ON ST. TAMMARUS, BISHOP AND CONFESSOR, AT BENEVENTO IN ITALY,
Fifth century, or the beginning of the sixth.
SYLLOGE.
The Elogium of the Saint; he was a bishop in Africa: but whether also at Benevento?
Tammarus, bishop and confessor, at Benevento in Italy. (S.)
BY C. G.
This holy Prelate is commemorated by the Vatican Usuardine Codex, written in Lombard script, which Papebroch calls a new collection made from Usuard, St. Tammarus on the 16th of January in the diocese of Aversa, Ado and others for the church of Benevento, among the Usuardine Auctaria in Sollerius, at this 15th day of October, in these words: At Benevento … and of St. Tammarus, Bishop and Confessor; he is commemorated also at the same day, in the Catalogue of the Saints whom the church of Benevento celebrates with double or semidouble rite, by Mario della Vipera, Archdeacon of Benevento; with the Vatican Codex and Mario della Vipera, as regards the day of the announcement, agrees Ferrarius in both his Catalogues of Saints, namely the General one and that of the Saints of Italy: but of the old Calendars inserted by Michael Monachus in the fourth part of his Sanctuarium Capuanum, which comprise the Saints formerly venerated at Capua, the second and fourth record the memory of St. Tammarus with the same title indeed of Bishop and Confessor, but at another day, namely at the 16th of January; and the said Monachus asserts in his Observations on the said Calendars that on this day the same Saint is still venerated in a place of the diocese of Aversa which is called Vico di Pantano, and that he is related to have died and been buried there. For which reason, I think, Castellanus at the 16th day of January in his Universal Martyrology attributes the Saint to the same village of the diocese of Aversa in these French words, which I render into Latin: At Pantano in the diocese of Aversa, of St. Tammarus, of the number of those Confessors who are believed to have come from Africa with St. Castrensis.
[2] but venerated on this day at Benevento, To bring the sacred Fasti cited thus far into agreement, some suppose that one St. Tammarus is venerated in the diocese of Aversa, another among the people of Benevento, which, although it did not displease Ferrarius either, will nevertheless seem less probable to us, as we shall say below. Further, since our Elders referred St. Tammarus at the 16th day of January among those Passed Over, it is necessary that we treat of the same Saint at this 15th day of October, on which the said Vipera teaches that he is venerated at Benevento both in the Catalogue cited above and in the Elogium soon to be given. It is extant in the Chronology of the Bishops and Archbishops of Benevento, from which I transcribe it here, as Ughelli also did Ital. Sacr., vol. VIII, col. 16.: Thammarus, the 23rd bishop, one of those whom the Roman Martyrology lists under the first day of September as companions of St. Priscus, who, variously afflicted in the persecution of the Vandals for the Catholic faith, and put on an old ship, came from Africa to the shores of Campania in the year of the Lord 440 or thereabouts, and the Christian religion in
those places, being dispersed, and set over various churches, they wonderfully propagated. This man, when he was leading a solitary life near Benevento, the fame of his holiness breaking out, was raised to the episcopate, and so ruled the church of Benevento piously and holily that he merited to be reckoned among the Saints when he died. There stood anciently a basilica erected in his honour outside the city near the river Thamarus, from which the river is afterwards said to have taken its name, consumed by length of time. He flourished in the year of the Lord 465, and his feast is kept on the 15th of October at Benevento, where his Relics are preserved in the cathedral under the high altar, as is taught by what is carved on marble there.
[3] from St. Tammarus, an African bishop, driven by the Vandals from Africa From what records he composed this Elogium the said Archdeacon of Benevento indicates, citing in the margin Michael Monachus in the Sanctuarium Capuanum, and an ancient MS. Martyrology from the Library of Benevento; but since he cites the latter only for the feast of the Saint which is kept at Benevento on the 15th of October, we may not undeservedly suspect that whatever he records about the Deeds of St. Tammarus, except those things which are found about the same Saint in the Life of St. Castrensis published by Michael Monachus, part 1 of the Sanctuarium Capuanum, and in our Work, volume II of February At the 11th day of Feb., p. 526., proceeded only from uncertain and popular tradition. And indeed from this Life, written by a contemporary or almost contemporary author, at least as it exists in our Work, as Henschen judged, and as Stilting strikingly showed, having resolved the objections of Tillemont and others, in volume I of September At the 1st day of Sept., p. 211., there is sufficiently confirmed what the given Elogium has about St. Tammarus having come from Africa to Campania, so that Castellanus need not have spoken about him so doubtfully in the words given above; this Martyrologist could also safely have added to the same Saint the title of bishop, on account of the episcopate held in Africa, since the said biographer of St. Castrensis counts him openly enough among the holy men endowed also with the honour of the highest priesthood, or bishops, put with many others on an old and rotten ship and committed to the sea, while the Vandals mocked each of them, and our St. Tammarus by name, with this bitter sarcasm, Tammarus may kindly steer the prow; saying: Of which men, namely, Saints and also endowed with the honour of the highest priesthood, there shone especially in merits and character and the comeliness of understanding Rossius, Priscus, and Tammarus, and, shining holy by disposition, Castrensis. But Castellanus will have doubted about these things because he gave less credit than was due to the same biographer.
[4] into Campania in the fifth century, But in what year the things which the Life of St. Castrensis narrates about our Saint and his companions happened, and they arrived unharmed in Campania, God wonderfully preserving them lest they be swallowed up by the sea, is not easy to determine: Henschen, volume II of February p. 524., supposed not improbably that it happened in the year 438 or 439 for this reason, that the said biographer, having touched on the persecution of the Vandals against the Catholics in Africa, has thus: This was done up to the fourth year, and, continuing his narration, presently relates what St. Tammarus and his companions suffered in Africa: for hence it seems possible to establish that from the beginning of the persecution, which, when in the year 435 peace had been made between the emperor Valentinian and the Vandals, and part of Africa granted to them to inhabit, the said Henschen at the place cited, and Thierry Ruinart in the Historical Commentary on the Vandal persecution, judge arose presently, 3 or 4 years flowed by before the Vandals raged against St. Tammarus and his companions, and so that the same Saints, cast out of Africa in the said year 438 or 439, reached the Campania of the kingdom of Naples. This opinion is also favoured by that deliberation of the Vandals, who wished to destroy the Saints, since after prisons and blows their constancy persisted unmoved in the Catholic faith, in such a way that none of their Relics should survive, which they knew the Catholics would hold in veneration, before they thought of putting them on a rotten ship and sinking them in the sea; for that deliberation seems to hint that this was then new, and not before practised by the Vandals, and so that it happened before the capture of Carthage by the Vandals in the year 439, when similarly they committed St. Quodvultdeus, bishop of Carthage, together with his clergy, to the sea, put on broken ships.
[5] or at the beginning of the sixth, driven, And these things indeed persuade that the said Vipera did not stray far from the truth, who placed the coming of our Saint into Campania about the year 440; but since they are also quite doubtful, I readily embrace with Stilting, volume I of September p. 212., the opinion of Ruinart: If (says this author in the said Historical Commentary) we wish to indulge in conjectures, there will be almost no year under the Vandal domination to which this persecution could not be referred; so that consequently in the whole of that time which runs from the year 435, when the persecution began, and, although intermitted under Guntamund, yet raged most cruelly under three kings, namely Genseric, Huneric and Thrasamund, up to the death of this last tyrant, or the year 523, when the persecution was extinguished by his successor Hilderic, our Saint with his Companions could have landed in Campania in that wonderful manner in which the biographer of St. Castrensis relates it was done. Further, in what place St. Tammarus spent the rest of his life after his coming into Campania, the said biographer of St. Castrensis is silent; he has only that the companions of St. Castrensis went on to their own places, which Christ appointed for them for the salvation of believers: and hence it now comes about that I suspect that what the said Vipera asserts about St. Tammarus's stay near Benevento and his episcopate at Benevento flowed from the same source, namely from vague and popular tradition, from which he writes that the river Thamarus, near Benevento, obtained its name from a basilica once dedicated to the same Saint, and which in this part the Most Eminent and likewise most learned Cardinal Stefano Borgia already held suspect before me in the Historical Memoirs of the city of Benevento Ist. della cità di Benev., vol. III, p. 282., and which is shown to be in fact very unreliable by the Itinerary of Antoninus Augustus, in which that name is given to the same river, and it is noted thus: Bovianum, a city, above the river Thamarus,
M. P. XVI.
[6] for the reasons here Yet Ferrarius, in the Elogium which he composed in the Catalogue of the Saints of Italy at the 15th of October, also holds St. Tammarus without hesitation for a bishop of Benevento, and makes him the immediate successor of St. Barbatus, and then, since St. Barbatus in the seventh century, when the Lombards were ruling in Italy, without doubt held the chair of Benevento, and so the age of St. Tammarus of Benevento, if he in fact succeeded St. Barbatus, could in no way agree with St. Tammarus, brought from Africa to Campania in the fifth century or at the beginning of the sixth, the same Ferrarius doubts in his Notes whether St. Tammarus, venerated by the people of Benevento and held once for their bishop, is not different from St. Tammarus the African, whom the inhabitants of the village of Pantano in the diocese of Aversa hold in veneration: but besides the fact that Ferrarius fights against himself, when he places SS. Barbatus and Tammarus in the series of the bishops of Benevento before Epiphanius, who subscribed the First Roman Synod under Pope Symmachus, held in the year 499 Labbe, vol. IV Conc., col. 1315., he is opposed in this matter by the said Vipera and Ughelli, volume VIII of Italia Sacra, in whom St. Tammarus obtains a place in the same series of the bishops of Benevento long before St. Barbatus, between Dorus, known from the Letter of Leo I of which Baronius speaks in the Annals at the year 448, and St. Sophias or Cadocus; he obtains the same place in the Diptych prefixed to the Collection of the Synods held at Benevento by Vincenzo Maria Orsini, Archbishop of Benevento, afterwards Benedict XIII, supreme Pontiff: although this chronotaxis too is perhaps faulty, and St. Sophias or Cadocus would be better placed, as can be perceived from what Bolland, the parent of our Work, has about this Saint in volume II of January At the 24th day of Januar., p, 602, not before but after Epiphanius, yet since all place St. Tammarus in the series of the bishops of Benevento before Epiphanius, this age which the people of Benevento ascribe to their St. Tammarus agrees sufficiently with St. Tammarus the African, so that they can be judged one and the same. [Joan. de Vita, Canon of Benevento Antiquit. Benevent., vol. II, p. 117., says that St. Sophias or Cadocus immediately succeeded St. Tammarus, without refuting the chronology of our Bolland by any argument.]
[7] adduced, he is not to be distinguished. Nor, to make us acknowledge here two distinct Saints Tammarus, does the difference urge between the day on which St. Tammarus is venerated by the people of Benevento and the day on which he is venerated by the inhabitants of Vico di Pantano: for the reason of this can be a translation of the Relics of the same Saint, which the often-cited Archdeacon Mario della Vipera teaches from a marble inscription that the people of Benevento possess, from the same village to Benevento, if in fact, as Paolo Regio in the Neapolitan Saints Vite de Santi e Sante, vol. II, p. 945. testifies together with Michael Monachus that the inhabitants of this village will have it, St. Tammarus the African died and was buried there, or, if it is otherwise, a translation once made the other way round. However that may be, if St. Tammarus, venerated either by the people of Benevento or by the inhabitants of the village of Pantano, were distinct from St. Tammarus brought under the Vandals from Africa into Campania, he would be wholly unknown; wherefore we would rather say what Papebroch pronounced on the occasion of St. Canio At the 24th day of May, p. 28, no. 5.: So certain a notice (from the Acts of St. Castrensis) of one (Tammarus) brought from Africa into Campania under the Vandals in a rotten ship, and the age which the people of Benevento ascribe to their St. Tammarus, if compared with the scarcity of the documents which the Italians have about St. Tammarus, if he is supposed distinct from the African, or at least have hitherto supplied, strongly incline us to judge that only one (Tammarus) is to be held as a Saint, and that he belongs to the fifth century and the times of the Vandals, and whom, as Confessor and Bishop, on account of the episcopate, as we said above, held in Africa, both the people of Benevento and the inhabitants of Vico di Pantano in the diocese of Aversa may safely continue to hold in veneration.
[8] Did he rule the church of Benevento? For the rest, we also lack those records from which I might duly pronounce which is the stronger case, namely that of the people of Benevento, holding St. Tammarus the African for their former bishop, or that of the inhabitants of the said village, contending that the same died and was buried among them; although meanwhile I cannot dissemble that the said Acts of St. Castrensis favour these latter more, which expressly have that St. Castrensis, after his coming into Campania, near the city of Sessa, embraced rather the lodging of a poor little cell,
than earthly riches and the favours of the people; wherefore we may suspect that his companion too, our St. Tammarus, chose a solitary place in Campania. There is added that his memory is much more celebrated in Campania, today the Terra Laboris, called by the Italians Terra di Lavoro, than in the territory of Benevento, as is clear from the various churches which existed in Campania dedicated to the same Saint, and in part exist today, reviewed by Michael Monachus in this way Sanctuar. Cap., p. 451.: He (St. Tammarus) has a village and parish church of his name a thousand paces from the city (of Capua) on the new royal Neapolitan road. He formerly had a church near the estate which was called St. Nazarius in the Terra Lanii (so called from the Clanius, in Italian Lagno, a small river which divides the territory of Capua from that of Aversa), and on the estate which was called Attignano in the land of Cancia, and in the diocese of Calvi the church of St. Tammarus de Monte was subject to the Archbishop of Capua in the year 1173. This last is established from a Diploma of Alexander III given in the same year, in which, among the possessions which this Pontiff confirms to Alfanus, Archbishop of Capua, the same church of St. Tammarus de Monte is reckoned. Whence arises no slight suspicion that St. Tammarus belongs to the inhabitants of Campania rather than to the people of Benevento. Indeed the episcopate of St. Tammarus at Benevento is not so certain that the Italians themselves do not doubt about it, and by name Michael Monachus, who speaks thus in his Observations on the Acts of St. Castrensis Ibid., p. 16.: The Acts have that St. Castrensis settled near Sessa: the Capuan Breviary has that St. Priscus settled at Capua: about the rest nothing certain is yet asserted: there are those who say Tammarus at Benevento.