ON ST. COMINIUS OR COMITIUS,
MARTYR AT CATANIA IN SICILY.
ABOUT A.D. 270.
CommentaryCominius Martyr, at Catania in Sicily (S.)
D. P.
Octavius Cajetanus, in his volumes on the Saints of Sicily, often deplores the disastrous calamities of Sicily, brought by the Saracens and other barbarians, through which very many monuments and various memorials of the Saints perished, The name in the Martyrologies and great darkness was spread over sacred things; trusting that from elsewhere some light would rise, which we from time to time try to kindle. To this will conduce, that at Florence from a MS. Martyrology of the Medici library, and another of Carolus Strozzi the Senator, and from a third there published by Franciscus de Bonaccursiis the Presbyter in the year 1486, we have drawn out the memory of St. Cominius, of whom at these Kalends of May these things are read: At the city of the Catanians of the province of Sicily, the passion of St. Cominius the Martyr under the Emperor Claudius.
[2] We described from a MS. of the Cathedral church of St. Martin in the city of Lucca the Passion of St. Comitius the Martyr, with this beginning: The Acts in the Lucca MS. Legendary. In those days, in the city of the Catanians, the Province (more correctly others read, of the Province of Sicily) in the place which is called inter Primum, under the Emperor Claudius arose a persecution of the Christians. The same Acts end with these words, But his birthday is celebrated on the day before the Kalends of May. This so slight difference of one day and of one little letter does not persuade that they are diverse, this one, of whom these Acts are had; and he, of whom the aforesaid Martyrologies make mention, whose authors probably had before their eyes other MSS., in which was read, not the day before, but on the very day of the Kalends of May. And so preferring the authority of the three Florentine books to the one Lucca MS. (in which, perhaps on account of the Kalends impeded by the cult of the Apostles, that Legend was drawn back to the preceding day) and leaving in the middle, whether Cominius or Comitius ought to be read, we would give the Acts themselves in this place, had we not judged them altogether unworthy of our work on April XXX: inasmuch as they are written thus, as if the Emperor Claudius himself, present in Sicily, had wished to turn from the faith of Christ a herdsman of a man, such as the Saint is said to have been, but fabulous. by the offer of marriage with his daughter Claudia, and to pervert him constant in it by manifold torment.
[3] Meanwhile we think these Acts worthy of consideration, not because they contain the true history of the passion; but because, like many other things of this kind, they make in some manner certain the truth of a Martyrdom, undergone for Christ by a Martyr of this name, and commonly believed through tradition, but after several centuries unhappily described. But this would not have been done, unless the Relics of the body had once in Sicily had public honor, or at least afterward, carried to some city of the Tuscan shore, had there obtained their veneration: for on such an occasion we often find Legends written in the Middle Age, from which nevertheless the ancient cult can be confirmed, by men pious rather than learned; thinking it in no wise absurd to extend tiny seeds of history received through tradition into the form of an ampler narration, such as each conceived in his own mind from things read elsewhere.
[4] That Gallienus the Emperor being slain by the soldiers there was substituted Flavius Claudius, to the year 269 Baronius narrates; and shows him to have been most hostile to the Christians: therefore it could most easily have come to pass, that also in Sicily, under his name, some one of the Prefects revived the persecution begun by the Emperor Valerian, the former Colleague of Gallienus,
and not wholly extinguished with his death. But in the Acts of SS. Alphius, Philadelphus and Cyrinus, Martyrs of Lentini under Valerian, to be examined on May X, we have a certain St. Donatus, a Christian from the Jew Samuel, and also from the age of Donatus the Presbyter who baptized and buried him. who afterward ordained Presbyter, gave no contemptible diligence to the Christian cause. Since therefore the Catanians are nearest to the people of Lentini, Cominius or Comitius could have come to that Donatus for the sake of catechesis and baptism, and have been buried by the same, after he had been beheaded, in the place which is called inter Primum, near the stone Bridge.
[5] Moreover leaving the situation of that place to be investigated by the Catanians, this only I say, and the Presidial See being established at Catania. that the President and Judge of the Emperors was wont to reside at Catania, who thence would make excursions to the neighboring places and punish the Christians; and that this is known from the slaying of the holy LXXV Martyrs of Menda by Apophrasius the Judge, who dwelt at Catania, of those condemned to death, and crowned with their necks cut by the sword in the times of Diocletian, who fourteen years after the death of the Emperor Claudius having elapsed began to reign. The Acts of these Martyrs the said Cajetanus has in volume 1 page 103, but the day sacred to their martyrdom is September XIII.