Augusta

CONCERNING ST. AUGUSTA, VIRGIN AND MARTYR, AT SERRAVALLE IN THE VENETIAN DOMINION.

Augusta, Virgin and Martyr, at Serravalle in the Venetian dominion (Saint)

[1] Serravalle is a town of the March of Treviso, subject to the Venetian dominion, a particularly wealthy one, The birthday of St. Augusta on March 27, distant one mile from Ceneda, an episcopal city which (as Leander testifies) has now been reduced almost to the form of a village. Here St. Augusta the Virgin is venerated, who is said to have been killed by her father Matrucus, Prefect or tyrant of the region of Friuli, because she refused to abjure the Christian religion. Her birthday is celebrated on the twenty-seventh of March, on which day Ferrari in his catalogue of Saints who are absent from the Roman Martyrology has the following: "At Ceneda, St. Augusta, Virgin and Martyr." He also treats of her in his Catalogue of the Saints of Italy.

[2] Or also July 28? We strongly suspect that she is the same one who is reported on the twenty-eighth of July in certain Martyrologies. Thus the manuscripts of St. Lawrence and St. Lambert at Liege, the manuscript Florarium, and Hermann Greven in his Additions to Usuard: "On the same day, the birthday of St. Augusta the Virgin." The most ancient manuscript Martyrology of St. Jerome mentions her, but seems to assert that she was killed in Phrygia with others; for it reads: "Phrygia, the birthday of Theophilus, Eusenus, Auxentius, Septima, Augusta the Virgin." But the manuscript of St. Maximin at Trier joins other companions to Theophilus and separates Augusta from them; for it reads: "At Laodicea in Phrygia, the birthday of Saints Theophilus, Prudentius, Philip, Alexander, and elsewhere, St. Augusta the Virgin." In a certain more recent manuscript we have found inscribed for February 17: "St. Augusta the Virgin." The deeds of St. Augusta, such as could be drawn from the records of the Church of Serravalle and the pious tradition of ancestors, Acts, were written by Minutius de Minutiis of Serravalle, Apostolic Protonotary, who afterward served as secretary to Clement VIII, and he sent them to Cologne to Jacobus Mosander, by whom they were published in the supplement to the Lives of the Saints of Surius, or volume 7. In these it is said that her principal celebration is held on March 27, the Finding on August 22, and the Dedication of the church on the Octave of Easter. Finding, But in the Description of Italy, Jodocus Hondius seems to defer the primary solemnity of the holy Virgin to the Kalends of August: for the particular Description, chapter 19, has the following, where it treats of Serravalle: "This town, therefore, situated in that region of the March of Treviso which was formerly reckoned in the Friulian homeland, in the diocese of Ceneda, encloses those mountains which antiquity called the Opitergine mountains, to which the Christian religion has now given the pious names of St. Augusta and St. Anthony, to which Saints temples have been placed on those mountains; a mountain sacred to her, and indeed a very celebrated one to Augusta the Virgin and Martyr, whose bones placed there are venerated by neighbors and foreigners, and they undertake pilgrimages and set up votive tablets. On the Kalends of August there is a very great concourse of people to that basilica, basilica, relics, when there are also celebrated fairs of the town. In these same mountains there are very ancient fortresses, the remains of which are not so ruined as not to show that great Princes placed there a very secure stronghold and a very convenient habitation: among which Matrucus, King of the Friulians, father of St. Augusta, still celebrated for his deeds, is renowned, unless the death inflicted on his daughter for the Christian faith had tarnished all his praises." So much for that author.

Ferrari writes in his annotation that in the passion of this Virgin the year 100 from the Nativity of the Lord is noted: age. "But at that time," he says, "the Roman Empire had not yet declined, nor did tyrants hold sway throughout Italy." What then does Florus say in the prologue to book 1? "From Caesar Augustus to our own age there are hardly less than two hundred years: in which the Empire grew old and withered through the indolence of the Caesars." Why could not some petty king have occupied the Carnic Alps or the Rhaetian Alps at that time? What if, having earned the friendship of the Romans by the Germanic wars, he obtained by their favor that tract of the extreme end of Italy by client right? Even in the age of Augustus, Cottius reigned in the Alps, at first an enemy, afterward received into the friendship of the Emperor: why could Matrucus not have done the same, although perhaps within narrower boundaries and with lesser fame? To us, however, nothing occurs to establish his period with certainty.

The same Ferrari reports that Peter de Natalibus mentions Augusta in book 4. But we have found nothing in Peter about her, not even the name.

ACTS

By Minutius de Minutiis.

Augusta, Virgin and Martyr, at Serravalle in the Venetian dominion (Saint)

[1] When long ago various nations had flowed together from the southern regions to infest Italy, with the affairs of the Roman Empire already weakened, and many barbarian leaders, enticed by the fertility, pleasantness, and temperate climate of the land, had planted their foot in it; there is a constant tradition among the people of Friuli that a certain Matrucus, a Prince distinguished both in birth and wealth, Matrucus the Prince persecutes Christians. a German by nationality, as they say, had in those times settled in the territory of Friuli, having occupied many estates, and had established a fortress and royal

residence on a lofty mountain not far from Serravalle. When he had easily increased in strength there, he began to exercise tyranny over the inhabitants of that place -- cruel indeed, but far more cruel in this respect, that being a most zealous worshipper of idols, he vehemently persecuted those who professed the faith of Christ: of which he gave an example in Augusta, his daughter, a virgin of tender age.

[2] For when she had applied her mind to the Christian religion, His daughter Augusta is converted: and had made no small progress in it, secretly from her father, having voluntarily sought and received holy baptism, she wished to be enrolled among the Christians: and once enrolled, she was so truly devoted to the most pious rites of the true religion that she would sometimes spend whole days in churches. This began to arouse the suspicion of her father, who did not know where she was betaking herself: and fearing that she might be planning flight, thinking she should be more diligently watched, when she withdrew to that pious place as was her custom, he secretly sent a spy to note each detail carefully and report. Following the virgin who had entered the church of the Christians, he understood that because she was praying to God on bended knees with hands and face raised to heaven in the manner of Christians, she had been converted to that religion, she is caught praying: and returning soon to Matrucus, he reported the matter as it was; who, gravely angered, ordered his daughter to be summoned from the church at once.

[3] But she firmly answered the one who announced her father's commands that she then had business with the King of heaven, God, and that when she had satisfied him, she does not interrupt her prayers when summoned: she would obey her father: and when she had at last put an end to her prayers, she returned to her father. He, his anger vehemently inflamed, received her with exceedingly harsh words, sharply rebuking her because she esteemed so little the religion of her ancestors, her father's authority, the honor of her family, and finally her own chastity, that neglecting these she converted to a foreign and most contemptible religion. To which the Virgin, answering with presence of mind, she answers her father nobly: said: "God, the Creator of all things, I love, venerate, and worship, as much as lies in me: frequent is my conversation and communion with the inhabitants of heaven: my chastity and purity I have vowed and betrothed to Christ the King: whom if you too had known, my father, you would without doubt have given yourself wholly to him."

[4] Matrucus, detesting his daughter for rejecting his admonitions, ordered her to be cast into prison, having seriously admonished her again to weigh all things more carefully even with her teeth torn out: rather than rashly incite her father's wrath against herself: if she did not comply, the most grievous punishments awaited her. On the following day, brought from prison to her father, when asked whether she persisted in her resolution, she answered boldly that she acknowledged and worshipped Christ as the one true God, whom alone she would obey forever. The father, even more exasperated by the Virgin's freedom in speaking, ordered two of her teeth to be pulled out. Yet not at all drawn from her constancy by that torment, but strengthening her resolve more and more to profess the faith of Christ, she openly declared to her father and all who were present that she would not unwillingly endure any torture and pain whatsoever, so that she might follow in the footsteps of Christ her Bridegroom and in some measure imitate him, who had not refused to undergo the most bitter death for her sake.

[5] Her father, bearing with the greatest difficulty the spirit his daughter showed, her threats scorned, nevertheless thinking that a delay and time for deliberation should be granted her, having threatened a far more grievous punishment unless she should forsake the Christian religion, ordered her to be thrust back into prison. Whence on the following day, brought again before her father, when he had left nothing untried of those things by which he thought he could bend her spirit, and all was in vain, at last seized with fury, he ordered his daughter to be suspended in the middle between two trees and tormented by fire set beneath her. torments divinely dispelled, But when the flame did not harm her at all, a wheel was devised which would lacerate her body with the points of protruding spikes: but she escaped this kind of torment also, when an Angel was sent from heaven who broke the wheel.

[6] At last, therefore, after she had in vain exhorted both her father and the surrounding crowd to the Christian religion, she was beheaded. she is beheaded, Her body was found some years later on that mountain which was formerly called the Mount of Marcumtonus, but afterward was named from the Virgin herself the Mount of St. Augusta. In which place there stands a church built and consecrated to the Virgin's honor: of which there is no record of its first construction, but a very ancient record of its restoration. she is illustrious for miracles. This much is well established, that in every age very many have been freed by God through the intercession of the Blessed Augusta, and continue to be freed: and this the votive tablets brought there both by the inhabitants and by Venetian sailors testify. Furthermore, the feast of the Blessed Augusta is celebrated on the twenty-seventh of March, the Finding on the twenty-second of August, and the consecration of the church on the Octave of Easter.