ON ST. MANTIUS, MARTYR
SLAIN BY THE JEWS IN LUSITANIA.
IN THE V OR VI CENTURY.
HISTORICAL COMMENTARY
Toward distinguishing his genuine Acts from the fabulous.
Mantius the Martyr, in the territory of Évora and of Burgos in Spain (St.)
BHL Number: 5219
BY THE AUTHOR D. P.
CHAPTER ONE
The Passion, Translations and cult on this day.
About to bring forth into light the genuine Martyrology of the Venerable Bede, desired by many, unknown to all, out of the deep gloom of eight centuries, in which it had lain immersed, before the second Tome of March; we showed the most diligent author to have so woven it together, that of those Saints whose Acts he had found described, he inscribed a compendious eulogy from those same Acts on the very day on which they had suffered or were venerated: but those days he left void of the names of Saints, for which the material of such Acts had not yet come to his hands. Bede's continuator Thus out of the days of the whole year, it fell to him to adorn about a hundred days with the passion of some Saint and almost always a Martyr; there remained likewise to be adorned two hundred and fifty days or more, when he left the work imperfect. To this study applied himself the holy and most renowned Florus, Subdeacon of the Church of Lyons, abounding in no mediocre store and truth of authentic books, as Wandelbert testifies of him, in the year 842 weaving together his metrical calendar, and using chiefly the help and aid of Florus himself. This writer therefore, not a whole century younger than
Bede, Florus of Lyons and flourishing under Charlemagne long before Ado and Usuard, when he had found various Acts of Saints, unknown to Bede; himself endeavored from these to receive, whence he might supply here and there the vacancy left in the Martyrology of Bede, and so that little work grew not a little: which finally the aforesaid Ado and Usuard, neither knowing anything of the other, endeavored each in his own manner to complete and finish, so that the single days might have something which concerning the Saints should be recited in the church. What things are Bede's, those from eight manuscript codices, distinguished from foreign additions, we have given there in capital character: the supplement of Florus three notable manuscripts have exhibited, of which one, namely the Arras, alone has those things which Florus by a first attempt adjoined to Bede, the Tournai and the Liessies also those which by a second.
[2] These things, in the preface to the aforesaid Martyrology drawn out more at length and proved by sure documents, were here summarily to be tasted again, that it might be established how great is the antiquity and authority of those words, which received from the older Acts of St. Mantius are read in the aforesaid Florus in the Tournai and Liessies manuscripts, and are of this kind: XII Kalends of June. In the territory of Évora, the passion of St. Mantius, he hands down that St. Mantius was slain by the Jews: who suffered from the Jews, whom for the confession of the Son of God, stretched out with the bonds of ropes, they scourged with the strokes of blows: afterward they bound the whole body with the tightest bonds, and afflicted the body with so great wounds, that the limbs were fed upon by worms: [to these they add that from the rising of the sun even to its setting a penal number should be added of cultivating the field into heavier tillage]: but unconquered by all these things, he rendered his spirit to God. Thus far the words of two manuscripts, which while the codices are taken some from others, have been not a little corrupted by inert copyists, for what we have given enclosed in [ ] are found in the Liessies alone; from the ancient Acts. the Tournai writer, being able to elicit no sound sense from them, preferred to omit the same: we have somehow restored them to their integrity, having at last received the Acts themselves, transcribed from an old codex of about seven hundred years, by the hand of a most learned man and one rich in such treasures, Don Juan Lucas Cortez, in the year 1674: to which in turn their own authority accedes from the age of Florus who used them.
[3] Whoever after this applied their mind to supplying the Martyrology of Bede, or rather after their example described new but entire Martyrologies, some in a broader, some in a stricter phrase; since they nowhere found the Passion of St. Mantius, which Florus had had before his eyes, and the Saint was otherwise unknown to all the Gauls and Germanies; but there were at hand other more illustrious ones, the additions to Usuard name the place. whose encomia they should inscribe to this XXI day; they judged it should be wholly omitted. Afterward some, who increased Usuard's Martyrology in process of time with Saints brought in from elsewhere, also on this day added in some manuscript copies: In Lusitania at the village of Miliana the passion of St. Mantius, slain by the Jews. So Molanus professes himself to have found in his Additions to Usuard, marking the said words with the letter q, that he may signify they are had from a certain confused Martyrology of churches, since namely he could not say, of what church properly it was, as there are with us very many ancient ones; which it is established to have been described for the use of some church, although it is unknown of which, because in the manuscripts that is never expressed. Meanwhile whoever wrote those things, it is plain he did not describe from Florus, who did not name the place of martyrdom; but received it from elsewhere, namely from the very old Acts, or also from Martyrologies, formerly described and augmented in Spain.
[4] It was venerated at Évora with an Office of 9 Lessons. The Church of Évora, in whose district the thing happened, was wont to celebrate the feast of St. Mantius as solemn, and (unless something has been changed more recently about the day) even now celebrates it on May XXI with an Office of nine Lessons; but which we grieve to be defiled with fables, unheard of to venerable antiquity, so far at least as concerns the history of the Passion: for the VIII lesson and the IX are almost taken from the unvaried words of the Acts, containing the manner of the body's finding and elevation: above whose marble tomb at last, on account of the frequency of miracles, a notable basilica was built. now at Villanova where the body is: Thomas de Trujillo adds, in the second Tome of the Treasury of preaching, Col., that in the destruction of Spain made by the Saracens the body was thence translated: but now it is found in a certain town called Villa-nova, in a certain monastery of the Order of St. Benedict, named after his name, which temple is assiduously frequented by all the neighboring regions. But our Mariana, in book 4 on the Affairs of Spain chapter 5, thus renders in Latin the words of Lorenzo Padilla, treating the same matter in the Catalogue of the Saints of Spain of the year 1538: The body, out of various wandering into Asturias, at the time when the Moors occupied Spain, at last came to rest at Villa-nova of St. Mantius, a famous monastery dedicated to it, four thousand paces from Medina, which has its name from Rio-seco. George Cardoso, in his Hagiology, places on the day XXVI of May the dedication of the church, on the credit of an inscription of this kind set there on one of the pillars: In the Era 1333 the church of St. Mantius was consecrated on the VI Kalends of June. But he adds that its founder was Don Alfonso Tello Meneses, who taking to wife Doña Teresa Sánchez, natural daughter of Don Sancho first of this name, but second King of Lusitania, in order to ennoble Villa-nova, which his father Tello Tellez de Meneses had founded, from the year 1195. obtained from the King his father-in-law the faculty of fetching the holy body: which being obtained he erected for it a magnificent church, and caused it to be consecrated in the year 1195, three years after he gave the same Villa-nova to the monastery of Sahagún, on this condition, that there should always be maintained there twelve monk Presbyters with an Abbot or Prior. There therefore under the high altar rested the body of St. Mantius until the year 1565, when Diego de Soto, Abbot of the Royal monastery of Sahagún (as Patron of the Villanovan Priory depending on his monastery) by a Brief of Pope Pius V, obtained license of transferring it into a silver chest very beautiful: which he placed within the same chapel at the side of the Gospel, after he had distributed thence various particles among the neighboring Abbeys, and had brought the sacred head into his own monastery; where it is frequented on the day of the anniversary feast with a famous concourse of peoples, excited by the lure of plenary Indulgence.
[5] That Medina, to which Mariana says Villa-nova is near, is a town of the diocese of Palencia in the kingdom of Leon, and is distant from the city of Burgos twenty Spanish miles, formerly also in both Castiles, fewer from that of Astorga and Leon. That Tamayo found nothing in the ancient Breviaries of these cities concerning St. Mantius, the silence of those about them proves: the Palentine he alleges, which we do not have; if however it is of the same antiquity as the Burgensian, we scarcely doubt, but that it has described with almost similar words an Office of as many Lessons, namely three, and those short, received from the beginning of the old Acts: such Lessons many Churches in Gaul and Spain began to use, after, judging the prolixity of the Acts among the divine Offices to be inconvenient, and being long since wont to recite only the beginning of them, they began to make for themselves Breviaries of more convenient use; in which they inscribed, either those very beginnings of the Acts which I have said divided into modest little Lessons, or an Epitome of them made for the same end. From old Castile to the new and the kingdoms joined to it the cult of St. Mantius was at some time transferred. For Galesinius, having cited in the Annotations the Cordovan Breviary, inserted the memory of St. Mantius Martyr in Lusitania into his Martyrology; and with his customary levity, divining, added, under Maximian: and that not on the XXI, but XXII of May. Galesinius was followed by the author of the German Martyrology, Canisius, as we advise on the following day in the Things Passed Over. Then with the Queen of Sweden Christina we found a Breviary, called Mozarabic according to the rule of Blessed Isidore, and by the order of Francisco Ximenez the Archbishop printed at Toledo in the year 1511, in whose calendar on this day was simply inscribed the name of Mantius Mart., so that a bare Commemoration seems to be prescribed or a whole Office from the common. Such a Breviary must he have had, who for the use of the Church of Basel near Switzerland, by the order of his Bishop Jacob Christopher in the year 1584, revised and on every side augmented the Martyrology to be printed at Freiburg in the Breisgau: for thus there is read, At Toledo the passion of St. Mantius Martyr: which is to be understood not of the place of Martyrdom, but of cult, is had from what has already been said. Gonsalvo Dávila in the second Tome of the Ecclesiastical Theater page 250 recites the consecration of an altar, made in the year 1254 by Benedict Bishop of Ávila; where with others are said to be enclosed the Relics of Mantius Martyr.
[6] but the cult now antiquated, But that cult of St. Mantius among the Toledans, of whatever sort, was by no means long-lasting to it: for just as his name was absent from the Calendar, which was prefixed to the Mozarabic Missal, by the care of the same Archbishop Ximenez printed before about the year 1500, so also it is absent from the same reprinted by the care of Archbishop Siliceo about the year 1551, as well as from all the proper Offices of the Church of Toledo struck and restruck in this century. Nor in this only, but also in the Churches of Cordova, Burgos, and the very Palentine the same cult is antiquated, as is plain from the Order of reciting the divine Office, which for all Spain and the single dioceses and religious orders we have struck in various years of this century; in which for the Cordovan and Burgensian church and diocese, and likewise for the Palentine, but at Évora resumed not a word is prescribed concerning St. Mantius: so that nothing now seems to be done concerning him in all Spain, except there where the body is, and in Lusitania. But this latter then at last began, when the other provinces ceased: which its piety toward itself, reviving after so many centuries, the holy Martyr seemed to have notably approved, when Theotonius of Bragança, Archbishop of Évora, on occasion of the arm received April 12. Philip second King of the Spains and first of Portugal interposing his authority, received the arm of the most holy Martyr, and in the greatest temple of Évora placed it with solemn pomp. So Tamayo de Salazar on the day XV of May, on which it is inscribed in the Roman Martyrology, because so on the Margin of his book Trujillo had noted it; although the aforecited ancient Breviaries alleged in the Annotations mark the XXI day. George Cardoso in the Lusitanian Hagiology refers the Translation of the arm to Évora, not of the body to Braga (which I know not how crept upon us in April among the Things Passed Over) to April XII, with a prolix epitome of fables to be discussed below; and indicates that it was made in the year 1592; and in the Notes describes a Sapphic Ode of our Emmanuel Pimenta, in which applauding the Martyr brought back to his own, among other things he sings thus:
We rebind the bones in jeweled gold; With the mouth we offer libation to the ashes received, Which a pyramid, made by rare arts, Reserves for thee.
As concerns the day XV of May, the earlier Translation May 15. I would believe this to be the anniversary of the primary Translation to the Villanovan monastery,
where (as in the aforecited place says Cardoso, and again on this XXI of May) not many years ago, on the same or another day, a new translation of the body was made, into a silver chest, about to offer through transparent crystals in the sides the very sacred bones to be beheld by the venerating people, in the right part of the greater Chapel. But when this Monastery was founded, and ennobled with that sacred pledge, we shall gladly learn. Meanwhile from the Order of reciting the Office, struck about the year 1617 at Lisbon, we observe, that not only in the Church of Évora, but also in the Church of Elvas near it, the received cult of St. Mantius is continued on the XXI day.
[7] Further, both from the Acts and from the Lessons of the Burgensian Breviary thence taken it is gathered, that Mantius, The Saint was a slave of the Jews bought into the servitude of the Jews or by some other chance delivered as a slave, a Christian by religion, and brought by his Masters from Rome into Lusitania, was. For although the Emperor Constantine in the year 339 had passed a law at Constantinople, that if a Jew should not hesitate to traffic in slaves conscious of the venerable faith, all that are found with him should forthwith be taken away; nor should any delay be interposed, but that he be deprived of the possession of those men who are Christians. Although also renewing the same law Honorius in the year 417 had decreed, that a Jew ought neither to procure a Christian slave, nor obtain one by title of largess; yet that the law itself was so far little rigidly observed it indicates, when he indulgently subjoins, that those whom, made participants of the right religion, the nefarious superstition seems already to have obtained in its census, he may possess under this law, that he confound them neither unwilling nor willing with the filth of his own sect; so that if this form be violated, the authors of so great a crime may be punished with capital penalty, proscription accompanying. But what at Rome in the urban frequency obstinate impiety had not dared, slain in the V or VI century that far from that theater of the world in the solitude of a far-off pilgrimage it did not shudder to do, with that bitterness which is described in the Acts. Which crime they could perpetrate far even more confidently, if their coming into Lusitania happened in those times, in which the Suevi possessing it were still either Gentiles, which they were from the year 408 down to the reign of Rechiarius the first Christian King, created in the year 448; or infected with the Arian heresy, which embracing about the year 80 of the century already mentioned, they did not lay aside, except under Theodemir, promoted to the kingdom in the year 558, as was shown on March X treating of St. Matrona the Lusitanian Virgin number 16. and revealed in the 7th century The manifestation certainly of the body we do not think to have been made except the Christian commonwealth being wholly restored and flourishing: and that manifestation not a few years after the building of the church could follow.
[8] Yet Tamayo seems to divine, when he says, that Julian the Count, the author of the temple, his wife Julia being dead (which again is assumed in the manner of one divining, since nowhere is his wife so called) was made a monk, and then Abbot of the monastery of St. Michael, who confirmed by his subscription, first among the Abbots, the Synodical writings of the Toledan Council XI, celebrated in the era 713 that is in the year of Christ 675. For although the kingdom of the Suevi in Lusitania and Galicia had already ceased, extinguished under Leovigild King of the Goths; yet there persevered the division of provinces, nor was any of those who were subject to the primacy of Braga present at the said Toledan Council. from a more probable conjecture. But that we think the passion of St. Mantius happened in the fifth or sixth century, rather than in some one of the earlier, this is done for this reason, that we may approach as nearly as can be to the time, in which we judge the body to have been revealed: then also because in the first three centuries of the Christian Era, in which the monstrosity of the Gentile tyrants sported in the blood of Christians, we read nowhere any such thing committed by the Jews, by the common crime of several; inasmuch as they had wherein to feed their eyes and minds, although they did not themselves bloody their own hands. But neither in the fourth century do we yet find any such thing; because they then for the first time, equally as the Christians, breathed again; but as it proceeded, having been made by little and little more opulent, they were rendered also more insolent against the Christians, as appears from the aforecited law of Honorius: which is so far from having checked their fierceness, that at last the Emperor Heraclius and Dagobert I King of the Franks judged it necessary, to drive those who would not be baptized from their Empires, as we indicated on March XXV, on occasion of St. Richard slain by the same at Paris. But before we proceed further to refute the figments, contrary to the conclusion premised, the very ancient Acts must be exhibited, found under this title, The Passion of St. Mantius Martyr, who suffered from the Jews on the day XII Kalends of June. The style inflated at once and rude according to the genius of the age, made rougher by the fault of the transcribers, has needed here and there a kindly conjecture, which we have so applied, that, dismissing many things which it was not easy either to supply or to correct, we may wish more manuscripts to be found, from whose collation among themselves the matter may succeed more happily and more solidly. Meanwhile observe that by the more recent it is always written Mancius for Mantius.
CHAPTER II.
The Acts kindly communicated from the old manuscript of Don Juan Lucas Cortez.
[9] Among these Martyrs, who crowned with a sublime passion, sought perpetual life by present death, the religious passion of St. Mantius is to be celebrated with worthy honor. For he was an inhabitant by nation of the City of Rome… especially since they were hard with the bars of Jewish perfidy, Led by the Jews into Lusitania, who thought the religion of the Lord to be not in the heart of believers, but in the flesh: who when they had come to b the Spains in the Province of Lusitania with the same Most Blessed one, in the Évoran c territory, in the estate to which now Miliana d is the name, on e the highway set in the midst of travelers; he began by the sacrilegious adjuration of the raging ones to be compelled, that the faithful servant of Christ, who with a pious mind daily took the body and blood of God, he is solicited to desert the faith: by the command of the deceiving devil, who had infused into their hard breasts the deadly poisons of the Jewish superstition, and should take the pleasure of confession. f To these things St. Mantius the undaunted soldier g … placing his arms, helmet, or breastplate in the sign of the Cross, with confident speech answered: I cannot hear false Gods, h I ought not to be a lying witness, I utterly refuse not punishments, I rather seek death through which the eternity of life may be conferred upon me. If you seek a confession, and constant in it I cannot confess otherwise, except the Father unbegotten, the Son begotten of the Father, but the Holy Spirit to have proceeded from the one Father and His Son, whence not three as Fathers, nor one solitary, and not three: but thence truly three, because they are one; and truly one, because they are three.
[10] This being heard, with a more powerful i anger the devil undertook to kindle the hearts of his servants. he is direly scourged, The devoted servant of God is hurried to punishment; and every garment of the body being plucked off, his limbs being spread apart, stretched with the bonds of ropes, he is scourged with innumerable strokes of blows; as if of a garment k the limbs could be stripped which faith and confession had already clothed; as if the fierce ones could… the spirit whose readiness had grown into a crown. Lest it should be too little to have suffered so great things, with a different kind of bonds his whole body is bound fast, he is bound with chains, that no more by those bonds he should be loosed, with chains running among the hard bonds about his neck, hands, and feet; thus he received iron on his feet, that the bonds might more be dissipated, when the limbs by bodily affection had begun to sustain monstrous ulcers; so that the limbs were fed upon by worms, which gathered with his hand after the manner of holy Job he laid back into his own wounds. To these is added this, that from the rising of the sun even to its setting a penal number l should be added of cultivating the field into heavier tillage. But he amid all these things, and dies in them and in the rustic labor. advanced by the illumination of the Holy Spirit, conceiving hymns with his labor passed the single days; adding this, that only in the night, which the darkness should give, religion then resting a little from labor, sleep being put to flight from himself, should resound with salutary blessings; while amid all these things he was always cheerful of countenance, secure of heart, with the body afflicted as it ought, the spirit, which endured in this confession, freed from the earthly prison, came to the martyrdom due to itself.
[11] Appearing to one having a difficult lawsuit This is known by them in the highest grief, that the blessed Martyr in this confession had departed, groaning alike and thinking to conquer dead him whom living they could not overcome. The body is dragged, and so bound on the neighboring public highway the earth covers it with a scanty scattering of soil, so that it was no more to bury it, than to betray it. By his merit it was brought about, that it could not long lie hidden. This possession not after many years devolved to Christians, and while so very famous a deed lay hidden, a certain noble head of a family was making a journey on the highway not far from the road, who for his patrimony, beyond the loss of cares and ruins, seemed to have laid out his fortunes. m When he had sat down n there, to him resting St. Mantius came, knocks him sleeping, bids him take up his body, commands him to watch, compels him to hear; so that by the signification of the countenance, the habitude of the body, the stature, age and dress of the Martyr, were discerned to the beholding eyes: he publishes his own name, bids it be noted, admonishes, testifies that he will fulfill the promises; he betrays the whole order o of his passion, speaks the martyrdom, which from the iniquity of the former superstition, the family of that man by dissimulation was suppressing. He runs through all his business, and promises victory. narrates things past, reveals the present thoughts with gladness, designates the future; the victory, which the litigant could not hope even after a long tract of years, within the spaces of seven days he promises; he admonishes the returning man to bury his body more honorably.
[12] Rising therefore not so much from sleep, as from the vision glorious, he inquires after all the signs in the same possession; the name, age, countenance, limbs, passion, sepulture he seeks: it is designated by the voices of all dwelling there. O wonderful thing! O faith made known! Those things are approved which had been suppressed, as if human envy could conceal a Martyr of Christ. He gives thanks to God, joyfully sets out on the journey, redoubles the stages, secure already of the victory. Nor delay. The palm [p] he set up his faith in the length of the journey, He finds it entire and buries it honorably, his faith the promised victory accompanies, the return is not delayed, the signs are recalled, the sepulchre is sought, the bonds and the body of the Martyr in fetters are found so entire, that you would believe it now buried: with a precious stone the happy limbs are laid up, which the look of the delicate Martyr adorned into the fashion of crystal: a temple of no great work is constructed for the swiftness. miracles becoming frequent at it. Straightway the divulgation seeks it out, swift fame fills the devout ears, there is made a concourse of all there, the desires of the penitent grow, and of those mutually promising vows: among whom many benefits, granted by divine largess in various places, we describe in few, lest we make weariness for the readers… [q] Another time Julian, a most noble man, in a grave offense at the [r] Court
was being sought: Julian being freed through the Saint meanwhile he made a worthy Basilica: for not only is he freed from this necessity, but also at that time was deemed worthy with a different dignity (which pertained to his praise) in that palace [s]: he attended upon the Martyr's will, which he merited to obtain: returning eagerly, he searches out the limbs of his desires. But to another [t] old woman, by name Julia, of a religious mind and good profession, the possession devolved.
[13] He disposing the Basilica with a huge work, the aforementioned old woman surrounding part of the work, and Julia the matron, with devout mind consents. The Basilica of the faithful [v] is constructed,… the buildings are disposed through an octagon of columns with admirable work. A Catechumeneum [x] also is added above to the Basilica: the body of the holy Martyr is consecrated beneath the blessed altar. Nothing earthly is there formed, but the spaces of the boundless edifice far and wide are raised with lofty summits: precious courts are suspended with ornaments of columns, all the walls are clothed with marbles, the floor is decorated with smiling mosaic, the roofs are woven with wonderful [y] beams: and lest anyone should think the fabric unhonored upon so precious an altar, a noble basilica is built. the wood with the very altar is decorated on high with metals of gold and silver. How great gifts there in vessels, precious necklaces of gems in the ministries, cups of bowls divine seem to have been collated, it is not expedient thence to write, because neither can the benefits be numbered [z] nor the gifts. Lest it should be too little; about the Basilica, walls are built broadwise with towers disposed, so that whoever from afar shall have beheld it, may judge a splendid city to have grown up. Groves are disposed, which… the pleasant ways of travelers… Not only in the possessions of the buildings is one surrounded, but near in the very journey are found ministering newly running waters, flowing from large fountains; so that from the merit of the Martyr and beyond the proclamation of the over-amplification, in honor so famous a possession has grown. These things comprehended small out of many, imparting [*] of the praises of good things the discourse has not been silent, lest anyone, who shall have read this order, may easily judge that more were passed over than said. These are the worthy commerces of the Saints, that the devil is conquered, and the Omnipotent is praised together; our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom is glory for ages of ages. Amen.
ANNOTATIONS.
p. The manuscript reads At Palmenis in the length of the journey setting up faith the promises accompany, the victory is obtained.
q. It is probable that some miracles are here subjoined, which the copyist passed over.
r. The Court (Comitatus) in the writings of that age is the same as the royal Curia. Meanwhile the compiler of the Évoran Breviary hence took the occasion of bringing in Count Julian, understanding perhaps him, who avenged the rape inflicted upon his daughter by King Roderic at the beginning of the 8th century, the Moors being brought into Spain.
s. In the manuscript is added, full.
t. An old woman here seems to be put for Lady, in Spanish Señora: in the Évoran Breviary, a Religious Matron, by Tamayo the wife of the aforesaid Julian.
v. I delete these words found in the manuscript, Of the blessed fount they are joined; meanwhile their sense the Évoran Breviary suggests thus, They built the Basilica… with a portico, which was watered by a large fount led down by subterranean channels.
x. The manuscript reads Caticuminum… is added beneath: but that one had to ascend, not descend, to the Catechumenium (which the middle age wrote Caticuminum), and that by the very name are signified the upper porticoes of the church, after his manner learnedly Du Cange shows in the Glossary.
y. The manuscript reads Hurdles.
z. The same place reads To wonder.
* The same place reads Impatient of good things.
CHAPTER III.
The fables, fastened upon St. Mantius in later centuries, are rejected.
[14] You have seen, reader, the ancient Acts; now also see the fables, which the loquacity of the unskilled vulgar, and the excessive credulity of posterity mixed with them. They appear first in the vulgar tongue in the Legends printed throughout Spain, of which one is with us, struck at Seville among many others by Juan Cromberger in the year 1532, and this Lorenzo Padilla fifty years after inserted into the Catalogue of the Saints of Spain. Fables inserted into the Évoran Breviary They appear then also in Latin in the Évoran Breviary of the year 1548, with no slight augment of fabulosity, distributed into Lessons, which afterward Fr. Diego del Rosario turned into the Lusitanian tongue, and inserted into the histories and lives of the Saints, struck in the year 1585. Of those Lessons, which are nine, this is the exordium: Among the Martyrs of Christ, who laureled with blood merited perpetual crowns, the happy passion of the Most Blessed Mantius is to be celebrated by our city with so much the ampler honor, by how much more peculiarly we owe to him the faith of Christ Jesus preached and received, from the very beginning of the nascent Church. It is said then, in words somewhat more prolix, but the same in sense, that Mantius the Roman, being in Judea with the Romans, met with the throng of the Hebrews the Lord entering into Jerusalem, and made His disciple reclined with the rest at the supper, and ministered to Him washing the feet of the Apostles, and beheld Him alive from the dead, then inflamed with the Holy Spirit, proceeded to the bounds of further Spain; and when he had come to Évora, and preaching the faith, and converting many, and ministering the sacraments within the city and without, had run into the eyes and hatred of the Gentiles, he was led to the President Validius; and having suffered these and many other things, because he would not adore the Gods, which Florus says he himself sustained from the Jews. Only where in the Acts it is said he was pressed with the heavier tillage of cultivating the field, there it is read, that in the quarries hewing stones and cement for the public work from morning even to night he was wont to be wearied; finally that he expired amid torments, and lay unburied in a dunghill, until, the face of the place being changed, his body so cast away came into oblivion.
[15] they make him a disciple of Christ, See how on occasion of the Jews, commemorated in the true Acts of St. Mantius, this unhappy machine has risen up; by which from Rome to Jerusalem, and thence to Évora Mantius should be brought; and indeed from the very college of the disciples of Christ; no longer a lay man, whose great praise it would be, the regard of his impious Masters being laid aside, to frequent the Sacraments after the Christian manner, in a region long since accustomed to them; but a minister of the Sacraments themselves, and so a Priest, for the cause of preaching the faith set out to the Gentiles, who had heard nothing of it before this. It was further consequent, that such and so great an Apostle should be feigned to have suffered under some Roman President, martyred under the President Validius. before the Tribunal, in the public forum of Évora, those things which are everywhere read of various Martyrs: there was also fabricated for that President, who should so mightily torture the Christians, a fitting name: and by the same work it was brought about, that Lusitania should be believed among the first, not only to have received the faith of Christ, but to have seen the same subsigned with Martyrial blood. Others add that he was Bishop of Évora. Upon this further so ruinous foundation, resting on no probable authority, certain men building, persuaded themselves and others, that St. Mantius was the first Bishop of Évora: with so great a confidence indeed of asserting, as if they spoke the most attested truth; but with so evident an unlikeness of truth, if anyone shall be willing to advert his mind, that what not so long since they began to say and believe concerning St. Peter, the Martyr of Rates, as the first Bishop of Braga (who perhaps was no more even a Bishop than Mantius) under Nebuchadnezzar banished into Spanish exile, and there raised to life by St. James the Apostle, and which on April XXVI were exploded by us; cannot seem more discordant, than these things concerning St. Mantius Martyr.
[16] Not so absurd, nay somewhat similar to that which concerning St. Werner, slain by the Jews at Wesel on April XIX we have narrated, is in Tamayo; where he says, that near the forum of Évora there is a certain small pillar, cut down in the forum at a column enclosed in a little cell, with iron gratings set around and a lamp hung up, which mortals religiously and piously venerate, because to that pillar the Martyr of Christ was bound when he was cut down with scourges. I fear however lest this persuasion had its origin from that fiction, which concerning the place and manner of Martyrdom as we have said, was more recently obtruded on the credulous vulgar, long since forgetful of the true cause, which perhaps far otherwise induced such a veneration of that pillar, having nothing in common with St. Mantius. No better founded seems that which Trujillo opines; namely that in honor of this Saint, very many women throughout all Spain are called Mentias. For Mentia is not said from Mantius, but by the usual aphaeresis of most peoples in proper names of the first syllable, from whom everywhere Mentias should be named; it is the same which would entirely be said and ascribed Clementia: in which manner I would gladly believe the very name of Mantius (if the Saint was truly of Roman either origin or tongue) to have been used for Amantius: for under this name several Saints also in Italy are found called, and namely St. Amantius Presbyter of the church of Città di Castello, to be commemorated on the day XXVI of September; and in the month of April on the VIII day, St. Amantius Bishop of Como, who both flourished in the V century; that I may be silent of various Martyrs in various places, and Gallican Saints of the same name, commemorated in our work.
[17] But because fables, like balls rolled through snows, grow continually, yet not always in the same form; therefore he who to all antiquity had been known only as a Martyr, and under this title alone was formerly proposed to be venerated, one of the 70 Disciples. began to be called and believed a Bishop, equally as most others of the first disciples of Christ and of the Apostles. For who would doubt, when the Lessons of the Breviary mentioned the Sacraments administered by him? Therefore also our Mariana could be persuaded
that in chapter 5 of book 4, treating of the Christians slain under Trajan, he should so write: Among these was Mantius, the first Bishop at Évora in Lusitania, born indeed in Aemilia, as some report, born in Aemilia, and one of the seventy disciples of Christ. We have various Catalogues of these disciples of Christ; but nowhere do we find the name of Mantius, or another near to it. When the Évoran Breviary called him a Roman; what cause there was, that those whom Mariana followed should say he was born in Aemilia, we do not divine.
[18] The fabricator of the Pseudo-Dexter Chronicle and of similar trash under the name of Julian, about to produce something still grander into the midst, invented under a double name Memmius Mantius, a Saint common to the Gauls and the Spaniards; who however among these is constantly called Mantius, among those Memmius, and ordained Bishop by the Apostles for both, first founded the Church of Châlons in Gaul, then crossing over into the Spains preached at Évora and died there. Which invention so pleased the Lusitanians, and the same who to the Gauls is St. Memmius Bishop of Châlons. that lest the Évorans alone should glory in this first Bishop, they contended that to him also the first place ought to be given in the cathedra of Lisbon. Nay, Roderic de Acuña endeavors to prove, that even before St. James the Apostle came into Spain, his Lusitanians were imbued by Mantius with the rudiments of the Christian faith, immediately after the martyrdom of St. Stephen. Against this Tamayo sharply rises up, arguing also of contradiction the Chronicle of Julianus Petrus, in which the Saint is said to have been sent by St. Clement to preach the faith, and to have announced it first to the Spaniards, then to the people of Châlons. But it is nothing new for fables to be at variance with fables; but to confute the same in this place more laboriously would be superfluous and inconvenient, since that ought to be done on the proper day of St. Memmius, Bishop of Châlons, dead and buried in his own See on the V day of the month of August; where also there is to be treated of the time of his mission, more probably to be referred to the III century of Christ, as has often already been said of several Apostles of the Gauls.
[19] finally a citizen of Cesena, I had finished, full of nausea and disgust, collected from the crudity of so many ineptitudes, when from Italy it is announced, that the people of Cesena are laboring, to prove that St. Mantius was their citizen, and to obtain for him as such a proper cult in their churches. But this happened so much the more new and unexpected, because long since there was in our hands the Chronology of Cesena, collected with the greatest study by Fr. Bernardino Manzoni of Cesena, and published in the year 1643; but the second Title of the first part is, a review of the Saints and Blesseds of the city of Cesena; the second, an Enumeration of the citizens of Cesena, raised to the Pontifical mitres and other ecclesiastical dignities. This author therefore, when in praise of his fatherland he heaps together whatever even by popular and uncertain tradition is circulated in both kinds, if, what is now pretended, there had been a most ancient cult of that Saint among the people of Cesena as it were of a fellow-citizen, and he had been held the same Bishop of Évora, would not have omitted to place him under both titles. They say also that this their opinion is confirmed from the Pisan Chronicle. Various things under this name Ughelli published in the third Tome of Sacred Italy, but other Pisan Chronicles published elsewhere I do not think to be extant. In none does the name of Mantius occur. What can be drawn thither is a certain insipid scrap, from a certain Roman manuscript called Pantheon on account of the universality of the history which it runs through, and under Clement IV about the year 1266 found among the books of the Pontifical secretariat, which contains a narration apocryphal in many places, concerning the coming of St. Peter from Antioch to Pisa and then to Rome, accompanied by the disciples Mars, Apollinaris, Martial, and Blessed Dionysius and several others. Whether here for Mars, unknown to all, who perhaps crept in for Marcus, the people of Cesena conjecture should be read Mantius, we know not; nor further do we find anything which can favor their said pretension. Perhaps, because the names of certain families of that city have some affinity with the name of this Saint, this trick was devised, the Manzonis, Manzinis, Mancinis and Mancellis applauding; but that invention is most recent, inasmuch as unknown to Fr. Bernardino, who himself also was of the Manzonis. But these things being seen, we hope the counsels are to be changed, and that the people of Cesena will be content with the sure and great Saints of their own Church.