ON ST. AGILEUS, MARTYR, AT CARTHAGE IN AFRICA,
From the Roman Martyrology and the Hieronymian ones.
Before the year 313.
CommentaryAgileus, M., at Carthage S. in Africa. (S.)
BY C. G.
The holy Carthaginian Martyr proposed in the title [The holy Martyr, who is indeed commemorated in the Roman Martyrology on this day,] was first inserted in the Roman Martyrology at this day by Cardinal Baronius, saying: At Carthage, of St. Agileus, Martyr, on whose birthday St. Augustine delivered a sermon about him to the people: to this announcement of his he subjoins the following Notes: Possidius in his Index, chapter 9, makes mention of the sermon of St. Augustine delivered on the birthday of St. Agileus. Of the basilica under the name of Saint
Agileus there is a clear record in the Life of St. Fulgentius of Ruspe in Surius T. l. Among ours at the 1st day of January, p. 43, no. 61.. St. Gregory the Pope received as a gift sacred Relics of this Martyr from Dominic, bishop of Carthage; there is extant concerning them Letter I. But since in these records, which this learned Compiler of the Martyrology reveals to have lighted his way, although they abundantly prove that the holy Martyr enjoyed a celebrated and ancient cult, and therefore was rightly inserted in the Roman Martyrology, he could not, however, discover the determinate day on which he either suffered or was anciently honoured with religious cult, nor does he cite any Martyrologies or Calendars from which he could have had it ascertained, I suspect that the said Baronius chose the day on which to give the holy Martyr a place in the Roman Martyrology at his own discretion, and so, as is accustomed to happen in similar cases, strayed rather far from the anniversary day either of the passion or of the cult.
[2] but formerly on the 25th of January, notably at Carthage, For in Fiorentini, in the very ancient, or Echternach, apograph of the Hieronymian Martyrology, our Saint is announced at the 25th day of January (from which day he was also deferred to this day by Bolland, the parent of our Work, who followed by design the order of the Roman Martyrology): he is commemorated at the same day by the Carthusians of Cologne, or, by the name under which they come in the Usuardine Auctaria in Sollerius, by Greven; at the same day likewise his feast is inscribed in a very ancient Calendar of the church of Carthage in Mabillon Vet. Analect., p. 167. Paris edition 1723., so that consequently it cannot be doubted that this day is truly the anniversary either of the passion or rather, on account of what is to be said below, of the ancient cult: the announcements of the Martyrologies we shall report below on another occasion: but whether any Acts of the holy Martyr are extant anywhere we do not know; their lack indeed, and the preservation for posterity of very many deeds of the Saint, could have been supplied by the sermon of St. Augustine of which the said Baronius speaks in his Notes, and which Possidius in his Indiculus of all the writings of the holy Doctor indicates briefly thus: On the Birthday of St. Agilaeus, a sermon of St. Augustine, had not antiquity begrudged us this one too, as Stilting noted on that same Indiculus Act. SS. 28th of August, p. 441 and following.: we shall now observe, with Tillemont Mém. pour serv. à l'hist. ecclés., vol. V, p. 554., only a few things about the ancient church dedicated to the name of our Saint which existed at Carthage, and also about his Relics sent to St. Gregory the Great.
[3] as from the church dedicated to him which existed there, once After Carthage was treacherously taken by Genseric, king of the Vandals, which Thierry Ruinart proves to have happened in the year 439 of the common era, in his Commentary on the History of the Vandal persecution written by Victor of Vita, a sharer in the tribulation then breaking in Chap. V, p. 444. Paris edition 1699., it is gathered that the basilica dedicated to the holy Martyr was wretchedly profaned, from a noble fragment of the Appendix to the Chronicle of Prosper, which Henricus Canisius edited from the Augsburg Codex Lect. Antiq., vol. I, p. 311. Basnage edition, where its author writes thus of Guntabund or Guntamund, the third king of the Vandals in Africa: After him (Huneric) reigned (from the year, according to the said Ruinart, about 484) Guntamund, son of Gento, brother of the same king Huneric, eleven years, nine months, eleven days, who in the third year of his reign ordered the Cemetery of St. Agileus at Carthage to be given to the Catholics, Eugenius, bishop of Carthage, having already been recalled from exile by the same; and in the tenth year of his reign he opened the churches of the Catholics. Genseric had probably taken from the Catholics the basilica of the holy Martyr together with the Cemetery, he who, as Victor of Vita says Pers. Vand., book I, § v, p. 7., having driven out the bishop (Quodvultdeus) … with his venerable clergy, at once made over to his own religion the church named Restituta, in which the bishops always resided, and took away all those that had been within the walls of the city, with their riches, and moreover occupied outside the walls whichever he wished; or certainly his successor Huneric, who, as the same Victor testifies Book IV, §1, p. 63., secretly sending his men through the various provinces with … a decree, while the bishops were placed at Carthage (where, at the urging of an edict of the same king, they had come together to render account of their faith), on one day closed the churches of all Africa, and granted all the substance of the bishops and of the churches as a gift to his own bishops. But to what use the basilica of the holy Martyr was assigned, whether it was made over to the Arian sect, or rather inhabited by the Vandals, to which profane use Prosper writes in his Chronicle that many churches were handed over by Genseric, in these words Canis. Lect. Antiq., vol. I, p. 303.: These (churches), both emptied of their sacred vessels and deprived of the ministration of priests, he ordered to be no longer places of divine worship, but dwellings of his own people, until Guntamund restored it to the Catholics, is uncertain.
[4] and profaned again by the Vandals, Further, the joy of the Catholics throughout Africa which arose from the churches restored by Guntamund was disturbed indeed shortly afterwards by his successor Thrasamund, who again, as Victor of Tunnuna says in his Chronicle Ibid. p. 326., full of Arian madness, persecuted the Catholics and closed the churches of the Catholics; but that joy was abundantly restored by Hilderic, whose wonderful goodness, says the biographer of St. Fulgentius, bishop of Ruspe Act. SS. 1st of January, p. 43, no. 59., restoring liberty to the Catholic church established throughout Africa, granted the people of Carthage their own prelate: and then, when the exiled bishops by command of the same king were returning from exile with St. Fulgentius to Carthage, The divine praise, adds the same biographer Ibid, no. 61., resounded from all tongues, for at the basilica of St. Agileus the people, following and going before, celebrated the noble triumph of the blessed Confessors: likewise that the ordination of the new bishop of Carthage, namely Boniface, was carried out in the basilica of the holy Martyr, perhaps for this reason, that Hilderic feared to return at once to the Catholics the cathedral church called Restituta, lest he too greatly exasperate his Vandals, who had often been crueller than their predecessor kings in persecuting the Catholics, is read in the said Chronicle of Tiro Prosper Canis. Antiq. Lect., vol. I, p. 312., which has thus: After whom (Thrasamund) reigned Hilderic, son of Huneric, eight years, eight days, who at the beginning of his reign ordered Boniface to be ordained bishop at Carthage in the church of St. Agileus, and restored liberty to all the Catholics: for the same reason, probably, In the second year of the most glorious king Hilderic (of the common era 524), on the Nones of February, at Carthage, in the secretarium of the basilica of the holy Martyr Agileus, Boniface, bishop of the church of Carthage, holding a Council with his fellow bishops of the various African provinces, is read in Labbe to have sat Conc., vol. IV, col. 1629 and 1641.; and so it does not seem unlikely that the bishops of Carthage had their cathedra for some time in the basilica of our holy Martyr, while the Arian Vandals still occupied the other churches at Carthage, as Tillemont asserts.
[5] [and from his Relics transmitted to St. Gregory the Great it is clear that the cult,] Whether, under the tyrant Gelimer, the murderer of Hilderic, up to the recovery of Africa by the emperor Justinian in the year 534 through the general Belisarius, and the leading of Gelimer himself into captivity, the basilica of our Saint suffered any further profanation, I do not find handed down to memory by writers; it seems, however, to have stood intact up to the end of the seventh century, when, as Paul the Deacon writes in book VI of the Deeds of the Lombards, chapter X Murator. Scriptt. rer. Ital., vol. I, p. 494., the race of the Saracens, faithless and hostile to God, advancing from Egypt and Africa with an excessive multitude, besieged Carthage and took it, and cruelly laid it waste when taken, and levelled it even to the ground; just as, when the kingdom of the Vandals in Africa was extinguished, the sacred Remains of the holy Martyr, which were probably preserved in that same basilica, survived unharmed, as is gathered from the Letter of St. Gregory cited by Baronius, which in the Paris edition of the Register of the Letters of St. Gregory, produced by the learned Benedictines of the Congregation of St. Maur in the year 1705, is in order the first of book XII; for in it the said Pontiff, thanking Dominic, bishop of Carthage, for certain Relics of our Saint that had been transmitted, says: We have received the blessing of the Blessed Agileus, Martyr, with that charity with which it was transmitted to us by you: further, that by this Blessing are not signified certain parts of the Body of the holy Martyr, but certain particles of cloth or silk which, applied to the reliquaries of the Saints, were held as their Relics and were called Brandeum (consult on this word the Glossary of Du Cange), since, as the said Benedictines observe, briefly from Mabillon on the Letter of the same St. Gregory addressed to Constantina Augusta, wife of the emperor Maurice, which in the same edition is in order the 30th of book IV, but more fully in the Life of the same holy Pontiff Opp. S. Greg. M., vol. IV, p. 244., the very Bodies of the Saints or certain of their members were very rarely transmitted in lands subject to the Western empire while St. Gregory the Great presided over the universal church, I judge with the said Tillemont.
[6] and he suffered under some pagan emperor, Since it is established from the testimonies of the ancients cited thus far that our Saint ended his life by Martyrdom, and already then, before the entry of the Vandals into Africa, had a temple at Carthage dedicated to his name, it follows that the same Saint suffered in some persecution stirred up by the pagan emperors, and therefore before the year 313, when Africa was already obedient to Constantine the Great after the defeat of Maxentius, although meanwhile in which determinate persecution this took place is entirely unknown.
[7] from Galeus, Martyr of Carthage, One doubt now remains, namely whether our holy Martyr Agileus, commemorated, as we said, in the Antwerp or Echternach apograph of the Hieronymian Martyrology at the 25th day of January, is different from Galeus, inscribed in the same apograph and in certain others at the preceding day, or the 24th of the same month. Bolland, the parent of our Work, treated briefly of St. Galeus in volume II of January On the 24th of January, p. 590., where he gives him both the title of Martyr, according to the received opinion of the learned, by which they agree that all the Saints inscribed in the Hieronymian apographs are to be held as Martyrs unless a weighty reason stands in the way, and teaches that he is to be assigned to African Carthage; nor have we thus far ascertained more than this about St. Galeus, if you wish him to be distinct from our Saint: then, among those rejected to another day, he deferred our Saint Agileus to this day, and so seems to have believed that Galeus and Agileus were two distinct holy Martyrs; but this most praiseworthy man then had no aids that might have put into him a contrary mind, very many Hieronymian Codices not yet having been brought out into the light, from which this difficulty arises, and by which also it must be resolved: what, therefore, these have both about Galeus and about our Saint Agileus, I set forth.
[8] inscribed in the Hieronymian Codices at the 24th of January, In the Lucca apograph in Fiorentini, at the 24th of January, it is read thus: At Carthage, of Galeus; with it agrees the Antwerp or Echternach one, which Fiorentini in his Notes calls the very ancient one, and also, as I think, since he notes no difference, the Blumian one; the name is little varied in the Corbie one in the same Fiorentini, and in D'Achery, volume II of the reprinted Spicilegium, where it is had thus: At Carthage, of Gelieus; among the abridged Hieronymian Martyrologies, published by us after volume VII of June, the Augsburg one has thus, without any place: Elsewhere… of Galaeus; the Labbe one: Elsewhere… of Galeus; from this the Gellone one in D'Achery does not differ; at the 25th of the same month, of the apographs already reviewed, only the Antwerp one, in the last place, announces St. Agileus in this way: On the 8th of the Kalends … and at Carthage, of Agileus: from this or a similar apograph, probably, Greven also transcribed this at this day: Likewise of Saints Vitus, Castula, Agileus, so that consequently no support accrues hence to either opinion; but in other exemplars of the Hieronymian Martyrology, which were edited either by us after the cited volume VII of June or by Edmond Martène Vol. III Anecdot., col. 1547., neither Galeus nor Agileus appears. Before I now put forward my opinion on the said question, that must be carefully observed which our Elders have often warned of, namely that the Hieronymian apographs have suffered various interpolations at the hands of copyists, diligent indeed but almost devoid of sound criticism, and that among these it is not infrequent that entirely the same Saints, with names somewhat changed, or even with entirely the same name, are repeated on the same or a neighbouring day in the same apographs, and that hence it comes about that it cannot safely be inferred that by the same or slightly changed names repeated on the same or a neighbouring day different Saints are designated: with this premised, I judge that by Galeus, or, as is had in the Corbie one, Gelieus, announced at the 24th of January in the cited Codices, and by Agileus, commemorated at the next following day in the Antwerp one alone, only one and the same holy Carthaginian Martyr is indicated, who, according to the testimonies of the ancient writers alleged before, is truly to be called Agileus, as Tillemont contended before me, and also Castellanus, who in his Universal Martyrology at the 25th of January commemorated our Saint Agileus, but in the Index of Saints attached a mark of omission to Galeus.
[9] for the reasons here I have been led into this opinion for this reason, that, if we suppose that in the Antwerp or Echternach apograph of the Hieronymian Martyrology different Saints are designated by Galeus at the 24th day of January, and by Agileus at the 25th of the same month, I should in no way perceive for what reason our Saint Agileus could have been passed over in all the other exemplars of the same Martyrology: for in this hypothesis that could not have come about from anywhere else than from this, that either their ancient compilers did not know our Saint, or, if they knew him, neglected to commemorate him in their Fasti; but both of these seem to me entirely incredible: for since our Saint is ancient, and was especially well known to St. Gregory the Great, as his words, cited from the Letter above at no. 5, prove, and was therefore also without doubt one of those Martyrs whose names this holy Pontiff, as he writes to Eulogius of Alexandria in book VIII, Letter 29, had collected in one codex, or, what is the same, was already in the sixth century inscribed in the Hieronymian Martyrology; it is by no means likely that his name dropped out in such a way that all the later ones who copied the same Martyrology, a single one excepted, did not find it, not even corrupted or dislocated, in the various Codices which they used: that this happened in the case of the name of our most celebrated Saint, which both the basilica dedicated to him, which, as we said, seems to have stood intact at Carthage up to the end of the seventh century, and his remarkable cult in Africa, were apt to publish to all but the whole world, no one, I think, will persuade himself.
[10] adduced, Nor can the other be more believed, namely that the compilers of those ancient Martyrologies neglected to bring our Saint's name into their Fasti, if it was known to them:
BY C. G.
for even though I would readily agree that this was done in certain smaller and excessively abridged apographs by their authors, who were more intent on brevity and therefore wished to report only the Saints nearer to themselves and better known; that the same nevertheless had place in the larger Codices, whose authors' diligence in recounting the Martyrs on almost every day, especially the African ones, shines forth, and is often praised by Fiorentini in his Notes, appears entirely unlike the truth: certainly it is admitted by all who are accustomed to be occupied in these matters that these authors more often sinned by excessive diligence, since, lest they pass over any Saint unmentioned, on account of some small difference in the name of some Saint found in the various Codices they used, they at once thought different Saints were indicated, and wrongly inserted such into their Fasti, than by negligence: therefore, since our Saint was not omitted, at least in the larger apographs of the Hieronymian Martyrology, for either of the reasons that could be alleged, and which we have already rejected, and yet cannot be found commemorated anywhere in them, if you except the single Echternach one, unless he is designated by this announcement which, as we said, is read at the 24th of January, At Carthage, of Galeus or Gelieus, I bring myself entirely to believe that our Saint, the Carthaginian Martyr, is truly commemorated here, and so that by Galeus, who is read at the just mentioned day of January in several apographs, and by Agileus, who is read at the 25th of the same month in the Antwerp or Echternach one alone, only one and the same holy Martyr can be signified, considering also the slightness of the reasons which might urge the contrary.
[11] [the arguments that could be alleged for the contrary opinion being also weakened,] We have seen that in the Martyrologies cited above at no. 8 Galeus is announced as a Carthaginian Martyr without companions, and that in exactly the same way our Saint Agileus is reported in the Antwerp or Echternach Codex; and so these announcements are so alike that nothing can be hammered out of them which in any way suggests that Galeus and Agileus are two distinct holy Martyrs, except a certain diversity of the names and of the days on which these names are reported: but this difference of names is not so great that it cannot be imputed to the fault of the Amanuenses, who, finding in their Codices the name of Agileus somewhat dislocated, and perhaps its initial letter eaten away by age or obliterated, could easily have turned it into Galeus; indeed I more easily perceive how our Saint's name could have been somewhat corrupted or dislocated by those ancient compilers of Martyrologies, perhaps also on account of a variant reading of the Codices they had before their eyes, than wholly omitted in the Fasti they were composing: however that may be, since the corruption and change of names in the Hieronymian apographs now extant is most frequent, it can in no way be inferred, on account of some difference that exists between the names of Galeus and Agileus, that these are distinct from one another.
[12] he is not to be distinguished. Nor does the diversity between the day on which Galeus is inscribed in various exemplars of the Hieronymian Martyrology and the day on which our Saint Agileus is reported in the Antwerp or Echternach one prove this any more: for what if, to the author of this latter apograph, some Martyrology or Calendar had lighted the way, in which the name of St. Agileus was marked at the 25th day of January on account of his annual feast then recurring, and hence he wrongly duplicated this Saint, who had been commemorated under the corrupt name of Galeus in certain Hieronymian apographs, likewise lighting his way, at the preceding day, because he had suffered on it? There is extant in Mabillon a before the seventh century, as the editor notes, in which our Saint is inscribed at the 25th of January in this way: On the 8th of the Kalends (of February), of the holy Martyr Ageleus; and which consequently, or something similar to which, could easily have lighted the way for the compiler of the Echternach apograph, and also have given him occasion to distinguish St. Agileus from Galeus: but even though this Calendar, or one similar to it, shows that our holy Martyr was anciently honoured at Carthage with an anniversary cult on the said 25th day of January, it in no way prevents us from believing that on the preceding day the same Saint was truly crowned with Martyrdom, and that therefore he was inscribed at this day in various now-extant apographs of the Hieronymian Martyrology, in which, on the testimony of St. Gregory in the said Letter to Eulogius, only the name, the place and the DAY OF THE PASSION were noted, even under the somewhat corrupt name of Galeus: surely, since the days on which Galeus and Agileus are reported in the Antwerp or Echternach apograph are so near, it may rightly be judged here, and on account of the reasons adduced in nos. 9 and 10 it even must be, that in the same apograph the same Saint, as we have observed before often happens elsewhere in the Hieronymian Codices, is repeated at the said 24th and 25th days of January, with the name somewhat changed, for whatever cause in the end, and therefore that Galeus is not in reality distinguished from our Saint, the Carthaginian Martyr Agileus.