ON ST. FELICITAS, DEDICATED TO GOD, AT PADUA IN ITALY.
BEFORE THE ELEVENTH CENTURY.
CommentaryFelicitas, dedicated to God, at Padua in Italy (St.)
[1] For the third time we revisit the basilica of St. Justina at Padua, often destroyed and often restored with the changing state of the Republic and the City, and on those occasions bodies found Body found in the year 1053 and exposed to the public veneration of all. Among these was the body of St. Felicitas, an illustrious woman: whose first finding around the year 1053 by Bishop Bernard, admonished by divine revelation, and canonization made by Leo IX, we described on the 17th of this month, when we treated of Blessed Julian and the three Innocents and St. Maximus, similarly found and similarly canonized. With these and the other Saints of the said Church, the sacred body of St. Felicitas was again hidden beneath the marble pavement of the temple, and again in 1177, and then in the year 1174, having been buried under the ashes of the burned building and City, is sufficiently clear from what was said there; from which it becomes probable that it too was sought and found three years later, translated in 1562 through the zeal of Gerard, Bishop of Padua.
[2] What happened to it afterwards, or under what altar it lay hidden, we do not know, until the year 1562, when it is established that the bodies of St. Justina and the other Saints deposited in its sacristies were most solemnly elevated and translated into that most magnificent basilica which we ourselves in recent years beheld with admiration. This last translation is commemorated on the 14th of March, and is recorded in the hagiologies of the Benedictines in these words: At Padua, the translation of Sts. Arnald the Abbot, Urius the monk, Felicitas the Virgin, and others; concerning which matter we said a few words incidentally, in connection with Blessed Arnald, as if he had no other proper day; thinking nothing of February, on the 10th day of which we had given his Acts. What is either written on parchments or inscribed on stones about the solemnity of the said Translation we reserve for the 7th day of October, when the feast of Blessed Justina is celebrated, who is named above all others in the said monuments.
[3] The first memory of the finding of St. Felicitas is from Cavaccius, cited by Ferdinand Ughelli in volume 5 of Italia Sacra, transcribing from an ancient author these things: epitaph of the ancient burial, In the third casket, which enclosed a woman's body, was read: Here is buried Felicitas, an illustrious woman, dedicated with the sacred veil, who, persisting in the service of God day and night, was received into heaven. Besides the author whom Cavaccius followed, a very ancient parchment manuscript, which is preserved in the sacristy of the same monastery, also attests to this epitaph, as Wion says, in which the names of all monks dying there are written: for it reads thus: In the year of the Lord's Incarnation 1053, Indiction VI, in the reign of Emperor Henry II. The epitaph then follows word for word, and there is added: These things were done on the 4th day before the Nones of August, under Bishop Bernard. The same Epitaph was found again in the year 1562, says Wion, when the body of the same Virgin was translated with other relics from the old church to the new one.
[4] She is believed, on the authority of Scardeone, to have lived in solitude in the greatest sanctity of life: and an ancient oratory in the mountains for in the Euganean hills (Cavaccius, cited by Ferdinand Ughelli in volume 5 of Italia Sacra, column 414, treating of these matters, interprets it as Mount Robolone) near the village of Titolo, eight miles from the city, a little cave is seen in the rock which still retains the name, so that it is commonly called the Oratory of St. Felicitas (which is near the very ancient church of St. Antony the Abbot, from whom the mountain itself also took its name), long ago happily entrusted to the monks of St. Justina and committed to their care with its emoluments.
[5] You have, reader, whatever can now be known about St. Felicitas, better known to heaven than to earth, with the support of ancient monuments or more certain tradition: in which, since there is nothing that teaches you that the title and aureole of Virgin, adopted by Cavaccius, applies, we have preferred to abstain from it whether a virgin rather than to use the uncertain eulogy of Dorgani, by which he says she was admirable for the praise of chastity: for the designation of illustrious woman added to her in the epitaph is more apt to signify matronly modesty than virginal integrity. Ferrarius adds that, after leading an eremitical life in the aforesaid oratory for some time, she spent the rest of her life in the monastery of Sts. Cosmas and Damian in the Campus Martius, and departed to the Lord on the 7th day before the Kalends of April. Ughelli, cited by Cavaccius, writes that she presided over the nuns of the monastery of St. Justina, which according to Scardeone was once a house of sacred virgins.
[6] But these things, resting on uncertain tradition confirmed by no monuments, I would not wish to undertake to discuss: whether Abbess of nuns at Padua? from the fact, however, that the oratory retains the name of St. Felicitas, and that it has passed into the jurisdiction of the monks of St. Justina, a probable conjecture could be made
that there, if not died, at least this Saint was buried: and thence, through fear of wars or some other occasion, was brought into the city by those who held possession of the aforementioned oratory: which is not so easy to suspect of the Convent of Sts. Cosmas and Damian as of the monastery of St. Justina, to whose jurisdiction the oratory of St. Felicitas is known to pertain to this day. Meanwhile, if the body of Blessed Felicitas had lain hidden in the sacred church of St. Justina ever since the time of Attila's destruction, whether of the Benedictine Order it is clear that she could not have belonged to the Benedictine Order, which did not yet exist. But as this is uncertain, so nothing remains from which it can be affirmed or denied that she followed the institution of St. Benedict: nor if something were established on either side, would it be of as great importance to our purpose as is the fact that the truth of legitimate veneration has been demonstrated to us from the aforesaid evidence: to which the present-day usage and approbation Bucelinus adds, when he says: Her body is most reverently preserved and venerated at a special altar, near the altar of St. Luke the Evangelist.