ON S. TORPES MARTYR,
AT PISA IN ETRURIA.
UNDER NERO.
PrefaceTorpes Martyr, at Pisa in Etruria (S.)
BY THE AUTHOR D. P.
[1] As certain and ancient as is the cult of this Holy Martyr, so almost uncertain are all the rest of the things, which about the history of his Martyrdom have already long since been written. The certainty of the cult is given by the churches erected to him, in Etruria and Liguria among the Italians, in Provence among the Gauls. The antiquity of the same cult is proved by the most ancient time's Codices, containing Acts; one such we ourselves have, mutilated indeed at the beginning, yet so that after the first column of the first remaining page, it exhibits this Rubric: Here ends the Passion of S. Torpes. Here begins the Passion of S. Vitalis and SS. Gervasius and Protasius in the month of April day XXIX, which Passion from the marginal numbering is understood to have been the XXIII, in the order of those formerly preceding and now lost Passions of the same codex. Then in place CXI begins the Life or deeds of S. Silvester Pope, Cult and most ancient Acts, of the month of December day XXXI; and consequently, no order of times being preserved, as in supplement afterwards brought are described other XI Passions, of which the last is the Passion of the Holy Twins, edited by us on January XVII, having as author Warnacharius, affirming in the Prologue to Cerannius, that this Cerannius, to be matched with Eusebius of Caesarea by zeal of emulation … devoutly intended to gather together the deeds of the Holy Martyrs, in the city of Paris (whose Bishop he is believed to have been, when in it was celebrated the V Council about the year DCXV) and that he himself Warnacharius to the same the deeds of the Holy Twins, just as by zeal of devotion he had commanded, so by the obedience of service directed. The Sammarthani in the Bishops of Paris perversely accepted these things, as if not Cerannius himself, but by the order of Cerannius Warnacharius, as Cerannius had them about the year 615, gathering everywhere the Acts of the Martyrs wrote them in letters: which, they say, are had in ancient parchments. Such meanwhile, as I have said, are ours, not indeed Cerannius's own originals, written at Paris; but from these after two or three centuries, by another exemplar mediating, transcribed in Belgium; as we can prove from other similar MS. codices among us. That however these are such, as they were first compiled by Cerannius, proves the order of the book, having the Acts of the Triplets in the last place; in the very body of the book, from so many Lives of Holy Confessors and Holy Virgins, by which afterwards they successively grew, no longer mere Passionals, but with a wider notion Legendaries, none here appears, except the Life of S. Gregory of Tours, and the Acts of S. Silvester: the rest are of Martyrs, and indeed of ancient ones.
[2] A second argument proving the ancient cult is afforded by Ado, Rabanus, and Usuardus, at almost the same time, that is in century IX each writing his own Martyrology; and those, which I have said, the Acts contracting into a compendium: more briefly indeed in his manner Usuardus, but more prolixly Rabanus and Ado. Indeed Notker following Ado shows that he had the same things, contracted into an epitome by ancient Martyrologists, while to Ado's words he subjoins certain things at the end, taken from no other source than from the Acts. And Usuardus indeed and Ado with Notker note this XVII day of May, because, as he says
Ado, the festivity of the Martyr and the assembly of the citizens is held on the XVI Kalends of June: and this with most others finally Baronius the reviser of the Roman Martyrology followed. Because however according to the Acts his Birthday is celebrated on the III Kal. of May, not only the most ancient Passionals, but also certain enlarged exemplars of Usuardus together with the MS. Florarium of Saints, on XXIX of April commemorate Torpes. But Rabanus on XXIX March treats of him, for May, April, March, Notker following his example: so much so that they in their MSS. seem in place of III Kalends of May to have read IV Kal. of April. There is also cited by Baronius Beda for XVI Kal. of June, but spurious, and (as we have said elsewhere) gathered from Ado. For genuine Beda is silent on both days, and Florus is silent. Although however in the ancient supplement of Beda, found at Dijon, is read, XVI Kal. of June, in Tuscia of Torpes the Martyr under Nero the Prince; that nevertheless does not prove a greater age, because that MS. does not seem to be older than Ado. Therefore unknown both to Beda and to Florus were these Acts, although composed before their age: but composed so unhappily, that although we have found them scattered in Passionals (very many of which through Germany, Gaul, Italy we have seen) yet we would not have inserted them into this our work, unless the disputes between the Lusitanians and the Forojulians, each drawing the rest of the writers of their nation to their part, and the fables inserted into Pseudo-Dexter's chronicle, had their foundation in the same Acts, on which account they ought to be produced by us.
[3] We give them therefore, comparing the apograph of the most ancient Passional of San-Maximinus near Trier with the printed ones in Boninus Mombritius, These, although apocryphal, are given from MSS. and the Cologne and Louvain Legends a little later, that is in the year MCCCCLXXXIII and V printed and reprinted: likewise with five MSS., two namely of our parchment Codices and three apographs sent from elsewhere; one, from the city of Lyon by John Columbus Presbyter of our Society, written clearly; another, at Soissons by Louis Nicquetus, Librarian of the monastery of the Celestines; the third finally, which from the Ducal Library of Turin, faithfully and word-for-word he transcribed, testified at the foot Peter Jofredus, Librarian of the Royal Highness of the Duke of Savoy, Historiographer and Tutor, on the day XVII of December MDCLXXVII, for the work of the RR. PP. of the Society of Jesus, who at Antwerp by publishing the Acts of the Saints render most useful service to the entire Christian Republic. It is however that, from which Jofredus transcribed, a volume much more recent than the originals of the others, and adorned with a somewhat more cultivated style, as in the Annotations we shall see.
[4] Furthermore that it may more certainly stand that I have said, that these very Acts, not other more sincere ones, Rabanus, Ado, Notker, Usuardus used; it will be worthwhile to their examination and deserved censure to premise the compendia, formed by them themselves. It is moreover that in Rabanus such: IV Kal. as Rabanus had, of April in the Pisan city, the birthday of S. Torpes Martyr, whom Nero the Emperor ordered to adore the great Diana, mother of the Gods: which he refusing, filled with the Holy Spirit, said: It is better to adore one God, who made heaven and earth, and all things which are in them, than to worship many Gods, that is, demons. Going out S. Torpes from the Palace, much considering within himself, said: What shall I do not serving idols? and not receiving the baptism of salvation? Then he ascended into the mountain, and began to cry out saying, Father Anthony, where are you? Antonius the Presbyter answered, and said: And who are you, son? S. Torpes said: I am your servant Torpes. Then Antonius baptized him in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Then immediately the Angel of the Lord appeared to S. Torpes, and said to him: Be of strong mind, because you with us shall be in paradise. Afterwards Nero went to Rome, and to Satellicus his kinsman commanded that S. Torpes be received into prison, and beaten with palms, and bound to the Aventine column with body naked: and while S. Torpes had completed prayer that column fell, and crushed fifty of the impious, and Satellicus himself died under it. Then the son of Satellicus, by name Silvinus, while these things were thus going on, ordered that a lion be sent forth to him to devour him; which suddenly let loose, giving a roar over him, in the same hour died. And again was let loose a leopard; and bending its head, it licked his feet. Then Silvinus commanded the ministers, that to the sea he be brought, and there be beheaded. The Holy Torpes truly, having hope toward the Lord, thus prayed: Lord, receive my spirit, and so was beheaded.
[5] Ado has thus: XVI Kalends of June. In Tuscia the Birthday of S. Torpes Martyr, Ado, under Nero the Prince. This man was great in the office of Nero Caesar, and by B. Antoninus the Presbyter was baptized, and in the faith of Christ instructed. Him Nero, when he had known to be that he might compel him to sacrifice. But when by the spirit of God comforted, and grounded in the faith the blessed man, immovable remained; Satellicus had him beaten with palms, and bound to the column for so long with blows afflicted, until the blood drop by drop should flow from his body. But suddenly, when the Martyr was being beaten, the column falling crushed the Judge and fifty men with him. Thence held by the ministers, he was placed on the wheel. Afterwards he is exposed to wild beasts by the son of Satellicus, by name Silvius, but not at all by them harmed. Whose constancy and virtue a certain Counsellor of Nero, Evellius by name, beholding, believed in Christ: and after a little baptized, was beheaded in the city of Rome, on V Kal. of May, and with the honor of martyrdom crowned. But also B. Torpes, by the order of Silvius brought outside the Pisan city, by beheading completed his martyrdom on III Kal. of May. Whose body the ministers of crimes, placed in an almost broken and rotten ship, and likewise a dog and a cock, cast forth into the course of the river. But the Angel of the Lord appearing to a certain venerable woman, whose name was Celerina, admonished that she should seek out the Martyr's body and bury it. Which she more swiftly fulfilling, found and with all reverence buried; and from her own resources, the persecution ceasing, above it built a church of wonderful work. The festivity of the Martyr and the assembly of the citizens is held on XVI Kal. of June.
[6] The old Breviary of the Marseilles monastery, without note of year printed in ancient character for the use of the same monastery, whence are taken the Lessons of the old Breviary, of which an appendix was the Priesthood of S. Torpes, situated by the Sambracite Bay now Grimbaldic, after it had prescribed the Saint's feast to be celebrated with the Office of twelve Lessons, that is most solemnly, in the Calendar, distributes almost all and the very same words of Ado into eight Lessons, the remaining four Lessons being designated for the exposition of the Gospel of the common: at the end however the body is said to be found by Celerina, not simply, but found in the Port of the Bay. The same all things, but without mention of the said Port are read on the day already said in the Martyrology in Notker, after this beginning, Notker, In Tuscia in the Pisan city the Nativity of S. Torpes Martyr, under Nero the Prince… toward the end however, from the same Acts (as I have said), he furthermore adds: Of whom also it is told, that a huge machine, which the adversary of God Nero in imitation of heaven by contriving fashioned, by his merits and prayers was cast down into the river Auxer, so that it nowhere appeared. Usuardus finally: Usuardus, In Tuscia of S. Torpes Martyr. This man was great first in the office of Nero Caesar: but afterwards for the faith of Christ, by the same's order, is beaten with palms, afflicted with blows for a very long time, and to wild beasts to be devoured is handed over, but not at all is harmed; at length by beheading he completed his martyrdom on III Kal. of May: but nevertheless his festivity is more frequently here recalled; namely on XVI Kal. of June. So all the exemplars: to which recent enlarged ones, as I have already noted, also on III Kal. of May had premised this same memory, In Tuscia of S. Torpes Martyr, who by Silvius's order outside the Pisan city brought, by beheading of the head completed his martyrdom: his nevertheless solemnity on XVI Kal. of June, is more festively celebrated.
[7] There was however of the Pisan city not only a most ancient origin, Long before fortune the Trojan-born household gods In these moreover Acts, Pisa, To the Laurentine Kings inserted, as Rutilius Numentanus sings; but also long afterward such great power, that before the epoch of the Christian Era about CLXXX years, when the Pisans were promising land, where a Latin Colony might be deduced, thanks were rendered by the Senate, as Livy teaches in book 41. And when Triumvirs had been created for that thing that had been done; and that Colony, by I know not what benefit was held bound to the Julian gens; from the same it took its name to itself, that the citizens indeed Coloni Julienses, most flourishing in Augustus's age, the city itself Colony Julia Pisana might be called; as is to be seen in two ancient inscriptions in Ughellus tom. 3 col. 390 and following. The same excelled in such great brilliance, that of Lucius Caesar Augustus's son she gloried as Patron, as also from the foresaid inscriptions is understood; in one of which are decreed the rites, by which to him designated Consul, but before entering upon the magistracy died, should be yearly publicly performed funeral honors; in the other similar and other greater monuments of public mourning and honor are constituted to the same Lucius's brother, and Augustus's son likewise, Cajus, after the Consulate gloriously borne by an immature death also extinguished; and he himself is called the only protector of that Colony. are feigned restored by Nero, Each cenotaph with a notable volume of learned observations most recently illustrated Henry Noris the Augustinian, Theologian of the Most Serene Grand Duke of Etruria Cosmus III, and in the Pisan Lyceum Professor of Ecclesiastical History, in which the origin of the Obedient Colony Julia Pisana, the ancient Magistrates and Colleges of Priests, the lives, deeds, and yearly funeral honors of each Caesar are set forth, and the golden Latinity of each cenotaph is demonstrated; with a Parergon, on the Years of the reign of Herod, and on the Presidents of Syria, and on the Roman provinces in Asia.
[8] And these things have been said for this, that it may appear how little is probable, that which at the beginning of the Acts of S. Torpes is said, that the city, both long before and in the age of Augustus himself so flourishing, after sixty years not even complete, had need that Nero, the last Emperor of the Caesarean family, should restore it; especially when Suetonius is silent on this matter in chapter 19, where to bring together into one, he says, those things which he partly with no reproach, partly even with no mediocre praise performed; among which especially in the first place ought to have been numbered the restoration of the Pisan city and the palace founded in it. Nor truly would Nero have omitted to order it from himself to be called Neropolis or Neroniada: whom the same Suetonius in chapter 55 says of many things and places, the old appellation removed, and a temple of Diana founded there, to have introduced a new one from his own name; because the highest in him was the desire of eternity and perpetual fame. It is added that when these things were happening, and on their occasion Torpes confessed the faith at Pisa, Nero is said to have been present; whom Tacitus, the historian of his whole life
most accurate, by his silence persuades not even to have set foot in Etruria, that there he might do anything good or bad. So far also is it from being credible, that Nero was solicitous about founding at Pisa a temple, where he might daily adore the Gods, as these Acts say, that on the contrary Suetonius c. 56 expressly says, that he was a despiser of religions everywhere, and a bronze sky. except that of the one Syrian Goddess; whom herself soon he so spurned, that he polluted her with urine. Finally a bronze sky, whence he might pretend to give rain to the earth, and to display the courses of the sun and the moon, neither of the writers aforementioned would have been silent about, having minutely pursued his various madness in building, if he had designed any such thing. With such a beginning the rest of the Acts being correspondent, and containing more and much more manifest fictions, no greatness whatever of antiquity will be able to bring it about, that I think anything in them is to be safely believed, except the time and place of the martyrdom and perhaps of the translation, the memory of which would have been preserved by perpetual tradition of the Pisans, rather than by the attestation of Artemius, from whose mouth as of an eyewitness, having received the deeds of S. Torpes, the recorder Audax is feigned to have written. These things truly, when from our Annotations, on the very context, on that account which I have said above, soon to be exhibited, shall be more clearly evident; I will proceed to the controversy stirred up between Spaniards and Gauls, and to the whole cult of the Saint himself more distinctly to be explained.
APOCRYPHAL ACTS
from various ancient codices, both manuscript and printed.
Torpes Martyr, at Pisa in Etruria (S.)
BHL Number: 8307
FROM MSS.
CHAPTER I.
Confession of faith before Nero.
[1] In that time, under Nero the Emperor who through every a province had reigned, and b in honor of his name in the parts of Etruria the city of Pisa had restored, and the ornament of the Praetorium or days he was prolonging his rule d, reflected with his men in what places he should build a temple, where daily they might adore the gods e. And finding a place at the entrance of the Latin gate of the Pisan city, at the head of the bridge of the river Auser f; and there in all beauty of marble cut or scored g tablets he ordered the temple to be adorned; Nero is said to have founded Pisa and a temple of Diana: and he ordered the artisans, that of pure gold or pearls they should make a statue of Diana, which on each day they should adore. Then was made a statue of Diana of wonderful magnitude, in face and eyes as if living h, and so it Nero the Emperor, with great veneration and multitude of Pagans, on the front of the temple ordered to be fixed: and on the same day with great joy feasting they dedicated the temple, and on each day their Priests did not cease serving through their offices. And while the great beginnings of the temples i were, the Emperor reflecting with his men said: I believe that I also can make a sky, in the likeness of the sky which rises above us: and no one was found who might hinder k his discourse. Then he made a bronze sky on the pavement of marble columns l in number ninety: which sky he ordered to be perforated with small holes m: and the height of the sky was a hundred feet. And water poured by ministers, as if rain falling on the earth, Narzius n began, the keeper of this place, to cry out, to have fashioned a bronze sky saying: Let all know, that the name of Diana is true and inestimable, to whose honor Nero the Emperor displays these powers. And thus in the morning he ordered lamps to be made in the fashion of the sun, and to be drawn through the sky, that they might give light to the people who were under the sky, and coming to the setting were extinguished. And again in the evening, at the o eleventh hour, they made a similar mirror, with great gems gleaming, exceedingly clear, in the fashion of the moon. And before the appointed hour it fell: and not even its fragments were found. Thus by night he ordered [p] a chariot to be drawn through the sky, as if thundering. Then the Lord sent a strong wind upon them: and made the chariot to be sunk in the river, and the charioteer was beheaded, and nowhere appeared.
[2] On another day the Emperor sitting before the tribunal, not knowing what had been done, whose ruin Torpes deriding, said to the people: Let all know, that great is Diana mother of the Gods, through whom I also display these powers. Then among them coming forth a great man, by name Torpes, who also himself from the [q] office had withdrawn himself, filled with the Holy Spirit said: What do you say, Emperor? Better is he who adores the one living God, who made heaven and earth, the sea and all things which are in them. For he who many gods worships, offends each one. But hear me, Emperor, because I am of their kind, who by your faithful ones at Rome have suffered [r]; whom I saw to be crowned by the hands of Angels, and who received the life of promise eternal. Nero said: And you alone are found, who would overthrow this city? S. Torpes said: confessing the faith of the one God: The city is not overthrown: for whoever Christ shall confess, shall be saved. Nero said: For what order of your conscience do you protest this? S. Torpes said: A good conscience from evil to life recalls, and the Holy Spirit breathes where he wills. Nero said: Why do you deny our gods? S. Torpes said: I deny them, because I see all things become imaginary. Nero said: Be not [s] disturbed because you have seen. S. Torpes said: In [t] these you shall be tested by your works: Your sun no longer shall shine, the moon nowhere appeared, the sound of thunder and those who moved it perished in the river. Nero the Emperor said: Why do you not adore according to custom our gods? S. Torpes said: I adore the Lord the living God, who is in the high places, who in heaven made the great luminaries alone. Nero said: Hear, Torpes, consider with yourself by serving well, lest with various punishments and with disgrace you be punished.
[3] Going out S. Torpes from the palace, much within himself considering, said: What shall I do? Serving idols I receive not the Baptism of salvation. And knowing that the holy Presbyter, by name [u] Antonius, was hidden in [x] a mountain, going out the gate which is called Lucana, and through the side of the amphitheater, and by Antonius the Presbyter baptized, and through the night walked to him: and ascending into the mountain began to cry out saying: Holy Father, Antonius the Presbyter, where are you? answer me. Then the holy Presbyter Antonius said from the place of his prayer: And who are you, son? S. Torpes said: I am Torpes, your servant. To whom the Presbyter said: On the mountain I fear you, because you are of the office. S. Torpes said: Hear me Father, and fear not, but let me kiss your hands, and pray for me: because I [y] yesterday said to the Emperor: I desire to adore Christ: and I have been made doubtful, because I am not baptized: and so I seek you, that the baptism of salvation I may receive. The Presbyter said: I know not if true are the things, which you urge. Saint Torpes said: And if I lie, I am not worthy to receive the baptism of salvation. S. Antonius the Presbyter said: In the name of the Lord my Jesus Christ, I baptize you. And they descended to the foot of the mountain, where is living water at the side of the History [z] of lions: and he blessed the water with his hands, and poured upon him the baptism of salvation: and the seal of Christ having been made, said to him: Go, son, because there grows in you the power of speaking and of conquering your adversaries. Then kissing him, weeping he said to him: The Angel of the Lord accompany you, son. Saint Torpes said: Pray for me, Lord, holy Father.
[4] And while in the same night he was returning to the city, the Angel said to him: Torpes, support me. And while behind himself he looked, he saw the Angel clothed in white and great splendor with him: and he fell prostrate on his face as if dead. Then the Angel of the Lord said to him: Be not afraid, Torpes, and by the Angel comforted, because the Lord this night by his hand has crowned you: nor fear the threats of your enemies, because I am with you, and there has not been found in this city a man who for Christ would have endured a blow, or for justice on heaven would have gazed: but you be strong in the truth. I know because you have forsaken the world, and with us shall be in paradise with the multitude of Saints rejoicing: for your body to another province I will transfer. Then the Angel was taken up from him, and rising S. Torpes said: I give thee thanks, O Lord my God, who hast sent thy Angel, who has consoled me, and bestowed on me strength as the Prophet says: At the right hand is the Lord to me lest I be moved, on this account my heart was glad, and my tongue exulted; moreover also my flesh rests in hope. O Lord my God, be my helper, that I may have confidence in thee, because me alone thou hast chosen in this city to trust in thee: give me strength to bear torments, that those who do not believe may believe in thy name, O Most High.
[5] Thus entering in the morning the city, through the stone gate, he came into the forum of the Pisan city: where Nero the Emperor was sitting and more than five hundred men and his counsellors with him. And after they saw him, they gnashed their teeth at him, saying: This is he who yesterday presumed to deny the great Diana or other gods. S. Torpes said: You denied, who do not adore the living God: is handed over to Satellicus to be perverted or punished. for Diana mother of the gods who worship, together with her shall perish. Then it was announced to the Emperor what he had said. The Emperor chose one from his side, by name Satellicus, who also himself was found a kinsman of Nero: and Nero was hastening to walk to Rome, because there not few Saints were suffering, who were being crowned for Christ. Nero said to Satellicus: Sit before the tribunal, and hear him diligently: and if he does not amend himself from that vain talk, let him be killed by various punishments: and a sentence having been said against him, if he persevere in the hardness of his heart, by the sword let him be ended. Satellicus said: All things whatever you have committed I will arrange. Then Nero went to Rome, but Satellicus ordered S. Torpes to be sent into prison. saying: I will test if your God will free you from my hands. He ordered moreover, that the wild beasts for three days should not receive food, that they might devour the holy Martyr.
ANNOTATIONS AND CENSURES.
on the occasion of the burning of the city, and of the women drawn over to the care of chastity: when otherwise, with Eusebius bearing witness in book 2 chapter 22, he had borne himself more clemently around the beginnings of the Empire, and the defense for our faith had benignly received. In the year then of the Empire 11, of Christ 65, after Peter and Paul the Apostles had been killed, he departed from Rome to Greece; nor did he return to Italy except in the year of the Empire 14 of Christ 68, when he killed himself, before he could approach Rome.
Since today only the Arno flows around Pisa, Ughellus wonders, by what reason Rutilius sings of them thus.
I behold the ancient city of Alphean origin,
Which the Arno and Auser surround with twin waters.
The converging rivers form a cone of a pyramid,
It is entered with a moderate front opened with soil:
But it retains its proper name in the common gulf,
And only the Arno truly approaches the sea.
See in Cluverius of ancient Italy chapter 2 Pliny and Strabo agreeing in this: nor does anything else from Ughellus's observation and the chorographic maps of this time follow, than that with the Auser or Ausarus, now Serchio, having been turned elsewhere and entering the sea through its proper mouth, distant from the mouth of the Arno about a thousand paces, the face of the soil there has been changed, as often elsewhere and namely in our rivers Scheldt, Meuse and Rhine. That however the Latin Gate is placed at the head of the Bridge of the river Auser, could indicate, that the lands offered by the Pisans to the Latin colonists to settle there, were extended toward the sea and the borders of the Lucchese.
Dining-rooms paneled with ceilings, with ivory tablets revolving, that flowers from pipes and unguents from above might be sprinkled: but the chief of the dining-rooms was round, which perpetually by days and nights with the alternation of the world might be turned around. Of these moreover and similar machines obscure knowledge, could have given to the author the occasion of fictions of this kind.
o. See here how once different was the reckoning of the hours; namely those which now from the setting of the sun in Italy, from midnight in Gaul and Spain take their beginning; then were begun from dawn; as from many other lives of Saints I remember to infer.
So also of Cosroes King of the Persians it is narrated, that wishing to be worshipped by all as God, he contrived how in a subterranean cave, horses drawing chariots in a circle, as if they were moving a chariot and simulating thunder. See Beyerlinck in Theatre at the word Adoration; by whom the author who relates these things is not alleged, but who other things in the same place said about the same Chosroes, looking to the year 614. Such a thing the writer of these Acts could have heard: perhaps also he had before his eyes the most well-known verses of Virgil, Aeneid 6.
I saw also Salmoneus paying cruel penalties,
While he imitates the flames of Jove and the sounds of Olympus.
Borne here by four horses, and brandishing a torch,
Through the peoples of the Greeks and through the city of middle Elis
He was going exulting, and was demanding for himself the honor of the Gods,
Mad! who clouds and the inimitable lightning
With bronze and the running of horn-footed horses had simulated.
q. Hence Baronius in the Roman Martyrology, on these words of Usuardus, who was great in the office of Nero first, believed could be added, and one of those of whom Paul the Apostle from the city to the Colossians writes: All the Saints salute you, especially those who are of the house of Caesar. But this S. Torpes then was not yet baptized, perhaps not even a Christian. For the Epistle to the Colossians was written by S. Paul within the time of the captivity, ended in the year 56 (as we shall show on 29 June) and so in the year 2 of Nero, and at least eight years before the persecution begun. Tamayo, with the liberty to himself customary, adding to the old Acts what from his authors, that is Pseudo-dexter and his followers he received, says he is C. Sylvius Torpes, son of C. Sylvius, paternal cousin of C. Sylvius Otho, who afterwards was Emperor, in the house of Nero a steward.
r. There is hardly doubt that he understands the Christians, on account of the fault of the burned city imputed to themselves cruelly extinguished; as Tacitus also narrates.
s. Mombr. and Ms. Maxim. you are not drawn together.
t. MSS. Suess. Turin. and ours with Leg. Colon. In this your works shall be tested.
u. S. Antonius, in Ado Antoninus: we have treated of him on 27 April.
x. This mountain seems to have been nearer to Lucca than to Pisa, or at least within the borders of the Lucchese: for of that Saint it is said, that the bodies of the Martyrs sought out to the Lucchese church, to which he himself also was finally translated, to be buried he was carrying. Pisa and Lucca are distant moreover, according to Ferrarius, by only X miles.
y. Ms. Maxim. only, on the last day.
z. Ms. ours, Where is a pool of living water and the history of lions. Ms. Turin. Where is living water for swimming. Tamayus, At the side of the streak of lions.
CHAPTER II.
Torments inflicted, martyrdom, burial.
[6] Three days having passed moreover, Satellicus ordered the Saint to be brought from prison, and to come before his sight. Sitting moreover before the tribunal he said to him: Torpes what do you think concerning your salvation? Now believe me, sacrifice to the gods as before, and your honor will go before you: but if not, with various punishments you shall be macerated. S. Torpes said: What I have once seen, I cannot deny. Satellicus said: What is it that you have seen? S. Torpes said: He who believes, shall see the Angel of Christ. Satellicus said: And have you seen the Angel of Christ? S. Torpes said: He who has believed and shall be baptized in his name, he shall appear to him. Satellicus said: Withdraw from vain talk. S. Torpes said: At the column dreadfully fallen, All who do not believe in Christ, they themselves speak vain things. Then Satellicus ordered him to be beaten with palms, and to the Aventine a column with body naked to be bound. S. Torpes said: But thou, O Lord, do not put far thy help from me. And while they were beating him, blood flowed from his side like water from a fountain. The holy moreover Torpes, lifting up with confidence his eyes to heaven, after the Judge and 50 others crushed under the ruin, said: I am mindful, O Lord, of what thou didst say through thy Angel: O Lord God, vindicate my blood. And when he had completed the prayer, the lofty column, where he was held, fell, and crushed fifty impious ones [b]: and Satellicus himself died under it. The ministers however held him, and put him on the wheel: and the son of Satellicus by name c Silvinus, gnashed his teeth over him as to how he might destroy him. is bound to the wheel:
[7] On another day moreover, when sedition had been made and great sadness in the people; they cast him from the wheel, and led him that he might be sent to the wild beasts. conquers the lion And they came into the amphitheater, and set him in the midst of them: and suddenly was let loose a lion, giving a roar upon him. The holy Torpes moreover the seal of Christ made against him: and in the same hour the lion died, and all wondered. Again was let loose his feet. Then Evellius, Counsellor of the Emperor seeing the wonders of God, believed in Christ, fleeing to Rome; and the leopard: and there beheaded, on the day fifth d Kalends of May completed his martyrdom in peace. Then the holy Torpes, having gone out of the amphitheater, entered under the bronze sky with the ministers; and lifting up his eyes to heaven said: O Lord God of powers, hear my prayer, and to this place send thy Angel, who may overthrow the bronze sky and the columns which bear it, that all may know that thou hast established heaven, not men who make like things. Then the Angel of the Lord came with clouds and thunders and flashes, and overthrew the bronze sky, and twenty-four e columns of it: and not a small multitude of Pagans on the same day died: and from the same day many were doubtful as to sacrificing to idols.
[8] Then Silvinus son of Satellicus ordered him to be ended by the sword [f]. The ministers held him, that he might be led to the Roman gate. He however asks the ministers saying: to be killed by the sword I beg you, brothers, that through my friend before his house, with a multitude of people: who crying out to him, and weeping for himself, kissing him said: Friend, follow me and bury my body, when I shall have completed the contest: believe in the Lord, you shall obtain your reward. Then the ministers hearing did not permit him to come, that those things might be fulfilled which by the Angel were said: Because your body to another province I will transfer. And so they went out with him by the gate The ministers however held him lest he should plunge himself into the river. Silvinus moreover in the forum of the city with a multitude of Pagans, said: It is better at the sea he be beheaded, lest he revive: is led to the sea, because their God many powers has shown. They said; So let it be done, as you have commanded. Then he ordered that they should announce to those who were leading him. Running one of the Office, was crying out after them, saying: This is commanded to you, that at the Step to the sea there he be beheaded. And they came to the Step said: O Lord my God, receive my spirit. and is beheaded:
He said nothing else, but lifted up his eyes to heaven, and so was beheaded.
[9] The ministers however found a small boat outside, which now could perform no usefulness; and they put in it the body of the just one, and a dog k and a cock with him: and with the running water they let it go: and so long they stood there, until they did not see it. the body brought to the Port of the Bay, Then the ministers having returned to the city, indicated how they had lost the body. Then the Angel of the Lord brought it to the port l of the Bay to the shore. Still slightly by the sea was the boat shaken: the dog became as if watching by the body, the cock truly indicating. Then going out the Angel of the Lord came to a certain matron, a Senatrix and by true name Celerina m, and said to her: Arise, Celerina, at dawn, and go to the seashore in the port of Sinos: bury the body of the Just one, by name Torpes: all things whatever you shall ask of the Lord you shall have. The Senatrix truly, as if waking, heard the Angel speaking to her: leaping from sleep, sitting on her cot, terrified with tears she said: Thanks to thee I give, O Lord my God, because thou hast deigned to send thy Angel, to admonish thy handmaid: O Lord my God, by Celerina the Senatrix is found; fulfill my desire. On the next day moreover the Senatrix gathering a multitude fasting they walked with all veneration to the sea: and while they sought the body, they did not find it. Then the Senatrix, while she was walking through the shores, looking up to heaven said: O Lord God of powers, show us thy wonders, that thy handmaid may rejoice in thee: and show me, that I may see the things which [o] I have heard from thy Angel. And when she had completed the prayer, in the same hour the cock crowed, and itself indicating it: and so at the side of a rock they found the boat, the body, and the dog, and the cock with it. Seeing this the Priests and the peoples all wondered, weeping and saying: Truly just and a servant of God is this man, who so deserved that with such a fragment of an old ship to the shore he should arrive. Then they raised the body wrapping it in clean linens, and with great joy they led it rejoicing to the place where it was pleasing to God, and honorably deposited in the port which is named [p] Sinos. The Senatrix truly seasoned with aromatics the body, and with all diligent honor they deposited it in the place. In the same hour the dog and the cock nowhere appeared: for [q] even Celerina herself had reigned over the half of Spain. Then she built a church of wonderful magnitude, founded with railings, and refulgent with [r] a golden cymbium. And on the same day, it shines with miracles. on which the offices of the building in all beauty being completed they dedicated, many sick were made whole, praying at the body and those held by an unclean spirit were freed, and to this present day the wonders of God are declared. The Senatrix truly not a small sum of money and substance left to the church: and to this day there is gathering there.
[10] After fifteen [s] years moreover, they heard of Nero, that he had perished and had died: and all the provinces rejoiced, because they were being converted believing in the Lord Jesus Christ. Then going forth one of his Office, by name [t] Artemius, who himself also had now received the baptism of Christ, The Acts are feigned to be dictated by an eyewitness. set out to the place Sinos: and going out from a small boat, having entered the church he prayed at the body, and said: Of what name does the Saint rest in this place? The dwellers truly of that place said: Torpes the servant of God. Then he knew, that this was the one, who under Nero in the Pisan city had suffered: and he said: Let the Lord indulge me, how much I have done against him, through the orders of the wicked Pagan Princes: because I was present when the Just one suffered. And they said to him: What is the name by which you are called? He said: Artemius. And they said: And do you truly know how he suffered? Artemius said: I was present at all things, and clearly I know how he suffered. They said: Announce to us his deeds. And because Artemius himself was [u] more learned in letters, sitting he dictated the deeds how he had suffered [x]. His Birthday is celebrated on the third [y] Kalends of May. Glory to Christ, who has given such grace to those who fear him and his Saint has snatched from the depth of the sea: [and all who invoke him on the sea, with the Lord helping shall be freed [z]], to whom is honor and glory unto ages of ages. Amen.
ANNOTATIONS AND CENSURES.
b. A notable and shameless hyperbole: for how broad and high a column would one have to conceive, that standing far from the tribunal, it should crush 50 men with the judge?
48. The penalty of parricide by the custom of the ancestors is thus instituted, that the parricide beaten with bloody rods, then sewn into a sack…with a dog, a cock, and a viper, and also even a monkey, into the depth of the sea should be cast. The Viper and Monkey since they were not at hand, the dog and the cock, animals encountered everywhere, could have been used, but the boat gaping for the sack; that wherever perhaps the body might land, it might be believed to be of a man notably wicked, or of a serious crime of injured majesty, who either his own father or the father of his country had attempted to kill.
whom, when receiving the disciples of S. James the Apostle, bringing back his body, made Christian by the same, and then a widow, and in her dotal land of Évora living, took up the body of S. Torpes; and at length for Christ apprehended completed her martyrdom under Nero: under which name her life and elogy he weaves on this day, with Cardoso following his example; with Galesinius going before, but abstaining from the title of Martyr; through intolerable carelessness truly calling her the Queen of that province, whence Ferrarius in the general Catalog on this day referred the memory In Spain of S. Celerina the Queen; and he had as a follower Arthur of the Monastery in the sacred Gynaeceum. More moderate in this by far is our writer: for while he clings as if principally to the title of Senatrix; he wished as the highest to say, that her husband by Proconsular right had ruled a good part of Spain.
n. Here again with the same license of fabling with which he had begun, the author begins openly to use: for who would have wisely believed so many and such ones in the time of the Neronian persecution, to have been led out so openly?
p. Thus both our Ms. and Ms. S. Maxim. with Peter de Natalibus: but the rest with Mombritius and Leg. Lov. Sinus. Ms. Italian version Porto Sino.
q. Legend of Louvain. Afterwards truly Celerina herself reigned over the half of Spain: she also built the church. The discourse is indeed gaping here, and so badly cohering with the preceding and following words, that it is brought into suspicion by some, as if some unskilled hand, beyond the mind of the author, has added these things about Spain perhaps at the end of the 12th century, when Ildefonsus King of Aragon also possessed the County of Provence, and these things by the name of Spain could have been reckoned; or at least when Spain, having been removed from the Roman Empire, was divided into many Kingdoms. But in so unrefined a writer as is here, who would require the highest accuracy? And the antiquity of our Ms., exceeding 700 years, dispels every suspicion of interpolation. It seemed however the matter itself to demand, that either through an interjected parenthesis the author should indicate, whence so great partly authority of Celerina, partly opulence; both for the body itself, without fear and interruption of anyone, in full day so solemnly to be buried; as for so august a church, with Nero dead, above it, as soon is feigned, to be built. As easily is rejected what someone suggests, that Spain crept in for Hesperia (that is Italy, to which Provence might be reckoned): because both this escape is hindered by the antiquity and consensus of the codices altogether all of them; and the name of Hesperia, used only by the Poets, is gratuitously supposed to have come into the pen and mind of such a writer. Finally there is no need for the Gauls, wishing to advocate the cause of the Provençals, to twist a reading so ancient and so received; since in century VI or VII, in which these Acts were written, Gaul subjected to the Pyrenees, with the first Province of Narbonne up to the Rhone, under the empire of the Goths was called Spain Citerior; perhaps also both that of the second across the Rhone, containing Provence; as a common bond of the same nation, through Italy and Spain dominating, as long as the Gothic state stood with the Italians, as below more fully will be declared.
Cymbium or Cymbius signifies a vault or arching. So Corippus used it, the African Grammarian, in book 3 in praise of Justinus the Younger, in Vossius on the Vices of speech.
Above which from clear preeminent gold a cymbius,
In the modest convex regions of the world simulating,
The immortal head and throne of the seated one overshadows.
This therefore is the true and undoubted reading, although MSS. Maxim. and our most ancient Cymbro auro, Mombritius Cymbo, Turin. Cinibro have; Suess. and another of ours Cymbo and auro: for which the Cologne printed edition auro and argento. But
who would not wonder at the ignorance of the writer, not only attaching to the first century of the Church but even to the time of persecution such a fabrication: such as scarcely the Constantinian times saw?
s. Over which namely Nero reigned, so that the first year begun from 1 October ends with January, and the last begun from January is also numbered for a year, although on 10 June Nero was killed. Too ridiculous moreover would it be to number the said years from the time of the church being built, for thus the death of Nero would have had to in that very place have lain hidden beyond a decade.
t. Elsewhere Arthemius. Ms. Lyon. and Mombritius with Tamayus Archemius.
u. Thus I correct, although the exemplars have magnis, or magnus.
x. Thus our Ms. more recent; adds the most ancient likewise our, corroded toward the end of the pages … vans by name Audaois. Ms. Maxim. and lifting up the scepter by name Audacis. Lyon. and Mombritius and the Recorder revealing by name Audacis: Turin. The Recorder was his helper by name Audax. Tamayus, and the Recorder by name Audax revealed these things.
y. Ms. Turin. XVI Kalends of June. Namely this codex is less ancient, and here and there as if polished according to the discretion of the transcriber.
z. These [ ] are lacking in Ms. Maxim. Mombritius with Ms. Lyon. They were freed.
DISSERTATION
On the cult and relics of S. Torpes.
Torpes Martyr, at Pisa in Etruria (S.)
BY THE AUTHOR D. P.
§. 1. Whether the Sambracite bay bore the name of the Saint before century X?
[1] The Provincial Gallican shores the sea makes as winding as possible, filling the frequent bays of that coast: among which none is more named both then and now than that, For the affirmative side which the ancients called Sambracitanum, Samblacetanum, or Samblacitanum; our age calls it Grimaldicum, commonly Golfo de Grimault, within the Forojulian diocese, on the day also preceding indicated by us, treating of S. Maxima and the maritime town named after her. To this town moreover opposite across the said bay lies the town of S. Torpes, having a not inconvenient harbor, which some think in Antoninus's Itinerary is called Heraclea Cacabaria, I would not wish to dispute this, and to scrutinize the obscure and uncertain vestiges of ancient appellations, among the ruins of cities and towns, overthrown by Barbarians. More to my purpose does it make to inquire, at what time the nomenclature taken from S. Torpes began, the most certain proof of his ancient and special cult in that place.
[2] To explain this in the first place would be done, if certain were the instrument of donation, made in the year DCCCCLXXX: for it would prove, that already from almost the first centuries of Christian tranquility, under Constantine the Great begun, that name there obtained; or at least long before the times of the Saracens, who already from the year DCCXXII began to invade the Province, and finally with Fraxineto fortified into the firm seat of their robberies laid it waste for fully two and a half centuries. the donation of the year 980 is alleged, For it is of this tenor, in Honoratus Bouche in the History of the Province book 9 sect. 1 chapter 5 reported. In the name of the Lord. Amen. To deeds magnanimously to be done by remunerations men are kindled: but then especially to spectable men the glory of retribution adds spurs to the same, when those places fall to them, in which the strength of body and mind tested, have brought back excellent trophies from enemies. When therefore Giballinus de Grimaldis, a man of great heart and excellent magnificence, assisting in all our aggressions, invasions, and dangers against the Agarenes and Moors or Saracens, the Bay of the sea Gambracium, after the Saracens were driven out of Fraxineto. which commonly is called the Stream of S. Torpes, by his own valor from the same Agarenes and Moors or Saracens has snatched, and his such deed by special munificence of the Prince ought to be recognized; We William the Count, son of Bozo and Folcoara, residing in Arles, and to the same attending; with our spouse and William our son consenting, with Anno the Archbishop and other Nobles; to the foresaid Giballinus de Grimaldis, the foresaid bay of the sea Gambracium, which commonly is called the Stream of S. Torpes, with the whole extent and circuit, we give, donate, and to be possessed whole and to be defended against the Agarenes and Moors deliver, with only the Forojulian Church or its Bishop having the Episcopal rights reserved. If anyone however to the said Giballinus de Grimaldis, a powerful man, shall contradict in this donation, may he incur the penalty of our indignation, and moreover with Korah, Dathan, and Abiron in the deep be swallowed up. In the year therefore of the Lord's Incarnation DCCCCLXXX, Indiction X, in the month of September, with Conrad reigning King of the Germans or Provinces, I Count William have caused this notice of donation to be written and corroborated by my hand. Adalaxia the Countess confirmed. William the Count confirmed. Anno the Archbishop conf. Rainordus conf. Riquelinus conf. Hildoardus conf. Pontius de Alaus conf. Fulco conf. Wido conf. Ingebradus conf. and others confirmed. Bonifacius wrote and confirmed.
[3] There does not extant the original charter of this donation; but only an exemplar inscribed in a certain Codex of the Episcopal Archive of Forojulium fol. 125: therefore for slight is to be held, if the scribe erred, writing Gambracium, but in this (other faults being dissembled) for Sambracium; Alauz. for Alanz or Alenz; which would be expressed in full as Alanzonum, today Allenson, a town of the Province under the Vicariate of Aix. More serious perhaps will appear and not imputable to scribes certain other things, and making the whole matter suspect; for instance Indiction X placed for VIII (which Bouche also observed) or for VIIII, if it be supposed the Month of September (where the number of the day not being expressed is sufficiently incongruous also) advanced beyond the XXIV day, from which the new Indiction's beginning is to be taken. A scruple also could here inject Anno the Archbishop of Arles, and there be doubt whether he was ordained before the year DCCCCLXXXI, which seem the Sammarthani to place as the first for him. But of this also let others inquire: for neither is the affirmative opinion proved from anywhere, nor, with the negative posited, would the omission of one I exceed the scribe's fault, and so with the Indiction first begun X would be reconciled the year DCCCCLXXXI, brought down to the last seven days of September.
[4] I, with all the foresaid, and other things which could be moved many, dissembled, The use of surnames displeases, by no thing more am compelled to suspend judgment about the truth of the prenoted instrument, than that I see that Giballinus, to whom the donation is pretended to be made, is designated by the manner not yet known then, but first begun to be introduced two hundred years after that, as if by gentile surname de Grimaldis. In which thing being sinned by many, scrutinizing the origins of noble families, complains himself Honoratus Bouche §2 preliminary to Sect. 1 book 9 cited above; and teaches to have been unknown surnames of this kind in Gaul, not only in the time of the first and second stock of the Kings of the Franks; but also in the beginnings of the third, which from Hugh Capet in the year DCCCCLXXXVII takes its beginning. Then finally he teaches, that Kings indeed and supreme Princes, from their states; lesser Nobles, from the towns and villas possessed by them began to be called: yet so that the appellations themselves did not pertain to all sons, but only to those to whom by hereditary right such dominions ceded in part; nor were retained longer in the same family, thus the later they began to be called. than the actual possession of them themselves. Finally the foresaid Bouche, asserting that it is a sign of great nobility when one and the same is the name of the family and of the dominion, denies that dominions were called from families, but asserts families were named from dominions, with very few perhaps excepted, he says, and by way of example (not so much from his own as from others' sense) proposes the family de Grimaldis, which some think gave the name to the town in the bottom of the Sambracite bay, which from it now is called Grimaldicus. Which town truly I would rather have believed from the founder Grimaldus to have received the name (as infinite other towns and castles) and that some centuries before the family de Grimaldis had this its proper name. What however we have said about Giballinus the donee, can be applied to Pontius de Alauz, placed among the confirmers.
[5] Into that general opinion of Honoratus on gentile surnames (which is also of Tessera or Insignia or Arms) most recently agreeing with us most friendly D. James le Roy, as already several learned men have taught. in the most recently published Notice of the Marquisate of the holy Roman Empire, that is of the City and Land of Antwerp, book 10 chapter 17, alleges authors curiously scrutinizing the same, Claudius Tauchet, President of the Senate of the Mint in the Origins of Arms; and Andrew du Chesne, in the Preface of the history of the House du Plessis de Richelieu, expressly speaking of the ancient Titles of families. About Tessera moreover an author he praises and as a witness brings forth altogether suitable, James de Hemricourt, Knight of S. John of Jerusalem, (who died at Brussels in the year MCCCCIII, and after him left written in French the Mirror of Hesbanian Nobility) asserting, that it is only 200 or 240 years since that thing began: and to him he adds Christopher Butkens in the Trophies of Brabant, assigning the year MCLX, before which nothing such existed in use of noble families. And to have indicated these let it suffice, meanwhile until a full work on that argument, to recall each thing to its origins, we await from our Francis Claudius Menestrier, which we understand is ripe for the press.
§. 2. More certain monuments of the ancient cult of S. Torpes in Provence.
[6] The town of S. Torpes, and its antiquity under this title, to one desiring to know more securely than from the Donation already examined, The Instrument of Pontius Bishop of Marseille is offered first the Donation of Pontius Bishop of Marseille, under the note of the year MLVI from the Prior of S. Torpes Mag. Peter Antibou transmitted to us, with faith made by Antonius Aubert Royal Notary: where among other things is named the Church of S. Torpes Martyr, which is situated in the County of Forojulium, in the territory which is called Fraxinetum near the sea. The instrument itself, since elsewhere printed it is not extant, it is helpful here to put the whole, in favor of those who took such studious care of it; and it is of this kind: It is established, anciently by legal disposition sanctioned and by the industry of the earlier fathers by legal right decreed, the donor to the monastery of S. Victor that if anyone shall wish to give his things to anyone, or to exchange, or to sell, through the page of description he should strive to do it: in which way the things themselves, stable and unbroken may be able perpetually to remain. For not only to such a tablet of description for the living and acquiring the possessions of other heirs is now about to be useful; but also for those in future and long after time succeeding, to the knowledge of such possessions and to their defense against opposers very suitable. Wherefore I Pontius Bishop of Marseille, and my brothers; namely Lord William and Lord Goffred, sons formerly of Ancelina, donate to the altar of Holy Mary Mother of God, which is consecrated in the church of Holy Victor Christ's Martyr, and to the same Holy Victor Martyr and his companions, and to the monks dwelling there, both present and future, forever, for the remedy of the souls of us and of our parents; namely
the church of Holy Torpes Martyr, the Church of S. Torpes. which is situated in the County of Forojulium, in the territory which is called Fraxinetum near the sea; and all that we have or ought to have in the territory and within the bounds of the same Holy Torpes up to the sea, and the sea itself; that also which Lord Fulco, our maternal uncle, has there likewise during his life, and after his death is determined as proper allod. Indeed the land itself and the allod itself from the Eastern part, from the place which is called Laudonarius, which is situated on the sea-bank, and proceeds through the middle peaks of the mountains, as the water turns and divides the land, and bounds the bounds of Ramaticella, and made through the ancient wall which is of Aldissart and Pampalona, and up to the Garonne running down into the sea from the Western part, and divides this land of Holy Torpes and of the Castle of Borrianum; from the North part the boundary having the sea itself. All these things above said, and whatever are contained within these bounds, and on these bounds, namely lands cultivated and uncultivated, meadows, pastures, woods * Ganicis, with their hunts and fisheries, waters and watercourses, with the harbors themselves and salt-pans, all in all, whatever we have or ought to have now and in the future, or after the death of our uncle Lord Fulco already said Viscount only, in full we donate to the now named Holy Mary monastery of Marseille and to Holy Victor Martyr, and to the monks of the same monastery dwelling there, both present and future, forever, as above said, in the year 1056. for legal and proper allod; that from this present day and thenceforth they may have and possess, with all quietude and peace. Plainly if anyone of us or any other person shall come or arise, to break these things, may he not be able to claim what he has demanded; but the wrath of God Almighty may he incur, and with all be cursed, unless he shall have foreseen; moreover let him compose in living bond to the same Holy Victor a hundred pounds of best gold. This donation moreover and description was made in the thousand year of the Lord's Incarnation LVI, in Indiction nine, with Henry reigning King. Pontius Bishop of Marseille confirmed. Goffred his brother. Brother William Bishop of Toulon confirmed. Lord William Viscount of Marseille confirmed, and made others to confirm. Fulco his son confirmed. Lord Fulco Viscount. Brother Rostagnus de Cateneto confirmed. Romulphus de Senatio. Brother Allastranus confirms. Br. Hugh de Marcavalla confirms. Aldavaldus brother. Arcadius … where still some things are wanting, as also the name of the Notary, who wrote and confirmed, perhaps the original parchment toward the end being corrupted.
[7] For neither is this had any longer, nor are the other two similar charters of the two Bishops about the same lands bounded in the same manner, but together with the prior they are registered in the old parchment book of S. Victor, containing many donations gathered: among which fol. 133 is the charter of Fraxinetum, and the charter of Grimaldus. So the author of the exemplar transmitted to us, on the reverse side of the folio noting the title of the first Donation in French, as made in the year MLVI, on the VIII of October, which day in the context I do not find. From the Register of Parchments, preserved in the Royal archive of the city of Aix, the city of Forojulium, where in the year 1084 the castle of S. Trope, and is called the castle of S. Trope: and so says Honoratus in the Chorography of the Province book 4 chapter 2, §. 6 it is called in the Bull of Gregory VII given in the year MLXXXIV, because namely S. Torpes commonly is called S. Tropez. Of this Gregory VII and Urban II the privileges to the Abbot of S. Victor confirming Paschal II in the year MCXIV, calls it the Cell of S. Torpes: of which with the Abbey of S. Victor the union thereafter confirmed Innocent II, in the year MCXXXVI, and in the year 1114 the cell of S. Torpes; XVIII July, and Honorius III in the year MCCXVIII, XVIII June. Of the prior however, which was Paschal's, we have an exemplar transcribed by the hand of Br. John Francis of S. Torpes the Capuchin, to whom it is fitting to refer thanks for the exhibition of the same in this place: it is truly such.
[8] Paschal Bishop Servant of the Servants of God, to the beloved in Christ Son Otto Abbot of the Marseille monastery, and to the same successors regularly to be substituted in perpetuity. By the authority of the Apostolic See and by duty we are compelled for the state of the universal churches to be busy, when Paschal 2 and for their quiet with the Lord helping to provide. On that account to your petitions, Son in Christ most dear Otto, not undeservedly to be assented to we have judged, that the Marseille monastery, over which by God's authority you preside, after the example of our predecessors Gregory the seventh and Urban the second, with the Apostolic See's privilege we may strengthen. Through the present therefore privilege's page, to you and to your successors, which by the foresaid Pontiffs are confirmed, we confirm: namely in the Bishopric of Forojulium the parochial Church of S. Mary of Cabasse, of S. Pontius, and of S. Peter, the cell of S. Mary of Luc, of S. Peter des Ans, the parochial church of the castle itself with its chapels, the church of S. Julian of Ailha, the cell of S. Cassian of Sala. The Laudimias * of S. Victor of Motta, of S. Romanus d'Estam, of S. Mary of Pollio, of S. Victor of Rochataillada, of S. Salvator of Buonum, the parochial church of Cellians, the church of S. Mary; the cell of S. Mary of Barjamonne, of S. Auxilius, the parochial church of Callas, the cell of S. Torpes, of S. Pontius, of S. Mary of Luesta; the parochial church of Grimal, it with many others of S. Antoninus of Inter-castella, the monastery of S. Mary of Villerroze, of S. Peter of Salerne, the parochial church of S. Dominic of Tostorium, of S. Mary of Villa alta, of S. Martin of Rocabruna. But the churches, or those which with their tithes and oblations they themselves to your monastery have granted, saving namely the rent which on them they were accustomed to have; we to you and to your successors so to have, and quietly and without calumny to possess sanction, as by your predecessors they have been possessed. We decree therefore that to no one of men at all be it lawful the same monastery rashly to disturb; or these things which are above written or its other possessions to take away, or things offered to retain, diminish, or with rash vexations to fatigue; but all things wholly be preserved, of those, for whose sustenance they were granted, to be useful in every way for their uses. If therefore in the future any ecclesiastical or secular person whatsoever, this our constitution's page knowing, against it rashly shall attempt to come; let her of the dignity of her power and honor be deprived, and let her know herself to exist liable to Divine judgment of the perpetrated iniquity, and from the most sacred Body and Blood of God and our Lord Redeemer Jesus Christ let her become alien, and in the last examination to strict vengeance let her lie subject, confirmed to the said monastery, unless by second or third admonition her presumption with worthy satisfaction she shall correct. But to all observing just things in the same place, let there be the peace of our Lord Jesus Christ, in so far as here they may receive the fruit of good action, and with the strict Judge they may find the rewards of eternal peace. Amen, Amen, Amen. Written by the hand of Grisogonus Notary of the sacred Palace. Given at the Lateran by the hand of John Deacon Cardinal of the holy Roman Church and Librarian, on the ninth Kalends of May, in the sixth Indiction, of the Lord's Incarnation in the year MCXIIII, also of the Pontificate of Lord Paschal the second in year XIV.
[9] Paschal was ordained on XXIV August in the year MXCIX: therefore in May of the year MCXIV the XIV year of the Pontificate was still in course: but the Indiction ought to be numbered not sixth, but seventh: which thus also I would have believed in the original, Indiction not 6, but 7 but written numerically VII, in which case it most easily happens to scribes transcribing originals that one numerical letter falls out: as in fact more than once we have found to have happened in the new edition of the Councils, where in epistle 68 of the same Paschal the Pope, with the day XII Kal. December of the year MC is composed Indiction VIII past, in place of IX already begun from VIII Kal. October. Likewise in epistle 69, where is expressed the year of Incarnation MCVI, in place of MVII: in epistle 88, where with X omitted is written Indiction II for XII; and in epistle 95, given Kal. December in the year MCVI, is noted the year of the Pontificate sixth in place of seventh: which is the error already above indicated. On the contrary from the addition of one superfluous letter the fault is sometimes detected in other Epistles of the same Pontiff, for instance 72, where year XI of the Pontificate, in place of X; and 73, where the year of Christ MCXIV is noted in place of MCXV: similarly in epistle 84 is read Indiction IX, for X: likewise in epistles 92 and 93, is the year of the Pontificate VIII for VII. And these things therefore I would have admonished, that it may be understood not at once to be believed in apographs; but before for some such single error any Bull may be brought into suspicion of falsehood, recourse must be had to the original: in this however if the same error be detected, already almost morally certain fraud will be held, because in a true original such an error could scarcely have crept in.
[10] Noted besides also here I want the use of designating the year of the Incarnation, and indeed according to the common manner from the Kalends of January, to this Pope Paschal and to the same's predecessor Urban II, was indeed not perpetual, but very familiar; since almost a fourth part of the epistles, hitherto found under their names, has this character of time subscribed. But also the epistle 7 of Honorius II, and with the year of the Incarnation added, and the epistles 3, 9, 12, and 31 with six following of Innocent II note the Year of the Lord's Incarnation: and the epistle 5 and 6 of Lucius II; and also of Eugene III 9, 10, 66, 70, 71, 72: then of Anastasius IV epistle 12; of Hadrian likewise IV Epistle 30, 38, and 39; of Alexander III epistle 52, and in his Append. the third epistle 20 with the two following; of Urban III also epistle 5 in like manner is marked. After this until Eugene IV no epistles thus noted appear in the body of the Councils: but in the Regest in Wadding it is to be found various, under Gregory IX from the year MCCXXXIV and the successor Pontiffs, thus signed up to the year MCCLIX: then in the Curia in use (but inconstantly) for 2 centuries; after which more solemn ones few, and those consistorially by several Cardinals subscribed, and by the Vice-Chancellor of the H.R.C. in fullest form expedited, are found to have inscribed the year of the Incarnation in the same Register, in the Bullary of the Order of Hermits of S. Augustine, in the Cassinese Bullary, in the Cluniac Library and elsewhere. But of these few the last is of Clement VI, with fifteen Cardinals subscribing in the year MCCCXLIII. Hence truly deep silence again everywhere about the year
of the Lord's Incarnation in Pontifical bulls (at least in those which either in the body of the Councils or in the works named above are extant) up to the year MCCCCXXXI and the beginning of Eugene IV, of which in the antiquarian Propylaeum part I num. 129 we have taught, and by Eugene 4 restored. from the Pauline book 3 chapter 6 written about the year MD, that with him presiding, with Blondus Foroliviensis exhorting, Notary by Secrets of the Pontifical College, in Bulls and Pontifical Rescripts, the calculation of years from Christ's Incarnation began first to be written; namely always and continuously: although it was not only in Paschal Candles annotated through a longer tract of time; but also in Pontifical Bulls and rescripts is found in the body of the Councils already from the time of John XIII and the year DCCCCLXXI: but little constantly, nor except very rarely in less solemn ones.
[11] For the rest, that to the town of S. Torpes the speech may return, through the Instruments above placed it sufficiently clearly appears, that this appellation, Of the Saint's Church, if it was not older than the dominion of the Saracens in Provence, was introduced not long after their expulsion in time; and among the first beginnings of the churches restored there in the XI century, that one existed, which Pontius Bishop of Marseille, with all that he had or ought to have in the territory and within the bounds of the same S. Torpes, in the year MLVI donated to the monks of S. Victor. These were of the order of S. Benedict; and this Pontius's predecessor and uncle, namesake to his nephew, first indeed a monk and Abbot, converted into a little monastery, then Bishop and restorer they had had; then truly by his nephew foresaid, by not one possession were they augmented, as is to be seen in the Sammarthani in the Bishops of Marseille. There was not however that church of S. Torpes, neither then when with those it was donated, nor in that whole century yet Parochial, as is established from the Bull of Paschal II, accurately distinguishing Parishes from Cells, and calling it the cell of S. Torpes; the Castle adjoining from which namely the Sanvictorian monks, having brought there a colony of theirs had begun to inhabit it under such title, which corresponds to the present title of Priory. But then, with little by little the dwellings of inhabitants accruing the augmented place (as several other places of similar origin) and against the incursions of pirates fortified, began to be called by the vulgar Castrum S. Trope, and the same name obtained the harbor pretended to it, as we were taught by P. Charles Faber, alleging as author Peter Louvet in the new epitome of the Provincial History tom. 2 chapter 14 num. 40, where it is said that Raymond Berengarius, Count and Marquis of Provence, of Faventia (which is a place neighboring to the city of Forojulium) in the year MCCXX, on XV March, it with the Harbor of the same name and the Parish. in the church of Our Lady of Cyprus donated to the church of Our Lady of Forojulium, and to Bertrand the Bishop, and to Raymond the Provost of Forojulium, the Harbor itself, defining the donation from the Harbor of S. Torpes up to Antibes, which tract extends through XL miles and more to the East: so that I do not doubt that at least about the beginning of the XII century, the title of Parish succeeded the title of simple Cell. I suspect also it then was made, that the bay called by the ancients Sambracite began to be called the Stream of S. Torpes: although the pretended donation of Count William I makes that name far older to seem.
[12] But with time, which overthrows and changes all things, proceeding, the place became so desolate, which all things destroyed long ago, that the foresaid P. Charles says, in the year MCCCCLXX nothing there remained except a single tower; while meanwhile the Castle of Grimaut, at the inmost recess of the bay itself (some wish it was the Athenopolis of the ancients) was most flourishing, and already from the year MCCXLIV with the title of Barony was glorying under King René, as Honoratus Bouche testifies, fol. 259. Therefore it is no wonder, if with the name of S. Torpes abolished, by which before the bay was called, the same began to be called the Gulf, that is, the Bay of Grimaud, the use enduring even now, when with the title of Marquisate around the year MDCXX adorned the place King Louis XIII. Since however in the year already said MCCCCLXX, John de Cossa, who called himself Baron of Grimaut, King René's Lieutenant general in Provence, to Raphael de Garaßius had ceded in fief the dominion of S. Torpes; began to be repaired in the year 1470. this new Lord brought into the place plainly desolate from the Ligurian shore sixty families; by whom is founded that which now they call the town of S. Torpes, with a new parochial church of the same Saint; which by five Presbyters under a Regular Benedictine Prior to be administered Honoratus Bouche teaches: with there remaining meanwhile outside the town toward the sea the vestiges of the old church, to which to advance the new Priors, about to enter on possession, is of ancient custom, the same who has taught us other things already related, P. Charles Faber, has taught; adding that this is even now observed, after the Capuchin Fathers, in the year MDCXVII brought there, built a new church of less space within the same ruins.
Annotations* Or Granceis, that is, granaries?
* perhaps he repented
* perhaps in the continent.
* Or Latomias quarries?
§. III. On the cult and pretended discovery of the body among the Lusitanians.
Whatever in the two preceding paragraphs has been brought forth by us, has no other foundation, With the Gauls believing the body to have been first buried with them than that the body of the holy Martyr was once brought to that place with an Angel (as in the Acts is said) governing, the Provincial inhabitants think themselves to hold by so certain a tradition; that when to the Capuchin Fathers whom I have said the site of the old church was to be handed over, they wished a condition to be added by which it should be guaranteed, that if in the process of time it should happen that there be found the body of S. Torpes, under the tyranny of the Saracens lost, it ought to be transferred to the new Parish, and to the right of its Priors return. Indeed even very recently it has been written to me, that one of the Capuchins of San- Torpes in familiar conversation let slip, that his Brothers perhaps not with difficulty would find the treasure so eagerly desired, if the Priors of the Parish would renounce the condition added to the contract, or its half part to the inventors they would promise to be left. I do not consider the Sant- Torpenses to be so sluggish, that to this beginning of any sort of hope they would slumber: but altogether I trust they will gladly yield something of the highest right, that they may obtain that which is principal and may persuade against the Lusitanians: who hold the place called Sines in the Eboran diocese, and from a similar, as they say, tradition maintain, the Lusitanians have contradicted, that this body not only is now with them, but was from the beginning under the Empire of Nero. Insisting upon this Tradition the Fathers of our Society, who the Roman Martyrology, by order of Gregory XIII reformed, into the Lusitanian language translated, and to it in the year MDXCI prefixed the Proper Martyrology of the Lusitanian Saints; having briefly narrated the history of the Passion, to it they add the history of the body translated immediately after death to that place, where (in that very year, in which these things were being printed) by the order of Sixtus V that the truth might be investigated, and the matter taken care of by D. Theodonius the Eboran Archbishop, were found certain indications of the old then both church, both burial, and of the holy bones themselves.
[14] Such things when also in the Hispanic Martyrology of Tamayus I read, and from the supposed figments of Dexter and Julianus to be elaborately confirmed I saw; for the just affection by which I abominate these things, and the recognized fabulosity of the Acts themselves; little was it lacking that I should judge those indications also, by which to some knowledge of the church, of the burial, and of the bones of S. Torpes the Lusitanians were said to have come, altogether contemnable. even before Dexter's chronicle &c. were feigned; I took care however that I should not by prejudices, however just in appearance, burden the case. Considering indeed that of that which was pretended to have been done discovery there was had testimony older than all the Pseudo-dexter figments, namely of our Eboran Fathers, who had published the Lusitanian Martyrology some years earlier than these things to spread into light had begun all things' fashioner Roman de Higuera; from the consensus of all, even of the most ancient MSS. having been convicted that the author of the Acts, ridiculously indeed, but had asserted nevertheless concerning Celerina the curatrix of the sacred body, that she reigned over the half of Spain; I considered it could have been, that the old tradition of the Pisans, which to define the time and place of the martyrdom suffered by S. Torpes had given light, to the same had also given light as to the region to which the body landed. I therefore suspended judgment, until I had compared past with present, and finally judged, from these to receive that some momentum of probability not altogether none: and that to the Provincial tradition, although by prejudices most powerful firmed, if not to prevail, at least so far to be able to resist, until by new argument more certain and more evident that becomes, for dislodging the Lusitanians from the possession which they pretend. To national affection to concede something is by no means to be ashamed Tamayus thinks in this place; asserting it glorious to fight for the country. But this, in a historian, as from fault to free I cannot, says R. P. Antonius Pagy, Provincial of the Conventual Minors through Gallo-Provincia; so also I cannot but praise your most reverend Paternity and his most learned Master, who insisting on truth alone, from all human affection are alien: the same exhibit a letter from Sines, as anyone, whom another opinion already before has not occupied, in your works, which a thousand times I have turned over, in reading through with me will confess. Trusting therefore in such judgments, formed of my sincerity with the Provincial friends, to whom otherwise with truth saved any service I profess to owe, without disguise I will report what for themselves the Lusitanians allege. And first about the foresaid discovery of S. Torpes, from a Lusitanian I will make a Latin epistle, by P. Bernard Sobrinho, Prior of Sines given on XVIII March MDCXL to P. Fr. Michael Ferreira the Carmelite.
[15] What is had through informations of grave-aged and faith-worthy persons of this town of Sines, about the holy Martyr Torpes, in which the body is said in the year 1591 to have been sought is; that Pope Sixtus V commanded D. Theotonius the Archbishop, in the year MDXCI, that he should employ all diligence for finding his holy body. This moreover was found through the information of certain old herdsmen, accustomed in summer time to find their oxen under the shade of a certain dense grove, which then was on the bank of the river Junquieira, there discharging itself into the sea: where that holy body had deposited a certain noble Christian woman, after to her had been divinely revealed that she should bury it. She truly to it an honorable sepulcher built of grand stones, which now have been brought to this main church, under which it was found, but without the head. To me however said Alexander Masseu the Neapolitan, Engineer of the kingdom of Algarve, that he had seen the same head at Pisa city of Tuscia, and to a new chest translated to be, where this soldier of Christ was beheaded by order of Nero. That body the general Vicar of Beja placed in a chest of three keys; and ordered two other chests to be filled with earth taken from the sepulcher: which three chests here with great veneration we keep. The custom
moreover is mine, to provide of this earth to those suffering from fever when they ask it from me as Relics, which they either at the breast carrying or in water macerated drinking are wont to report miraculous health. There were found in the same sepulcher, a great lamp, formed of clay; and a stone, in which written letters no one was able to read: round about truly various bones, which we judge to be of persons, who there ordered themselves to be buried out of devotion toward the Saint; who, according to the tradition of the elders, came here miraculously in a certain ancient small boat, without sails or oars, with a cock and a dog. Witnesses of all the foresaid things are P. Francis de Valladeres, before Witnesses, in the year 1640 again heard. Brother of our Order of S. James, who says he so heard from Peter Aires his father: and that he, when he was the ordinary Judge of this town, spent his work to the foresaid general Vicar in seeking, and lent his hand in opening the sepulcher. Manuel Pereira nearly ninety years old, who was present at all and each thing. Alfonso Pirez Coresma, and Manuel Ferdinandus Fogaza, men grave-aged and principals among the inhabitants, who were then in their company. And so we all hold him as Church permits, to whom the definition of such things pertains: and therefore of him we do not celebrate the Office, until she herself shall have declared it to be done. Therefore your Paternity will think the labor well spent for the honor of so great a Saint, supposed that through him you have acquired for yourself a special Patron in heaven: whose person for many years may God preserve. From Sines XVIII March MDCXL. Br. Bernard Sobrinho.
[16] Cardosus had premised, that Sines is a Maritime town in the Eboran diocese, The site of the place, not far from S. James de Cassem, in the extreme limit of the Ouriquensian Field, situated on the shore which from Troia to Cape S. Vincent extends, where somewhat into the Ocean is extended the land, and into it discharge three rivers, Regalvus, Borbolega, and Junquieira; fortified truly by two fortifications and equipped with warlike engines; and also with a small naval station, within which receive themselves the fishing boats, for the support of about three hundred inhabitants, professing seamanship: indeed it abounds with savory wine and the best mutton, and also with wild beasts and birds for hunting, by which the neighboring rivers and lakes are frequented. He adds then, that it is commonly told, that when some of the inhabitants, present at the translation of the relics already said, certain particles of them having stealthily abstracted, and to home each one their own having taken; with the same suddenly disappearing, and themselves to the holy body (whence they had been taken) restoring, were deprived of them. Finally he wonders, what cause had the Church of Évora, why, possessing the relics of so notable a Martyr within the diocese subject to itself, has ceased to recite the Office of him; when nevertheless his feast on this XVII day of May was inscribed in the old Breviary of that Archbishopric, which in the year MDXLVIII he took care to have anew printed.
[17] We have a Breviary printed in that year at Lisbon by Ludovicus Rotorogius, Cult in the old Breviary of Évora in the year 1548. of which to the elogy at the foot is added, that it has been again emended, corrected, changed, and far now more orderly and elegantly made, by the order and authority of the Most Reverend in Christ Father and Most Illustrious Prince and Lord D. Henry, Cardinal of the H.R.C. of the title of the Holy Four Crowned, Infant of Portugal and first Archbishop of the church of Évora: and in the Calendar of this Breviary, which on almost every day proposes some feast or one or more Saints, I find the name of Torpes the Martyr. Whence moreover it is consequent, that of him ought to be made a simple feast, under nine lessons, equally as the Solemnities and Doubles minor and major to be celebrated, as the Rubric on the fourfold difference of feasts has (of which because in the proper place it is not found, all things would have to be taken from the Common) it can be gathered from the Rubric which says, According to the use of the Eboran Church never is made of the feria, except in Advent, on the day of Ashes, in Lent, and in the time of the Resurrection, and that on few only and determined days through the weeks then occurring, there individually noted. This use moreover, so different from the common, wholly ceased, with the use of the Roman Breviary received through all Lusitania, abrogated after the assumption of the Roman Breviary. published by order of Pius V the Pope in the year MDLXVIII, and then revised by Clement VIII the Pope in the year MDCII: nor in the whole month of May from the fourteen simple feasts, by which the ferias in the Roman Breviary free were before filled, was retained even one; not even that of SS. Torquatus and Companions Bishops, of all Spain the Apostles, for the day XV; as appears from the Calendar of certain Lusitanian Saints, for their Offices among the Bracarenses, Olisiponenses, Eborenses and Conimbricenses, which we have printed at Lisbon in the year 1617, and subjoined to the Order of reciting the divine Office and celebrating Masses, according to the rite of the Roman Breviary and Missal for that year. Nothing therefore is wonderful, that the feast of S. Torpes was abrogated in that Kingdom, where there was no church under his name, but of the body where it was, was unknown. And indeed it had been believed afterwards to be discovered by the foresaid indications; so nevertheless that to be awaited was thought the definition or permission of the Roman See.
[18] To me requiring then some further notice, under the public faith of Emanuel Moteirro Apostolic Notary, from the same town of Sines, this instrument came: The Licentiate Lawrence Pyresius Leytao, Brother Professed of the Order Military of D. James, and Prior in the major church of the town of Sines, I make sacred faith, that in this town religiously are venerated the Relics and the body of the Martyr S. Torpes, which was found on the shore of the sea, near the mouth of Junqueira; and translated from the foresaid place into the major church of the same town of Sines. And according to notices and old tradition, from most true informations, fame establishes that the foresaid Martyr's body in that place was found, in a marble sepulcher enclosed; near which, when the body of the foresaid Martyr was being sought, certain also bones of dead bodies were found, until the foresaid sepulcher was found; and unsealed, of the foresaid Martyr it was clear to be. For in the foresaid sepulcher was an earthen candelabrum, and certain then prodigies and signs were given forth, The marbles of the old sepulcher translated to the ornament of the altar: that more clearly the very Martyr's holiness might be known. Whose Body (as I had begun to say) with two together chests, full of earth dug from the same tomb, was translated to this town, and placed in a fitting place in the major church: to which also the marbles of the sepulcher were brought, which I myself with my eyes saw. And after I entered upon the rule of my Priorate in this town, those I transferred, into the high altar of the major church, where now they are kept, the work being to be enlarged. And I make faith, that to the foresaid stones no inscription is on, and so on the word of a Priest I swear: nor was it ever established, or memory was there of any inscription or epigraph found in the foresaid sepulcher. Likewise I make faith, that it is known in this town, that the piety of the townsmen wished in the same major church to construct a chapel, that there more religiously by the faithful the foresaid Relics might be venerated; with a place even being designated to that end near the more sacred part of the church (which we Lusitanians commonly call Cruzeyro) where outside was a cemetery, where the bones of the dead are placed; although that thing then to its outcome did not come.
[19] I from twenty-one years ago, when the office of Prior of this church I began to fulfill in this town, an annual procession instituted, I instituted that on the Friday of Holy Week a solemn procession should be performed; which is wont to be made about the eleventh hour of the Day: and in the first year, in which the solemn procession began to be made, when through the foresaid place of the church, where was the cemetery, the procession was passing; by all who accompanied it, a great multitude of white butterflies from the Martyr's tomb was seen to come forth: which by their flight above the canopy, by which was covered the Lord's image, presented the appearance of a cloud, and accompanied the same image, where the solemn pomp was completed, vanished. Which prodigy to all who were present, was a wonder: and through the following years also in the same way it was seen to come forth, not without the bystanders' amazement: until in the same place from four years ago was erected a chapel, leaning on the cemetery, and dedicated to the foresaid Saint Martyr. Whence also now in single years on the very same day the prodigy of butterflies (of which I have above mentioned) is wont to come forth; and the solemn procession, with the miracle of butterflies flying from the sepulcher. and the Lord's image accompany. Which all things to be so on the word of a Priest I swear: in faith of which thing these letters I have given, and here wished to subscribe. In the Town of Sines, on the day fourteenth of June, of the year one thousand six hundred eighty-first. Prior Lawrence Pyresius Leytao.
[20] Thus he, so distinctly and solicitously indicating, that on the sepulchral marbles no inscription was seen or had ever been seen, because through interposed friends I was insisting, that to me an accurate delineation of those letters be sent, The stone found within the chest, which were said to have been seen on a stone found within the sepulcher Bernard Sobrinho wrote: for that stone, together with the clay candelabrum of which above, I presumed either together with the bones to be preserved in the chest, or separately to be had in the sacristy. But Lawrence Pyresius, my mind not at all having grasped, did not seek that stone there, but others about which there was no question he caused to be inspected; and so he disappointed the hope which I had conceived in mind, and have not yet plainly laid down of grasping the sense, of those same letters, in copper to be engraved and to the eyes of the learned to be exposed, and through this means more certainly something to determine about the foresaid Relics, whether they truly are of S. Torpes, or not. Meanwhile, since those letters were such, that they could not be read by men by no means idiots and unskilled, whom it is probable either to have been present at the discovery or afterwards to have been consulted; it becomes clear, that they were not Latin. With difficulty even can I presume that they were Arabic, such as among the Moors of Spain the occupiers after the year DCCX were in use. For these had no care of adorning the bodies of saints, not in Latin or Arabic, as being Mahometans; nor were they so driven from Spain all, that frequent ones into Lusitania do not come, at least for the cause of business, who could have been called to interpret them. It would remain therefore that under the dominion of the Suevi or Goths in Lusitania those letters be believed to have been written or sculpted, if truly, as is pretended, they are most ancient and on that account illegible. The Suevi reigned moreover in Gallecia first, where to the faith of Christ with paganism left they began to be drawn over, about the year of Christ CCCCXLVIII. The same not many years after into Lusitania populously ran forth, and this finally occupied, but inscribed with Suevic or Gothic letters. they were drawn into Arian perfidy, after the year CCCCLX; until under King Theodomar, about the year DLVIII, again made Catholic,
after not full XL years they came under the power of Leovigild the Arian: the faith however not difficultly they kept, with Leovigild dying about the year DLXVIII, and Reccared succeeding and the rest in order Catholic Kings, up to Witiza and Roderic: on account of whose wicked ways Spain almost universal yielded to the barbarian Moors as prey, with the Kingdom of the Goths overthrown from the foundations, about the year DCCXIII. Hence further to be consequent it seems, that, if truly the body of S. Torpes immediately after death was conveyed to the shore of Lusitania, it would prove the body to have been placed there in century 6 or 7. and there entombed by Christians; that with them celebrated yet cult he had, when in the perhaps fifth century of the Christian era at Pisa his most ancient, although fabulous acts were written. From the same principles not absurdly would it be said, that the same holy body, into a new and more august church, by some Suevic-blooded Prince erected in century VI or VII (in that place where in the previous century it was found) was translated.
[21] You have here, Reader, also from the part of the Lusitanians, if I do not err, all things which can confer some likelihood to their pretension: but as in receiving the documents of the Provincials I did not dissemble what less certain seemed; so neither ought I to be silent about certain difficulties which make that I cannot in favor of Portugal anything certainly define. It moves me first, that to sustain this part it is necessary to believe, that the Port of Sinos in Lusitania was a place anciently famous and named, and of so great celebrity, that even to outsiders, But this difficult to believe makes the novelty of the name Sines, among whom we suppose the Acts of whatever sort were first composed, it was most named. Meanwhile neither to Ptolemy, nor to Pliny, nor to any of the ancient Geographers is such a nomenclature known: nor does any history of the middle age make mention of it. Perhaps however the place from the Saracens received its name from their language, as most places of Spain, formerly unknown and ignoble, after the destruction of the ancient cities and villages made by the Moors, began to be inhabited under their empire and to be named. Now however not Sinos but Sines is pronounced, and so in the Acts compiled by him Tamayus wrote, against what he had read in Equilinus and Mombritius, whose names he pretends in the title. Which since it is so, with difficulty can be refuted he who would say, that that persuasion of the Lusitanians about the tomb at Sines, with obscure formerly fame and without the name of the body within known, and at length uncovered, as if it were of S. Torpes, is not much older by one or one and a half centuries; nor has any other foundation, than the fortuitous congruity of the old name Sinus, and the new Sines, added to the more vulgarly known meaning of the name of Spain: which they who did not know it had been divided into Citerior or Cispyrenean, and Ulterior or Transpyrenean under the Gothic Empire, they thought themselves equally certainly to hold the name of the buried one, as they believed they held the region and the place of burial, and the sepulcher itself and the bones contained in it: which were perhaps of someone truly a Saint, now Anonymous: and that they were not, the good faith nevertheless of those venerating S. Torpes in them, could some graces divinely obtain, such as the author of the epistle indicates.
[22] Another and not lighter than the prior scruple imposes the obscurity and ignorance of S. Torpes in all Lusitania up to the last past century; while meanwhile from the Ligurian shore up to Marseille the same from time immemorial both temples and most celebrated cult he has had, and the obscurity of ancient cult there. as the Patron of those sailing, such as the Acts make him. For at Genoa is extant a very ancient Collegiate church under his name, which I understand was not so long ago restored and amplified, and the Historian of the city of Nice in Provence Peter Joffredus for the year MCLIX presents the instrument of solemn division of goods between the Canons and the Bishop, where among other things is adjudicated to the Canons the Church of S. Torpes with its honor: and in neighboring Antibes the same name is retained writes to us Anthelmius: and that of the very town of S. Torpes I say nothing, also at Marseille is had an old of the same, and that most solemn Office printed for the use of the Sanvictorin monastery. What however in the old Eboran Breviary above is indicated, neither has proper Lessons of the history, nor except by the simplest rite is it prescribed to be done, equally as very many other Saints noted in the Calendar of the same Breviary, having nothing common with Lusitania, and to this only assumed that to no day, on which it is licit to make of a Saint, should be lacking some proper one of its own; such as it was easy to receive from Legendaries, after the ejection of the Saracens begun to be restored, according to older exemplars from Gaul sought.
[23] Thirdly most easy to grasp is, how a small boat, through the mouth of the Arno entering the sea, with the waters of the Tyrrhenian sea flowing back toward the Ocean, without grand miracle, without human guidance, may have glided into some port of the Grimaldic Bay: not likewise how the same small boat, having sailed past the whole Gallic and Iberian shore, nor does the name of Spain prove would have sought the Strait of Gades, that having entered the Ocean with course turned to the North it might bend to Lusitania. Wherefore if in the age in which the Acts were being written, Narbonese Gaul was equally by the name of Spain reckoned as Lusitania, that according to this be borne the opinion, it would be necessary to have documents more evident and more ancient by far than the other part has. That however the appellation of Spain extended itself to that point, by evident authority is clear. For the Council of Narbonne, in Era DCXXVII, that is in the year of Christ DLXXXIX, was celebrated by seven Bishops of that Province, according to which the holy Synod, through the ordination of the most glorious Lord our Reccared the King, in the city of Toledo defined: and among the Notes of Garcia Loyasa to the Councils of Spain fol. 131, from the Hispalensian codex of Saint Lawrence, which in the year DCCCCLXII was written, is placed the division of the Provinces of Spain and of their Sees, and among them the second is the Province of Gaul, whose Metropolis is Narbonne: and again fol. 133 in the codex of the Church of Oviedo in Gothic letters, is said in the beginning thus written: In the name of D. N. Jesus Christ begins the number of Hispanian Sees and the Sees of each Province, subscribed to its Metropolitan, up to the river Rhone; and last is named Narbonne the Metropolis, and under it nine Sees. Finally fol. 135 from the Ms. book of the Churches of Toledo and Oviedo, in century 6 and 7 extending up to the Rhone. whose title is Itacius, and in which the history of the Kings of the Vandals and Alans in Gallaecia, and afterwards of the Suevi, and finally of the Goths is written, is presented the Division of the boundaries, dioceses and parishes of Spain, made by King Wamba, where similarly is ordered that to the Metropolitan of Narbonne be subject six Sees nominally expressed: at the beginning moreover thus is read, Era DCCIV, that is in the year of Christ DCLXVI Wamba King of the Goths obtained the kingdom for nine years … and among other things which gloriously he did, and there are enumerated, the Province of Gaul, which is called Citerior Spain, rebelling against him, with many troops of the Franks intercepted he subjugated. Behold the name of Spain, at least extended up to the Rhone. But if on the contrary someone should assume, and deny that the second Narbonese Gaul, on the other bank of the same Rhone, by the same appellation can be comprehended, would respond for his country some Sant-Tropezian, that the author of the Acts wished nothing else, than to extol mendaciously the immense power of Celerina as if she on this side of the Rhone then indeed dwelt, when there the sacred body landed; before, however, namely with the husband alive, over the half of Spain she had reigned, beyond the Rhone, that is over the whole citerior Spain; not indeed in the time of Nero so called, but in the time in which he was writing. The places cited from Loyasa's compilation all are found reprinted in the same way in the most recent edition of the Councils, tom. 5 col. 879 and following.
§. IV The Head of S. Torpes at Pisa. Whence and where were the Acts written?
[24] The Acts say in num. 8, that with the ministers leading S. Torpes in the small boat to undergo the punishment of the head, In the Step of the Arno of the beheaded the head, the order on the way was given, that in the Step at the sea he be beheaded: and they came to the Step of the Arno; they went out on the bank of the river … and so was beheaded. From that time, with the bed of the rivers changed, vehemently also changed the face of that maritime shore must have been; unless the town which the Chorographic table of the Florentine Dominion, by John Anthony Magino published, and thence to the Blavian Atlas translated, calls S. Pietro in Gradi, is wrongly above the ditch, which leads to Liburnum, placed, by one mile at the least from the Arno. But in so small a discrepancy of space, not so much to be trusted are the tables we have learned by experience. It is enough that the name is found yet today surviving from such great antiquity: it would be however according to that description the place of beheading the middle between Pisa and the sea way; where the ministers leaving the Saint's head, found a small boat outside … and put in it the body of the Just one … and with the running water they let it go. Of the head of the Martyr what was done are altogether silent the Acts, either because they were written before that was revealed; or because written far from Pisa, where the notice of such revelation had not arrived. Therefore of this sacred Relic now nothing else is established to us, than that it in century XIII was preserved and venerated in a place, near to that which we have said is called S. Peter at the Steps, and which according to Razzius distant by the third mile from the city overlooks the sea; and in the chorographic table passed over now obtains the name from S. Luxorius Martyr, and commonly is called San-Rossore. He is venerated here on XXI August with companions Cesellus and Camerinus, having suffered martyrdom at Cagliari in Sardinia under Diocletian and Maximian: and preserved in the church of S. Luxorius, whose sacred remains were brought here by the Pisans, when they themselves held that island under their dominion, with others feeling otherwise, of others is the opinion, with Ferrarius being witness. The Pisans held moreover the island taken from the Saracens from the year MXVI up to MCCCXXII, when from there they were driven by the Aragonese; that this monastery of S. Luxorius, erected from the spoils of the barbarians, could have abolished first the name of the place, which perhaps was derived from S. Torpes, by reason of the Head formerly preserved there: as testifies a Ms. relation, which from Italian into Latin I make thus.
[25] In the time of Archbishop Frederick (he sat from the year MCCLIV up to MCCLXXVIII) when neither rain nor dew fell upon the earth for a long time, and that produced no fruits, a remedy from heaven was sought, with frequent processions to the sacred places through the city and the suburban towns to be led. On a certain day therefore, when the supplicating people the Prelate had led out toward the mouth of the Arno to the village of S. Luxorius, in remedy of drought is borne to the sea where anciently was preserved the Head of S. Torpes, he received this sacred Relic, and proceeding to the sea, having made on the shore prayer, immersed it in the waters: and besought God, that through the merits of the same Saint to the thirsting
fields rain might be granted. Upon this a more vehement wave gliding in seized the holy Head from the hand of the Prelate: who consternated by that fall, bent his knees to the ground, and with tears and prayers began to supplicate God, that the precious treasure He would restore to him. The efficacy of the prayer was such, that the sea, which had borne it, forthwith carried it back into the hands of the Archbishop. Then truly the universal people seeing this, began to praise S. Torpes, and to be more enkindled to his devotion, and water from him more confidently to ask. So great moreover an abundance of waters suddenly divine providence granted, that with difficulty they could return to the monastery of S. Luxorius; and elicits rain: and the Archbishop with his retinue had to mount horses and run back to the city. From that time moreover huge was the veneration of the Pisans toward S. Torpes: and to this day it endures, not without salutary effect. For on the mountain, where he was beheaded, gushing forth water, sweet and white, of many is believed to be the worker of miracles; and especially to women in childbirth beneficial, restoring lost milk.
[26] By this devotion growing, it seems to have been done, that the Pisans the old church of S. Torpes (if any indeed anciently they had) magnificently restored, a church to him built in the city or new founded from the foundations, at the Northern gate by which one goes to Lucca; and where the church of S. Torpes Martyr was the tradition is, says Francis Lanovius in the Chronicle of the Minims for the year MDLXXXI num. 3. in which year namely, after the new division of the Provinces into sixteen, the Tuscan first made their fruits, having received at Pisa a domicile, in the very place which I have said, of which the possession they entered at the end of July; where even now the holy Martyr's Head with great religion is preserved, and his name retains the monastery, a splendid work, firm, and ample, and by the Pisan citizens to be referred as having been received. is handed over to the PP. Minims, with the head: No memory indeed is extant of the time of the Head transferred from the old monastery of S. Luxorius: if however the Minims received at Pisa some sacred church to D. Torpes there found, as is probable I can scarcely doubt, that in it they found the said Head, since with these Religious no memory survives about it brought into the city later and handed over to them. It happened further that in the year MDCXXX an epidemic plague made great slaughter of men through all Italy. After various processions instituted, it pleased the Pisan Magistrate to bring forth the Head of S. Torpes: by which carried around the plague is calmed. which through the streets and squares of the city carried around, wherever it was carried brought health to men, salubrity to the sky. So the Appendix to the prenoted Italian Vita Ms. of which from Latin to be translated the authors to have been the Minim Fathers, who also added that Appendix, and finally the last article on the plague joined, altogether to me is probable.
[27] We have received the apograph of each at Avignon, by the kindness of P. Balthasar de Riez Capuchin, Thus the Ms. Appendix to the Italian Life, such as he had received at Pisa from the Guardian of his Order there. A similar apograph already before had received Silvanus Razzius, &, as containing the most ancient Passion among the Pisan Saints, to his Italian work on the Lives of the Saints of Tuscany he inserted in the first place word for word, with the Appendix omitted, and published it at Florence where he was living, in the year MDXCIII; and again in the year MDCXXII, with some little preface, in which he excuses, that the first time indeed he used that Vita not without scruple, because he did not remember anywhere that he had read, that Nero ever departed from the City of Rome (in which truly his memory had greatly deceived him, if he had read Suetonius and Tacitus) the scruple moreover that to him diminished, after he found among some historians, that he never made a journey with less than a thousand carriages, (the words are of Suetonius chapter 30) as if by this very thing it became sufficiently probable even that Nero came to Pisa: which to us does not seem. A note then subjoining; Although, he says, this Vita is almost wholly similar to that, of which the apograph from the Pisan Church to Rome before this was sent to Caesar Cardinal Baronius, similar to the older MSS.: who alleged it in the Notes to the Roman Martyrology; and although the same is similar to some, which I have seen at Pisa; and namely most similar to one, to me in this year MDXC in which I write lent by the most Reverend D. Raphael Roncioni Canon of Pisa: it appears nevertheless, by the author of that last not all things were accepted which elsewhere are narrated, as not sufficiently founded and doubtful: for instance that S. Torpes was a most noble Pisan, and by Nero made a Knight, and other things of this kind: which however could be true. That a Pisan could be Torpes and noble by birth, no one will deny; and each is exceedingly probable to me to be: but that manner of creating Knights, which first became known in the middle age under Christian Princes, cannot be drawn to the times of Nero, except through the highest license of unskillful fabling: from which although the author of the Acts is not excused, more ancient nevertheless even he was, than that this he could have dreamed.
[28] Meanwhile if, with the Acts laid aside for a time, in so far as fabulous they are convicted to be, which laid aside, Torpes seems a more probable narration about S. Torpes I would by conjecture weave; I would suppose, that the fable itself, as to many of its circumstances, has some foundation in truth. And so I would say, not elsewhere indeed than at Rome was Nero seen and rebuked by S. Torpes; but this then to have happened, when Nero from the Palatine to the Esquiline made a house; which first Transitory, soon by fire consumed and restored, the Golden he named. About the space and adornment of this house Suetonius sufficed to have related, that its vestibule was, in which a Colossus of CXX feet stood with his own image: and that of the same was such breadth, that it had triple porticoes a mile long; likewise a pool, like the sea surrounded by buildings, in the appearance of cities: country places besides, with fields and vineyards and pastures and woods varied, to have contradicted Nero, building the golden house at Rome, with a multitude of every kind of cattle and wild beasts. In the other parts, says Suetonius, all things were smeared with gold, distinguished with gems, and shells of unions… When such a house he was dedicating, he so far approved of it, that he said as if a man at length he had begun to dwell. There were not lacking those who at one so madly and prodigally, indeed ruinously, building should mock with sayings or songs, whence this also arose: Rome will become a house, migrate to Veii, Quirites; If that house does not also occupy Veii. At which he indeed wonderfully patient, with Suetonius bearing witness chapter 39, neither sought the authors; and raging against the Christians, and certain ones through an informer denounced to the Senate, he forbade to be afflicted with a graver punishment: if however such things to his face anyone had said, and his insane projects had despised, shall we believe that he ought to have acted secure from his anger? What moreover, if the same had also shown that to himself displeased the cruelty against the Christians begun to be exercised, on the occasion of the falsely imputed fire? What finally, if he had heard his own name, as a Christian, denounced? These things therefore either separately each, or together all, by obscure relation and vulgar tradition preserved about S. Torpes, could give the foundation to the Passion of such a kind as we have given to be written; to the Saint himself, and so to have fled to Pisa. acting at Rome and now perhaps a Catechumen, was the occasion of fleeing to Pisa in Tuscany, his country similarly his own; where having received baptism now more secure and stronger, either through assassins sent from Rome was killed, or by public judgment condemned by the Prefect of the city Silvinus, son and successor of Satellicus.
[29] What pertains to the other part of the same Legend, in which is treated of the transvection of the body to another province; that as similarly is obscured by fabulous circumstances, in so far however as it names Spain, neither (as we have already seen) of nation, for the time in which the author could have lived, Whether the name of Spain be present or absent in the MSS. matters not, greatly favors; even though Equilinus and Galesinius, simply Spain writing (when that name had ceased even of Narbonese Gaul to be understood) seem to favor the Lusitanians; truly by error rather than by counsel. Wherefore I think with superfluous solicitude they are anxious, who, that this handle also from the Spaniards they may snatch, greatly busy themselves to find exemplars, in which the very name of Spain has either by negligent scribes fallen out, or by smatterers been on purpose passed over, or even turned into the name of Narbonese Gaul; of which however conversion hitherto no exemplar could be found. Ferrarius indeed in the Catalog of the Saints of Italy on the day XXIX April thus notes: Mombritius on III kal. May writes that S. Torpes was crowned with martyrdom, but has certain things little probable, especially indeed about his burial, which on the shore of Narbonese Gaul, where the town of S. Torpes is extant, to the holy Martyr to have been given, his Acts in the Pergamene Codex of the Pisan Church have. But little are we moved by this Annotation, because we believe Ferrarius wrote at Pavia in Lombardy, and the matter of the Catalog he gathered. Not with his own therefore, but with others' eyes he saw the alleged Codex: nor is it to be cared what perhaps the Pisan Ms. had: we know moreover that he often was deceived by informations, either little truthful or perversely understood. This truly even now to him to have happened, is gathered from Razzius, who at Florence very near to the city of Pisa writing, and beyond controversy all the Pisan MSS. with his own eyes having scrutinized, sufficiently indicates that nothing such there he found, when the annotation fixed to the Legend of S. Torpes thus he concludes: Notwithstanding that in the foresaid Legend both manuscript and related in the Saints' collection … is said, that the place to which the small boat landed, is in Spain; most certain however is, that the town of S. Torpes (in which is believed his body to be) is in Provence: where note, "It is believed," is said, not, "It is read."
[30] Meanwhile that Pisan Codex by various, and also by us in vain sought, is not found, a loss, as to the present point (as much as I at least judge) not great. For not because at Pisa the holy Martyr suffered, Nor indeed at Pisa do the Acts seem to have been composed is it consequent that there were purer Acts; unless we believe that there also they were composed first. This truly by no reason seems to me probable, considering such great fabulosity, as much as in that place and so close to Rome could have been thrown into paper, or received by anyone, I shall not easily be persuaded. Indeed the more strong are the prejudices, by which the Provincials arrogate the Saint to themselves, the more I incline to think, that this drowsy farrago, with barbarism gaining strength, was among them composed by someone, who from the uncertain traditions of the vulgar and the inventions of his own head patched it together, in the first church of S. Torpes on his feast day to be read aloud. From this moreover exemplar others and others through Gaul and Italy transcribed their own: whence it has come about, that first the Gauls Usuardus and Ado in their Martyrologies remembered S. Torpes. And Ado indeed, expressly adding that the festivity of the Martyr and the assembly
of citizens is held on XVI Kalends of June, nor a feast of the Saint instituted for this day. supposed that into Provence the body landed, no other Citizens to me will it seem to indicate, than those who now from him have the name. From the fact also that of this festivity the Acts do not make mention, I shall suspect that they were written, when still the Saint's body lay in the first church, which had been erected to him after the persecutions; this however afterwards being amplified, on account of the concourse of those sailing and there fulfilling their vows, and with the sacred body more magnificently placed, the new feast, which most Mss. Martyrologies call of the Translation, prevailed over the old feast on which the Passion was venerated, as in most other Saints has happened.