ON ST. QUARTUS, CONFESSOR, AT CAPUA IN CAMPANIA,
AT AN UNCERTAIN TIME.
CommentaryQuartus, confessor at Capua. (S.)
BY H. D.
[1] The martyrologies, the Passion of St. Caesarius, The Hieronymian cento is, as usual, not a little entangled today, nor is it entirely certain in what place, at length, and under what formula St. Quartus, who has also crept into the preceding entry and perhaps into the following one too, is to be announced. The right reading, if you compare all the codices, seems to have been preserved by the Echternach copy: At Capua, of Quartus the confessor. That the writer of the Passion of St. Caesarius narrated of the same man that the bodies of SS. Felix and Eusebius were found and buried by him, namely by a certain priest of Capua named Quartus, is evident from what has been said above P. 32, n. 1.. Nor is it less established, from what we have stated about the credibility of those Acts, that one seeks in vain a source from which we may be made certain both of his deeds and of the name of the priest. That their compiler perhaps did not err in bringing forward the names of places or in describing places De la Blanchère, Terracine. Essai d'histoire locale (Paris, 1884), p. 153. shows that he wrote at Terracina or at some time lived there, but can win no authority for the history he peddles.
[2] The Capuan mosaic. That there is in fact found among the saints of Capua a certain Quartus becomes manifest from elsewhere. For in an ancient mosaic which formerly adorned the church of San Prisco, in the midst of the company of saints offering crowns to God, half of whom belonged to the church of Capua and the other half to the Roman, there were seen two little infants joined together, with this inscription: St. Quartus and Quintus, as Michael the Monk has it, who alone preserved traces of this remarkable work, sketched by a rough hand [Sanctuarium Capuanum. Garrucci took the same figure from the Monk, Storia dell' arte cristiana, vol. IV, p. 254, and corrected it from various indications; De Rossi also borrowed it from Michael, Bulletino di arch. crist., 1883, Plates II, III.].
[3] SS. Quartus and Quintus, others There are different traditions about SS. Quartus and Quintus of Capua. If credit is to be given to an inscription of the middle age on the burial niche in which two bodies are laid,
found, they were clerics Michael the Monk, vol. cited, p. 35.. But in the ancient Capuan breviary, at the 7th day before the ides of May, they were called bishops and confessors, resting in the cathedral church Ibid., p. 34.. The same were undoubtedly designated by Baronius when he wrote in the Roman Martyrology at the 6th day before the ides of May: At Rome on the Via Latina at the Hundred Halls, the natal day of the holy martyrs Quartus and Quintus, whose bodies were translated to Capua; and in a certain way the present Capuan Proper agrees, by which on the 10th day of May there is celebrated the festival of SS. Quartus and Quintus, clerics, martyrs of Capua, whose bodies are kept in the Metropolitan basilica of Capua Proprium Capuanum (Tournai, 1888), spring part, p. 58.. It is a wonderful confusion of things, and you read of the same saints now as clerics, now as bishops, now as martyrs, now as confessors, now as Romans, now as Capuans [On SS. Quartus and Quintus venerated on the 10th of May read Acta Sanctorum, May vol. II, pp. 555–56.].
[4] Roman martyrs, It is the opinion of Michael the Monk that there were at Capua several called by the name of Quartus and Quintus, and that the names were fused into one and the persons confused Op. cit., p. 34.. Provided you do not call them Capuans, I too think that two pairs of the same names must be distinguished, in such a way that the former is the one who was celebrated at Rome on the 6th day before the ides of May and is noted under this formula in the Hieronymian codices: On the Via Latina at the Hundred Halls, of Quartus and Quintus; and the other the one who was seen depicted in the mosaic work of the church of San Prisco and belonged properly to the church of Capua. That the former was at some time translated to Capua we find proved by no ancient document, and it was undoubtedly devised by those who began to mix the Capuan saints with the Roman ones. Let us leave, then, the Roman pair resting in peace at the Hundred Halls.
[5] others of Capua. Let us come to the Capuan pair, which, to confess the truth, is not a true pair if you consult the martyrologies. For I find St. Quartus and St. Quintus announced on different days in the Hieronymian codices: the latter, namely, on the nones of September, and the former on this very day, the 5th of November, as has been said above, and another of the same name, with Marcellinus, on the nones of October, if indeed he is different from today's [Read what we have said about names repeated in the Hieronymian cento in Analecta Bollandiana, vol. XXVI, pp. 95–99.]. When and by whom Quartus and Quintus began to be joined in an undivided partnership I cannot divine. Quartus to be separated from Quintus. Perhaps the nature of the names first brought it about; afterwards it was expressed in figures, when the saints of Capua were delineated in painted tesserae. That the mosaic work of the church of San Prisco has perished, and that sufficiently certain arguments cannot be drawn from Michael the Monk's copy, is the more to be regretted because the effigies of SS. Quartus and Quintus seem not improbably to have been added to the rest at a later time Garrucci, op. cit., p. 65.. Certainly the one who depicted them, by showing each saint smaller in stature, beardless, marked with the tonsure, carrying a crown in his hand, and standing in a place distinct from the others, testified not obscurely that SS. Quartus and Quintus seemed to him to have been a pair of martyrs of tender age, coopted into the number of the clerics. By what right he thought so is not clear. We call Quartus a confessor only because it is so written in the Hieronymian codices, nor is it shown to be false by any sufficiently powerful argument.