ON ST. REPARATUS, DEACON, AT NOLA IN CAMPANIA,
IN THE YEAR 553.
CRITICAL COLLECTION.
Reparatus, deacon and confessor, at Nola in Campania. (S.)
BY V. D. B.
§ Sole. On the epitaph and cult.
[St. Reparatus, whose name is inscribed in some sacred fasti on 21 October and 1 November,] Nola in Campania, a city of the kingdom of Naples, the homeland of St. Paulinus, everyone knows. And already in the fourth and fifth centuries it abounded so much in memorials of the saints that the most holy poet, while he gave the first place to Rome, assigned the second to Nola. For he sang Feast of St. Felix III, ℣ 86, in Migne, Patrologia, volume LXI, col. 467.:
You too, after the City, have obtained the second titles: For she was formerly first only in empire and victorious arms, But now first of the lands in apostolic tombs as well.
To these saints whom St. Paulinus already venerated many others were afterwards added, among whom St. Reparatus; of whom only a few things remain to be collected. At the 1st day of November he is mentioned by the one who in the year 1773 had printed at Bassano the Italian Hagiology, taken in great part from the Catalogue of the Saints of Italy of the Servite Ferrari, yet with some eulogies of saints added; and he has only this of him Hagiologium Italicum, volume II, page 269.: In the church of Nola, St. Paulinus the younger administering it, St. Reparatus, deacon and martyr, was laid in the cathedral church in the year 513, as is read noted in a marble inscription, whose words are these:
DEP. SANCTI MARTYRIS REPARATI DIACONI AN DXIII KAL. NOV. XII IN PACE. RAS. NIVI [The deposition of the holy martyr Reparatus, deacon, in the year 513, on the 12th before the Kalends of November, in peace. RAS. NIVI]
He had drawn these from Ughelli Italia sacra, volume VI, col. 253, Venice edition.; who had himself taken them, as Remondini witnesses to me Della Nolana ecclesiastica Storia, volume III, page 74., from the canon treasurer Ferrari, except that the latter had written not RAS NIVI, but RAS NIVC. Ughelli too beyond doubt lighted the way for Castellan, who, because in that form of the inscription the holy deacon was said to have been laid to rest in peace on the twelfth day before the Kalends of November of the year 513, referred him to 21 October in the universal Martyrology, in these words which I render into Latin: In Italy, of St. Reparatus, deacon and martyr, whom the people of Nola especially venerate. And certainly, as long as the inscription was read in the way we have said, Castellan was to be praised for celebrating the memory of St. Reparatus at 21 October: but there was no reason, nor is there now, why the name of blessed Reparatus should be marked at the 1st day of November in Martyrologies and Hagiologies.
[2] [he was laid to rest on 19 Oct. in the year 553 and is venerated on the last Sunday of October.] But the inscription was wrongly read, although, as Remondini says Ibid., loc. cit., it is so clear and so well preserved that it is enough to have eyes in one's head to read it. The genuine reading is this Ibid., loc. cit., and volume I, page 510.:
DEP. SANCTE. M. REPARATI DIAC. DPS. D. XIIII. KAL. NOVEMB. XII. P. C. BASILI V. C.
that is: The deposition of Reparatus, deacon, of holy memory. He was laid to rest on the fourteenth day before the Kalends of November, or the 19th day of October, in the twelfth year after the consulship of Basilius, a most illustrious man. Now who does not know that Basilius the younger was consul in the year 541; that afterwards the custom of marking years by the names of the consuls ceased, but that for some time an era was in use whose beginning was taken from the consulship of Basilius? Not in the year 513, therefore, nor on the twelfth day before the Kalends of November, but on the fourteenth day before the Kalends, or 19 October, of the year 553 was the blessed deacon committed to the earth. Wherefore this holy man should have been spoken of at 19 October; but since we had found him in no Martyrologies and Hagiologies at this day, we did not make mention of him even among those passed over. But neither is the feast of St. Reparatus now kept at Nola on the 21st day of October; as we have learned from some notes which the distinguished Mr. Pietro Cernazai, jurist of Udine, an eminent patron of our work, and than whom we have nowhere a more excellent helper, sent to us, and which he begged from the Most Reverend Giuseppe Formisano, bishop of Nola. According to these, namely, the memory of St. Reparatus is celebrated on the last Sunday of the month of October. But since this day is not fixed, and since moreover such is the fame of Castellan's universal Martyrology that hagiophiles everywhere have recourse to it, we have preferred to speak of him on this day; although, as we have said, it is manifest that this day was assigned to his veneration by Castellan for this reason, that he had had a badly copied inscription before his eyes.
[3] He was a deacon of Nola, by no means a martyr. For the rest, besides what has become known from the inscription, we know nothing of his deeds. It is established first of all that he flourished before about the middle of the sixth century; and so, unless he reached a very great age, he cannot have been deacon of St. Paulinus the younger, whom Remondini, after Papebroch, makes Paulinus III Ibid., volume III, page 65 and following.; but of Leo I, who is said to have held the see of Nola until the year 560 Ibid., page 74.. St. Reparatus lived in difficult times, since at that time Italy was occupied by the Goths, until Belisarius and then Narses destroyed their kingdom and subjected the greatest part of the peninsula once more to the emperors of Constantinople: which was completed only in the very year in which the blessed deacon passed to a better life. Yet it by no means follows from this that St. Reparatus is to be called a martyr; which praise was given him by the canon Ferrari, Ughelli, Castellan, the Hagiologist
Italian, already praised; Orlendi besides Orbis sacer et profanus, volume IV, page 1671. and recently the distinguished Mr. Gaetano Moroni Dizionario di erudizione ecclesiastica, under Nota, volume XLVIII, page 71.; they being followed by the sculptor and painter, whoever they were, who adorned the statue of the blessed man, placed above the tomb, with a diaconal dalmatic of red colour and with the palm of martyrdom in the left hand. For no one can doubt, as Remondini Della Nolana ecclesiastica storia, volume II, page 510, volume III, page 74. and Andrea Ambrosini Cimitero di Nola, book III, chapter 2, page 309. long ago observed, and the Most Reverend Giuseppe Formisano himself in the notes praised above, that this persuasion about St. Reparatus the martyr arose from the misreading of the sepulchral stone, the words "of holy memory" being changed into "of the holy martyr". Nor is there reason for you to object that the Goths were at times savage and could easily have stretched out bloody hands against St. Reparatus; I would not deny it, although very few martyrs were made by those barbarians; but since nothing suggests that this was the lot of St. Reparatus, and since his sepulchral stone makes no mention of martyrdom suffered, he is more credulous than is right who continues still to admit this obliterated opinion.
[4] [His cult, arisen from the words "of holy memory" inscribed on the tomb.] Now if it is asked what the beginning and origin of this saint's cult is, we fall into a most difficult question. It has been written to me that his sanctity is established from the inscription in which Reparatus the deacon of holy memory is read. But from this very source the greatest difficulties spring. For none of those who read the inscription correctly doubted that this stone is to be referred to the first deposition of St. Reparatus; although they knew well that the saints, when they were translated into new tombs, were quite often said to be deposited anew. For if they had hesitated whether that stone perhaps pertained to some later deposition, they would by no means have pronounced that St. Reparatus died in the year 553; for this later deposition that is supposed could have been made in the 12th year after the consulship of Basilius, while the saint himself had died long before. But if this stone is to be referred to the first deposition, as I do not doubt, and so if it was set up immediately after his death, the question arises of itself whether from the words "of holy memory" a safe argument can be deduced for his sanctity, and indeed so great that he is worthy of ecclesiastical honours? Was it the custom in the sixth century that confessors were reckoned in the list of the saints immediately after death? And if there are any examples, are they not of men whose fame was by far the most celebrated? Why then was St. Gregory the Great, who recorded the holy deeds of so many Italians of his own age or not much older, silent about St. Reparatus, although he would have deserved to be inscribed in the sacred fasti immediately after death through the formula "of holy memory"? Is it not therefore to be feared that the people of Nola, when they fashioned a holy martyr out of the sigla SANCT. M., committed an error similar to that from which the inhabitants of Sardinia suffered when, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, coming upon inscriptions a great part of which had the sigla M. B., that is, of good or blessed memory, they persuaded themselves that they had in their possession a cemetery filled with the tombs of blessed martyrs [Cf. Bonfant, Triumpho de los Santos del reyno de Cerdeña, and Muratori, Antiquitates Italiae, volume V, col. 17.]?
[5] is entangled in the greatest difficulties; The difficulties are increased because similar inscriptions exist elsewhere, without anyone persuading himself that by the words "of holy memory" there is signified a dead person to be honoured with ecclesiastical cult. Receive an example. At Vaison in Gaul there was formerly kept in the cathedral church a marble inscription on which these words were carved Royer, Histoire de l'église cathédrale de Vaison, page 35.:
✠ HIC IN PACE REQVIESCIT SANCTÆ MEMORIÆ ERIPIVS PBR. QVI VIXIT ANS. XXVII. MENS. X. D. XVIII. OB. VIII. KL. FEBRVAR. PC ITERVM AGAPITI V. C. CONS. ✠ [✠ Here rests in peace Eripius, priest, of holy memory, who lived 27 years, 10 months, 18 days. He died on the eighth day before the Kalends of February, in the second year after the consulship of Agapitus, a most illustrious man, consul. ✠]
This stone was set up in the same century as that of Nola, namely in the year 519 or 520: (for Sigonius had at hand a letter of Pope St. Hormisdas to John, archbishop of Constantinople, written while Agapitus held an extraordinary consulship; by which one or the other year must necessarily be designated because of John's death Sigonius, Argelati's edition, volume I of the Works, col. 624.:) yet no one of Vaison up to this day seems to have thought that sufficient authority was placed in the words "of holy memory" for them to refer the priest Eripius to the class of the saints and venerate him publicly. But in truth, although these things are so, I would not dare to urge the people of Nola to expunge St. Reparatus from their liturgical calendars, into which he was inserted only ten years ago. For that to be done it would be necessary that it be certainly established that St. Reparatus is unworthy of the ecclesiastical honours in whose possession he is: which, since nothing is known of him except that before the year 553 he was a deacon of Nola, no one would assert. Moreover it can perhaps be maintained that the words "of holy memory", written on tombs, are not empty praises of the dead, but were given to those who truly excelled in Christian virtues. Certainly Marius Mercator adorns St. Ambrose with them, writing Commonitorium, §1.: By a certain Paulinus, deacon of Ambrose of holy memory, bishop of Milan, and St. Augustine, adding Ibid., chapter 9.: Of Augustine the bishop, of holy and blessed memory. The people of Nola also have the sepulchral stone of St. Aurelian the bishop, on which the sigla SANC. M. likewise occur; namely Remondini, della Nolana ecclesiastica storia, volume I, page 510.:
✠ DPS. SANC. M. DMN AVRELIANI. EPISC. IN. PACE QVI BIXIT. ANNS PL. M. LXXX SEDIT. ANN. XXXVIII DP. ES. OCTABV. KAL. AVG [✠ Laid to rest, of holy memory, the lord Aurelian, bishop, in peace, who lived more or less 80 years; he sat 38 years; he was laid to rest on the eighth day before the Kalends of August]
and hence indeed a sound argument could be deduced that holy men were called "of holy memory" by the people of Nola, if the sanctity of this bishop were better established, and if his cult too, of whatever kind, did not seem to have arisen from the sigla SANC. M. being changed by Ferrari, Ughelli and others into "holy martyr". But enough of these things.
[6] in these latest times it has grown somewhat. However these things may be, the people of Nola have now been venerating him publicly for more than two centuries. True, Filippo Ferrari of the order of the Servants of the B. V. M. made no mention of him either in the Catalogue of the Saints of Italy or in the General Catalogue of Saints who are not in the Roman Martyrology; whence one may conjecture that at the beginning of the seventeenth century no honours had yet been paid to Blessed Reparatus; but not long afterwards the canon Ferrari, Ughelli, Carlo Guadagni Nola sacra, book XI, page 205. and others celebrated him as a saint. Moreover in the basilica situated at the cemetery of the martyrs, behind the altar of St. Felix in Pincis, the tomb of the blessed deacon is seen and piously visited, closed with a great marble, sunk about a palm below the pavement, and surrounded by wooden screens to keep people off: so that the relics were never raised. And above, in a niche, there is his image, of which we spoke above. We conclude these things with the words of the Most Reverend Lord Giuseppe Formisano writing to the distinguished Mr. Pietro Cernazai: It is to be noted that, although religious veneration has always been paid to the holy deacon, yet his cult has grown only a little while ago; and for only ten years has his festival been celebrated solemnly on the last Sunday of October: but the gifts and even precious votive offerings which are offered give hope that his cult will increase hereafter. Carlo Guadagni relates Ibid., loc. cit. that his patronage is especially implored by those who suffer from tertian or quartan fever.