ON ST. GEMINUS, CONFESSOR, PERHAPS A MONK OF THE ORDER OF ST. BENEDICT, IN THE TOWN OF SAN GEMINI IN UMBRIA,
In the year DCCCXV.
SYLLOGE.
Notice of the town of San Gemini; the Acts of the Saint discussed; his sacred cult.
Geminus, conf., perhaps of the Order of St. Benedict, in the town of San Gemini in Umbria. (S.)
BY J. B.
Between Narni and Terni, cities of Umbria, there is seen a moderate town, situated in the diocese of Narni, Notice of the town of San Gemini; which already some centuries back found the name of San Gemini from the Saint, the confessor, of whom we treat. They will have it that it was formerly called Casentinum, and that its inhabitants were named Casuentini or Casuentillani by Pliny, book 3 of the Natural History, chapter 14: indeed it once also obtained the name of Valentia, if the Acts of St. Geminus have it rightly. That town was destroyed in the ninth century by the Saracens, and then restored by the inhabitants not far from the old site, namely in the place where St. Geminus is related to have had his fixed seat for some time: and from the time that that restoration was made, the same town, its ancient appellation dropped, was not only called the town of San Gemini, but its inhabitants also adopted and venerated St. Geminus as their own special patron. For which cause chiefly we have assigned St. Geminus, though he died elsewhere, to the town of the same name; whom at this day it pleased Bucelin in the Benedictine Martyrology to assign to Ferentum or Ferentia, once indeed an episcopal city in Tuscany, but now a village, because St. Geminus departed from life there. Further, St. Geminus has long since obtained a sacred cult not only in that town which took its name from him, but also at Viterbo and elsewhere through Italy, as will be said below; so that it may seem in some measure wonderful that he has generally gone unmentioned by most martyrologists, even Benedictine ones, and by Ferrari in the General Catalogue of the Saints of Italy.
[2] There was sent in the year 1686 to our predecessors from Viterbo a Latin apograph of his Life, The Acts of the Saint, partly fabulous, transcribed from a certain Ms. codex of the lord Fecchi concerning St. Geminus, and signed by the hand of Francesco Salendi, notary. But that Life neither bears the name of its author nor is very ancient; and first indeed its anonymous author pursues the deeds of St. Geminus in Syria, where he relates that he was born: then he narrates to the reader what he did in Italy, whither he says he came from Syria: but he treats the argument proposed to himself so jejunely, nay even fabulously, that it is plain enough that he drew what he handed down about the deeds of St. Geminus, done chiefly in Syria, from no other source than from a certain confused opinion and report of the common people, or monuments which flowed from that as from a fountain. At the end of the Life of St. Geminus he makes mention of a monastery in the town of San Gemini granted to the Franciscan Fathers; whence it follows that he did not write before the fourteenth century (unless perhaps it was an addition to the Life written earlier by the anonymous writer, attached later). Jacobilli, in the Italian Life of St. Geminus in volume 1 of the Saints of Umbria at the 9th day of October, mostly agrees with the anonymous writer, although now and then he adds some things drawn from elsewhere and not mentioned by the anonymous writer. He praises monuments indeed, where his discourse is about the deeds of St. Geminus in Syria, and ancient ones, as he says; for example the Ms. Lessons contained in a very old Breviary of the church of San Gemini, likewise a codex of consistorial Propositions in the Library of Cardinal Marcello Lante, instruments of the monastery of Farfa, and ancient Mss. But what he drew from each, and what and how great their antiquity is, he is silent: St. Geminus lived partly in the eighth century, partly about the beginning of the ninth, as Jacobilli writes from them. What if they were made some centuries later, at first not from certain authors but only from the opinion of the common people? However the matter may be, I do not think that those Acts will find among the learned a certain and undoubted credit in those things which appear fabulous in themselves, and hence I shall not put them to the press. But let us hear what both the anonymous writer, who also lit the way for Jacobilli, and this writer record about St. Geminus.
[3] the victory in Syria won by his prayers, He was born, they say, in Syria, of a noble father, Militianus, commander of the army of the king who then reigned in Syria. His mother's name our anonymous writer does not reveal; Jacobilli calls her Belliades. Martial names indeed, which fit admirably a commander of the army and his wife: but I fear they are plainly invented. Further, their son St. Geminus, though sprung of idolatrous parents, having contracted fellowship with Christians, as Jacobilli writes, early gave his name to Christ; and when he was already growing up, and devoting himself solely to piety, it happened that the Chaldeans burst into Syria suddenly and in huge number: and having already ravaged everything in their way, they had returned laden with plunder to the sea, when Militianus, having at once gathered an army, pursued the departing enemy, attacked him, and compelled him to yield the victory and the plunder carried off; but not without a prodigy: for the father saw the Son, whom he had wished to take with him against the enemy — though absent at home, and fighting there with prayers for the safety of his father and of the Syrians — putting the Chaldeans to flight with drawn sword: of which victory indeed this was the chief fruit, that Militianus, returned home, since he reported the victory as received through the prayers of his Son, who nevertheless had not set foot out of the house, embraced the Christian faith together with his wife and all his household.
[4] but with circumstances But these things are not without their difficulty. For if you ask at what time, or under what king of Syria, the mentioned irruption of the Chaldeans into Syria took place, so far is the anonymous writer from declaring at what time it took place that you cannot elicit from him even the age in which St. Geminus lived: whence that whole narration seems to have proceeded from an author not properly instructed about the deeds of St. Geminus. But if you hear Jacobilli, St. Geminus died in Italy in the year 815 after spending about eight years there; and he says he came there a little after the victory over the Chaldeans won by his father; whence it follows that the mentioned irruption of the Chaldeans into Syria must have happened about the beginning of the ninth century, in the time of Harun al-Rashid, who reigned in Syria from the year 786 to the year 809, as is to be seen in Elmacin. But indeed this Harun ruled not Syria only but also Chaldea itself and other neighbouring regions, so that it seems less probable that the Syrians were ill-treated at that time by the Chaldeans and plundered everywhere, since they served under the rule of the same lord: Harun had indeed divided it among his sons; but again he had set his son al-Amin, on the testimony of Elmacin, over both the region of Syria and that of Babylonia; nor, while he lived, is any dissension read to have flourished among his sons. And whence did the Chaldeans burst into Syria? If you hear the anonymous writer, you would think they came there from their homeland, and indeed by a sea journey. At that time, he says, the Chaldeans, invading Syria in arms, plundered everything, and with many spoils and treasures received returned to the sea, to cross over into Chaldea; whereas the land journey from Syria into Chaldea is ever so much shorter than if one had to sail to Syria by crossing part of the Mediterranean sea, then traversing Egypt by a land journey, and again passing through the Arabian gulf, the Red Sea and the Persian gulf; and there is no sea to be found between Syria and Chaldea.
[5] Jacobilli writes that the Chaldeans burst into Syria from Samaria, which is a city of Palestine, scarcely credible and calls them the Chaldeans of Samaria. From Palestine indeed a way lies open into Syria through the mediterranean sea. But what business, I ask, had the Chaldeans in Palestine at that time? Had they come there too to ravage? Had they established a fixed seat there, as Jacobilli seems to intimate? But indeed, like Chaldea and Syria, so also Palestine at that time lay subject to the rule of Harun, which does not appear very probable to have been so far and wide devastated by the Chaldeans under a most warlike prince. If any place be given here to conjecture, some rabble of robbers perhaps broke out at that time from Babylon, which Pliny, book 7, chapter 26, names the head of the Chaldean nations, or from the regions neighbouring it, while Harun was occupied with foreign wars, and, having roamed through Arabia and Palestine by a land journey, and at length crossed part of the mediterranean sea, brought devastation on Syria. Thus indeed you may in some fashion reconcile the sayings of the anonymous writer and of Jacobilli: but the force of this conjecture is not such that it can exempt the whole matter from the suspicion of invention. Moreover Jacobilli openly makes the king of Syria an idolater — which the anonymous writer seems in some measure tacitly to intimate — such as neither Harun nor al-Amin, men of the Mahometan sect, were. And Jacobilli writes that Militianus went out against the Chaldeans from Chalcedon, by which name is to be understood not the city of the same name in Bithynia, situated on the Euxine sea opposite Constantinople, which at that time obeyed the emperor of Constantinople; but Chalcis, also called Chalcedon in a later age, as Le Quien proves in volume 2 of the Oriens Christianus, page 786, which was the head of Chalcidene, a region of inland Syria. But let us proceed to other things.
[6] A few years after the victory won over the Chaldeans (if only
it be not an invention) years, as Jacobilli says, Militianus departed from among the living. clothed, they assert. And the king of Syria, as the Acts state, had resolved to advance Geminus to his father's offices, and to ampler ones than these: but Geminus, who had determined to serve as a soldier not to the king but to God, rejected the honours offered him, moved not at all by his mother's prayers, not at all by the king's threats or promises. He was therefore cast into prison, and while he was held there the king sends his niece (behold another kind of invention) into the prison to St. Geminus, to storm at once the chastity and the faith of the Youth. When nothing was effected by these arts either, they came to stripes, which he bore with equal constancy; and, led out of prison by the help of an angel, if we believe it, he was ordered to make for Italy, there to spend the rest of the days of his life. Setting out, therefore, secretly from his mother, he entered a cave near the shore of the Syrian sea, in which, living on herbs and water, he stayed eighteen days. Here, when he had healed the withered hand of a country girl by his prayers, and had brought eighty unbelievers to the Christian rites, his holiness began to be spread abroad through the mouths of men, and his fame having been carried to his mother, she at once flies to her Son and begs him not to desert her; but in vain. She therefore returns sorrowful to her own, intending to return at once to her Son together with her kinsfolk; but meanwhile St. Geminus had already set sail for Italy. And the mother passed the rest of the course of her life in the same cave which her Son had inhabited, and, as indeed they say, wished to be entombed there.
[7] Landed in Italy from Syria St. Geminus, having landed in Italy, was first received by Fano (Fanum Fortunae), situated in the Ecclesiastical state on the shore of the Adriatic sea between Pesaro and Senigallia, and conspicuous both for its antiquity and for its episcopal see. It venerates St. Paternian as its first bishop, who was treated by us at the 12th day of July. There once existed not far from there a monastery of the Benedictine Order sacred to St. Paternian, and mentioned in the Acts of St. Fortunatus, bishop of Fano, at the 8th day of June, whose inhabitants are stated to have received St. Geminus, a stranger, very kindly and in Christian fashion. But they reaped a rich reward for the hospitality afforded to St. Geminus: since, as the Acts state, when they were suffering from a scarcity of water, the Guest, not ungrateful for their kindness, raised up a spring by prayers poured out to God. St. Geminus, however, did not stay there long, since the Acts presently exhibit him setting out elsewhere, though not without the grief of the monks of Fano.
[8] he works miracles in various places, and at Casuentum Having then said farewell to these, St. Geminus, departing farther from the sea coast, hastened to Spoleto, an episcopal city of Umbria, namely, as the Acts state, for this cause, that at Fano, whether on account of the holiness of his life or on account of the spring, of which there was talk a little before, prodigiously drawn forth, he was being celebrated in the talk of the people more than his lowliness of mind could bear. And when he came to Spoleto, he presently began after his custom to visit the churches and to give himself to prolonged prayers; especially the church of St. Gregory the martyr, inscribed in the Roman Martyrology at the 24th day of December. Here, as he was praying, the son of the sacristan, driven by youthful insolence, struck him with a slap, and presently paid the penalty of the deed, wonderfully vexed by a demon: when the youth's father heard this, he at once went to St. Geminus to beg pardon for the offence, and he, moved by his prayers, restored the possessed one to his former health. The report of the prodigy, spread among the common people, which St. Geminus hated, was the cause why he had again to migrate elsewhere from there. From here, therefore, St. Geminus, as his Acts have it, went off to the city of Martana, or, as I read elsewhere, Martulana. It was situated in Umbria about five miles distant from Tudertum (in Italian Todi) toward the winter sunrise, at the roots of a mountain of the same name. And from here, having expelled a demon from the daughter of a certain widow, he came to Casuentum or Casuntia, where, says the anonymous writer, he dwelt for many days, healing the sick, preaching and doing many miracles. These things the anonymous writer relates in general about the deeds of St. Geminus at Casuentum.
[9] But Jacobilli in the Life of St. Geminus recorded a few things more than these; a church having been founded to St. Nicholas, and having received, and first indeed he affirms that he turned aside to a certain Benedictine abbey, founded before the year 730, as he says, and situated outside the walls of old Casuentum, and fixed a stable seat there by the divine nod: and then that he raised there a church sacred to St. Nicholas, and became so famous for virtues and prodigies that not only after his death, but even while he was alive (the credit for which, however, let rest with Jacobilli), Casuentum was called the town of San Gemini by the multitude flocking there to recover health. He adds finally, in volume 3, page 294, that St. Geminus received the habit of the Benedictines there. But in this matter that author does not seem consistent with himself, since in volume 1, page 744, he related that he did this in the monastery of St. Paternian shortly after his landing in Italy; and again at the end of the Life of St. Geminus he says that there are not lacking ancient codices which relate that St. Geminus was already clad in the monastic habit when he landed in Italy from Syria. On the contrary, the anonymous writer relates absolutely nothing from which you might conclude that he received the habit of the Benedictines either in that Benedictine abbey or elsewhere: Mabillon gave St. Geminus no place either in the Benedictine Annals, or in the Acts of the Saints of his Order, or finally among the Passed-over, which he is accustomed to do only in the case of those who, if they were monks, were at any rate not Benedictines, or, if they were such, either have no Acts, or Acts besprinkled with errors and fables — from which certainly the Acts of St. Geminus, of which I am speaking here, do not seem to me free.
[10] Jacobilli indeed praises these words of the son of the sacristan of Spoleto about St. Geminus: with the Benedictine habit, as indeed they say Having a tunic down to the ankles; but what of it, if these can be understood of a merely eremitical tunic? And as for what he adds about the pictures of St. Geminus, namely that in some of them, one of which is in the church of St. Francis, he is exhibited clad in the Benedictine habit — although others, and the very arms of the town, represent the same in the appearance of an armed horseman in memory of the victory won by Militianus through his prayers — nothing certain can be concluded from that either, since they were most probably so formed only from popular tradition and long after his death. Certainly, if I may conjecture anything from the Acts of St. Geminus, in great part fabulous, he will have been a holy man indeed, but little known even to the inhabitants of Umbria, as one who came there from abroad, and led a solitary life removed from the eyes of men, and not rarely changed his dwellings; whence I think it came about in later centuries that those who wished to consign anything about him to writing, and had no certain guide lighting the way before them, followed the mere opinion and report of the common people, that is, a guide not rarely untrustworthy, especially in those things which are said to have been done by him in Syria. And that it was familiar to the Umbrians to call up Saints from Syria into Umbria is clear enough from the Preliminary Treatise on the XII Saints who came from Syria into Italy, prefixed to volume 1 of July. But whatever the Acts of St. Geminus may be, since true things are wont to be mixed with false, I would not altogether deny that he was a Benedictine; I should wish, however, to be able to give it more luminously proved from somewhere by more certain documents.
[11] He dies at Ferentium. After he had stayed for some time at Casuentum, he withdrew from here again, at the warning, as they say, of an angel, to Ferentum or Ferentia, at that time an episcopal city in suburbicarian Tuscia, but now a village. But, cast out by the Ferentines, he chose for himself a cave in the neighbouring places, in which he led a life removed from men but joined to God, until there, forewarned by an angel of his impending death, he rendered his blessed soul to the creator in the year, as Jacobilli writes, 815, where also he was buried in a fitting place; so that a certain Benedictine Menology departs plainly from the truth, whose words Jacobilli cites in volume 3, page 496: At Ferentum in Tuscia, of St. Geminus, monk and confessor, a Man of wonderful holiness, son of Militianus, general of the king of Syria. He died at Camerinum, now San Gemini in Umbria, on the IXth of October in the year DCCCXV. For neither did what is now called the town of San Gemini ever obtain the name of Camerinum, nor did he cease to live there, but at Ferentum according to the Acts. And Camerinum is generally placed between the borders of Umbria and Picenum at the roots of the Apennine. These things I had to say about the deeds of St. Geminus; it remains that I likewise dispatch in a few words what pertains to his cult.
[12] In various places through Italy That St. Geminus obtained no slight cult through Italy is proved by the various buildings sacred to his name, which Jacobilli mentioned here and there: among these the chief is the one which, old Casuentum having been destroyed in the ninth century by the Saracens, and the town of San Gemini having afterwards been founded not far from there in the place where he had lived for some time, the inhabitants of the place willed to be sacred to his name, a monastery of Benedictines also being added, which, as we have already related above, was transferred in the course of time to secular priests. Jacobilli writes that the destruction of Casuentum happened about the year 840, perhaps for this cause alone, that about that time the Saracens, called in by Radelgis of Benevento and Siconulf of Salerno, princes contending in war among themselves, afterwards afflicted Italy with the greatest disasters. And that the Saracens brought themselves into Umbria more than once is clear enough from Erchempert, a contemporary writer. About the same time (about the year 880), he says in Muratori, volume 2 of the Writers of Italian Affairs, part 1, page 248, (the Saracens, having made peace with Athanasius, prelate of Naples,) destroying all the land of Benevento and at the same time of Rome, and also part of Spoleto, plundered all the monasteries and churches, and all the cities and towns, villages, mountains, hills and islands. Again, toward the end of his History he writes thus: And Lambert, son of Guido the elder, having died (about the year DCCCLXXX), left Spoleto to his son; and he too dying, Guido the younger, taking up Spoleto and Camerino, made peace with the Saracens encamped at Sepinum (a town of Samnium), hostages being given and received: in whose time also the aforesaid monasteries, cities and towns were all taken and burned by the Saracens. And again a little after: But Guido, learning that Charles Augustus (the Fat, who died in the year 888) lay half-dead, overcome by the desire of reigning and deceived by his kinsmen, leaving the province of Benevento subdued to himself and the duchy of the Spoletans, went off into Gaul to reign; the land of Benevento indeed is taken by the Greeks; Spoleto is plundered by the Agarenes. But in what year definitely the destruction of old Casuentum happened, or in what year the town of San Gemini began to be restored, and its chief church, sacred to St. Geminus, to be founded, I cannot say.
[13] Likewise another church dedicated to St. Geminus
he records in his Acts as raised at Ferentia, has sacred buildings which, although half-ruined, kept the appellation of St. Geminus down to the century just elapsed when he was writing. And a third founded in the territory of Todi in the place called Civitella, situated between the Tiber and the Tinia. A fourth on mount Agnasio in the district of Nocera. A fifth, finally, in the territory of Bassano in suburbicarian Tuscia, not far from the Tiber and the city of Orte. And as regards the sacred remains of St. Geminus, he writes thus of them in Italian at the end of volume 3, in the Catalogue of the relics of Umbria, page XXXIII: The body (rather, part of the body) of St. Geminus, monk and confessor, which once rested at Ferentum, then at Viterbo, is believed to rest in the church of St. Nicholas in the said town of San Gemini; and a little after he adds: but to this day unknown to our eyes. Thus he, but not very affirmatively about the relics of St. Geminus believed to be kept in the church of St. Nicholas: but it is established more luminously that the same were once translated to Viterbo: for first indeed Fr. Bernardino Coccovagini, in a letter written to our predecessors from Viterbo in the year 1686, testified that there an urn inscribed with these words: Here rests the body of the most blessed Geminus, confessor, had not only been seen by him in the church of St. Lawrence; but also that there had been found by chance in the same city a parchment leaf of an old printed Missal, inserted in the old cover of a codex of Ovid's Metamorphoses, in which there was read a Prayer of this kind about St. Geminus: We humbly beseech thy immense clemency, almighty God, that we who, hindered by the frailty of the flesh, sin innumerably, may be helped by the prayers of thy most blessed confessor Geminus: so that, whose most sacred body we here venerably embrace for love, by the suffrage of his merits we may be freed from all adversity. Through our Lord etc.: whence it follows not only that relics of St. Geminus were kept at Viterbo, but also that his memory was anciently celebrated with a certain special cult.
[14] dedicated to him, and his relics are honoured at Viterbo. Then Bussi narrates, in the Chronology of the bishops of Viterbo, that in the year 1724, beyond the expectation of all, the sacred bones of St. Geminus the confessor were found in the cathedral church, sacred to St. Lawrence, in an old altar, and were enclosed in a new one together with relics of the holy martyrs Valentine and Hilary by Adriano Sermattei, bishop of the Viterbese. But at what age they were first brought to Viterbo I have found related neither in Jacobilli nor elsewhere. That he died and was buried among the Ferentines, and that his bones were brought thence to Viterbo, has been said above. I would believe, therefore, that they were kept at Ferentia until it was utterly destroyed by the Viterbese: for then the Viterbese carried into their own city the remains of the Saints and the sacred images kept among the Ferentines, as the same Bussi affirms in general in book 1 of the History of Viterbo, page 40. Further, Leandro Alberti in the Description of Italy and Baudrand in his Geographical Dictionary say that Ferentia was destroyed by the Viterbese in the year 1074; on the contrary Bussi, just praised, page 41, almost a whole century later, namely in the year 1172, and rightly indeed, since in the Appendix of his Work, page 398, he exhibits the instrument of Christian, archbishop of Mainz, legate of the emperor Frederick I through Italy, by which the Viterbese are reconciled to the emperor, whose indignation they had incurred on account of the destruction of Ferentia, and are absolved from the imperial Ban, given at Foligno in the year of the Lord's Incarnation MCLXXIII, in the VIIth Indiction, on the Ides of February.