ON ST. VALENTINIAN, BISHOP OF SALERNO,
AT THE END OF THE FIFTH CENTURY.
CommentaryValentinian, bishop, at Salerno. (S.)
BY G. V. H.
Filippo Ferrari in the Catalogue of the saints of Italy hands down the following about St. Valentinian, bishop of Salerno: He is known, not from Acts, but from other documents, Valentinian, sixth bishop of the church of Salerno, is reported to have succeeded St. Gaudiosus, the fifth bishop. He lived and flourished in holiness before the year of human salvation five hundred, in which year Gaudentius is read to have been put in his place, who, under Symmachus, Supreme Pontiff, took part in the Roman synod of 105 bishops gathered against Laurence, elected in schism against Symmachus. Valentinian, having for some time most holily presided over his church, departed from life on the third of the nones of November, having merited the honours owed to holy bishops. His body is religiously kept in the lower cathedral church with the bodies of the holy bishops. From the tablets and monuments of the same church. And in the Annotation he says: Acts are not extant; his memory is extant in the ancient breviary of the church of Salerno written four hundred years ago; where also the prayer or collect that is said on his feast is contained. Baronius mentions him in the annotation on the Roman Martyrology at the 19th day of October, and Gaspare Mosca in the book on the Bishops of Salerno.
[2] and he is held by others to be the sixth bishop of Salerno, In the place cited Baronius, on the occasion of St. Eusterius, likewise bishop of Salerno: His (Eusterius's) body, he says, is laid in the cathedral church in the lower crypt under the confession of the altar, where are also placed the venerable bodies of other holy bishops of the same city, as of Bishop Bonosus… of Bishop Valentinian, whom they celebrate on the 3rd of November, etc. And Gaspare Mosca, in the book on the Bishops and archbishops of the church of Salerno Naples 1594, pp. 14, 15., lists St. Valentinian before St. Gaudentius and after St. Gaudiosus, assigning however no year of age, century or episcopate. The title of saint and the prayer he took from the Breviary of Salerno of the twelfth century.
PRAYER.
Help us, we beseech you, Lord, by the entreaty of St. Valentinian, your confessor and pontiff: and grant that we may feel in heaven the aid of him whose solemn day we venerate today with spiritual gladness on earth. Through, etc.
And a little later: The bodies of all these six holy bishops are at present honourably laid up in the greater church of Salerno under the title of the blessed Apostle and Evangelist Matthew in the lower basilica at the altar of the holy confessors, which looks to the west, with other sacred relics of saints. The six bishops he had enumerated are Saints Bonosius, Gramatius, Verus, Eusterius, Gaudiosus, Valentinian. To the following Gaudentius he then assigns the year 500. Therefore the episcopate of St. Valentinian would have occupied the end of the fifth century.
[3] by others the fifth. And these are about the things we had to say of St. Valentinian; to which we add that in the Hagiologium Italicum Volume II, p. 271. St. Valentinian is called not the sixth, but the fifth bishop of Salerno: Valentinian, or Valentine, fifth bishop of Salerno, after St. Eusterius holily ruled that church. His feast day is kept on the third day of November in the same church where the holy body rests. These things are taken from Ughelli, Italia Sacra, among the Bishops of Salerno. — Ferrari, whom we cited above, in the Catalogue of saints who are not in the Roman Martyrology, at the 3rd day of November: At Salerno, of St. Valentinian, bishop. Castellano mentions the same in the General Martyrology.