Maximus

ON SAINT MAXIMUS

TRANSLATED FROM ISTRIA TO VENICE.

HISTORICAL COMMENTARY

On the place of his passion and burial, the corrupted Acts, the time and memory of the translation.

Maximus, Martyr, translated from Cittanova of Istria to Venice (S.)

BY THE AUTHOR D. P.

Cittanova of Istria, at the mouth of the river Quieto, seems to have been founded at the beginning of the IX century. For a certain diploma of Charlemagne, The body in the year 1146 laid up with the body of S. Pelagius, noted in the year DCCCIII, names in those parts six Bishoprics, one namely of Concordia, another of Udine, the third that which is known to be established at Cittanova of Istria &c. indicating it as more recently established. The names of the Bishops of that place lie hidden until John, who in the year DCCCCLX, with the title of Bishop of Aemona, is found in the consecration of the Church of Parenzo. The same title his successor used, likewise called John, obtained from Poppo the Patriarch of Aquileia the villa of S. Laurentius in Daila, near to Cittanova, as that church still holds it under the title of a County, the Emperor Conrad confirming the donation in the year MXXIX. After that John a third is supplied in Ughellus, Adam, of whom in the Cathedral building, dedicated to Saints Pelagius and Maximus, the memory is preserved by an inscription of this kind, related in the same Ughellus, as placed above the tomb of the aforesaid Saints, In the year of the Lord's incarnation MCXLVI, VI Ides of October, were laid up these bodies of the Saints Pelagius and Maximus, in the time of Bishop Adam. No other title is added to the names, nor probably more was then known of them: yet Martyrs gradually they began to be believed, and indeed so that Maximus was called Bishop, Pelagius Deacon. Of this opinion if not the author, certainly the chief promoter was Nicholas Manzolus, in his Description of Istria, edited at Venice with the Lives of the Saints of that province: concerning which a most learned man and famous even after death by many written books, John Ludovic Schönleben, Doctor of sacred Theology and Archdeacon of lower Carniola residing at Laibach, wrote to me before this, that those Lives, patched together from common opinions from everywhere, were very suspect to him, lest either most of them be wholly fabricated, or at least have very much fiction mixed in.

[2] By a luculent example we showed this on the preceding day, when we treated of S. Nicephorus, The same Acts which we already gave on 30 April, Patron of the city of Pedena in the same Istria: now in the aforesaid two Saints something similar offers itself. The Acts which yet are attributed to them, in Ferrarius in the Catalogue of the Saints of Italy to be read at the IV Kalends of June and of September (on which days they are severally venerated) are truly Acts of Martyrs so named, and perhaps of the same who were laid up by Adam: but having suffered in other places and on other days, without any title of sacred Order; with which had the Elders believed them to have been endowed, they would not surely in engraving and using their names have set the Deacon before the Bishop. And the Acts indeed of S. Pelagius we have for XXVIIII of August, in which he is said born at Aemona, and under Numerian to have suffered at Constantia, for which Aemona Ferrarius himself substitutes, which he believed to be now Cittanova. but corrupted by the Istrians The Acts of S. Maximus, which he himself into an abridgment contracts, we already gave on the day XXX April, following Florus and other older Martyrologists: in which constantly he is read, Decius reigning, brought before Optimus the Consular in Asia: but on the contrary by Ferrarius the same Optimus is called President of Istria, when the impious edicts of Diocletian and Maximian had been promulgated, and S. Maximus is called Bishop of Aemona, in the time and the title of Bishop, and on a day more diverse than S. Pelagius he is proposed to be venerated.

[3] As regards the day, this could seem taken from S. Maximus, Bishop and Confessor of Verona, of whom afterward. From the same the title of Bishop also could be taken; and that the more readily, because indeed some Maximus Bishop of Aemona was present at the Council of Aquileia, in the time of S. Damasus the Pope celebrated in the year CCCLXXXI. These set down, it remains to be discerned, whether those whose Acts are nearly the same, can also be believed the same persons; those namely whose sacred bones, conveyed from elsewhere to the Patronage of Cittanova, and at once by Bishop Adam placed; but now are wrongly believed there in their rank to have ministered and to have suffered. Manzolus asserts, and to him consequently the Italian writers give suffrage, that Cittanova, from the ruins of old Aemona, was born nearby; and since it is established that this was set by the river Nauportus, by this name they distinguish that one of theirs which they call Quieto. On such a supposition it would not be difficult to grasp, how the bodies, already of old laid up at Aemona, were at length translated into Cittanova. Nay even, although you remove Aemona and Nauportus farther from Cittanova, as we shall say soon must be done, provided you remain within the Pannonia neighboring Istria, and the place of his passion: which is Asisia, you will easily understand by what reason the aforesaid Translation could have happened. But lest the Acts and the ancient Martyrologies adhering to the Acts disturb, while they say S. Maximus suffered in Asia; there comes to aid in his epistle to us Schönleben, admonishing that the preposition "apud," not to signify some region, but a city, in the Acts of the Saints and Martyrologies is employed. But although a city Asia, is known to no Geographers; yet he says Asisia is known, to be found in his Carniola; in which also can be found Constantia, ennobled by the martyrdom of S. Pelagius.

[4] For indeed the same Schönleben holds, that Emona or Aemona or Aemonia, far from Istria and from the Adriatic, near to Laibach the metropolis of Carniola, to which Cittanova lies, by the sea, was situated in his Carniola, by the river Laibach; which the Argonauts

called Nauportus, a city being founded there, where not being able, against the adverse currents of the rivers, to be carried farther from the North to the South, they had been compelled to carry their Argo on their shoulders or by machines through land for some time, until they found some river, which flowing in a course contrary to the Nauportus, into the Adriatic sea rolled them down, so at length to be carried back into their Greece. This opinion of his he defended, in a very learned book published at Salzburg in the year MDCLXXIV, under the title of Aemona vindicated, asserting that name to Laibach the Metropolis of Carniola as ancient by this reasoning, that in the first Chapter, he explains the first origin and nomenclature of the city of Aemona, and the old writers who mentioned it he alleges, for defining its site the limits of Noricum and Pannonia and the conterminous regions being previously explained: in Chapter II that it is the modern Laibach from the ancient Geographers, Historians, Itineraries, which is demonstrated to have been old Aemona. Inscriptions, by an evidence almost palpable he proves; nor less evidently by negative arguments from the same Geographers, Historians, Itineraries in Chapter III confirms, that that appellation cannot suit Cittanova in Istria; finally in Chapter IV he dissolves the objections opposed to him of a certain Neoteric. I have also his learned epistle on this argument, where he alleges Cluver, asserting that in an ancient Geographical map, he had seen a river by which Istria was intersected, with the title added Quaetus (which you would scarcely doubt to be Quieto) and beside it is noted Praetorium, inscribed Silvo, which easily could have been deformed from the Alvus of Ptolemy reckoned among the cities of Istria. The ruins therefore of this Alvus, not of Aemona, he contends to be those which are found near Cittanova, founded under Charlemagne; whose Bishops never came into mind to call themselves Bishops of Aemona, before the X century; and so that he too of a later time seems, on one step of whose Baptistery, adjoining the Cathedral Church of Cittanova, this carved memory: The Baptistery with worthy marble Mauritius Bishop of Emona.

[5] Now as regards Asisia (whence the rashness of writers or inadvertence, or also the usage of the common people speaking more contractedly made Asia) Ptolemy places it among the mediterranean cities of the Liburnians: that Asisa today called Berbir: but the Liburnians to Illyris the same Ptolemy attributes, and that it is Krain that is Carniola the authors in Ortelius judge (granting that Bertius ordered the Ptolemaic tables otherwise): which Ortelius also from Niger writes, that Asisia is now leveled with the ground, and in the same place many monuments of antiquity are extant, and the place is called Beribir. Schönleben says it is commonly named Berbier, near the river of S. Vitus, and by a space of two days distant from Laibach, and so is nearer to Trieste than to Laibach. But he does not so absolutely vindicate to his Laibach the name of Aemona, [whence the body of S. Maximus removed could at length have passed to the Istrians.] but that he leaves free to place its site within that space of the river, which from upper Laibach, now a village; to the lower, now the Metropolis of the Carni (which space is about twenty Italian miles) he leaves free for old Aemona to be constituted; whence it was easy for one wishing of his own accord to profess the faith, as Maximus is read to have done, to run out to Asisia, where then the President was; afterward to be martyred, and the body to be carried back to Aemona. For the rest willingly Schönleben will concede to the Istrians, that on occasion of the barbaric incursions into the Pannonias, to which that Aemona was also exposed, one or another body of those which had been at Aemona, and namely of S. Maximus, could have been carried away into Cittanova of Istria.

[6] [and the body of S. Pelagius to be borne to the same from Constantia, now Gurkfeld,] Concerning Constantia, in which S. Pelagius bore Martyrdom, we have not so express a testimony: but Schönleben comes forward, judging, after Ptolemy and the founders of the ancient Itineraries, that this name was given to the place by Constantius the Emperor, son of Constantine the Great, who his brothers being dead alone possessing affairs, more often in those parts made delay, wintered, levied soldiers; and to some there formerly great city, restored and amplified by himself, the name he could have set. Now Schönleben alleges the letters of Doctor Fulckenstein, Parish-priest of Gurkfeld in lower Carniola; in which he testifies, that the inhabitants of the town have from tradition that an ample city once stood there by the name Constantia; and an argument of amplitude and antiquity the ruins afford, scattered through an entire mile, from under which a great abundance of bronze coins, silver and gold, even surpassing the imperial, the same Doctor dug up, also huge stones with inscriptions, examples of which he sent to Schönleben himself. But the site is the same, which Ptolemy to Neodunum, the Itinerary of Antoninus to Noviodunum seem to ascribe; the Noviodunum of the ancients. to which the name of Constantia so easily could have succeeded, in this province, as to another in Gaul, and to another city in Germany on the Rhine the same name was given by the same Emperor: whence it came to pass, that also those both vindicate S. Pelagius the Martyr to themselves, although so far distant from Emona, so expressly named in the Acts.

[7] And let these things be said, not with the mind of defining for certain, that those whom the people of Cittanova venerate as Patrons, are the same whose Acts are had; but of showing, that this can be conceded to them without great difficulty; provided in turn the Istrians confess as to the place and time of the passion that the ancient Acts are more safely believed, than the ones renewed among them. Because furthermore Cittanova, on account of the inclemency of the air, especially in summer time, Pelagius this one is other than he whose body is had at Constantia on the Rhine did not long retain its dignity, nor beyond the year MCCCLXX is it known to have had resident Bishops; and at length fell so far, that in winter time, in which alone it is inhabited, it scarcely numbers two hundred inhabitants under the care of one parish-priest; it is very probable that various bodies of the Saints were long ago carried away thence. What was done with S. Pelagius, is not known: for the body, which under that name is had at Constantia on the Rhine to have been brought from Rome in the year DCCCCXVIII, by Salomon III Bishop of Constance, the Annals of Einsiedeln relate, and it is credible that name was then given to it, on account of the Acts of S. Pelagius of Aemona, in which the named arena of the Martyrdom Constantia, Salomon believed to be his own city: otherwise that it remains in Cittanova, and that he remained among the Istrians. is persuaded by the title, from the other part of the tomb mentioned at the beginning thus teaching: The Relics of the Saints Pelagius and the Innocents here were placed on XII December, the 3rd Sunday of Advent MDCXXI: in which year the Dominical letter C, made the third Sunday of Advent, here noted, concur with the XII day of December.

[8] Concerning S. Maximus it is more certain, that his body is had at Venice in the church of S. Cantianus, whence also there were brought to us triple Acts, The translation of S. Maximus to Venice, all as to the substance of the martyrdom agreeing with the aforesaid. The latest of them, from a Legendary there in Ms. transcribed, thus end: This holy and miraculous body in the progress of time, by other devout and pious Christians, from the city of Asia translated was to Cittanova: and thence by a certain devout Venetian Noble translated to Venice, and placed in the church of S. Cantianus; where still illustrious by miracles it rests. But the solemnity of this Translation of the most blessed Martyr is celebrated in the aforesaid church of S. Cantianus on the second Sunday of October. Other older Acts, but nonetheless composed at Venice, and distributed into six Lessons, with proper Responsories interspersed, thus begin: Under Decius the Emperor at the city Asia, Maximus … suffered on the fourth Kalends of June, where the feast is kept on the 2nd Sunday of October, whose day of the translation of the body into this holy church on the eighth Ides of October to commemorate we ought; nonetheless his Birthday day of the glorious Martyr, on the second Sunday of the same month, under a greater Double we solemnly celebrate.

[9] and the Office is of a Bishop Martyr, Then follow the Acts, Decius the Emperor wishing, &c. nearly such as we gave on XXX April; except that, where in the ancient and genuine Acts to the President asking, what office he bore, the Martyr answered; I am a plebeian man, living by my own business, or (as the same Acts have it, from the Parenzo Legendary transcribed at Venice, and thence also sent to us) I am a parish man, attending to my own business, which is manifest to suit a layman only; there the Venetian Acts read, I am a Shepherd of the flock of my Lord Jesus Christ, that namely it might be persuaded that a Bishop was he who speaks. But he who changed this, did not observe, that it does not suit, that having confessed himself the Bishop of a Christian Flock; he be asked (as everywhere is done) whether he is a Christian; such as in other parts of the Office is said, on the contrary the best order is, that first the name, then the occupation, thirdly his faith one be bidden to declare. Meanwhile the title of Bishop several times is inculcated in the Acts, both Venetian and Parenzo, and in the Responsories, which we have from the Venetian Ms. alone. But these Responsories also themselves we believe taken from the usage of Cittanova; just as from the same place were taken the Collects of this kind for the Mass: I. Almighty everlasting God, who grantest that wonders, by the radiant merits of B. Maximus thy Martyr, should glitter in thy basilica; grant we beseech, that as to him thou didst confer from heaven the grace of a divine gift; so to us, by his suffraging prayers, indulgence thou mayest deign to confer. II. The supplications of thy servants, Author of all, in mercy hear: and to whom thou hast given B. Maximus, Pontiff and Martyr, as Patron; with a memorial of the dead raised up. strengthened by regard of thy grace, may we feel him with thee a Protector. III. God, who B. Maximus, thy Pontiff and Martyr, didst adorn with the grace of raising the bodies of the dead: we beseech, that what to him living under mortal flesh thou didst confer, now to him better living with thee thou mayest deign to bestow; that the souls of those supplicating may merit to live. Through Our Lord Jesus Christ &c.

[10] The translation in the 15th century, But according as the Bishopric of Cittanova, was first to that of Parenzo about the year MCCCCXXXIV united by Eugenius IV; then by Nicholas V, about the year MCCCCLI, associated to the Venetian Church; but at last in the year MCCCCLXVI, as Ughellus has it, received its own Shepherds, and had them thenceforth: who however, the place being almost desolate, as I said, never reside there. The first conjunction propagated the cult of S. Maximus to the people of Parenzo, the second gave occasion and convenience to the Venetians of transferring the body to themselves: but what cause the people of Aquileia had, that they should take him up to be venerated in the whole diocese, I do not divine. Because yet, everywhere he is venerated as a Bishop Martyr, and that not long after the times of Bishop Adam seems instituted; when to the same, whose Acts were read, was adapted the last Collect, alone containing something new, which the Acts do not touch; we are compelled to suspect, that this Maximus who was present at the Aquileian Synod, contemporary of S. Damasus, was indeed also and perhaps on this day anciently venerated. Of whom since besides this memory no Acts of his Life were extant, since already long two Maximi had been confused into one. there were applied to him these things regarding the Maximus, under Decius a lay Martyr, of XXX April: which observing Bishop Adam, prudently took care, lest him, whose body he was laying up, he should call either Bishop, or Martyr.

The same we also do, leaving in doubt, of which of the two is the body, which it is agreed among all was translated from Istria to Venice.

[11] Here I had finished, when before the proper Offices of the holy Genoese Church, The Relics at Genoa. by Apostolic concession and mandate of Stephen Cardinal Durazzo Archbishop of Genoa in the year 1640 reprinted, I find on p. 6 in the calendar of feasts noted On the 29th day of May, of Maximus and Pelagius Martyrs, semidouble. But after the Offices themselves it is taught, how the Saints of that Church, though not inscribed in the Martyrology, in its reading nevertheless through the whole city and diocese, after the pronouncement of the kalends and of the Moon, ought immediately to be placed, and on p. 39 for XXIX May thus is prescribed to be read: The Birthday of SS. Martyrs Maximus the Bishop, and Pelagius the Deacon, whose sacred bones from the city of Aemonia of Istria, Urban the Sixth being supreme Pontiff, translated to Genoa, in the church of S. Matthew with worthy honor were laid up. We can scarcely doubt, but that these bones are from those very bodies, which in the year MCXLVI in the Cathedral of Cittanova of which they were Patrons we said were uncovered: but Urban the Sixth sat from the year

MCCCLXXVIII to LXXXIX.

ON SAINT MAXIMUS

BISHOP OF VERONA IN ITALY.

A Collection, from Augustine Valerio, Bishop of the same City.

IV CENT.

Maximus, Bishop of Verona in Italy (S.)

BY THE AUTHOR D. P.

Among very many holy Bishops of the Veronese Church, whom continually we set forth, on this XXIX May in the Tables of the modern Roman Martyrology is inscribed S. Maximus Bishop of Verona: Memory in the Roman Martyrol., and are alleged by Baronius in the Notes the Tables of the Veronese Church, and the often cited Commentary on the Bishops of Verona p. 9 and 40: but in the margin he is said to have flourished about the year CCCLII, from the monuments of the Veronese Church. Furthermore in the old monuments of the holy Bishops of Verona, by Raphael Bagatta, Baptist Peretto, and Augustine Valerio the Bishop in the year MDLXXII edited, on the cited page 9 reverse, these are read: Of S. Maximus the Bishop of Verona the body, a certain one left written, was buried outside the gate of the city; where also a temple of his name was built and consecrated. and a church dedicated to him, But where now he rests, we from the old monuments to find could not. In the table of the Saints on the day XXIX May, of Maximus Bishop of Verona and Confessor, double less. It is unknown where he is. Outside the gate of the city there stands even now a Church rebuilt in honor of the name of S. Maximus, a village, a gate, in a village which also S. Maximus is called, and that gate is called the gate of S. Maximus. In the consecration of the altar of S. Helena, of the Church of the holy Apostles, were replaced also the Relics of S. Maximus Bishop of Verona, as from a Psalter old of the said Church. Thus there. But others above cited on page 40 reverse, these are had. Of S. Maximus the Bishop of Verona. Maximus the Bishop of Verona, as domestic old monuments testify, and also a monastery of Virgins. a man he was of eximious learning and approved virtue. With egregious probity of manners a great use of affairs he had joined. From this life he departed on the fourth Kalends of June, and of his name afterward outside the city, not far from the walls, in honor of him a temple was built. Likewise also a monastery of sacred Virgins, near the same city's gate: which itself also with the village, in which the temple was built, of S. Maximus was called. In the consecration of the altar of S. Helena, in the church of the holy Apostles of Verona, together with the rest of many Saints were placed the Relics, the Relics, also of this holy Bishop. Thus there. Finally on page 77 these are repeated: In the Church of the holy Apostles … in the consecration of the altar of S. Helena were replaced Relics of the wood of the Cross, of S. Pantaleon the Martyr, of S. Facundinus the Martyr, of SS. Proculus and Maximus Bishops of Verona and Confessors: the Acts of S. Proculus Bishop of Verona we gave XXIII March.

[2] Onuphrius Panvinius in book 4 of the Veronese Antiquities chapter 7 produces the Bishops of Verona, The time of his See. of uncertain time, after S. Zeno, whom on page 101 in alphabetical order he places, where these are related: S. Maximus died XXIX May, buried at S. Maximus in his basilica. Ferrarius, in the Catalogue of the Saints of Italy, some of the already related eulogy edited at this XXIX May, and makes him the XVIII Bishop, and the Veronese Church to have administered he says about the year CCCLII. But Ferdinand Ughellus in the Bishops of Verona sets him Bishop XX, and successor of Syagrius, to whom are extant epistles two of S. Ambrose, and so to be referred according to him the Episcopal of S. Maximus dignity rather to the end of the fourth century.

[3] Therefore this only of him and of several others can be said, that he lived among those five first centuries of the felicitous Church, in which so great was the probity of the Veronese Bishops, that to a man all are held Saints. Of their order among themselves it would be allowed something more certain to establish, and (which is consequent) also about the age of each somewhat to conjecture, if anywhere were found the old of that church Diptychs, The Episcopal series until the year 500 uncertain. from which in the Sacred rites the names of their Predecessors recited the Bishops.

[4] This I would note: by such a usage, long ago abolished, it seems to have come about, that certain more celebrated in Italy Churches the whole series of their first through three or four centuries Bishops, without discrimination, to the Saints ascribe; though from that precisely usage and such a title of Saint, not more perhaps is had, than that each lived laudably, and committed nothing on account of which the name ought to be expunged, as among the Sacred rites to be used unworthy. More yet we have in favor of S. Maximus, whom not simply to have been called a Saint, by the common once to all good Bishops title; but a religious also cult from his death to have merited, prove those, which I said, of sacred edifices appellations.

[5] Nicholas Brautius, Bishop of Sarsina, with this eulogy him in his Poetic Martyrology celebrates:

Heavenly doctrine, to God and the people a Master had made him acceptable; his life approved, more.