ON ST. PROBUS, BISHOP AND CONFESSOR, AT GAETA IN ROMAN CAMPANIA,
IN AN UNCERTAIN CENTURY.
SYLLOGE.
Probus, bishop and confessor, at Gaeta in Roman Campania. (S.)
BY J. B.
Two bishops named Probus, illustrious for sanctity, we have long since inserted in our Work, Whether St. Probus was a confessor. the one of Verona at the 12th day of January, the other of Rieti at the 15th day of March: to these we today add a third, whose remains Gaeta possesses and venerates, an episcopal city on the coast of Latium and on the Gulf of Formia, subject to no metropolitan, but immediately to the Roman Pontiff. Of this St. Probus one of the martyrologists, as far as I know, makes mention, Ferrarius
in his Catalogues of Saints, both that of Italy and the General one: in the former Work he has it thus: St. Probus, bishop and martyr, has been accustomed to be celebrated by the church of Gaeta with a double rite on the day before the Nones of October. His body, together with the bodies of the holy bishops and martyrs Erasmus, Marcian, Castus, Secundinus and Innocent, is religiously kept in the Major church. So Ferrarius here; from the Tables, he says, of the aforesaid church. He speaks in almost the same manner in the General Catalogue of Saints: At Gaeta in Campania (Roman, or, if you prefer, New Latium), of St. Probus, bishop and martyr. Nor should you expect more concerning the things done by him: for his Acts, says Ferrarius, are wanting. A Sermon once delivered on his feast, from the manuscripts of the church of Gaeta, was supplied to our Predecessors by Fr. Antonio Beatillo; but it is not worth the trouble to commit it to print, since it records nothing of St. Probus which could not equally be said of any holy bishop and confessor whatever: Of any holy bishop and confessor, I say: for the above-mentioned Sermon expressly ascribes this title to him, of which this is the beginning: Today, dearest Brethren, we celebrate the birthday of the holy confessor Probus, who, leaving this laborious life, was reborn into perpetual life, wherein he ended the labour of the contest and received the reward of confession.
[2] Ferrarius therefore seems to have been mistaken, or perhaps to have used corrupted Tables of the church of Gaeta, whether he was a martyr is doubtful: when from them he made St. Probus a martyr. Certainly neither Ughelli, among the Bishops of Gaeta in volume 1 of the enlarged Italia Sacra, column 533, nor Nicola Coleti in his Additions to Ughelli, writes that St. Probus was a martyr: Ughelli's words are: Probus, bishop of Gaeta; to which Coleti adds these: And he too came forth from the same stock of the dukes (of Gaeta), the laurel of whose sanctity the church of Gaeta celebrates on the 6th day of October, according to the same abbot Constantine, who says that he received what he wrote about the church of Gaeta from the most ancient charters of its cathedral. So Coleti, from the Italia Sacra of Giulio Ambrogio Lucenti, which he cites. But Pietro Rosetto expressly calls him Confessor in his brief Description of Gaeta, published in Italian at Naples in the year 1694, where first, on page 22, in discourse 5, on the relics of Gaeta, he has thus: The body of St. Probus, bishop and confessor, whose feast is celebrated on the 6th day of October: and again on page 28, discourse 6, on the illustrious Men of Gaeta, writing thus: St. Probus, bishop and confessor, a native of Gaeta, whose feast is celebrated on the 6th day of October. But if Ferrarius, asserting the martyrdom of St. Probus, ought certainly not to be believed, is greater credit to be given to Coleti, affirming that St. Probus, venerated at Gaeta on the 6th day of October, was not only a bishop of Gaeta, but also born of the dukes of Gaeta?
[3] as also whether he was bishop of Gaeta in the 10th century, Ughelli indeed inserted a bishop Probus into the Catalogue of the prelates of Gaeta; but besides the name he added nothing about him; he did not call him a Saint, did not say he was born at Gaeta, nor born of the dukes of that city, nor venerated on the 6th day of October. And if Coleti, following in this matter the statements of certain more recent writers, says these things, so long as I have not seen more ancient and more certain testimonies about these matters, neither Coleti nor the other recent writers will obtain undoubted credit from me. The Sermon indeed, cited at number 1, has thus at the end: Blessed Probus, bishop of Gaeta, died on the day before the Nones of October in the year of the Lord DCCCCXVI, in the time of John X, Prelate of the holy Roman Church, and was buried in the cathedral church in the place which is called IN CORPO, beside the bodies of SS. Erasmus and Innocent; but of what age is it itself, that it should merit undoubted credit? Certainly it seems to have been first written a very long while after the death of St. Probus; for otherwise it would have related at least something particular of the things done by him, which it does not do, as I noted above. What if Probus, venerated at Gaeta on the 6th day of October, is perhaps far more ancient than the 10th century, and the same who in Ughelli, volume X of the enlarged Italia Sacra, column 98, leads the band of the prelates of Formia, and is adorned with this kind of eulogy: Probus, who buried the relics of St. Erasmus, who suffered martyrdom at Formia under Diocletian, from the Acts of the same Saint? With reason Ferrarius doubted on this matter at the 6th day of October in the Catalogue of the Saints of Italy, annotating thus on St. Probus: Whether he was bishop of the church of Formia or of another see, and at what time he suffered martyrdom (if indeed he was a martyr), it has not yet been possible to know; since his Acts (which in all likelihood do not exist) have not come into our hands.
[4] whether rather of Formia in the early centuries of the Church, whose It is indeed hard to grasp that so great a forgetfulness should have crept upon the people of Gaeta concerning their Bishop, illustrious for sanctity, sprung from their dukes, perpetually kept among them, and dead only in the 10th century, that they seem never to have known anything of the things done by him, much less know them now. Of a Probus who governed them as bishop in the 10th century Ughelli reports no monument; he reports, however, monuments of Bernard and Deusdedit, bishops of Gaeta, between whom he places Probus. Bernard he writes to have lived in the times of Otto the Great, and to have presided over the church of Gaeta in the year 954; he is read as subscribed to the Roman Council held under Gregory V in the year 998, in the time of Otto III. Deusdedit, according to an ancient monument from the archive of the church of Gaeta cited by Ughelli, sat at Gaeta in the time of the emperor Leo, surnamed the Wise, who departed from the living in the year 911; so that, according to Ughelli, it must be that Probus occupied the see of Gaeta between the year 911 and the year 954 or 998: but does so vague a notice of the time at which Probus sat at Gaeta suggest a prelate illustrious for sanctity? He is said in the Sermon cited above to have died in the year 916; but since this, as was said above, was in all likelihood written long after the death of St. Probus, nothing certain can be drawn from it either. The bishop of Gaeta who next follows in Ughelli, Stephen by name, is said to have been elected in the year 1031. Rosetto, cited above, places Probus after Stephen, page 31 and following; so that the chronology of the prelates of Gaeta of that age is very obscure and confused, which, as I have said, at least as regards a Probus illustrious for sanctity, as the people of Gaeta would have it, and whose remains they have always possessed, is hard to grasp.
[5] Nor indeed are there lacking from elsewhere things which suggest that St. Probus, venerated at Gaeta, relics were at some time, like those of other Saints, was a bishop of Formia. The body of St. Probus has long lain in the cathedral church of Gaeta, sacred to St. Mary and St. Erasmus, beside the bodies of SS. Erasmus and Innocent. St. Erasmus the martyr was treated in volume 1 of June at the 2nd day of that month, and it was there shown, on page 212, from Gregory the Great, that the body of St. Erasmus lay in the church of Formia in Gregory's age, and was afterwards translated to Gaeta in the ninth century, namely about the year 842, about which time, on account of the incursions of the Saracens, Gregory IV, who died in the year 844, is said to have transferred the see of Formia to Gaeta. St. Innocent the martyr was treated at the 7th day of May: they say he was an African bishop under Diocletian and Maximian; that, compelled to flee from Africa into Italy, he settled and died in a certain place, as it appears, of the territory of Terracina, called Capratia; and that his body was kept there until, the Saracens breaking into Italy on every side, it was likewise carried to Gaeta and deposited in the cathedral church. The same basilica contains, moreover, the relics of St. Marcian, of SS. Castus and Secundinus, of St. Eupuria or Exuperia, and of St. Albina. St. Marcian was bishop of Syracuse, whose body, when Sicily was harassed by the incursions of the Saracens, is said to have been translated to Gaeta. See volume 2 of June, part 2, page 787. Similarly, in volume 1 of July, page 28, the relics of SS. Castus and Secundinus are reported to have been conveyed to Gaeta from elsewhere. The miracles of St. Eupuria were written down about the year 900, as Henschen says in volume III of May, page 575; but their author frankly confesses that it is not known from what place or country this virgin sprang, or in what manner she came to Gaeta. Finally, St. Albina is announced on the 16th day of December at Formia in Campania in the Roman Martyrology, because she was buried there, as Ferrarius says in the Annotations at the same day; adding that she was afterwards translated to Gaeta.
[6] carried to Gaeta What if, therefore, St. Probus too was one of the ancient confessors whose deeds have been almost blotted out of the memory of men, whether by the antiquity or by the injury of the times, and his body was at some time carried to Gaeta, either from Formia while the Saracens were raging through Italy, or from Africa in the time of the Arians or Vandals, or finally from somewhere else, as we have already observed was done also with the bodies of the Saints just mentioned; and hence the people of Gaeta have so great an ignorance of the things done by him? Surely, if anyone should wish to suspect thus, I do not see on what head he could be greatly blamed by the people of Gaeta: especially since it does not seem unlike the truth on other grounds that the Saracens, as they were the cause of the episcopal see being transferred from Formia to Gaeta, so also brought it about that the bodies both of St. Probus and of other Saints were transferred to Gaeta as to a place safer from the fury of the Saracens; and John of Monte Cassino, afterwards Pope Gelasius, the II of this name, cited by Papebroch in volume 1 of June, page 217, says that St. Erasmus was buried in the church of Formia by Probus the bishop; who was perhaps the same as that Probus who, in Labbe, volume 1 of the Councils, at the 2nd Roman council held under Silvester in the year 324, is read as subscribed among 139 bishops from the city of Rome or not far from it, although the name of his see is not expressed.