ON ST. VERUS, BISHOP AND CONFESSOR, AT SALERNO,
FIFTH CENTURY.
HISTORICAL SYLLOGE.
Verus, bishop and confessor at Salerno. (S.)
BY J. V. H.
§ Sole. The time of the erection of the bishopric of Salerno; the series of the bishops.
Whenever we treat of the holy bishops of the Church of Salerno, In the series of the bishops St. Verus coming third we are entangled in chronological knots from which it has so far not been granted us to extricate ourselves. For it is not agreed among the learned in what century the first bishops of Salerno lived; namely whether in the fifth or in the eighth century, with Gaspare Mosca on one side contending for the fifth, and Antonio Caracciolo on the other for the eighth. But most of the more recent writers defend the side of Mosca, and indeed Ughelli himself, to whom the opinion of Antonio Caracciolo is pleasing, nevertheless exhibits the Catalogue of Gaspare Mosca Italia sacra, volume VII, column 351.. Our men followed the common opinion on St. Bonosus at the 14th of May Acta Sanctorum, volume III of May, page 374., on St. Grammatius at the 11th of October Ibid., volume V of October, page 671., and on St. Eusterius at the 19th of the same month Ibid., volume VIII of October, page 436., and we too embrace it. And in truth that the bishopric of Salerno is very ancient is attested to us by Gaudentius, who took part in the Roman council under Pope Symmachus, in the year 499, and subscribed to it in these words: Gaudentius of Salerno Labbe, Concilia, volume IV, column 1315.. But if we reject the tradition of the Church of Salerno, we shall have as bishops of this Church down to the ninth century only those whose names can be gathered from the acts of Councils. From this source indeed the notice has come down to us not only of Gaudentius, but also of Asterius, who in the year 536 was present at the council of Constantinople as legate of Pope Agapitus Ibid., volume V, column 51 and elsewhere., of Luminosus, a father of the Lateran Council of the year 649 under Pope Martin I Ibid., volume VI, column 78., and of Leo, omitted in Ughelli's Catalogue, who in the year 761 subscribed the charter of Pope Paul I for the monastery of SS. Stephen and Sylvester Ibid., column 1693.. The names of the other bishops of Salerno, if we reject the tradition of this Church, antiquity has erased Compare Orlendi, Orbis sacer et profanus, volume IV, page 1708..
[2] Flourished in the fifth century. But the calendars of a Church, to which more than to others it is of concern to preserve the memory of its own bishops, are not to be rejected without grave reasons: and thus we must claim for the Church of Salerno the holy bishops who are said to have made it illustrious. Among these on the present day comes round St. Verus, whose memory the Roman Martyrology celebrates in these words: At Salerno, of Saint Verus, bishop. Filippo Ferrari in the Catalogue of the Saints of Italy writes a little more abundantly: Verus, third bishop of Salerno, succeeded St. Grammatius in the episcopate. Although no Acts of him exist as a Saint, yet that he presided holily over the Church of Salerno and shone with miracles cannot be doubted, since his memory has been accustomed to be celebrated by the Church from ancient times, as is sufficiently apparent in the Breviary of the same Church, published four hundred years ago and more. He departed from this life on the 10th before the kalends of November. His body, laid in the crypt of the greater sacred building together with the bodies of other holy bishops, is piously preserved. Gaspare Mosca has nearly the same, a presbyter, as he says, of the city of Salerno De Salernitanae Ecclesiae episcopis, page 13., who adds the Prayer customarily recited on the feast of St. Verus, of the following tenor: O God, who have conferred perennial glory on the soul of your most holy Confessor and bishop Verus, grant, we beseech you, that we may be so exalted before you by his patronage, that we may possess eternal life with him. Through our Lord. The same prayer is exhibited by the Proper of the Saints of the Church
of Salerno, published in the year 1696; and it has nothing else special, since, as it writes, all the rest are from the Common. Nor has it fallen to us to find anything with which to elucidate the history of St. Verus: the chronological question has been treated before us by those who have dealt with SS. Bonosus, Grammatius and Eusterius, in such a way that we have no leisure to repeat the same things: wherefore, since he succeeded St. Grammatius, we have fixed the time of the episcopate of St. Verus in the fifth century.