ON ST. MAXIMIANUS, BISHOP AND CONFESSOR, AT BAGAI IN AFRICA,
IN THE V CENTURY.
COLLECTION.
The sacred memory of St. Maximianus, his episcopal see, his difference from namesakes, his persecution by the Donatists.
Maximianus, confessor, bishop of Bagai in Africa. (S.)
BY J. B.
The Roman Martyrology announces St. Maximianus at the III day of October in these words: St. Maximianus, whom the Martyrologies "In Africa, of St. Maximianus, bishop of Bagai, who, having suffered most savage things again and again from the Donatists, and at last having been thrown down from a high tower and left for dead, rested in the Lord, illustrious in the glory of confession." The name of St. Maximianus is indeed celebrated in the History of the Donatists, but it is not found in the more ancient Martyrologies. The first, unless I am mistaken, to insert him in the Roll of the Saints was Baronius, whom some of the more recent writers have afterwards followed. For what reason, however, he is announced on this day rather than on any other, besides perhaps the mere choice of Baronius, I cannot assign: for whatever has become known of him must almost wholly be credited to Augustine alone; in whom, however, there exists no trace of the day on which he was taken from human affairs, none of any festivity; nor am I aware whether any is found elsewhere. For the rest, the Maximianus who is now read in the Roman Martyrology to have been bishop of Bagai is named in its Plantin edition of the year 1586 bishop of Sagium: but that reading is generally less approved by the learned. He is also found called Vagitanus, Vagiensis and Vaginensis in various Works of St. Augustine, both printed and manuscript: but the Benedictine monks of St. Maur judge that he should rather be called of Bagai, both because St. Augustine constantly names him so in book 3 against Cresconius the Donatist, and because
records of good repute also have it so, (and) do not greatly disagree. See their Notes on number 7 of Letter 88 and on number 26 of Letter 185 of St. Augustine.
[2] The same things about St. Maximianus as the Roman Martyrology only more recent ones have mentioned, Chastelain relates in his Universal Martyrology at the III day of October, and other more recent writers. He adds in the margin that there is held no tradition of cult, none of the day either, unless he be among the number of those Martyrs who are called Vagenses in the Calendar of Carthage on the 2nd day of November (or rather the XXIX of October). Mabillon published that most ancient Calendar in tome 4 of the Analecta, and it comprises the series of those Saints whose annual cult was once in Africa. The ancient cult of St. Maximianus in Africa would therefore be established if it were certain that he was of the number of those Martyrs. But by what testimonies of antiquity will this be confirmed? What if Vaga and Bagai were distinct cities in Numidia, and he performed the episcopal office in the latter, not in the former? What if by the name of the Vagensian Martyrs Mammarius and his companions (of whom we treated on the X of June) are to be understood? For Ruinart suggests this suspicion about them in the Notes on the History of the Vandal persecution of Victor of Vita, page 257. "For although," he says, "they were consummated in the city of Boseth, yet Mammarius, who was as it were the father and chief of all, was arrested first of all at Vaga, and thence, led about through various cities, all were interrogated at Vaga and shut up in prison by the count; whence at length, sent to Anulinus, who was in the city of Boseth, they could from then on be called Vagenses, which name was also transmitted to posterity." So he, from the Acts of St. Mammarius: but to discuss these things is not of this place.
[3] and his cult uncertain; bishop I have distinguished St. Maximianus with the title of Confessor, namely according to the manner of speaking of today, by which all who, after a life holily spent, have rested in peace are called Confessors. For in former times those also were called Martyrs who had borne most atrocious torments for the faith, although they survived and rested in peace, as Benedict XIV teaches in his Work On the Beatification of the Servants of God and the Canonization of the Blessed, book 1, chapter XI, number 7; and so, since he suffered most grievous torments from the heretical Donatists for defending the rights of his church, he could in a like sense be called a Martyr, although he rested in peace. That he shone with episcopal dignity is clear from Augustine. But about his episcopal see there is not one opinion of all. For there are those who think Bagai or Vagai (for the Africans often change B into V) is the same as Vaga. Simler, in Ortelius, in the Geographical Thesaurus at the word Vagal, believed it the same as Bagai or Bagaia mentioned by St. Augustine: but Ortelius notes that the city of Vagal was situated in Mauretania Caesariensis. Lucas Holstenius, in the Notes on the Sacred Geography of Charles of St. Paul, makes Vaga the see of our Maximianus and ascribes it to Numidia: Cellarius also, book 4, chapter 5, places Vaga in Numidia, and writes that it is called Βάγαν by Plutarch; and in chapter 6 he attributes other Vagas to Mauretania Caesariensis. Garnier, in Dissertation 2 on the Synods held in the Pelagian cause while St. Augustine was living, acknowledges only a single Vaga. And if you object that two Catholic bishops of Vaga, Ampelius and Primulus, are mentioned in chapter 215 of the conference of Carthage, he says the text in that place is to be corrected and Vadensis read.
[4] Garnier's opinion does not please Noris, whence in tome 3 of his Works, in the Censure of Garnier, column 1122, he rises against him in these words: not of Vaga, "He did not know that there were two Vagas in Africa, whence he contends that the other city is to be called Vada. But Pliny, to whom the African cities were better known, book 5, chapter (4), names among the XV towns of Roman citizens the Vagense, and among the XXX free towns another Vagense. He deliberately added ANOTHER, to distinguish the two Vagas." But the old edition of Pliny made at Venice in the year 1469 has not "another Vagense" but "another Sigense": whence on this side at least Garnier is not refuted with sufficient certainty: yet Garnier must here be abandoned: for Ptolemy enumerates a twofold Vaga in Africa, one situated in Mauretania Caesariensis, book 4, chapter 2, the other in Numidia, chapter 3. For the rest, Bagai seems able to be confused with neither of these: not with the Vaga ascribed to Mauretania Caesariensis; for the Bagai of which Augustine speaks seems to have been a town of Numidia: for thus Augustine speaks, in Noris, History of Pelagianism, book 2, chapter 8, Discourse 2 on Psalm 36: "You purged yourself at Bagai"; and before: "How did you keep to the council of the Numidians?" Likewise in the book On the Unity of the Church, objecting to the Donatists that they communicated with those whom they themselves had condemned in the council of Bagai, he exclaims: "O rule of Numidian law! O privileges of Vagai!" From which it is gathered that the Bagai or Vagai mentioned by St. Augustine is to be numbered with Numidia, not with Mauretania Caesariensis, and consequently is different from the Vaga of Mauretania.
[5] Nor does it seem that the city of Bagai can be confused with the Vaga of Numidia: but of Bagai, "For," says Noris in the place cited above, column 346, "St. Augustine in book 6 On Baptism recites the individual opinions which the Africans pronounced in the synod of St. Cyprian, and indeed word for word from the synodal Acts. And there, among others, are named Felix of Bagai, chapter XIX, and Libosus of Vaga, chapter XXXVII." This Noris against Holstenius, who confused the Vaga of Numidia with Bagai. Besides, there was present at the conference of Carthage held in the year 411, as is clear from its chapter 176, Donatianus, bishop of Bagai, who stood with the Donatists; and mention is also made there of two Catholic bishops of Vaga, namely Ampelius, who seemed to Garnier to have been of the number of the Numidians, and Primulus, who, having deserted the schism of the Donatists, had joined himself to the Catholics, and for that reason, as happened now and then in those times, had retained the episcopal dignity. Further, Ampelius said in the place cited: "Unity is perfect there, not only in the city itself, but in all the dioceses," that is, the villages and lesser places. If unity was perfect there, Donatianus, a non-Catholic bishop, could not occupy that see. Finally, from chapter 177 of the same conference and 179 someone could contend that Januarianus and Privatus were likewise bishops of Vaga; but whether rightly or otherwise I do not inquire: it will be enough for me to have said that Bagai seems different from these Vagas also: for Donatianus, Privatus and Januarianus were all Donatists; and it is less credible that two bishops of the same schism presided over the same see at the same time. For the rest, "Bagai," says Ruinart, "was made celebrated … both by the notorious pseudo-synod of the Donatists at Bagai and by Donatus of Bagai, whom the same Donatists venerated so zealously as a martyr… But this city became more illustrious on account of the monstrous punishments with which the Donatists raged against Maximianus, the Catholic prelate of the same place."
[6] and from Maximianus, brother of Castorius, But before we turn our discourse to what Maximianus suffered from the Donatists, another question offers itself to be discussed. In the year of the Lord 402 St. Augustine, in his own name and in that of Alypius, formerly bishop of Tagaste, sent letters to Castorius, in which he extols with splendid praises Maximianus, bishop of Vagina in Africa and brother of Castorius: he had been, as is gathered from that letter, a partaker in the schism of the Donatists; but, converted to the Catholic faith, he had not so long before, so far as indeed appears, been raised to the episcopal dignity among the Catholics. Whether he had previously been of the same rank among the Donatists is uncertain. The joy conceived at his conversion was soon dissipated by disturbances stirred up against him. Maximianus, however, preferred to yield the episcopate rather than, says Augustine, "disturb the Catholic peace by the question of his honour"; lest, namely, on account of his honour a foul and dangerous, or perhaps even pernicious, dissension should arise among the members of Christ. And Rivius, in the Life of St. Augustine, book 3, chapter 2, §7, relates that the cause why he was not peacefully received by the people was this, that he had at one time adhered to the schism of the Donatists. I fear whether the matter is so: for Castorius, designated as Maximianus's successor, on the testimony of Augustine, was hindered from taking up the episcopate by no such necessity as Maximianus, and yet had laboured under the same plague of heresy as his brother. In the same year there were brought to the council of Milevis letters of Maximianus, bishop of Bagai (in Greek it has Βαγενσίου), in which he asked leave to resign the episcopate; or at any rate signified that he would do so, or had already done so. Further, there can scarcely be any doubt that this is the same as the one of whom Augustine speaks above.
[7] that, having changed his opinion, The question is asked, therefore, whether Maximianus, the brother of Castorius, is the same as our Maximianus the confessor, against whom a few years later the atrocity of the Donatists raged so inhumanly. Baronius in the Notes on the Roman Martyrology confused the two, deceived by the likeness of the names: but in the Ecclesiastical Annals at the year of Christ 402, his former opinion having been revoked, he preferred to distinguish the one from the other: and he brings forward these reasons for his changed opinion: the first indeed lies in this, that Maximianus, the brother of Castorius, is to be called of Vagia rather than of Bagai from Augustine's Letter to Castorius, by which latter name St. Augustine constantly calls Maximianus the confessor in book 3 against Cresconius; although he acknowledges that the latter too was called by Augustine bishop of the church of Vagia in the Letter to Boniface: but in that place also the Benedictine monks read "of Bagai." And if you object to him chapter 55 of the African council, in which Maximianus, the brother of Castorius, is named of Bagai, he nevertheless adheres to the Augustinian reading. And indeed the reading of that council is suspect, since the Greek text has Βαγενσίου, as we said above. The other reason of Baronius is, "That he (Maximianus the confessor) presided over that church (of Bagai) for a long time, nor is he said to have resigned by Augustine, who often treats of him: whereas this one (Maximianus, the brother of Castorius) can be well understood from the same letters of Augustine to have sent notice of resignation to the see after his election."
[8] That Maximianus, the brother of Castorius, sent notice of resignation to the see Baronius teaches, is certain from Augustine; but perhaps Castorius was unwilling to take up the episcopal office offered to him, and Maximianus, the disturbances having been calmed, or his brother perhaps having already died, resumed the same: about which nothing certain can be determined. That St. Augustine often treated of Maximianus the confessor, and yet did not say that he resigned the episcopate, is likewise true: but he could keep silent about what he perhaps knew had truly happened. For what need had Augustine to join to the cruelty of the Donatists (whom he had undertaken to combat) the disturbances stirred up by Catholics against their prelate? For it was for the sake of these, not of the Donatists, that Maximianus said farewell to his dignity, who did not wish the Catholic peace to be disturbed by the question of his honour, and who, as Augustine nearly speaks, having abandoned the insane pride of the Donatists, so clung to the inheritance of Christ that he was proved, by the testimony of humility, by his love of unity. Nor
ought the dissension between the Donatists and the Catholics, long since full-grown, to arise any further. But that Maximianus the confessor presided over the church of Bagai for a long time I do not know from where it can be derived with certainty. That he suffered many and most savage things from the Donatists in the year 404 is ascertained from what will be said below. It is also sufficiently established that he afterwards went to Italy to lay before the emperor Honorius just complaints of the cruelty of the Donatists: but whether he closed his last day there, or on the journey, or returned to his see, and how long thereafter or before he governed it, is nowhere, so far as I know, read expressed. His name indeed is not subscribed to the conference of Carthage of the year 411: although it may be that he was of the number of those Catholic bishops whose names have fallen out of the Acts of that conference, which Baluze suspects.
[9] Tillemont, in Note 38 on St. Augustine, assigns another, and that not improbable, reason for distinguishing the two Maximiani. was another, Namely, Augustine nowhere mentions that Maximianus of Bagai was ever infected with the heresy of the Donatists, although discourse about him recurs not rarely in the holy doctor. Nay, St. Augustine, setting out the cause of the hatred and fury of the Donatists stirred up against Maximianus, puts it, not in his having deserted the errors of the Donatists, which thing indeed would by itself have sufficiently incited the atrocious minds of the Donatists to persecute Maximianus, especially in that city in which they surpassed the Catholics in an enormous multitude, on the testimony of Augustine in the book to Boniface; but in his having recovered by judicial sentence the basilica of the estate of Calvianum, occupied by the Donatists against right and law. What my opinion holds on the matter in controversy I shall set out in a few words. And first, indeed, Maximianus, the brother of Castorius, seems to be called of Vagina or of Vaga rather than of Bagai: both because he is found so called in Augustine in the Letter to Castorius, and because the Greek text of the council of Milevis in Justel, Labbe and Hardouin, which I oppose to the Latin text of the same council, favours this reading. On the contrary, Maximianus the confessor is rather to be called of Bagai than of Vaga: for so he is named in Letter 88 according to seven manuscripts of good repute, and not much otherwise in many others; so in book 3 against Cresconius. He is indeed called Vagiensis in Letter 185 in the printed editions, and Vaginensis in some manuscripts; but in most others Vagaiensis for Bagaiensis. See here the Notes of the learned men of St. Maur on Augustine, from which these things have been drawn. Next, just as Bagai does not seem to be the same as Vaga, so the difference of Maximianus of Bagai, of whom we are now treating, from Maximianus of Vaga or Vagina, of whom Augustine speaks to Castorius, is the more approved by me.
[10] and most savagely Now let us hear from Augustine how great was the savagery of the Donatists against St. Maximianus. In book 3 against Cresconius the Donatist, chapter 43, he has thus: "Maximianus, Catholic bishop of Bagai, a judicial sentence having been pronounced between the parties, had recovered the basilica of the estate of Calvianum, which your people had at one time illicitly usurped: while he was retaining it by clear right, in that very basilica, under the altar, whither he had fled, the altar being broken over him, cruelly beaten with its timbers and other clubs, and with iron also, he filled that whole place with blood. And he had received also a great wound in the groin, from which, the gore flowing out more largely, he would have died at once, had not their greater cruelty, by the hidden mercy of God, been of benefit. For when, the limbs on that side being stripped, he was dragged moreover half-alive and face down, the dust secretly stopped up the overflowing veins. Then, when he was being carried by the hands of our people, they, rushing upon him again, violently wrested him away and punished him more severely, and, thrown down by night from a lofty tower, he lay softly received below on ashes of dung, having lost sensation, scarcely drawing his last breath. There a certain poor man, passing by, found him, when he had turned aside to that place for the sake of relieving himself. And he recognized him when, frightened, he called his wife, whom modesty had removed to a distance, bearing a lantern. Then both carried him home, either out of pity or also hoping for some little gain, when, whether living or dead, but at least gathered up, he should be shown to our people.
[11] was held by the Donatists in the year 404 "What more? He was healed by a wonderful cure; he lives, more scars being counted in his body than limbs. Rumour had announced him to overseas lands as killed by your people, and the monstrousness and grave indignity of that crime, wherever it could be heard, had moved all things with horrible grief. And after he himself followed thither, his most recent scars defended that lie of rumour: for him whom those then looking upon him could scarcely believe alive, rumour seemed not to have rashly spread abroad as killed. When he had found there the colleague of Thubursicum, whom I mentioned a little before, and some others who had suffered similar or not much lesser things, and no means of returning to their own seemed open to them; and because the notorious fury of your circumcellions, providing your clerics with a horrible bodyguard, became known everywhere most hatefully; an enormous ill-will flared up against you, and thence it came about both that all the past laws against you were stirred up and that these new ones were enacted. Yet the severity of all of them, if it be compared with the cruelty of your people raging disorderly and without any law, must be called wonderful mildness. For by these, so great a power having been received, Catholic gentleness is commended more than heretical savagery is punished: nay, rather, it rages against us more boldly and more insanely, devising, threatening and executing slaughters, robberies, burnings, blindings."
[12] St. Augustine is consistent with himself in the book to Boniface On the Correction of the Donatists, he went to Honorius, and of most severe laws where he narrates the same things about their savagery exercised against St. Maximianus; yet there is here something which he suppressed in the former place, such as this, that St. Maximianus was transferred from the house of the poor little man who had first discovered him to the houses of certain pious men, and, studiously cared for in them, at length recovered beyond the expectation of all. "But, received by a certain soft heap" (the words are Augustine's), "and seen by the lantern of certain persons passing by at night" (the poor little man, namely, and his wife), "recognized and gathered up, and carried to a religious house, great care having been applied, after many days he was restored from that desperate state." After many days, he says, which you may nevertheless truly call few, considering both the multitude and the gravity of the wounds inflicted: whence not unjustly he said in the place described above that Maximianus was healed by a wonderful cure. After he was restored to health, he went to Italy to implore the help and aid of the emperor against the Donatists, not so much for the sake of avenging himself, on the testimony of Augustine, as of protecting the church entrusted to him, which he proves by the example of Paul that he did rightly and justly: and the horrible and incredible slaughter of Maximianus especially moved the emperor's mind so much, on the same testimony in the book to Boniface, chapter 26, that a law was promulgated by which the monstrous heresy of the Donatists was not permitted, not merely to be violent, but to exist at all, with impunity.
[13] That law was passed by the emperor Honorius in the year of the Lord 404 or 405: was the occasion against the Donatists, for the council of Carthage which was celebrated in the year of the Lord 404 on the XXVI day of June sent to the emperor at Rome as legates Theasius and Evodius, to obtain, says Augustine in Letter 88 to Januarius, number 7, "that not all the Bishops and clerics of your party" (the Donatists) "should be held to the same condemnation of ten pounds of gold which was established against all heretics; but only those in whose places the Catholic Church suffered some violence from your people." But this they could not obtain: for thus Augustine continues: "But when the legates came to Rome, the horrible and most recent scars of the Catholic Bishop of Bagai had already moved the emperor that such laws should be sent as were in fact sent." The Theodosian code has various constitutions of Honorius against the Donatists inscribed with the year 405, for example L. 38 and 39 of the title On Heretics, L. 3, 4 and 5 of the title That holy baptism be not repeated, L. 2 On Religion. But which is that Honorian constitution which had already been promulgated at the arrival at Rome of the Carthaginian legates is not sufficiently ascertained. Those just cited were given not at Rome but at Ravenna in the year 405. Wherefore Tillemont, Note 39 on St. Augustine, and Cardinal Noris, History of the Donatists, part 2, chapter 12, judge it to be different from those which we have inserted in the Theodosian code; and they would have this hinted in Law 38 On Heretics, where it is said: "But if anyone should dare to mingle himself with things forbidden and illicit, let him not escape the snares both of the innumerable past constitutions and of the Law lately brought forth by our clemency."
[14] to the very great advantage of the Catholic faith. However that may be, St. Maximianus had indeed no small part in the laws which Honorius passed against the Donatists in the year 405, and in the fruit which proceeded from them. Of what kind and how great it was it will help to hear from Augustine. In Letter 93 to Vincent he has thus: "For we rejoice now at the correction of many" (Donatists), "who so truly hold and defend the Catholic unity, and rejoice that they have been freed from their former error, that we admire them with great congratulation." And below, number 2: "O if I could," he says, "show you, from among the circumcellions themselves" (these were the chief instruments of the Donatists' cruelty), "how many we now have as manifest Catholics, condemning their former life and miserable error, etc." That letter was written in the year 408. There followed the conversion not only of private persons but also of peoples: and not only of peoples, but the true Mother, rejoicing, received into her bosom great columns of peoples, on the testimony of the same Augustine, Letter 185, number 30; so that not undeservedly Idacius wrote that in the consulship of Stilicho for the 2nd time and Anthemius, that is, in the year 405, unity was made between the Catholics and the Donatists, and in the same consulship the council of Carthage decreed that thanks were to be given to the emperor by a public embassy: although the sect of the Donatists was not then so extinguished that no contests were thereafter to be entered upon by the Catholics with its more obstinate remnants. More of the deeds of St. Maximianus I have not found; this one thing I add from the words of Augustine related at the beginning of number XI, that he was still among the living about the year 406, about which St. Augustine composed his books against Cresconius.