ON THE HOLY ROMAN MARTYRS
BASILISSA OR BASILLA, AUREUS, AND NUSCIA OR NUSCA
ON THE OLD SALARIAN WAY.
HISTORICAL COMMENTARY.
The cult of Basilla and her Companions from the Hieronymian Martyrology: the bad faith of the Acts of St. Eugenia, into which they are rashly inserted. The place of burial.
Basilissa or Basilla, at Rome on the Salarian Way (St.)
Aureus or Aurea, at Rome on the Salarian Way (St.)
Nuscia or Nusca, at Rome on the Salarian Way (St.)
BY THE AUTHOR D. P.
[1] Three transcripts of the Hieronymian Martyrology, the Corbie, the Lucca and the Blumian, after the African Martyrs named, thus inscribed in the Hieronymian Martyrology, continue this day XX of May thus: At Rome on the Salarian Way of Basilissa, Aureus, Nuscia, or Nusca: for so the latter two have: for which in the old MS. of the Queen of Sweden in the Holstenian Animadversions is read, Of Basilissa with two others. Florentinius however judges these corrupted, and prefers the reading of the most ancient of all, the Epternach copy, which seems to have At Rome of Basila: at Ostia of Aurea. This opinion is favored by certain MSS. found at Dijon, it is taken for the Basilla praised in the Acts of St. Eugenia at Reichenau, at Monte Cassino, and at Lucca, in which Basilla alone is named. And in agreement with these Usuard and Ado say, At Rome on the Salarian Way, the birthday of St. Basilla Virgin and Martyr, who, being of royal stock and having a most illustrious betrothed, accused by him of being a Christian, it was decreed by Gallienus Augustus, that she should either accept her betrothed, or perish by the sword. Approached about this and refusing to give consent, she was run through with the sword. The pseudo-Bede and Notker follow, and generally the more recent ones with the present Roman one. But they follow on the faith of the Acts of St. Eugenia, in which is read, Basilla was run through with the sword on the twentieth day of May: and thus that part which pertains to Basilla, excerpted thence, under her name alone, on May XX is found in many Passionals in MS.
[2] Those Acts are indeed exceedingly old: for Alcimus Avitus, Bishop of Vienne, who presided over the Council of Épaone in Gaul in the year DXVII, marked with the 5th century, in the book which he composed on the Praises of Virginity to his sister Fuscina, had them before his eyes, and judged them worthy to be rendered in verse from line 565 to 615. Likewise also Metaphrastes believed them worthy, which in that elegant style of his he should commend to the Greeks: whence to the Eastern Churches as well as to the Western they have become most known: indeed by a wondrous turn of events affording a most pleasing delight to readers and hearers, and contributing not a little to the commendation of Christian virtue, especially of chastity. And yet however much those Acts may once have pleased, now, if they be brought to the Lydian touchstone of historical examination, they will be found to be not gold, but dross: but with fabulous ones. so much so that from them nothing certain can be had concerning her who is inserted into the Hieronymian Martyrology for this day, Basilissa or Basilla. That examination pertains to December XXV, on which St. Eugenia is venerated: yet I am compelled to anticipate that time, at least in passing indicating, why they cannot be approved but deserve to be despised as a fable: because there are not lacking those who think from those Acts is evidently proved the antiquity of the Monastic life in
the East and West, greater than that which we define elsewhere.
In few words therefore receive the by no means obscure marks of the bold fiction, the chief out of many. Thus they begin.
[3] In his seventh Consulship Commodus the Emperor sent the most Illustrious man Philip to Egypt, that he should act as Prefect of Alexandria. Metaphrastes renders: Commodus holding the Empire after Marcus, when he was now passing seven years in it. According to this man, For in the age of Commodus the Emperor, Eugenia of marriageable age, the year CLXXXVI of the vulgar Era would be marked: which to the Latin text, numbering not the years of the Empire, but the Consulships held, would be the year of Christ CLXXXXII, the last of the life of Commodus the Emperor. While Philip was administering that Prefecture, and by the edict of the Emperors should bid Christians depart Alexandria; Eugenia is said, excellently instructed in Philosophical studies, to have gone out into the suburban fields of Alexandria under pretext of health, in reality for the sake of declining marriage with Aquilius, son of Aquilius the Consul: and her dress changed into a manly one, by Helenus Bishop of Heliopolis, together with her eunuchs Protus and Hyacinthus, baptized under the name of Eugenius; and clad as a Monk, in the third year of her conversion she was elected Abbot. Afterwards it is narrated how the same Eugenia, now Eugenius, on account of the excellence of her form, solicited by the matron Melanthia to fornication, and by the same one before her father Philip the Prefect of Egypt, and a little after made Abbot among the Monks with her sex hidden, accused of that very crime which she had refused to commit, and was compelled to disclose her sex and her stock to her parent: who thereupon made a Christian, with his wife and sons, brought it about with the Emperor Severus (he was raised to the Empire in the year CLXXXXIV) that the persecution of Christians should cease in Egypt. He afterwards, in the tenth year of his Prefecture delated to the Emperors Severus and Antoninus, and thus after the year CLXXXXVIIII (when the father declared his son a partner of the Empire) bidden to sacrifice or depart from his dignity, this being laid down, he is said to have been made Bishop of Alexandria.
[4] I do not ask when Commodus, or his successor Pertinax, or finally Severus, ordered Christians to be driven from the cities by new edicts (although it be difficult in all that time to find any notable persecution) Severus Philip himself would have sufficed, (Philip) the father made Bishop of Alexandria, which cannot be said) to bring back the old laws by his own judgment into use. But I do not grasp, how the name of Philip Bishop of Alexandria escaped all the notice of the Church of Alexandria, enumerating the series of its Bishops successively from Mark among domestic and foreign writers: especially if that Philip was ordained to hold Alexandria by Commodus (as the rescript of the Emperors has) not as Prefect, but as King, so that while he remained in life he should not receive a successor; if he held the Magistracy for ten years, notwithstanding the double change of Empire, devolved from Commodus to Pertinax, and from Pertinax to Severus (which kind of continuation perhaps can be proved by no example to be likely true) if finally the same one made Bishop, they lead down to Gallienus the Emperor. ended his life and Pontificate by Martyrdom. There is here, as you see, no slight difficulty: but a greater arises a little after, when Eugenia is said, with her mother Claudia and her brothers, to have returned to Rome, and kindly received by the Senate, which made one of the brothers Proconsul of Carthage, the other Vicar of Africa (as if forsooth that were then the power of the Senate) where when Eugenia was instructing many virgins, with Pope Cornelius assisting, among them she also converted Basilla; so that she repudiated her betrothed; and therefore, Gallienus the Emperor ordering it, she bore the sentence of capital punishment under Nicetius, or (as Metaphrastes calls him) Anicetus, Prefect of the City.
[5] Gallienus began to reign, taken into partnership of the Empire by his father Valerian, in the year of Christ CCLIIII; and that one in the fifth year after led into captivity by the Persians, Pope Cornelius and Anicetus Prefect of the City: which do not stand together: he alone reigned from the year CCLVIIII. Cornelius before either of his beginnings had departed in Life or at least in Pontificate, believed to have been martyred under Decius. We have the Prefects of the City most accurately described in Bucherius from an old parchment, from the beginning of Gallienus through the whole hundred subsequent years; nor yet in these is any Nicetius or Anicetus or anyone akin in name, before Anicius Julianus in the year CCCXXVI. But suppose there was an error in naming the Pontiff, and likewise in naming the Prefect: do you think there can be reconciled the seventh year of Commodus, or even the seventh Consulship, in which Philip passing into Egypt led thither his daughter, not only marriageable, but within a few years even fit for monastic rule, with the time of Cornelius or Gallienus, when she with her mother and brothers still flourishing in age is said to have passed to Rome? She would have had to be then eighty or even ninety years old; but how old her Mother? how old her brothers, greater in age? But if these things are incongruous, as they assuredly are, it follows that the Acts of St. Eugenia, as much as they are varied and pleasing by novelty, so much are they confused in times and persons, and thus can teach us nothing of her whom we here seek, Basilissa or Basilla. For if, with certain Greeks, for Cornelius we substitute Pope Soter, who baptized Basilla; not only Gallienus, but also Commodus the Emperor you must remove: since Soter died before both, namely in the year CLXXI. But if you wish Gallienus retained, as it would behoove, that disciple of Eugenia would not have been hers, unless you feign for yourself another Eugenia than the daughter of Philip, brought to the Prefecture of Egypt by Commodus. Those difficulties did not altogether escape the Ancients. For Vincent of Beauvais, book 11 of the Historical Mirror chapter 75, as was already long ago noted. and Boninus Mombritius, describing the Acts of St. Basilla, such as they found them separately; found them in old MSS. with this preface of an older Collector: In a wondrous manner the histories disagree concerning these Martyrs, who suffered under Decius the Emperor. For Cornelius the Pope is read to have suffered under him, and yet the same is read to have suffered in the deeds of Bl. Eugenia under the Emperors Valerian and Gallienus, who certainly after Decius, and also after Gallus and Volusianus are read to have taken up the Empire. Whether Cornelius suffered death or only exile under Decius (for the Acts of this one also are found greatly depraved) we shall see elsewhere; before Gallienus he certainly died.
[6] These things being thus weighed and the faith of the Eugenian Acts exploded, resting on the prescription of however much time and authority, I observe, that on the old Salarian Way there existed a certain cemetery of Basilla, it will better be said that Basilissa was buried, in the Cemetery of Basilla, by others called of St. Hermes and the holy Protus and Hyacinthus, of which in the old Index of certain chief Martyrs in Bucherius is read, V Kalends of September, of Hermes in Basilla's, on the old Salarian: and III Ides of September, of Protus and Hyacinthus in Basilla's; of which also in Hadrian I Anastasius says, that he renovated the Basilica of the Cemetery of the holy ones Hermes, Protus and Hyacinthus and Basilla, of wondrous magnitude. Hence further of the old Hieronymian Martyrology I seem to elicit a reading of this kind: At Rome on the Salarian Way in Basilla's (understand, Cemetery) of Basilissa, Aureus, Nuscia, namely, the Birthday. Which context, when by the fault of the transcribers, now one, now another name truncated it was read, and on this XX of May in Basilla's cemetery the Birthday of three Martyrs was kept, the names of Basilla and Basilissa not being sufficiently distinguished, occasion seems to have been given to him who applied the memory of Protus and Hyacinthus and Basilla, buried together in the same cemetery, to embellishing the fabulous Acts of Eugenia the Martyr, so that he ascribed to this day the Martyrdom of St. Basilla, although she suffered on another day, June XI, when we shall treat of her. The conjecture is confirmed by the MS. Martyrologies, the Augsburg of St. Udalric and the Paris of Labbe, where Basilla and Basilissa are named separately; but with the name of Victoria from the former class interposed.
[7] Would that now, just as the uncertainty of the notice taken from those Acts is not hard to detect, with 2 companions. so also it were easy to elicit from elsewhere something of greater clarity concerning this day's Basilissa and her companions male and female: for not even this is sufficiently established, whether he ought to be called Aureus, or she Aurea. Yet were Aurea said, I would not wish to confound her with Florentinius (on the faith of the single Epternach, reading in place of Nuscia, the other companion, at Ostia) with St. Aurea of Ostia; who though in the Hieronymian Martyrology she is nowhere else named, yet generally has her cult, and that a famous one, on August XXIV.