ON SAINT LIBERATOR,
BISHOP MARTYR, BURIED AT BENEVENTO.
CommentaryLiberator, Martyr buried at Benevento (S.)
G. H.
Marius de Vipera, Archdeacon of Benevento, published at Naples in the year 1635 a Catalogue of the Saints, whom the Church of Benevento celebrates with a double and semidouble rite: The worship at Benevento, among whom is S. Liberator, who is venerated with a double rite on this XV of May, and from the archive of the monastery of S. Sophia in an ancient MS. codex, where there are registered the names of the Saints, whose Bodies and Relics are preserved there, and from an inscription on marble in the same Church existing in the wall near the chapel of the Treasury, this concerning S. Liberator he published in compendium.
[2] Liberator, Bishop of Ariano and Martyr, admirable by the multitude of miracles in many places, and especially at Benevento: the body, where his Body is laid up with worthy honor in the august temple of S. Sophia. His Acts perished by the injury of the times. He has at Benevento a basilica dedicated to him outside the city of great devotion, a basilica, from which that whole region is named: where his festivity is celebrated with a great concourse of inhabitants. The feast day is kept out of devotion, the citizens ceasing from servile works. Thus said Marius de Vipera.
[3] Because his Acts are said to have perished by the injury of the times, some doubts occur concerning the Episcopate. There is extant at Rome in the Vatican library a very ancient Martyrology in the old Lombardic character, marked number 5949, which formerly pertained to the Beneventan Church of S. Sophia: in which is celebrated on this XV of May the memory of S. Liberator the Martyr, martyrdom. no mention being made of the Episcopate. In the same year 1635, in which Marius de Vipera published the cited Catalogue of the Saints, Fabius Barberius of Ariano also published a Catalogue of the Bishops of Ariano, with the deeds of each, of whom he names first Meinardus, who sat about the year 1070: yet he prefixes these words: S. Liberator the Martyr, was Bishop of Ariano by report from the people of Benevento. But Ferdinand Ughello in volume 8 of Sacred Italy printed in the year 1662, published from Fabius Barberius and other writings the Bishops of Ariano; and no mention being made of S. Liberator, set the said Meinardus first.
[4] David Romaeus also had printed in the year 1577 a treatise, on the Five Holy Guardians and Presidents of the city of Sorrento, to which he subjoined an Index of the Saints, who were born and buried in the Neapolitan kingdom, in which on page 409 he has these few things: The said Pontiff among the Peligni: Among the Peligni Liberator the Pontiff, no mention being made of martyrdom. The Peligni are a people in Abruzzo, between the Sagrus and Aternus rivers, whose chief city is Sulmo, the native land of Ovid; but from this is far distant among the Hirpini Arianum, by the ancients called Tuticum, Equus Tuticus, and Equus Magnus. Ferrarius in the Catalogue of the Saints of Italy, published in the year 1613, in the first place on this XV of May treats of S. Liberator the Bishop and Martyr among the Peligni, and asserts that he has taken care to have the Acts investigated from various places in which he is venerated, but that nothing certain has hitherto come to hand. Meanwhile he formed this eulogy: Of S. Liberator, Bishop and Martyr among the Peligni, frequent and famous is the memory in many places, especially at Sulmo, at Benevento, where his Relics are had, and Patron of Manliana. and at Manliana among the Sabines, where he is the Tutelary and has a temple, as we have received. The same Ferrarius in the General Catalogue of the Saints printed in the year 1625 on the Ides of May, Among the Peligni, he says, of S. Liberator the Bishop and Martyr. And he annotates that he so writes from the Tables of the Beneventan Church, where his Relics are had, and of the Church of Manliana among the Sabines, where he as Patron of the place is said to be venerated… The castle of S. Liberator, There is extant a castle with a monastery of S. Liberator in the Theatine diocese near the town of Bucchianico. Thus there: nor have we hitherto been able to obtain more concerning S. Liberator. There wrote to us from Viterbo in the year 1668 the Most Eminent Cardinal Francis Maria Brancatius, that he was busying himself to collect some notices concerning S. Liberator, which when he had reduced them into order, he wished to send to us. But it did not befall us to obtain them. From all things now related it seems it can be most certainly said, that S. Liberator was a Martyr, and that his sacred Relics are at Benevento, and it is very probable that he was a Bishop. The rest we submit to the judgment of the reader.