the feast of the Epiphany in the Christian rite according to custom, opened the temples of the gods previously closed, and publicly abjuring the Christian religion, had himself inaugurated as Pontifex Maximus in the ancient rite and sacrifices. The following year, about to make war on the Persians, he departed from Constantinople
to Nicomedia, thence he sought the city of Pessinus in Galatia, to venerate Cybele, the great mother of the gods: thence he came to Antioch, and there spent the winter. After this, in the year 363, having led forth his forces against the Persians, on June 26 he was pierced by a javelin and perished in the midst of battle, having reigned for only one year and about seven months after the death of Constantius. Behold the time during which the persecution of Julian against the Christians lasted, and during which the Emperor himself was always in the East. For the rest, the governors whom he himself had appointed at Rome, in accordance with his intentions, did not cease to harass the Christians, whose deeds, because Rome itself was the seat of the Roman Emperors, were attributed to Julian: indeed because many in that persecution had obtained the palm of martyrdom, he was believed to have reigned for many years after abjuring the faith of Christ. Various persons were also deceived because he had been made Caesar in the year 355, having married Helena, the sister of Constantius, with the administration of Gaul.
[4] We have obtained various Acts of S. Pigmenius, but plainly corrupted and unworthy The beginning of the Acts, of being inserted into this work. Some of these we copied at Rome in the Vatican library from codex 1193, with this beginning: In the time when Constantine, who founded Constantinople with his own name, held the Roman Empire, there was in the city of Rome a certain Priest, Pigmenius by name, of the title of the Pastor, venerable for his virtue and worthy of esteem among his fellow citizens for his learning in the liberal arts: to whom the people of Rome were accustomed to come: and while they were receiving from him the rudiments of the liberal arts, many, wholesomely washed in the saving font, with the heavenly Teacher dictating, flocked to the fold of Christ through his zeal. The same beginning is in the manuscript of Rouge-Cloître, where the rest is more contracted. Constantine the Great died in the suburbs of Nicomedia on the very day of Pentecost in the year 337, after which time S. Pigmenius lived for nearly twenty-six years, having been martyred in the year 363, ordered to be cast from the bridge into the Tiber. His body was collected by a certain matron named Candida, and the end concerning the martyrdom and burial, and was buried in a crypt in the cemetery of Pontianus at Ursus Pileatus on the twelfth day before the Kalends of May, as is read in the same Acts.
[5] In the manuscript Acts of the monastery of Böddeken in Westphalia, it is said he was cast from the greater bridge: whose body was collected and buried in the cemetery of Pontianus opposite the palace, on the twelfth day before the Kalends of March, or February 18, on which day S. Pigmenius the Martyr is recorded in the Reichenau, Aachen, and other manuscripts. In the supplement of Greven to Usuard, Pigmenius is called Priest and Martyr at Rome. But on the twelfth day before the Kalends of May, or April 20, no mention of S. Pigmenius is found anywhere: but on March 18, Pigmenius, Priest and Martyr at Rome, is commemorated in the Barberini, Utrecht, Aachen, and other manuscripts. in the cemetery of Pontianus, The cemetery of Pontianus was situated on the Portus road near the Tiber, at Ursus Pileatus, also called the cemetery of the holy Martyrs Abdon and Sennen, not far from whom S. Pigmenius is read to have been buried, in Ado, the printed Bede, and Notker. Consult Aringhi, book 2 of Subterranean Rome, chapter 19. Among the Relics which the Emperor Charles IV donated to the Metropolitan Church of Prague, Relics at Prague and Bologna. there is a part of the head of S. Pigmenius the Martyr, as we said in the Appendix to January 2, page 1084. Masinus also in his Sacred Bologna records that there, in the temple dedicated to All Saints, are Relics of S. Pigmenius or Epigmenius, Priest and Martyr. But whether they belong to this S. Pigmenius or to some other S. Epigmenius is not established.
Annotation* otherwise of the Salarian Way.