ON ST. FULGENTIUS,
BISHOP OF OTRICOLI IN ITALY.
SIXTH CENTURY.
HISTORICAL COMMENTARY.
On his cult, the notice from S. Gregory: on the other apocryphal Acts.
Fulgentius, Bishop of Otricoli in Italy (S.)
BY THE AUTHOR G. H.
Otriculum, or Utriculum, to others also Otriculi and Urticuli, a town, one old, the other present-day. The old was in a plain beside the Tiber's bank, where also vaults and columns and many other of antiquity traces are found. The sacred cult. But the present-day on a neighboring mountain constructed, is between Narni to the North and Civita-Castellana to the south. In old Otriculum was Bishop S. Florentius, of whom in the present-day town perseveres the Ecclesiastical veneration, which in the Ms. Florarium of the Saints and in Galesinius is referred at the Kalends of January: but in Ferrarius in the general Catalogue at the third day of December: but in the Catalogue of the Saints of Italy he transmits the reader to this XXII of May, when in each Catalogue of him he treats: The elogia everywhere are taken from book 3 of the Dialogues of S. Gregory the Great, who when in the eleventh chapter he had treated of S. Cerbonius Bishop of Populonia, Acts from the Dialogues of S. Gregory whose annual celebrity is the day X of October; and had narrated the ship, in which his body was carried, by a stormy rain to have been untouched: soon in chapter twelve of S. Fulgentius these things he recounts.
[2] This which of the divided rain done I narrated miracle, also in the veneration of another Bishop was shown. For a certain Cleric old, who still survives, to the same thing to have been present testifies, saying: Fulgentius the Bishop, who over the Church of Utriculum presided, the most cruel King Totila hostile in every way had. He sends to Totila gifts, And when to those parts with his army he had drawn near, it was the care of the Bishop through his Clerics gifts to him to transmit; and his fury's madness, if he could, with gifts to mitigate. Which he, when he saw, forthwith spurned: and angry to his men commanded, that the same Bishop with all harshness they should bind, and him for his examination keep. bound to him he is led: Whom while the fierce Goths, the ministers namely of his cruelty, held, surrounding him in one place to stand they ordered, and to him on the ground a circle they designated, beyond which a foot to extend in no way he should dare. And when the man of God in the excessive sun was scorched, by the same Goths surrounded, and by the designation of the circle enclosed, enclosed in a designated circle, suddenly lightnings and thunders and so great force of rain burst forth, that those who him to be guarded had received, the immensity of the rain to bear could not. And while a great too much inundation was made, within the same designation of the circle, in which the man of the Lord Fulgentius stood, not even one of rain a drop descended. Which when to the King most cruel was announced, that mind savage to a great of him reverence was turned, whose punishment before with insatiable fury he thirsted. from the rain untouched he remains. So the omnipotent God against the elated minds of carnal men of his power the miracles through the despised works, that those who proudly against the precepts of truth themselves elevate, their neck the truth through the humble may press. Thus far S. Gregory: and from him Peter de Natalibus book 2 of the Catalogue chapter 33 and others. We treated on the day XIV of May of SS. Victor and Corona, and in the Analecta num. 2 we said, that S. Fulgentius about the year DXL the body of S. Victor found, and above it built an altar. Masini in Bononia perlustrata, Relics of the same some asserts to be kept in the church of S. Stephen. Ferrarius from the monuments of the Church of Utriculum these things adjoins:
[3] whether alive in a pit he was buried? When Totila to Utriculum had come, and at the instigation of the wicked the holy Bishop to be cut down, and before his chariot bound to be led had commanded; him the soldiers, because from preaching he ceased not, into a pit casting headlong alive bury. But a globe of light, from which the voice of Fulgentius praying, and of another him consoling was heard, being seen; the King and those standing by, the man's sanctity admiring, and made penitent, him to burial accompanied. To which that Annotation adds Ferrarius: If so the matter holds, as a Martyr therefore, not as a Confessor by the Church of Utriculum S. Fulgentius the Bishop is to be venerated. But how can be believed a narration so different from that which to us handed down S. Gregory? Therefore we do not think it to be labored by us, that from the Otriculan church we should receive those very things which Ferrarius alleges monuments, deservedly for figments to be held.