Regulus

ON ST. REGULUS, AFRICAN BISHOP AND MARTYR, AT LUCCA IN TUSCANY,

PROBABLY IN THE YEAR DXLII.

HISTORICO-CRITICAL COMMENTARY.

Regulus, African bishop and M., at Lucca in Tuscany. (S.)

BHL Number: 7102, 7103

Written by J. L.

§ I. The various announcement of St. Regulus: it is shown that his body was translated to Lucca from Walda, the site of which place is discovered: various documents concerning the Saint's cult: relics.

[ ] Among the African prelates whom Trasamund, king of the Vandals, or the persecution of the Arians under him, compelled to go into exile, [African exiles who shone with sanctity in Tuscany; of these two are venerated today:] there are to be reckoned, more probably, as we shall show below, SS. Regulus, Cerbonius, and Felix. These, as many hold, were accompanied into exile by SS. Justus and Clement, and also by St. Octavian. They all landed in Tuscany, that most famous region of Italy, which they ennobled by their virtues and miracles: St. Regulus also watered it with blood poured out for the faith of Christ, as did St. Felix likewise, as is reported. Both of these are venerated on this day. We shall first set forth what pertains to the cult and life of the former: St. Felix will follow next. Of St. Octavian we shall treat in this same tome on the second of September. St. Cerbonius will be given on the tenth day of October, on which he is inscribed in the Roman Martyrology. Of SS. Justus and Clement our Papebroch wrote on the fifth of June. See what is to be said at number 45.

[2] In the Hieronymian of Lucca, which Florentinius published illustrated with copious notes and entitled the More Ancient Martyrology, [St. Regulus M., of whom it is now the place to treat, is variously reported by the sacred Fasti; he is to be granted the title of bishop] there is read in the first place: Of St. Regulus the martyr. To the More Ancient Martyrology he next subjoined another, which he calls the Little Hieronymian, from a very old parchment book of the library of the canons of Lucca; in which the Saint likewise occupies the first place: The Kalends of September. Of Regulus the bishop. On the former announcement Florentinius observes among other things the following, which suit the latter equally: Nor would I deny that by the same clerics of Lucca the memory of St. Regulus was added at the head of today's list in our books for the use of the church of Lucca; since the holy Bishop (as is plain from the manuscript Acts, and from his Life written in Italian by Cesare Franciotti and Silvano Razzi) was not among the ancient martyrs, but was crowned under Totila, that is, about the year DL. More probably he suffered eight years earlier, as will be proved below from number 46. In the Little Hieronymian the title of martyr, in the More Ancient Martyrology the title of bishop, is omitted. Both are expressed in Greven's Usuard: In Tuscany, in the city of Lucca, of St. Regulus bishop and martyr; and in the Strozzian: In Africa, of St. Regulus bishop and martyr, whose body rests in the basilica of St. Martin in the city of Lucca. But again in the Roman Martyrology he is called only a martyr: At Populonia in Tuscany, of St. Regulus the martyr, who, coming from Africa, there consummated his martyrdom under Totila. We think that not only the palm of martyrdom but also the episcopal dignity is to be attributed to him; which all the documents plainly to be produced in the third paragraph confer upon him: nor have I found any of the more recent writers who has openly called it into doubt. His episcopate can nevertheless be held suspect from this, that almost everywhere in the monuments which exist concerning him he is called archbishop: which title was not only unusual, but even hateful to the Africans. But the doubt which can arise from this ought, if not altogether to be removed, certainly to be much diminished by the things which will be said at number 39 and following.

[3] The Saint is announced in the Roman Martyrology at Populonia, [and he seems rather to be announced at Lucca: notice of the place where he lived in exile and died a martyr:] because, if not in the city itself, at least in its neighborhood he underwent martyrdom: in the Strozzian codex, in Africa; perhaps on account of the persecutions of the Arians endured there, which at length compelled him to go away into voluntary exile. Certainly he neither consummated his martyrdom in that land, nor is he known ever to have had any cult there. Since the body of St. Regulus has from the eighth century, as it drew to its close, been preserved honorably laid up at Lucca in the cathedral church of St. Martin, and since the Saint himself has obtained there a more solemn veneration than anywhere else, I have preferred, with Greven, to announce him at Lucca in Tuscany. This noble city, the head of the republic of its own name, and lately also raised by Benedict XIII to the title of an archbishopric, is better known than that it should be necessary to describe it. Populonium, or as others say Populonia, whose territory fell to our holy Prelate as the wrestling-ground of his virtues and of his martyrdom, was likewise a renowned city of Etruria. On the shore, says Baudrand, of the Tyrrhenian sea, formerly episcopal; afterwards destroyed by Nicetas, a general of the emperor of Constantinople, at which time Bernard, the grandson of Charlemagne, was king of Italy. Its ruins are shown today, where there is a harbor called Porto Barato, in Tuscany and in the territory of Siena, according to Leandro with others, yet under the dominion of the prince of Piombino, three miles distant from Piombino to the west, twenty from the city of Massa, which succeeded it in the episcopate, to the winter west, and ten from the island of Elba to the north: it lies almost midway on the coast between Pisa to the north and Cosa to the winter east. Since St. Regulus was carried in exile with his companions from Africa to Populonia, I do not doubt that the harbor at which he landed was that very one which today is called Porto Baratto: next to which I find noted on geographical maps Populonia distrutta. This is confirmed from Cluverius, book 2 of Ancient Italy, chapter 2: But the dockyard of Populonia is today called Porto Baratto. The Annals which are wont to be cited under the name of Eginhard, at the year 809, in which their author himself was living, and Pippin the son of Charlemagne at

was reigning in Italy, have these words in Duchesne, tome 2, page 255: In Tuscany Populonium, a great city *, was plundered by the Greeks who are called Ὀροβιῶται (that is, dwellers of the mountains). I suspect that then also the city was destroyed, and that Baudrand goes astray when he says that its overthrow was effected by the Greeks at the time when Bernard, the grandson of Charlemagne, was king of Italy, who was inaugurated in the year 813 and died in 817. In most lexicons indeed and in other geographical books the same is asserted; but nowhere is the testimony of an ancient writer produced: whence one must not acquiesce in them.

[4] [verses taken from a corrupt Lucchese Martyrology of Wandelbert, and wrongly attributed to Bede:] Baronius, in his Notes on the announcement of St. Regulus, writes that manuscript Acts of his martyrdom are extant; and that at the end of them these words are found: Whose most worthy sanctity blessed Bede considering, he took care also to make mention of him in his Martyrology, which he composed in hexameter verses, saying:

Regulus holds and opens the Kalends of September, Regulus the prelate, who carried his own head, cut off by the sword, for two furlongs, Christ so effecting it: Whose relics the city of Lucca now venerates.

The praised Florentinius observes the following concerning those verses falsely fastened upon Bede: The verses which Baronius brings forward in his Notes on this day I have read in the Martyrology of Wandelbert, in a goatskin manuscript among the Canons of Lucca, from which perhaps he who wove together those manuscript Acts of St. Regulus, bishop in Africa and martyr in Tuscany, of which (which things) Baronius makes mention, received them altered. For although that metrical Martyrology is wholly Wandelbert's, yet it bears no name of an author in that codex; whence it was easily attributed by the most celebrated writer of that Life to Bede, the author of the Martyrology. But where Wandelbert has,

Joshua holds and opens the Kalends of September:

in that very ancient Lucchese codex, written five hundred years ago, there is read:

Regulus holds and opens the Kalends of September, Regulus the prelate, who his own * head, cut off by the sword, &c.

Which verses likewise are read written in the same words at the foot of the Life or Passion of St. Regulus in one of the great goatskin passionals of the Canons of Lucca. And, to confess the truth, I suspect that by the clerics of that church, where the body of St. Regulus the bishop rests and his memory is solemn, these verses of Wandelbert were accommodated to the celebrity of the same St. Regulus; and that the Acts which Baronius had in manuscript flowed down from the church of Lucca.

[5] Ferrari's elogium taken from the Life of St. Regulus; Ferrari in his Catalogue of the Saints of Italy wove this elogium concerning the Saint out of the monuments of the church of Lucca: Regulus, an African archbishop, when the persecution of the Arians against the Catholics was stirred up, sailed from Africa into Italy with the bishops Cerbonius and Felix, and during the voyage stilled by his prayer a storm that had arisen. When he had come to Populonia in Tuscany, he lived there for some time in the nearby solitude: until, the fame of his sanctity having been carried to Totila, king of the Goths, he was betrayed by a girl pasturing goats to the soldiers sent by him to bring him to their master, was seized, and, being unwilling to come to the idolatrous king, was beheaded. Of whom this memorable thing is reported, that he took up his head in his hands and bore it for two furlongs, and sat down as though he had not been slain, so that Cerbonius and Felix, admonished by an angel, coming upon him found him sitting, and when he was called by them he rose and carried his head a stone's throw: in which place he was buried by them not without tears, his slayers being strangled by a demon together with the girl (one only excepted, who had repented of the crime committed). There a church dedicated to the holy Martyr, on account of the frequent miracles which were wrought at his tomb, had great veneration among the inhabitants; until the body, translated to Lucca by John, bishop of Lucca, was honorably laid up in the church of St. Martin.

[6] Here you have a compendium of the things which are related in the Acts, to be subjected to examination in the following paragraph. [the error of both concerning the translation of the body, which was not from the neighborhood of Populonia,] In these, however, it is not said that a demon strangled the girl who betrayed St. Regulus to Totila's soldiers; but on the contrary, that she was preserved unharmed by the benefit of the holy Martyr. That a church was built over the Saint's tomb, and that, as the fame of the miracles grew widespread, it was frequented by the faithful in great concourse, is read in our Acts also; whence the antiquity of his cult becomes known. But was the body carried off to Lucca from the territory of Populonia by bishop John? Ferrari took this from the History of the translation subjoined to the same Acts, or from another tainted with the same error, which deceived him. In our transcript it begins thus: When therefore the venerable body of St. Regulus had been buried within the bounds of Populonia, and was resting there for a long time, the almighty Lord working there very many miracles on his account, being frequented by many dwelling round about, it was held, as was fitting, in great reverence. But when now the Lord, wonderful in his Saints, willed to exalt him in glory more than upon earth, he caused his aforenamed holy body to be translated from the place in which it lay to another, where it might be more frequented and honored: for it was brought into the city of Lucca… Meanwhile there was holding the episcopal chair of the same city John, the venerable prelate, &c. I do not transcribe more here. Let it suffice for now only to have noted that bishop John, the first of this name, did indeed translate the sacred body to Lucca toward the end of the eighth century, but not from the neighborhood of the city of Populonia; and that he who composed the translation, whose opening I have given, is not older than the tenth century, as will be plain from what is to be said at number 15. I believe indeed that he had genuine Acts in hand, in which he read that John saw to it that the body of St. Regulus was carried to Lucca from a place by the sea: but while he judged this to belong to the territory of Populonia, he himself fell into error, and drew others after him. The rest, which he relates of the translation made by the prelate John, do not differ as to substance and chief circumstances from what the Acts of the same translation have, published by Ughelli in tome 1 of Italia sacra, column 847. These are free from the said error; and they will be brought forward after this Commentary, in whose last paragraph they will be vindicated from the censures of Florentinius and others.

[7] Further, that St. Regulus was not carried to Lucca from the neighborhood of the city of Populonia by bishop John, [but that he was translated to Lucca from Walda, is demonstrated from ancient documents:] I demonstrate most evidently thus. John succeeded Peredeus in the episcopate; concerning whom Lodovico Antonio Muratori writes thus in tome 3 of the Antiquities of Medieval Italy, column 572: Finally there are seen in the same place (in the archive of the archbishop of Lucca) his (Peredeus's) last testament, written in the fourth year of Charles, king of the Franks, on the sixteenth day of March, in the first Indiction, that is, in the year DCCLXXVIII: which being laid down, we easily understand that his life could have been prolonged as far as the year DCCLXXX, recorded by Ughelli in tome 5 of Italia sacra in the Appendix, column 1516. And so John did not ascend the chair of Lucca before the year 778 or 780. But in those times the body of the holy Martyr was not resting in the territory of Populonia. This is established from a document which Florentinius, in his posthumous Work entitled the Origins of Etruscan Piety, chapter 9, thus records: But now, King Desiderius having been put to flight, and Charles king of the Franks reigning in Italy in the fourth year, the first Indiction, namely DCCLXXXVIII, it appears from a document that the Monastery of B. Regulus, martyr of Christ, where his body rests, was enriched; Done at the very church of God in Walda, in the territory of Lucca. Mention of the same document is also made in tome 10 of Ughelli's Italia sacra, enlarged by Niccolò Coleti, in the Addenda and corrigenda, column 279: where it is said to have been written in the month of March… in the year of Christ DCCLXXVIII. The month of March of the first Indiction and of the fourth year in which Charlemagne reigned in Italy is bound by the praised Muratori to that same year 778; and it ought so to be bound, as will be plain to one who examines it: whence in the posthumous Work of Florentinius the number of years 788, which I believe crept in by the printer's fault, must be reduced to 778. Below at number 52 two other monuments will be produced of donations made to the church of St. Regulus in Walda: of which one was drawn up in the year 770, the other in 774 or 775. Each, expressing the name of the said place, adds immediately that the body of the holy Martyr rests there. But if St. Regulus was preserved in Walda, a place of the territory of Lucca, before John succeeded Peredeus in the chair of Lucca, how could the latter, in the time of his episcopate, translate him to Lucca from the neighborhood of the city of Populonia, where he no longer was?

[8] [from others it is drawn out that it rested at Walda before the middle of the eighth century,] By whom and at what time the sacred pledge was deposited at Walda is unascertained: nor is it even established whether it was brought thither from the territory of Populonia: yet it is credible. From the charters of donation recorded in the preceding number it is certain that Walda possessed the Saint's body from the year 770. I subjoin two other documents, from which you will rightly infer that it was laid up there long before. In tome 2 of the Antiquities of Italy, column 611, Muratori writes this: Likewise in another charter, drawn up in the first year of Aistulf, a most excellent man, being king, in the third Indiction, that is, in the year of Christ DCCL, Tanualdus the presbyter promises to Walprand, bishop of Lucca, that he will duly serve the church of St. Regulus in Walda under a penalty of two hundred good Lucchese solidi. In the same tome, column 1041, another document is brought forward, of a sale made to Tanualdus the presbyter by Clausulus, a citizen of Lucca, in the year 746: the words in it making to our purpose occur thus: I have delivered * to thee, Tanualdus, venerable presbyter of the blessed holy Regulus &c. From these it can sufficiently be gathered that Walda was enriched with the sacred treasure before the middle of the eighth century.

[9] whose site is discovered: Long did I search among the geographers with useless labor for the place celebrated under the name of Walda in so many ancient monuments, from which it is also drawn out that St. Regulus was there held in the highest veneration. Some topographical maps note in the territory of Pisa a village called S. Regolo, distant about three hours' journey from Livorno and nearly seven from Lucca, and perhaps so called because the Saint is the patron of the place. But Walda, in whose church the body of the holy Martyr rested in the eighth century, belonged to the diocese and territory of the city of Lucca: whence this place must be different from that. In Muratori's often-praised Work on the Antiquities of Italy, tome 4, column 733, there is produced a document of a concord entered into in the year 1099 between the canons of the church of St. Martin of Lucca, and a certain Wido and those attached to his party. From it we learn that Walda was situated in that tract of the lands subject to Lucca which lies westward toward the Tyrrhenian sea between the river Auser and the diocese of Luni, now Sarzana. Receive the words from which I deduce this, from the document itself, written in barbarous Latinity: All these swore with their own mouth

upon the holy Gospels of God, that from this hour onward, so long as I shall live, I will not deliberately give offense, nor cause offense to be given, either in respect of property or of person, in the goods of the blessed holy Martin and of his canons, or clerics, which are along the road of Montemagno as far as the sea, and to the place which divides the goods of the blessed holy Martin between Fabianula and Walda, as far as the castle which is called Pedoni. Those who swore these things are said, at the beginning of the document, to have inflicted grave injuries on the men of the estates of the canons of the aforesaid St. Martin, of the place and bounds of Massagrosum, and of Riscetulum, and of Walda, and of Montisciana. The Blaeu geographical map, tome 8, folio 161 verso, exhibiting the republic of Lucca, notes within a small space of ground Massarosa, Pedona, Fabialla: which names have so great an affinity with Massagrosum, Pedoni and Fabianula, that it is not to be doubted that by them are signified those very places which are recorded in the document adduced. And since this indicates plainly enough that Walda was near to the said places, it must be set in the same parts of the territory of Lucca as they. But the Blaeu map, with which the topographical charts of others also agree, places Massarosa, Pedona and Fabialla in the maritime tract of the domain of Lucca, between the Auser and the boundaries of the diocese of Sarzana; therefore Walda too must be placed in the same. If Florentinius and other Italian writers had discovered its site, and had seen the documents hitherto alleged before the publication of their Works, they would not have committed such grave errors; which are reported and refuted more opportunely below from number 50.

[10] The body of St. Regulus was translated from Walda to Lucca by bishop John, [from the time when he was honorably laid up at Lucca in the cathedral, the Saint has obtained] who can be shown from the monuments published by Muratori, tome 5 of the Antiquities, column 417, and tome 6, column 405, to have presided over the church of Lucca from the beginning of the year 783 until the end of July of the year 800. The Acts of the translation will be given after this Commentary. It will not be beside the purpose to have tasted here in passing some things out of them. The prelate John, who was most piously affected toward the Saint, being admonished by an angel to receive his body at Lucca in a more honorable tomb, went to the place where it lay with the clergy of the city of Lucca. He found it incorrupt and breathing a sweet odor: and, having borne it to Lucca in religious procession, deposited it in the basilica of St. Martin. A little afterwards he built in it an underground crypt, and in this a marble tomb, in which he laid up the Saint: and over the tomb in the crypt he constructed an altar, and consecrated it to St. Regulus: and since by his intercession with God many obtained health of body and other benefits, it was decreed by the same prelate, or by one of his successors, that the first of September, the day of the Saint's birth into heaven, should be celebrated throughout the whole diocese with that solemnity, as I gather from the Acts, which obliged the faithful to hear Mass and to cease from labors.

[11] Cesare Franciotti, who published in Italian the Lives of the Saints of Lucca in the year 1613, there the Saint has obtained a cult, as is understood from various observes on page 183 that the chief church of the city, which formerly bore the name of St. Martin alone, after the body of the holy Martyr was translated thither, is in many documents called the church of St. Martin and St. Regulus. One or another of these I have found in Ughelli. In tome 1 of Italia sacra, column 850, he brings forward a diploma of Carloman, king of Italy, given in the year 877, in which I read this: Gherardus, bishop of the church of Lucca, which is seen to be constructed in honor of St. Martin the confessor, and in which St. Regulus rests in the body. In the same place, column 853, he produces a document of the marquis Adalbert, who he writes died about the year 917; in which I find these words: We have invested the church of St. Martin and St. Regulus with the tenth portion, that it may hold it unto the end of the world. From these I conclude that our Saint was the second patron, after St. Martin, of the cathedral church. In Ughelli's Italia sacra, enlarged by Niccolò Coleti, tome 1, column 819, there is extant a bull of Pope Gelasius II, given in the year 1118, by which, among various customs of the chief church, this also is confirmed: Let none of the churches, moreover, celebrate solemn Masses on the festival of B. Martin and St. Regulus. Hence I gather that on the feast-day of our Saint, in the chief church of the city where his body rested, a solemn Sacrifice was wont to be performed with the highest celebrity and the highest splendor: at which, that the faithful might be present in greater concourse, every solemn Mass was forbidden to the other churches. The Acts of the translation made by bishop John, which will be published below, indicate not obscurely the origin of that custom. Receive the words: When the renowned bishop John, whom we have commemorated above, was celebrating the solemnities of the Masses in honor of B. Regulus, signs of very many miracles appeared through the divine power and the honor of B. Regulus… From this custom therefore it was decreed that all the holy churches of God of the people of Lucca, far and wide, should most devoutly and with joy celebrate the solemnities of B. Regulus, and that all the people should come there (into the cathedral church, to the Saint's tomb) to adore, and to celebrate the solemnities of the Masses on the day which we have foretold, the Kalends of September. Laymen too were formerly said to celebrate Mass, who heard it and offered it to the Lord to obtain some benefit for themselves or for others; as Mabillon shows, book 1 on the Gallican Liturgy, chapter 6, number 4.

[12] documents: The praised Franciotti affirms that Alexander II, who from the year 1061 ruled the Roman Chair of St. Peter and that of Lucca at the same time, after he had rebuilt from the foundations the basilica of SS. Martin and Regulus, placed the body of our holy Martyr in the altar in which it was still preserved when he wrote these things: and he adds that that altar was in the year 1484 adorned with most beautiful marble statues by Niccolò Civitali, a citizen of Lucca and a most celebrated sculptor, and that these words were inscribed upon it: Here the body of the holy martyr Regulus is venerated. The same Franciotti relates on page 458 that the remains of St. Regulus were twice carried around through the city of Lucca in public necessities, namely in the month of April of the year 1527, and in the month of November of the year 1531. From Ughelli's Italia sacra, enlarged by Coleti, tome 10, page 279, we learn that for the use of the clergy of Lucca there were composed hymns, antiphons, and lessons of the Office which was anciently wont to be recited on the feast of St. Regulus. The most eminent lord Prospero Lambertini, archbishop of Bologna, who now happily governs the universal Church, in book 4 on the Beatification of the Servants of God and the Canonization of the Blessed, part 2, chapter 19, number 2, testifies out of Ascanio Arnolfini that in two ancient Missals, printed at Lucca in the years 1540 and 1560, there are extant Litanies in which St. Regulus was invoked among the martyrs by the clergy of Lucca. Ferrari in his Catalogue of the Saints of Italy adds to the elogium of St. Regulus that he is venerated by the church of Lucca with an Octave. Whence it is plain that he was honored by the people of Lucca with a signal cult in the preceding century as in ancient times, which without doubt perseveres even now.

[13] Silvano Razzi in his Work on the Saints and Blessed of Tuscany, page 116, writes [from the Acts of the visitation it is certain that his body was neither carried to Pisa,] that the Pisans contend that they possess the body of the holy Martyr, because in their cathedral church, on the right hand of one entering the choir, opposite the archbishop's seat, beneath an ancient painting of St. Regulus these words are read: Of St. Regulus, bishop and martyr, out of reverence for whom this image was made, the relics and bones were translated to this church with the highest honor, in the running of the years MCDLXXXVIII, on the eighth day of April. Now hear Florentinius in his Notes on the Saint's announcement: That on this day also St. Regulus with Felix the bishop his companion is venerated at Pisa in the cathedral, where their bodies rest, the same Ughelli affirms. Ferrari, however, following Razzi, wrote that some relics, not the body, are preserved there, and deduces from the records of that church that where St. Felix suffered is unknown. For my part, if the same St. Regulus is venerated at Pisa and at Lucca, as the same day, the episcopal dignity, and the title of martyrdom persuade, it would have to be said that in the church of Pisa the body of St. Felix rather than that of St. Regulus rests, together with some relics of St. Regulus. For while I was writing these things, the most eminent Cardinal Girolamo Bonvisi, bishop of Lucca, diligently surveying the sacred relics of his cathedral, on opening the marble tomb of St. Regulus, found the bones of the holy Martyr most white and excellently preserved, and such that scarcely any particles could be lacking to them for the completeness of a human body, as is established from the Acts of that visitation. There were also found in the same stone chest small ancient bronze coins of the size of a quarter, some of which, laid up in my keeping, bear the name of the city of Lucca badly engraved, and were enclosed there, as it is fair to believe, at the time of the translation.

[14] Alfonso del Castillo in the Sacrarium of Valencia, page 153 verso, asserts [nor to Valencia, and that only slight relics are preserved outside the cathedral of Lucca.] that the count of Benavente, Juan Pimentel, in the year 1606 sent from Italy, where he was then staying, into Spain to the college of Valencia, founded by Juan de Ribera, archbishop of the city and patriarch of Antioch, the body of St. Regulus the martyr. Hence Tamayo inserted him thus into his Spanish Martyrology on the first of September: At Populonia in Tuscany, of St. Regulus the African bishop, who, having left his see and coming into Italy, was seized by Totila, king of the Huns (rather, of the Goths), who was ravaging the province, and for the confession of the Catholic truth fell a martyr by the edge of the sword. Whose sacred remains, translated first to Lucca and afterwards to Valencia in Spain and laid up in the college of the patriarch Juan de Ribera, rest there honorably. In his Notes he cites Alfonso, relying on whose testimony he asserted that the sacred deposit was translated from Lucca to Valencia. But if the most eminent Cardinal Girolamo Bonvisi, who from the year 1657 until 1677 ruled the church of Lucca, found the Saint's body almost entire in his cathedral, one of two things must be confessed: either that the college of Valencia received only a slight part of it from Italy, or that under the name of St. Regulus it honors a body sent to it, or notable relics, of some martyr different from ours and extracted from the Roman catacombs. At Lucca, among the nuns of the convent of the Angels, and among the religious of the Order of the Servants of the blessed Virgin Mary, some relics also of our Saint are preserved, as Franciotti testifies on pages 527 and 563. The same writer on page 580 writes that the Presbyters of the Lucchese Congregation of the blessed Virgin venerate in their church one of the Saint's teeth and a fragment of his jaw: but this cannot be large, if, as Florentinius affirms, it is certain from the Acts of the visitation that scarcely any particles could be lacking, for the completeness of a human body, to the Saint's bones preserved in the cathedral.

* elsewhere, maritima

* in Baronius, sibi qui

* that is, tradidi

* that is, hora

* that is, seu

* that is, ad viam

* that is, of the estates of the canons

§ II. The antiquity and credit of the Acts is examined: the things in them which are false or suspect are noted; among these is reckoned the miracle of the body carrying its severed head.

[ ] The Saint's Acts were not written before the tenth century: I do not doubt that the Acts of St. Regulus, which I have before me transcribed from I know not what codex of the Vatican library, are those very ones of which Baronius speaks in his Notes on the Saint's announcement: for not only the four verses falsely ascribed to Bede, Regulus holds the Kalends of September &c., but also the words immediately preceding them, which you will find above at number 4, are plainly the same in our Acts and in those which Baronius saw. Now I send the reader back to the observations of Florentinius transcribed by me at the same number 4. When these have been weighed, he will readily grant that the Acts seen by Baronius, and consequently those also of which I have a transcript, flowed down from the archives of the cathedral church of Lucca, and that their writer took those verses from the manuscript Martyrology of Wandelbert preserved there (which he thought to be Bede's), altered perhaps by one of the clerics and adapted to our Saint. Hence it follows that the author of the Acts is younger not only than Wandelbert, but even than the Lucchese transcript of his Martyrology, which exists in a corrupted state in a codex drawn up five hundred years ago, as the praised Florentinius affirms, who wrote after the middle of the seventeenth century. But although that codex be older than Florentinius judged, it can nevertheless not much exceed the tenth century in antiquity; for Wandelbert composed his Martyrology only fifty-eight years before that century, as Bollandus shows in tome 1 of January, in the Preface, page LII. And so it is scarcely credible that the Acts of St. Regulus which I have in hand, being more recent than the said codex, surpass in age the tenth century; between the beginning of which and the year of the holy Martyr's death more than three centuries and a half intervene.

[16] [older ones have perished; at least they are not extant at Lucca in the archives of the cathedral:] More ancient Acts of St. Regulus, as will be plain from what is to be said at number 20, did indeed once exist; but I judge that they have now perished. Certainly they are not preserved in the archives of the cathedral church of Lucca, as the letters of Florentinius teach us, sent from Lucca on the seventeenth of September in the year 1664 to Papebroch; a fragment of which, set aside for this day, begins thus: The canons of the cathedral church of Lucca, in whose keeping lies the body of St. Regulus, would wish for something of older notice concerning him, if it be in your keeping, than what exists in their Passionary books. The letter concludes thus: Besides our own monuments concerning the Saint, from which I remember that we excerpted some things, if anything older from elsewhere should be in your keeping, may your kindness deign to indicate it. We have no older Life of the Saint than that of whose antiquity we have already treated, and at the end of which are read the four verses copied from the corrupt Lucchese Martyrology of Wandelbert, and wrongly attributed to Bede: which likewise, says the same Florentinius cited at number 4, are read written in the same words at the foot of the Life or Passionary of St. Regulus in one of the great goatskin Passionary codices of the canons of Lucca.

[17] Although the biographer is separated by an interval of several centuries from the death of the Saint whose deeds he describes, credit is not on that account to be taken from him, if it can prudently be believed that he obtrudes nothing feigned by himself or by another. In the Acts of St. Regulus, which narrate his life and the translation of his body, and which were composed, as has already been shown, many centuries after his martyrdom, only two things occur touching the Saint more closely which I should dare to affirm proceeded from the author's own invention. the author of the more recent ones reports some things out of his own invention The one is that he says Totila, under whom the Saint suffered, was cut down by the sword in battle against Narses, because St. Regulus with prophetic mouth had foretold that he would perish along with his banquets. Procopius, book 4 on the Gothic war, chapter 32, writes that Totila was pierced by a lance; he also brings forward the narration of others, according to which he was transfixed by an arrow. But the words on account of which he makes the holy Martyr a prophet are those by which he is related to have answered the king's ministers: I am ready to go to him who deigns to prepare eternal banquets for his servants. Totila certainly, with his feedings, I reject, because with his perishing banquets he himself, faithless, is to perish. Here I recognize an antithesis, by which the eternal banquets of the eternal King are set against the perishing feasts of a perishing king, to which the Saint had perhaps been invited; but not any prophetic prediction concerning the death of Totila, who will be plain from what is to be said from number 46 to have reigned nearly ten years after the martyrdom of St. Regulus. The other thing, which perhaps he was the first of all to assert, is that the Saint's body was carried to Lucca from the neighborhood of Populonia. That this is false I proved in the preceding paragraph at number 7. In the same place, at number 6, I gave the words with which the biographer begins his narration of the translation: the rest I shall not publish, for reasons which will be brought forward at the end of this Commentary.

[18] Neither do the things merit credit which the biographer relates of the girl pasturing he-goats, or, as I should prefer to believe, she-goats, [and out of the tradition of the common people relates things false or suspect: to these we reckon the wondrously narrated] who betrayed the holy Martyr to Totila's ministers, and thereby rendered him so hostile to the female sex that formerly no woman dared to sleep in his church, nay, not even to pass beside it. But these things the author of the Life did not invent: for he adds that it is so noised in the ears of the populace, which, being over-credulous, is wont to carry about foolish fables concerning the Saints. From popular tradition perhaps he also received what he subjoins to the wonderful burial of the Saint, namely that no one could ride or hunt about his church without some impediment befalling him. The things which he relates to have happened after the executioners had cut off the Saint's head can also with reason be held suspect. They are these: St. Regulus, taking his head in his hands, carries it from the place where it had been cut off as far as a certain tree two furlongs distant thence: he sits upon the tree until the coming of SS. Cerbonius and Felix, to whom an angel had announced his martyrdom: these address the Saint and ask him to rise and go on to the place where he wishes to be buried: presently the headless body raises itself again upon its feet and goes forward with the head as far as a stone's throw: at length it is committed to the earth by SS. Cerbonius and Felix in the place where it had halted its step.

[19] Although the biographer perhaps clothed that prodigious carrying of the head with some circumstances, carrying of the severed head: that it might appear more wonderful, yet he was not the first to publish in writing the very substance of the miracle. He was preceded by the author of the four often-mentioned verses, whom he cited under the name of Bede. We have said that they are read in the corrupted Martyrology of Wandelbert, which exists at Lucca in a codex which Florentinius inspected and judged to have been written five hundred years ago. But the corrupter of the said Martyrology, who can be understood to have composed those verses six whole centuries after the Saint's martyrdom, is not worthy of secure credit: because the carrying of the head asserted by him is not confirmed by an older testimony. Two sets of Acts of St. Cerbonius will presently be brought forward, whose writers, more ancient, as we suppose, both than our biographer and than the author of the verses, treat of the martyrdom and burial of St. Regulus: but of the said miracle they make no mention. Hence there can be a suspicion that it drew its origin from an erroneous opinion of the common people. Holy Martyrs beheaded were often anciently painted or sculptured, in the manner in which St. Regulus is exhibited in the image prefixed to his Life in Franciotti, page 178, namely with the body erect and the head raised within the hands before the breast. Images so painted or sculptured to express the manner of death could easily lead the rude populace to believe that which the sense of the eyes first suggested to the mind, namely that the martyrs whom they beheld in them had walked bearing the severed head before the breast: This could, says Papebroch in tome VI of May, page 38, have really happened once and again; but that fallacious principle, which has led so many into error, being once recognized, it can be prudently believed of no saint whose Acts are not altogether most genuine: such as certainly those are not which relate that St. Regulus carried his own head. In the same place he subjoins from St. Chrysostom some reason on which is founded the manner of thus painting beheaded martyrs. There may also be read what he has in tome III of April, page 106, where he treats also of other popular errors to which the monuments of painted or sculptured images gave occasion.

[20] the rest, because they are supported by sufficient authority, seem to me true. The things which the author of the Life wrote of St. Regulus out of his own invention or out of the tradition of the common people, false or little credible, have now been set before our eyes. What is to be determined concerning the rest, understand from what follows. That Acts of the holy Martyr more ancient than ours existed is testified by the author of the Life of St. Cerbonius, bishop of Populonia, which Niccolò Coleti inserted in tome 3 of Ughelli's Italia sacra, column 703, and which he himself thinks to have been written before the times of Charlemagne. Although this opinion of his perhaps deceives Coleti, yet we believe that that monument is ancient which the Acts of St. Cerbonius record when they touch briefly on the martyrdom and burial of St. Regulus in these words: For at that time Totila, the faithless king, with his Gothic satellites was devastating Italy with cruel scrutiny: and blessed Regulus, as is read in his Digests, he dispatched * by a capital sentence. But Cerbonius and Felix, most holy bishops, wondrously buried the corpse of their Master and archbishop. The things which pertain to the life of St. Regulus lived in Africa and in exile are set before his martyrdom in the same Acts of St. Cerbonius. We keep another set of Acts of the latter, which, as is noted at the head of our transcript, exist in codex 6453 of the Vatican library, and which Orlendi, in the Sacred and Profane World, part 2, book 3, chapter 43, number 7, affirms not yet to have been published in print. In these, if you regard the thing itself, the same things are related of our Saint as in the Life of St. Cerbonius published by Coleti. But since the author of the latter cites a more ancient document concerning St. Regulus, which he calls the Digests, without doubt from it were taken the things which both he and the other, who composed the deeds of St. Cerbonius his disciple not yet brought to light, relate of the holy Martyr. But the chief heads of all the matters which each relates of St. Regulus are read also in his more recent Acts: therefore those things in which the latter agree with the former merit credit, as being drawn from the same more ancient monument.

[21] Whether that document, of which mention is made

by our biographer, prudently credible: the reasons why the Saint's Acts will not be given entire. when he begins for the second time to narrate the Saint's martyrdom with these words, Wherefore, as we have found in the Deeds, we declare, is the same as that which is cited in the published Acts of St. Cerbonius, is not manifest to me. In the narration which follows immediately upon the words quoted, and which will be brought forward at number 28, sincerity and the other things which win credit for a history seem to me to shine out more, so that both the antiquity of the document and the biographer's fidelity in transcribing are less suspect to me. Prudently, therefore, may that description of the martyrdom be believed to which is prefixed, Wherefore, as in the Deeds &c., as also those things which are read in each Life of St. Cerbonius. But what is to be thought of the things which our biographer relates of St. Regulus and which are not found in the Acts of his disciple? The false and suspect things which he mingled into his history out of his own invention and out of popular tradition have already been set before the reader above. The rest, if they be understood in a sound sense, are not to be held fictitious, because they are related in a manner sufficiently credible, and are almost nothing but certain circumstances not alien to the matters narrated in each Life of St. Cerbonius. If you admit the truth of these, you will not rightly deny the verisimilitude of those. What has been said thus far concerning the facts and the circumstances attending them is so to be understood that it be not extended to the addresses which the biographer writes were made by the Saint, by his companions, and by the Arians. I do not indeed deny that they spoke; but it is not credible that they used those words in which they are brought in speaking. And since the discourses which the biographer attributes to them are very prolix, and since he thrusts very many texts of holy Scripture into his narration, and moreover — to be silent about his other wanderings — even describes the meeting of Totila with St. Benedict, and commemorates not a few other things concerning the deeds and death of that king plainly foreign to his purpose; I have judged that the history which he wrote concerning St. Regulus, though in part worthy of credit, as I have already shown, is not to be published save with the longer digressions and interpolations cut away, which could not be read without weariness. But this I shall faithfully perform, that I shall omit nothing which in any way pertains to the Saint's life. Then from both sets of Acts of his disciple I shall subjoin those things which very much confirm our biographer's history. From other authors also some things will be brought forward which are not found in the documents hitherto mentioned. The following paragraph will contain almost nothing but the bare narration of them, and that its historical context might not be interrupted, I have reserved for paragraphs 4 and 5 the observations and the discussion of the questions to which the things I now undertake to transcribe give either matter or occasion.

* read extinxit

§ III. The Saint's Acts, the longer interpolations cut away; some things pertaining to his life from other documents.

[ ] [The Saint's solicitude for his flock, his contests with the Arians; who harass him in unworthy ways,] The biographer, having prefixed a wordy Prologue in which he brings forward nothing worthy of note, thus begins the Life of the Saint: Most blessed Regulus therefore, as most learned men have handed down, when he was celebrated throughout Africa as exalted to the archiepiscopal summit, and was governing in the Catholic faith the church committed to him, the very * fountain of the Arians began to flow with pestilent and poisonous venom. For that chief Shepherd was teaching the people assigned to him how the Son of God &c. He here inserts the doctrine of the Church opposed to the errors of the Arians, to the faith of which the Saint exhorted the people. Presently he brings in the Arians opposing themselves to his preaching and perverting the faithful people; whose heretical dogmas also he alleges. At length he proceeds thus: Then blessed Regulus, father of Africa and athlete of the Lord, forbidding the wicked deed of the impious, began to rebuke them and strongly to fight back, that he might free God's people from the domination of Satan, and restore them, as was fitting, to their Creator. But those whom the aforesaid heresy had stained blazed up with so great a torch of fury against the same Servant of God, that not only were they unwilling to restrain themselves from error, but they did not even deign to hear the words of God from him: moreover they hurled threats of death against him… Therefore those who had been offended by the preaching of blessed Regulus began to be wounded by ill-omened darts, while, casting away the good Shepherd's admonitions, they gave themselves over to the madness of the Arians: accordingly, lying in wait for him, they endeavored to expel him from their own borders.

[23] [and force him into voluntary exile: he proposes to the clergy the counsel of flight; with his companions,] Meanwhile the blessed Archbishop, considering so great a crime propagated * by the authors of the Arians, and that he himself was profiting nothing by his resistance, … having called together … a certain number from his own clergy, addresses them thus with kindly voice: Brethren and fellow-partakers of the Catholic faith, you see well how greatly the persecution of the wicked against us has increased: leaving therefore this land with these most wicked men, let us go into another, to serve God. There follow texts and examples taken from the sacred Letters, by which the holy Prelate showed to the assembled clergy that he might lawfully, the rebellious flock being left behind, migrate to other lands. Presently he adds: With these at length and many other examples brought forward, certain of his own began to say that they were ready to follow him wherever he wished to go, desiring rather to die with him than to live without him… Then St. Regulus gave himself to prayer with his disciples, praying and saying: Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the almighty God … do thou deign always to be with us, and to prepare a fitting place for us, and to direct our feet into the way of peace, that we may be able to serve thee and always to wait upon thee in quiet, who with the coeternal God the Father &c. And when it had been answered, Amen, the same holy Regulus, leaving the fields to the inhabitants and quitting his own see, with two bishops as companions and three presbyters and two deacons, reached on foot the land of Tuscany, a peaceable and new guest. The things comprised in this and the preceding number, which could have been dispatched in a few lines, are so amplified with sacred texts and long interpolations that they fill almost three pages of a folio in our transcript.

[24] The biographer thus pursues his narration: And because to the Saints in this world contests of temptation are not wanting, [a storm being stilled by his prayers, he lands in Tuscany, where he leads a solitary life:] while he was making for the parts of Tuscany, there arose upon the windy waves a raging storm; against which the crew girded itself with its accustomed preparation: for the deep thunders had begun to roar, and the lightnings to flash, the face of the sky too to be changed by the clouds of the air, and the roar of the sea to display the waves of its fury. Terror invaded the minds of all in the ship, and dragged them almost to the whirlpool of despair. But the mind of blessed Regulus alone terror could not plunge into the abyss of despair, because he was trusting in the Lord's mercy toward him. And having placed his knees upon the ground, he besought the Maker of the world that amid the trembling waves he would become the pilot of his ship, and free his exiles from so great a peril: upon whose prayer there straightway followed the desired effect. For to the sea was given the starry concord of the heaven, so that the fearful clouds forsook it, and the sea with prosperous breezes kept its former gentleness: and it came to pass in that space of waters that the sea became peaceful, and the spirit of the sailors was saved from a huge fear. Having therefore come forth from the waves of the deep, he chose to live by the eremitical path, and to lie hidden in a fitting place in remote borders: where, while he lived sequestered from the vanity of this world, he was daily honored by the service of wild beasts and of many animals.

[25] And when Christ deigned to work many signs through him in that same place, he is betrayed by a girl to Totila's ministers; his martyrdom: fame announced him to Totila, the faithless king: who, sending some of his retinue, commanded that St. Regulus be fetched to him. Certain young men who had been sent came to his lodging: but though they passed three times before him, they were quite unable to see him as he sat and read. Now there was not far off a girl pasturing beasts and he-goats, who pointed out the excellent Man to the savage executioners; which brought no small detriment upon women and he-goats to come. Certainly let no woman presume to remain in his most holy hall even for a brief sleep, nor can any be found refreshed there: because it is noised in the ears of the populace that no woman dare with rash presumption take rest in his house, nor is it lawful to pass beside his church, the Lord so working through his servant Regulus. But the ministers who had been sent by the king, seeing him, urged him to go to the king, lest, if he despised the summons, he should be punished with the gravest penalties. To whom he answered: I scorn to fulfill what Totila has commanded, because I keep the precepts of Christ, Son of the eternal King: I am ready to go to him who deigns to prepare eternal banquets for his servants: Totila certainly, with his feedings, I reject; because with his perishing banquets he himself, faithless, is to perish. Hearing these things, the executioners extinguished his life by a capital sentence: and his head they cast beside a spring, accounting it as nothing.

[26] But that the Lord might show with what merits he was to be honored, [he carries his severed head in his hands: he is buried by SS. Cerbonius and Felix, admonished by an angel:] lifting with his own hands his head, which the wretched executioners had cut off, he carried it two furlongs, he for whom he suffered so effecting it; and he sat down upon a certain tree as though he had not been slain by the sword of the savage men. And an angel of the Lord appeared to two of his fellow-bishops, Felix and Carbonius *, and announced to them the slaying of the blessed Prelate, saying: Your Pontiff has been slain. And when he had said this, he vanished from their eyes. But they, with the Holy Spirit as their guide, went forth and found him sitting where, before he was beheaded, he was known to have sat: who, saddened at his death but rejoicing at the perpetuity of his life, said: Why hast thou separated us from thy fellowship, most holy Father? With thee we crossed the deep gulfs &c. These and other discourses are attributed to SS. Cerbonius and Felix, from which it may be plain how great a longing for himself the Saint left among them. At last they address him thus: Rise, rise, most holy Father, that in the place of thy will we may be able to bury thy body. Presently, raised up and bearing his head in his hands, he went as far as a stone's throw and rested, being delivered to burial.

[27] [the executioners punished, miracles at the Saint's tomb; a church erected to him; the concourse of the faithful.] But the slayers were strangled by a demon. One escaped, together with the girl who kept the he-goats; who, crying out, shouted everywhere: O Regulus, servant of God! Why dost thou lead us bound with chains? And when they were bound, they broke their bonds and ran to the tomb: and coming to the place they were made whole, and reported all the things which had been done. But those men, seeing the miracles which were being wrought through him, built him a house. Whence it has come to pass that even until now no one sitting upon a horse dares to pass by the church of that same Martyr; nor can a hunter pursue wild beasts within his borders without some impediment befalling him. But also

God works many other things through this same praiseworthy Martyr of his: and very many, hearing of his miracles from afar, come thither; whose sick, paying their vows, receive many benefits. He suffered and was buried on the day of the Kalends of September; whose festival is to be celebrated with honor. Many invalids await his benefits, that they may be made well.

[28] A second narration of the martyrdom, taken from a more ancient document: It seems moreover that we must here commemorate how almighty God, after the passing of blessed Regulus the archbishop, wrought vengeance upon the cruel and impious king Totila: for it is not seemly that we, knowing the wonderful deeds which the Lord has deigned to work in his Saints and for his Saints, should not at least relate some of them at a fitting time… Wherefore, as we have found in the Deeds, we declare. At the time when the emperor Justinian, praiseworthy among men, dwelling in the parts of Constantinople, held the Roman empire, Baduila, who by another name was called Totila, namely the king of the Goths, having gathered an army from every side, invaded all Italy with great ferocity. For he destroyed many churches there, and impiously slaughtered many Christians. Making also plunderings and takings of captives on every side, he burned and overthrew many castles and houses. Meanwhile, while he was in the maritime borders within the county * of Populonia, which is situated in the parts of Tuscany, he heard that blessed Regulus, archbishop of Africa, was dwelling in those borders and leading an eremitical life. And so, having sent a messenger, he commanded that he should come to him with all speed. But he, being unwilling to obey his orders, scorned to come to him. On hearing which, the tyrant, filled with wrath, commanded that a capital execution, as has been said above, be inflicted on the holy Pontiff: which he received joyfully for Christ, and entered the heavenly gate without fear.

[29] The predictions of SS. Benedict and Regulus concerning the death of king Totila. But Totila did not do this unpunished, since, as the following lesson will teach, he himself afterwards ended his life shamefully. About the same time, inflamed with excessive cruelty and ferocity, making his journey through Campania he came to the monastery of the blessed man Benedict, who at that time was living in the body. Hearing that he had the spirit of prophecy, he endeavored to test whether it were true. There is here inserted the whole history of Totila's meeting with St. Benedict: presently various deeds and journeys of the same king are recounted: at length one comes to the battle joined between the Goths and the Romans under the general Narses, in which Totila was slain in the tenth year after the conference held with St. Benedict, who had foretold that he would reign nine years and die in the tenth. The slaying of the king of the Goths being narrated, there is subjoined: And so it came to pass that he who had caused God's holy Regulus to be slain with the sword was himself also slain with the sword… For it could not be passed over that Totila himself should not perish, because St. Regulus with prophetic mouth had foretold that he would perish along with his banquets. The biographer means, forsooth, that as the year of his death was foretold by St. Benedict, so also the manner of his death was foretold by St. Regulus. Then, after various antitheses in which the deeds and death of the holy Martyr and of the king of the Goths are set against one another, there follows the history of the translation, whose beginning I gave at number 6. The reason why I judge that it is not to be published will be given at number 54.

[30] Now receive the beginning of the unpublished Life of St. Cerbonius, of which there was mention at number 20: A shorter Life of the Saint from the unpublished Acts of St. Cerbonius, At the time when the Arian heresy was sprouting throughout the whole world, and most of all among the nation of the Vandals, which was devastating the African nation, and which cultivated that heresy as though it were divinity; blessed Regulus was archbishop in that region, who, breathed upon by the grace of the Holy Spirit, had begun to preach to the people that they should separate themselves from this heresy, and with all their efforts worship Christ the Son of God, who is true God. But while his preaching was failing with fruitless labor, the holy Regulus himself began anxiously to grieve, because that nation was daily tearing the servants of Christ in pieces. But in those days the father of blessed Cerbonius, coming and seeing that Priest of God flashing with miracles and preaching to all the sound doctrine which was concerning the Lord Jesus Christ, commended him to blessed Regulus, that he might teach him the doctrine of Christ, so that he might learn the sacred Letters of divine worship. Then blessed Regulus taught blessed Cerbonius all the sacred Scriptures, and he became his disciple. But when blessed Regulus perceived the madness of the heretical depravity, leaving the see in which he was blessing other priests, and taking to himself blessed Cerbonius and Felix, two bishops whom he himself had consecrated, he seized upon the path of the deep, a swift ship being joined to him, with three presbyters and two deacons and other companions journeying with him, and made his way upon the waves of the sea. This period is very much contorted, and perhaps corrupted by the transcriber.

[31] But while they were traversing the deeps of the sea, the roar of the sea was troubled, [which differ scarcely at all from the other Acts of the same, published by Coleti:] and a violent storm rose against them, and cast all into disturbance: only blessed Regulus was nothing terrified, because he was trusting in the mercy of his Lord. For he besought the Lord whom he purely served, whom all things obey, that amid the tempests he would become the pilot of his ship. Whose prayers almighty God at once heard; and the sea became peaceful and suffered his servants to depart in quiet. But when he came upon the Roman borders, being separated from his companions he began to lead an eremitical life, and to have the service of Felix. And while he was doing these things and working many signs in that same place, it was reported by certain persons to Totila, the faithless king: who sent his officers and commanded that he should come to him, and, if he despised the summons, should undergo a capital sentence. And they presently fulfilled the words of his order. But blessed Cerbonius and Felix delivered his poor body to burial. And after the death of his Prelate, blessed Cerbonius began to teach all the peoples dwelling in those parts, admonishing them to persevere in prayers and vigils, in fastings and almsdeeds, as the blessed Pontiff himself had been wont to do. Almost all the same things are contained in the other Acts of St. Cerbonius. One thing I pluck out of these, which is not clearly expressed elsewhere, namely that St. Regulus had Cerbonius and Felix as his companions in the solitary life as well as in his flight: And the three holy Exiles, coming into the Roman borders, claimed for themselves a fitting place, so that, all things being set aside, they might lead * an eremitical life for the best almighty God. The rest I do not transcribe, both because it can be read in Ughelli's Italia sacra enlarged by Coleti, tome 3, column 703, and also because a long repetition of the same matters, though narrated in other words, would be less pleasing to the reader. Yet it is permitted to recall this to memory here, that the writer of the Acts published in print, as his words reported at number 20 make credible, saw a more ancient Life of St. Regulus. By this testimony of his, whose falsity, since it cannot be proved, ought not to be presumed, the things are rendered more credible which he himself, which the author of the unpublished Life of St. Cerbonius, and which for the most part our biographer committed to writing concerning the holy Martyr. But on this matter I have already discoursed enough from number 20.

[32] [Augustine the Camaldolese cites other documents, from whom a few things are excerpted:] Augustine of Florence, a monk by profession of the Camaldolese, published at Florence in the year 1567 the Life and miracles of SS. Justus and Clement, into which he also inserted the Acts of St. Regulus and of other heavenly ones. On page 16 he recounts various manuscript monuments out of which he wove all his history. Although this is in many matters very suspect to me, yet it has seemed good to excerpt some things pertaining to the Saint from his chapters 5 and 6, because they are narrated with new circumstances, which perhaps he found in the documents which he cites. And they are these: At last B. Regulus with Justus, Clement, and Octavian, and with the rest of the multitude, being carried into a harbor of Etruria, landed with thanksgiving. And when all, having disembarked, gained the longed-for sand, the blessed Archbishop blessed them. Then, greeting one another in a holy kiss, wherever the divine providence called them, the company being divided, some took one way and some another. B. Regulus, having first entered the borders of Populonia with his disciples Cerbonius and Felix, presently chose to lead praiseworthily in the Lord an eremitical life in a remote grove and hidden wood. Where, giving himself to prayers, vigils, and fastings, at length, worn out with age, in the preaching and defense of the Christian faith he sought for himself the crown of martyrdom on the Kalends of September at the Bridge (as they call it) of Sacco. For the fame of his sanctity and preaching having been carried to the ears of the impious Totila, satellites were sent and he was beheaded in the desert. St. Octavian, in his own Acts, which will be subjected to examination on the second day of this month, is also said to have joined himself as a companion, together with Justus and Clement, to our Saint as he fled from Africa.

[33] [some things read in more recent writers concerning the Saint are manifestly false.] The Life of St. Regulus was written in Italian in the last century by Cesare Franciotti and Silvano Razzi, praised at numbers XI and 13. Besides many others, almost all who have written of the Saints who followed him as their leader into exile, or are believed to have followed him, treat of him also. But they bring forward nothing which is not found in the documents adduced. Some, however, I have met with, from what source they drew what they relate I do not know. He who enlarged the Florentine Martyrology of Usuard writes, on the second of September in the elogium of St. Octavian, that he came together with our Saint to Volterra, a city of Tuscany. But all the rest everywhere who say that he was the companion of St. Regulus when he fled from the African persecution of the Arians affirm that he went to Volterra together with Justus and Clement; while the holy Regulus, about to lead a solitary life, remained with Cerbonius and Felix in the territory of Populonia, in which also he obtained the palm of martyrdom. These last things are beyond doubt, as is plain from the documents alleged. Plainly foreign both to their narration and to the truth is what Lodovico Zacconi also writes in the Compendium of the Lives of all the Saints, when he says that St. Regulus set out from Africa to Rome to honor the relics of the Saints there, and that, when he was making his journey from Rome into Tuscany, he by chance met Totila, king of the Goths, who ordered the Saint to be slain because he was a Christian.

* perhaps impius

* that is, propagatum

* read Cerbonio

* that is, territorium

* perhaps ducerent

§ IV. The time is inquired into at which the persecution of the Arians compelled St. Regulus to go into exile; who more probably was in Africa the prelate of a primatial see: Tillemont is refuted, who covertly accuses him of absence from his flock: the companions of his flight and of his solitary life.

[ ] That the Saint neither in the fifth nor in the eighth century, The things which we have gathered from various documents in the preceding paragraph do not all merit equally firm credit. Those which we think false or not verisimilar have already been assigned at numbers 17, 18, 19, and 33. Of those which seem to me credible, some are narrated ambiguously, confusedly, and stripped of their due circumstances, so that to doubts

and to questions of no light kind they leave room. These we now begin to discuss: and first indeed we shall inquire into the time at which the persecution of the Arians compelled St. Regulus and his companions to flee from Africa. Raffaello Volaterrano, in book 5 of the Urban Commentaries, after the middle, and following him Leandro Alberti in the Description of Italy, Cologne edition, page 79, affirm that the Saint, a fugitive from his fatherland with Justus, Clement, and Octavian, landed in Tuscany when Leo III was emperor. Papebroch, in tome 1 of June, page 438, thinks that it must be attributed to the printer's fault, for the reasons which he there brings forward, that in Volaterrano the numeral III crept in for the letter M, signifying the Great. But whether you read "when Leo III was emperor" or "when Leo the Great was emperor," you will not vindicate him from error: since the holy Exile came into Etruria under neither of them. It is certain that St. Regulus suffered under Totila. But since the latter did not take up the kingdom of the Goths in Italy before the year 541, nor held it beyond the year 552; the holy Martyr's exile can neither be deferred to the eighth century, in which Leo III, surnamed the Isaurian, reigned, nor be called back to the persecutions which Genseric, king of the Vandals, stirred up in Africa under Leo the Great, the first of that name, that is, between the years 457 and 474. These things will be set in open light in the following number.

[35] St. Gregory the Great, in book 2 of the Dialogues, chapter XI, relates but came in the sixth century from Africa into Tuscany, that St. Cerbonius was by Totila's command thrown to a bear to be devoured; but that he escaped unhurt by divine help, the beast falling down at his feet and kissing them. Of which thing, the holy Pontiff adds, is certain from the age of St. Cerbonius: some of those who were then present still survive; and they testify that they saw it, together with all the people there. Then he thus begins to narrate the death foreknown by the Saint, and his wonderful burial: For in that church of Populonia over which he presided he prepared a tomb for himself. But when the nation of the Lombards, coming into Italy, had laid all things waste, he withdrew to the island of Elba. And he, when sickness came on and he was drawing near to death, commanded his clerics and those attending him, saying: Place me in my tomb, which I prepared for myself at Populonia. And when they said to him: How can we bring back thy body thither, we who know that those places are held by the Lombards, and that they range everywhere there? He himself answered: Bring me back in safety &c. It suffices to have excerpted these things for our purpose from the narration of the holy Pontiff, a contemporary writer. Although the cited Papebroch denies that SS. Justus and Clement fled from Africa together with St. Regulus, and without doubt judged the same also of St. Octavian: yet among all it is certain that SS. Cerbonius and Felix landed in Tuscany as exiles together with our Saint. Now if St. Cerbonius flourished in the times of Totila, under whom St. Regulus consummated his martyrdom; nay, if he was still living when the Lombards, who burst into Italy in the year 568, penetrated even into those parts of Etruria where Populonia was situated; no further doubt is left that he and St. Regulus, whom he followed as his leader into exile, came into Tuscany in the sixth century. And so Raffaello Volaterrano and Leandro Alberti, cited above, have wandered very far from the truth. Ughelli too has fallen into a foul anachronism. In tome 1 of Italia sacra, column * 332, he places St. Justus in the series of the bishops of Volterra before Elpidius, whom he writes to have been present at the Roman synod held under Pope Symmachus in the year 502; but in tome 3, column 784, he extends the life of St. Cerbonius as far as the tenth of October of the year 573: and yet he affirms that both prelates fled from Africa at the same time together with St. Regulus.

[36] [reasons are brought forward why I judge that he fled into exile not under Gelimer, as many hold,] From the unpublished Life of St. Cerbonius we learn that he followed St. Regulus, a fugitive from the persecution of the Arians, with Felix and other companions, while the Vandals were still ruling in Africa. Their kingdom there was extinguished in the year 534, when the last king of that nation, Gelimer, was conquered and taken by Belisarius, the general of the emperor Justinian, and led off to Constantinople in triumph. Whence it follows that the Saint's exile cannot be deferred beyond the said year 534. Up to this time there were in the sixth century three kings of the Vandals in Africa: Trasamund, Hilderic, and Gelimer, who in the year 530, or as others say 531, seized the latter's kingdom. It is in no way verisimilar that our Saint withdrew himself from persecution while Hilderic was reigning; for he favored the orthodox prelates, and restored to the Catholic cause the peace and liberty which Trasamund had taken away. Augustine the Camaldolese in the Acts of SS. Justus and Clement, Franciotti in the Life of St. Regulus, page 179, Benedetto Falconcini, bishop of Arezzo, in Orlendi's Sacred and Profane World, part 2, book 3, chapter 31, number 9, and some others judge that the persecution of the Arians against the Catholics broke out afresh under Gelimer, and that in this our holy Prelate and his companions were compelled to flee. But since I do not find among ancient writers that the Catholics suffered any persecution for the cause of the faith under that king, and since St. Regulus, as is read in his Acts, was harassed by the Arians for no other reason than because he attacked their heretical doctrine and defended the Catholic; I cannot acquiesce in the assertion of the more recent writers, destitute as it is of testimony worthy of credit. I read indeed in Procopius, book 2 on the Vandal war, chapter 9, that he adhered to the tenets of Arius, and in Victor of Tunnuna in his Chronicle, that many of the nobles of Africa were slain by the same king, whose goods he afterwards seized by right and by wrong: but did he rage against them because they were Orthodox? It appears to me more credible that, as he slew Hilderic, whom he had thrust from the throne, and his kinsmen, so he slew also many other African nobles who favored him, that he might establish for himself the kingdom which he had seized. This opinion of ours is favored rather than hindered by the enlarged Chronicle of Hermann Contractus, published by Christian Urstisius at Frankfurt in the year 1585; which at the year 530 has these words: Geilamer, seizing the kingdom, rages against the Catholics and against all whom he knew or suspected to stand with the party of Hilderic, no distinction being made of condition or of religion. This is confirmed by the fact that in the sacred Fasti I have been able to find no martyr, no confessor, who is noted as having endured death or exile for the faith of Christ under Gelimer.

[37] Thierry Ruinart, in the History of the Vandal persecution, part 2, chapter XI, number 13, but under Trasamund, asserts that St. Regulus with his companions fled into Italy under Hilderic's predecessor Trasamund; but at about what time under him this happened, he does not determine. Noris, in book 2 of the Pelagian History, chapter 21, proves that Trasamund succeeded his brother Guntamund on the twenty-fourth of September in the year 496, and departed from the kingdom and from life on the twenty-eighth of May in the year 523. It seems to me that no fitter time can be found to which the exile of the Saint and his companions may be referred than the year of Trasamund's death, or those immediately preceding. That king, most devoted to the Arian sect, as contemporary authors and, following them, the readily available writers of Annals relate, had by an impious edict forbidden that others be ordained in the place of bishops who had died; and when the prelates of the province of Byzacena had transgressed this, he at once ordered the churches of the Catholics to be closed and all the prelates of his kingdom to be punished with exile. Victor of Tunnuna in his Chronicle writes that a hundred and twenty, others that far more, were cast out of their sees under that tyrant. That in those times all things were permitted with impunity to the Arians against the Catholic prelates is sufficiently understood from this alone, that they drove Trasamund himself, as it were unwilling, to send back into exile St. Fulgentius, bishop of Ruspe, whom a little before he had recalled from it, seized with a desire of seeing and hearing the man. Further, that persecution, stirred up a little after the beginning of the sixth century on account of the transgression of the royal decree, was continued until Trasamund's death, or at least broke out afresh toward the end of his life, as the praised Ruinart proves from synchronous and contemporary authors at number 23. And not only living but even dead he oppressed the Catholics as much as he could; for the Chronicle of Victor of Tunnuna testifies that Hilderic was bound by an oath by his predecessor Trasamund neither to open the churches to the Catholics in his kingdom nor to restore their privileges. These things it has pleased me to commemorate summarily, that the reader may understand that the perversion of the faithful in Africa, the increase of the Arian heresy, the unbridled wickedness of its followers, by which they did not cease to harass St. Regulus for his championing of the true faith until at last they compelled him to go into exile; that, I say, he may understand that these things and the others which are narrated above at number 22 in the Saint's Acts fit no times better than those in which Trasamund and, under him, the Arians persecuted the faithful of Africa and especially the prelates.

[38] [and that in the year 523, the year of this king's death, or in those immediately preceding.] Now receive the reason why I judge that the exile of our Saint and of his companions is to be deferred to the years which immediately preceded Trasamund's death. In both Lives of St. Cerbonius it is narrated that he was delivered by his father to St. Regulus, then prelate of some church in Africa, to be imbued with virtue and the sacred Letters, and that he did not depart into exile before he had been ordained bishop by his Master. Now since St. Regulus died a martyr under Totila in the year 542, as we shall prove below, while St. Cerbonius was still living when the Lombards, having entered Italy in the year 568, had run out as far as Populonia; the exile of both Saints cannot be drawn back to years remotely preceding Trasamund's death: for a greater age would have to be granted to both than could easily be believed, as will be plain to one who considers it. This inconvenience we avoid, who defer their flight into Italy to the last years of Trasamund's life. Admitting the verisimilar opinion of Baronius, of Ughelli, tome 3 of Italia sacra, column 784, and of others, which sets the year 573 as that of St. Cerbonius's death, we shall indeed have to grant that he, who before his exile had already been consecrated bishop, lived fifty years and more in Tuscany, and consequently passed to the happier life in a very advanced old age: but his unpublished Acts, whose beginning I transcribed at numbers 30 and 31, testify this very thing toward the end: For he was of wonderful abstinence, strong in pious works, gentle and modest toward clergy and people alike, reaching even to a decrepit age. In his other Acts, which are extant in tome 3 of Ughelli's Italia sacra, enlarged by Niccolò Coleti, column 708, I read this. He withdrew to the island which is called Elba, on account of the cruelty of the Lombards, and there with his clerics he cherished a hiding-place. For already a decrepit age had come upon him, which him unto the end of his life

prolonged. We confess also that it follows from our opinion that St. Regulus suffered at an advanced age: for if he presided over some church in Africa when St. Cerbonius became his disciple, and did not go into exile before the Order of the episcopate had been conferred upon the latter, it cannot conveniently enough be understood how he prolonged his life to the times of Totila, unless it be said that he was an old man when he underwent martyrdom. If you wish to attribute to him about eighty years of life, I do not resist: for Augustine the Camaldolese, in the Life of SS. Justus and Clement, chapter 6, writes this of him: At length, worn out with age, in the preaching and defense of the Christian faith he sought for himself the crown of martyrdom on the Kalends of September. Although the author just named merits no credit in many things, yet I prefer to believe that he does not go astray here, rather than to assert that St. Regulus with his companions fled a persecution of the Arians stirred up under Gelimer, of which all antiquity is silent.

[39] It seems to me more credible that St. Regulus in Africa was, not indeed in name, The authors of the documents which I transcribed in the preceding paragraph, and the writers more recent than they, everywhere all call our Saint archbishop, if you except the martyrologists. These more rightly abstained from that title, which no one of the prelates of the African church ever bore. The name of archbishop was always hateful to them, because it seemed to smack rather of the world's pomp and domination than of the modesty worthy of the ministers of the Church. The third council of Carthage proscribed it in the year 397, decreeing in canon 26, That the bishop of the first see be not called prince of priests, or highest priest, or anything of this kind; but only bishop of the first see. Nor was the odium wiped from the name in the sixth century, in which the Saint flourished; for the synod of Carthage celebrated under Boniface in the year 525 renewed the same prohibition. And so St. Regulus did not bear in Africa the title of archbishop; whom accordingly you will more rightly name, with the martyrologists, bishop. But if not in name, was he not an archbishop in the very thing and dignity? That this comes nearer to the truth, the things which I now subjoin seem to me sufficient to affirm. In all the provinces of Africa, the Proconsular excepted, the prelate senior in consecration, in whatever city he resided, was the bishop of the first see. But since the persecution against the Catholic prelates had no end save with Trasamund's death, very many churches were widowed of their pastors. Whence St. Regulus, who, as necessarily follows from what has been said above, was for many years a bishop in Africa, could easily have been the senior of the prelates in his province and have borne the episcopate of the first see. In the most ancient Acts of the Saint, which have perished, this his preeminence over the other prelates was perhaps expressed in words formerly in use among the Africans; but which a younger author explained by the appellation of archbishop, better known in Italy: which title then passed into the writings of the more recent biographers, published or unpublished, which exist today.

[40] Moreover Cerbonius, in his unpublished Life, is said to have been ordained bishop with Felix by our Saint: but in the very thing an archbishop, that is, the prelate of the first see. whence again it is understood that he was prelate of the first see; whose office it was to consecrate a bishop in his own province. But, you will say, St. Regulus is narrated in his Acts to have proposed his counsel of fleeing from Africa when he had called together a certain number from his own clergy: but from the same it can be deduced that Cerbonius and Felix were more probably of the number of those called together: they do not therefore seem to have been bishops, because they were of St. Regulus's own clergy. This argument, as it seems to me, presses little: for it can be said that the biographer used those words that he might comprehend under them all whom the Saint summoned, bishops as well as presbyters and deacons: of whom the latter were of his own clergy as he was a bishop, but the former as he was bishop of the first see; to whose jurisdiction, which cannot be understood without some right of ownership, the Nicene Decrees most openly committed both the clerics of the lower grade and the bishops themselves, who are of the clergy of the highest grade. The words are those of the African Council, canon 238, in Thomassin, On the Ancient and New Discipline of the Church, part 1, book 1, chapter 41, number 18. And so from the fact that Cerbonius and Felix were of the clergy called together, it cannot be inferred that they were not bishops; which ecclesiastical dignity is attributed to them not only by the Life of St. Regulus and both Lives of St. Cerbonius, but also by all the more recent biographers everywhere, acquiescing in a constant tradition. Nor do I think we should on that account recede from this, because the church which they ruled in Africa is nowhere determined. Not only the deeds but even the very names are wholly unknown of most of the prelates who under Trasamund went into exile in Sardinia, Italy, and elsewhere. And of those whose names are expressed, there are several of whom it is not known what chair they held, as may be seen in the praised Ruinart from number XI. Why should not Cerbonius and Felix be reckoned among these; whom, though of uncertain sees, you will find named bishops almost everywhere. Why also should it not be permitted to believe that St. Regulus was prelate of the first see, who is read in the unpublished Life of St. Cerbonius to have conferred upon them the order of the episcopate, and who in all the documents of which I have thus far made mention is endowed with the title of archbishop. Among these are two whose writers testify at numbers 20 and 28 that they produce some things pertaining to St. Regulus's martyrdom out of his more ancient Acts. If they used these, why are they rather to be believed to have added the title of archbishop of their own, than to have wished by it to explain what they in fact read, namely that the Saint bore the episcopate of the first see, which differs from an archbishopric in name only, not in the thing?

[41] [The Saint's absence from his flock is freed from all suspicion of fault, and it is shown] Tillemont, in the Ecclesiastical Monuments, tome 16, page 610, proposes to the reader for weighing a certain difficulty which our holy Prelate's stay in Tuscany after the death of Trasamund created for him. Nothing, he says, was an impediment to him against his being able to return into Africa under Hilderic, who restored peace to the Catholic cause there: it is difficult to understand what released him from the obligation of returning to his see. This objection strikes us no more than it strikes those who defer the Saint's exile to the times of Gelimer. For if he ought to have returned to his chair under Hilderic, he ought also to have done so in that space of about eight years in which he lived after Gelimer was stripped of the kingdom and Africa was recovered by the emperor Justinian, under whom the state of the true religion there was happier than under any king of the Vandals. But whether St. Regulus could have returned under Justinian after Africa was subjected to the empire, or under Hilderic, or under both, my opinion is that he, dwelling in exile, was loosed from that bond by which bishops are bound to their churches, and consequently was not obliged to return to his see. Tillemont says indeed that this is difficult to understand: but we shall easily prove it, and that by arguments not far sought, but drawn from the Saint's own Life. From it in the first place we have that he wished to abdicate the episcopate absolutely, and not for some time to withdraw himself from persecution: for he is narrated to have said to the assembled clergy that, leaving his see, he wished to withdraw into other lands to serve God; and then to have prayed the Lord to deign to prepare a fitting place for himself and his companions, and to direct their feet into the way of peace, that they might always be able to wait upon him securely and quietly. Presently it is subjoined that the Saint, leaving the fields to the inhabitants and quitting his own see, committed himself to the sea, and, having struggled through a great storm, landed in Tuscany; where he chose to live by the eremitical path. From which it is clear that the holy Prelate, when he went away into voluntary exile, abdicated the episcopate, being inflamed with the desire of leading a more tranquil and holier life in a remote solitude.

[42] against Tillemont that it can easily be understood that he was released But could he by that abdication so tear himself away from the church espoused to him that the bond by which he was formerly bound to it was removed? Of the loosing of that bond there is no need to doubt, if he yielded the episcopate for a just cause and those whom it was enough to have consulted approved the cession. The whole power of dissolving that sacred bond has long since devolved upon the Apostolic See: but in the times in which St. Regulus flourished, cessions of episcopates were wont to be made for just causes without consulting the supreme Pontiff. Thomassin puts this beyond all doubt in the Ancient and New Discipline of the Church, part 2, book 2, chapter 50 and following. In the same place, chapter 54, number 6, he writes that only in the twelfth century, under Alexander III, did the usage prevail that prelates should not renounce their dignity and burden without the Pontiff's command. But whether formerly in Africa the approval of the primate of Carthage was necessary for a valid and lawful cession of an episcopate, or whether the consent of the bishop of the first see, or of the provincial council, or even of the clergy and people alone sufficed, I do not here inquire: because St. Regulus himself was more probably prelate of the first see, and could not consult the bishop of Carthage, because in those times there was none. For from the death of St. Eugenius, that is, from the year 505 until 523, the first chair of all Africa was vacant. It was enough therefore to call together from the clergy of his province the bishops and others who could conveniently be present, and to propose to them his will concerning the abdication of the episcopate: and that the Saint did this his own Acts testify; from which also it is gathered manifestly enough that his counsel was approved.

[43] The cause which moved the Saint to lay down the sacred magistracy was also just. from the obligation of returning from Tuscany to his church; His Acts bring forward this: Those whom the aforesaid heresy had stained blazed up with so great a torch of fury against the same Servant of God, that not only were they unwilling to restrain themselves from error, but they did not even deign to hear the words of God from him: moreover they hurled threats of death against him. Accordingly, therefore, lying in wait for him, they endeavored to expel him from their own borders. Meanwhile the blessed Archbishop so greatly they endeavored. Meanwhile the blessed Archbishop, considering so great a crime propagated * by the authors of the Arians, and that he himself was profiting nothing by his resistance &c. These words having been weighed, let the reader go to the cited Thomassin, discoursing at length and learnedly on the cessions of episcopates and the causes required that they be judged canonical. You will find in him very many prelates, illustrious in piety and holiness of life, who before and after St. Regulus shone in various parts of the world, and who renounced their sacred prefectures for the same or like causes, or even, as it seems to me, for lighter ones. The testimonies of the ancients which he produces are so frequent, so certain, and moreover everywhere so well known to the learned, that I judge I should not delay in transcribing them

further. If you seek examples of Africans who left the episcopate or wished to leave it, you will find them in the praised writer, chapter 51: which, when you have read through together with the preceding and following chapters, it will sufficiently appear that the Saint's own Life supplies sufficient arguments from which it can be inferred that he, when he departed from Africa, was loosed from the bond by which prelates are joined with their church, and consequently was bound by no obligation of returning to his see. But the persecution ceased under Hilderic, who favored the Catholic prelates. What follows from that? So much the sooner and more safely could St. Regulus's church be committed to the care and administration of another; and without doubt it was so committed: for Wonderful, says the contemporary writer of the Life of St. Fulgentius, chapter 28, was the goodness of Hilderic when he began to reign… He gave to the people of Carthage their own prelate, and by a most clement authority commanded that ordinations of pontiffs be made in all places.

[44] The saints Cerbonius and Felix, whom we believe to have been bishops, [the same is asserted of the companions of his solitary life, SS. Cerbonius and Felix:] likewise never returned to their sees. Their absence from their flock can be as easily excused as that of our holy Prelate. That they departed from Africa with this end set before them, that they might lead a solitary life in far-distant lands together with St. Regulus, we gather from his Acts. And that they in fact did this, the Life of St. Cerbonius asserts, which is extant in tome 3 of Italia sacra, enlarged by Niccolò Coleti, page 703: And the three holy Prelates, coming into the Roman borders, claimed for themselves a fitting place, so that, all things being set aside, they might lead * an eremitical life for the best almighty God. If no other reason had moved St. Regulus's companions to forsake their churches than the desire of the solitary life, I should not dare to blame their counsel: I should number them among those of whom St. Augustine writes in book 2 against Cresconius, chapter XI: Finally, some men endowed with holy humility, on account of certain stumbling-blocks in themselves by which they were piously and religiously moved, laid down the office of the episcopate not only without blame, but even with praise. But it appears to me more credible that both saints left the episcopate for the same cause for which St. Regulus did so; namely on account of the people's defection from the faith, their great contumacy, such that all their labor was fruitless, and also the vexations of the Arians, who grew more insolent day by day, exercised with the approval and patronage of Trasamund, so that they were compelled to flee into voluntary exile, whom that tyrant perhaps had not commanded to be thrust into it by open force. These things are consonant with what is read in the letter of Boniface, bishop of Carthage, written to Missor, primate of Numidia, in the second year of Hilderic, of which this is the beginning: After the almost continual trouble of the gravest tribulation, which the whole church of the African province endured in common, it was fitting of the renewed liberty &c. In almost the same way speaks Felix, bishop of Zattara, legate of Numidia to the council of Carthage under the same Boniface: We render innumerable acts of thanksgiving to God the Lord that, the liberty of the longed-for time being granted, he has bestowed upon thee, most blessed Pope Boniface, after the deadly perils to which the episcopal honor lay narrowly subject, by the highest promotions, upon this holy see and the church of Carthage a priest, by the urgency of whose exertion the number of pontiffs, which had perished, might be renewed.

[45] besides these, others followed him into exile. Besides the two often-mentioned prelates, our Saint, as his own Acts report, was followed into exile by three presbyters and two deacons. The unpublished Life of St. Cerbonius, whose beginning I transcribed from number 30, adds other companions. Whether SS. Justus, Clement, and Octavian were of their number is plainly uncertain. Their Life, collected by Augustine the Camaldolese from various documents, affirms it, as do also the Acts of St. Octavian, to be examined on the second day of this month: but at the same time they narrate that these freed the city of Volterra from a siege with which the Vandals, brought over from Africa by fleet, had encircled it. But since those nations are nowhere read to have made hostile inroads into Italy in the sixth century, but only in the fifth under Genseric, Papebroch in tome 1 of June, page 438, judged that the exile of SS. Justus and Clement must be called back to the times of the said king; between whose death and the beginning of the reign of Totila, under whom SS. Regulus, Cerbonius, and Felix flourished, about sixty-five intervening years pass. But of this question more will be treated in the Commentary which we shall give on St. Octavian on the second of September.

* that is, propagatum

* perhaps ducerent

§ V. It is shown that the Saint's martyrdom more probably happened in the year DXLII: the Acts of the translation, published in print by Ughelli, are vindicated.

[ ] From the journeys of Totila The more ancient document, part of which, inserted in the Acts of St. Regulus, I gave at number 28, testifies that Totila, when he summoned the Saint to himself and, when he refused to come, ordered him to be slain, was in the maritime borders within the county * of Populonia, which is situated in the parts of Tuscany. Certainly it is less verisimilar that the king of the Goths was then far distant from Populonia. Whence I do not agree with Florentinius, who on this day in his Notes asserts that the Saint was crowned about the year 550; nor with Castellan, who notes his martyrdom about the year 546; nor even with Franciotti and any others who defer it beyond the year 542: for among the various cities which Procopius, in his books on the Gothic War, narrates that Totila visited from the winter immediately preceding the ninth year of the Gothic war, that is, from the year 543, until his death, which happened in the year 552, neither Populonia nor any place near it is named. Turning over Procopius's history, I have studiously observed whither, by what way, and whence Totila measured out and measured back his journey in all that time: I have been able to find nothing from which it can be gathered that he even set foot within the bounds of Etruria taken in the stricter sense, which the Italians now call la Toscana. Of the cities which he approached from the year 543, I have met with none nearer to Populonia than Perugia and Civitavecchia: but from these cities of ancient, not of modern, Tuscany, Populonia was separated by a long interval: from the latter it was about eighty, from the former about ninety miles distant. But St. Gregory the Great, in book 2 of the Dialogues, chapter XI, narrates that Totila ordered St. Cerbonius, who was to be thrown to bears, to be led away from the territory of Populonia to the place which is called Merulae, at the eighth milestone from this city (Rome), where he himself was then sitting with his army. He could therefore both summon St. Regulus to himself and pronounce a sentence of death upon him when he refused to come, while he was staying in the year 545 in Umbria, situated on this side of the Apennine mountain and bordering upon Etruria, or while he halted near Perugia or Civitavecchia, of which cities he besieged the latter in the year 549 and the former two years before. But since the often-mentioned more ancient document expressly affirms that Totila was not far from the city of Populonia when he ordered the holy Martyr to be slain, and since from Procopius's narration for the eighth year of the Gothic war, the year of Christ 542, it can be gathered well enough, as will presently be seen, that he was then in parts of Tuscany not so far distant from Populonia; the martyrdom of St. Regulus seems rather to be bound to that same year 542 than to be deferred to later times, in which Totila was always occupied in lands too remote from the place where the Saint was living in solitude.

[47] [and from his deeds, described by Procopius, it is drawn out that St. Regulus suffered in the year 542] The day on which St. Regulus suffered is asserted by the biographer to have been the first of September. The year he does not determine. Consonant, however, with our opinion are the things which he writes of him after the Saint's martyrdom has been reported from the more ancient document: But Totila did not do this unpunished, since, as the following lesson will teach, he himself afterwards ended his life shamefully. About the same time, inflamed with excessive cruelty and ferocity, making his journey through Campania, he came to the monastery of the blessed man Benedict, who at that time was living in the body. Hearing that he had the spirit of prophecy, he endeavored to test whether it were true &c. The meeting of Totila with St. Benedict is fixed to the year 542 by Henschen in tome III of March, page 276, by Pagi to the year 543, and by Mabillon in tome 1 of the Benedictine Annals, book 4, number 24. Let us now see whether our statements and the biographer's are consonant with what Procopius narrates for the eighth year of the Gothic war, with which the year of the Lord 542 is composed from the beginning of spring until the end. The winter being ended, he says at the end of book 3, chapter 5, and at the beginning of the following, there is finished the seventh year of this war which Procopius committed to record. Then Totila took the strongholds of Cesena and Petra. Somewhat later he betook himself into Tuscany; and having attempted the towns of that region, when no one was willing to yield to him, having crossed the river Tiber, he kept away from the borders of Rome, and, suddenly entering Campania and Samnium, brought under his power without any trouble Benevento, a strong city. Then he determined to besiege the Neapolitans. Those words of Procopius, "having crossed the river Tiber, he kept away from the borders of Rome," are singularly to be observed: for from them it is drawn out that Procopius cannot be so understood as that Totila attempted the towns of Umbria situated on this side of the Apennine, which that writer in book 3, chapter 12, and book 4, chapter 29, makes a part of Tuscany; for if he had made his journey from Petra or Cesena to the Campanians and Samnites through the Umbria lying on this side of the Apennine, not the Tiber but the river Nar would have had to be crossed by him. If therefore he crossed the Tiber, and that in a place more remote from the city of Rome (for he kept away from its borders), he must be believed to have come to the Tiber from that region which today is called la Toscana, and, having passed it, to have directed his journey through the fields of the Umbrians nearer to Narni. Now, that the whole matter may shine out more clearly, it has seemed good to follow Procopius's narration with this comment. Totila took Cesena and Petra in the month of April. Somewhat later, say in the month of May, he seized upon his journey into Tuscany, and joined himself to the generals Bleda, Rodericus, and Uliaris, whom toward the end of the year 541 or the beginning of the following he had sent to encircle Florence with a siege: which, although they raised it when the Roman army came up, yet, since these, when battle was joined, cast themselves into shameful flight; it is not verisimilar that the generals of the Goths departed from Etruria, in which they had conquered the enemy. Totila therefore joined himself to them, penetrated into the more inland and even the maritime places of the region, and attempted in vain the better-fortified cities in them. This expedition detained him within the bounds by which the Italians today circumscribe Tuscany until the middle of September, on the first day of which month St. Regulus was slain by his order. Then he turned aside to the Samnites and Campanians, on whose confines, where they are nearest to the Volscians, Cassino lies: here he had his conference with St. Benedict in the month of October. The remaining time of the year, after Benevento was taken without any trouble, he spent in assaulting the city

of Naples: which at length he took by storm toward the end of the winter of the year 543, which closes the eighth year of the Gothic war.

[48] [before the meeting of the king of the Goths with St. Benedict, concerning which Mabillon errs,] The order of time which we have just now attributed to Totila's deeds and journeys appears to me very verisimilar. Mabillon, cited above, commits a grave chronological error when, dissenting from us, he writes that Totila's conference with St. Benedict happened in the very month of April or May of that year, namely 542: With this reckoning, he says, St. Benedict's prophecy rightly agrees, where he foretells to Totila that, reigning nine years, he would die in the tenth… Count the time from May of the forty-second year, in which we said his meeting with Benedict happened, to the month of August in the fifty-second year, in which he was cut down in battle against Narses; you will certainly find nine whole years with three months: which accurately agrees with the aforesaid prophecy of the Saint. Unhappily has Mabillon here cast up his accounts: for from May 542 until August 552 there flowed not nine, but ten whole years with three months. Moreover it is almost incredible that Totila from the spring of the year 542 stormed Cesena and Petra, somewhat later made his journey into Tuscany, attempted the towns of this region, thence set out into Campania and Samnium, and came to St. Benedict's monastery of Cassino no later than the very month of April or May of that year. All these things could not conveniently have been done in one month or two; or if they were done, St. Benedict's prediction was false. And the truth of this, as also of the things which have thus far been said concerning the day and year of St. Regulus's martyrdom, will most easily be understood if the journeys and deeds of the king of the Goths be reduced to that order of time which we have given them.

[49] Augustine the Camaldolese, cited at number 32, determines the place The wrestling-ground of the martyrdom, whose cause is uncertain. where our Saint's head was cut off, namely at the Bridge of Sacco. Various geographical maps place a village or small town of that name in the territory of Pisa, about forty-five Italian miles from the destroyed Populonia: but that was not the holy Martyr's wrestling-ground, since it is established that he suffered in the territory of Populonia, now the principality of Piombino, in which I nowhere find a place of the same name. Of the cause of the martyrdom this only is known, that the holy Man was beheaded by Totila's command, because, being summoned, he refused to go to him. From the Saint's answer to the royal ministers, I am ready to go to him who deigns to prepare eternal banquets for his servants; Totila certainly, with his feedings, I reject, it is indeed easy to judge that the king invited him to a banquet: but the end for which he did this, and the reason why St. Regulus was unwilling to come, the documents produced in §3 do not express. It must nevertheless be believed that he is truly a martyr, since he has always been held and venerated as such.

[50] Ughelli, in tome 1 of Italia sacra, column 847, published from a manuscript parchment of the Vatican library a history [Those who have wrongly interpreted the Acts of the translation, published by Ughelli,] in which is described the translation of St. Regulus from Walda into the city of Lucca, made by John I, who administered the episcopate for about the last twenty years of the eighth century. If the interpretations and censures of some Italian writers are true, that document errs not only about the place from which, but also about the person by whom, and the time at which, the translation was made. But they themselves go astray, as many as ascribe any of the said errors to it. Ughelli in the first place ill understood the Acts of the translation brought by him to light, when he judged, as is plain from the words which he prefixes, that they treat of a translation to Lucca from the neighborhood of Populonia. That it was made from there to Lucca, Ferrari also writes in the Saint's elogium on the first of September, and Franciotti in his Life, page 182: but these were deceived by the history of the translation whose opening I gave at number 6. Florentinius in his Notes on the Saint's announcement, and Giulio Ambrogio Lucenti in tome 1 of Italia sacra, column [ ], thought that in the Acts published by Ughelli it is asserted that bishop John carried the body of St. Regulus to his cathedral church of Lucca from the territory of Populonia; and since they knew this not to be true, they detracted from their credit on account of an error which they do not assert; for they do not even name Populonia. And while they corrected a supposed error, they most confidently affirmed against the same Ughellian document that before the times of bishop John the sacred remains were translated from Walda to Lucca: in which they receded far from the manifest truth.

[51] and undeservedly reprehended them, Receive the words of each writer. Those of Florentinius are these: That he was buried within the borders of Populonia, and that the sacred body was translated to Lucca from the basilica erected there, the Acts of the translation teach in Ferdinando Ughelli, our friend and most illustrious in the volumes of Italia sacra, tome 1, from a Vatican parchment; which, although they agree with the Lessons customarily read among the people of Lucca on his festival, yet stand in need of much correction, as we shall show, God favoring, in our Diptychs. Whether the Diptychs of Florentinius ever saw the light I do not know. If he wrote the promised Work, certainly in it, as will presently be plain, he could not show that the Ughellian Acts of the translation need that correction which he signified to Papebroch that it was necessary to bring to them, in letters written from Lucca on the seventeenth of September of the year 1664: That the sacred pledge was translated about the year seven hundred from the place named Walda in the territory of Lucca to the cathedral church, is plainly established for me. Whence the homily on the translation, published by Ughelli from a Vatican manuscript, is at least shaky as to the time. Lucenti, cited above, pronounces thus with no less confidence: Yet its (the Ughellian document's) credit is shaky. For from ancient documents preserved in the archive of this (Lucchese) church there is a constant credit that in the time of the earlier bishop Walprand the body of St. Regulus was translated from the place Gualdum, or Valdum, to Lucca, to the church of St. Martin. John, succeeding him, had perhaps adorned the sacred deposit and increased its cult more splendidly.

[52] are convinced by an evident demonstration: Orlendi transcribed Lucenti's censure, and, since he opposes nothing to it, may also be thought to have approved it, in the Sacred and Profane World, part 2, book 3, chapter 30, number 19. The same is reported by Coleti in tome 1 of Italia sacra enlarged by himself, column 796: but in tome 10, in the Addenda and corrigenda, column 279, the matter being better examined, he thus vindicates the Acts of the translation: But what those ancient documents are, preserved in the archive of the cathedral of Lucca, from which it can be gathered that the translation of B. Regulus was made not by B. John, but in the time of Walprand his predecessor, I do not know. The following prove the contrary altogether. In a document of the episcopal archive of Lucca, ✠ C, number 28, given in the fourteenth year of Desiderius and the eleventh of Adelchis his son, on the twenty-fourth of May, in the eighth Indiction, that is, in the year of Christ 770, Talanus and Taupertus, sons of the late Magnifredus, make an offering to the church of St. Regulus in Valdum, WHERE HIS BODY RESTS &c. There is extant in the archive of the canons of Lucca, letter A, number 45, a document drawn up at Valdum in the month of December by Rodibertus the notary in the year… of the reign of Charles, king of the Franks and Lombards, the thirteenth Indiction, that is, in the year of Christ 775, or if you prefer 774, of a donation of goods made to the church of St. Regulus, martyr of Christ, where his body rests in Valdum. And these same words are repeated in a document of the same episcopal archive, * I, number 55, given in the fourth year of Charles, king of the Franks and Lombards, in the month of March, in the first Indiction, that is, in the year of Christ 778. Go to number 7 above. From which it is clearly perceived that at least up to the said year 778 the body of St. Regulus had not yet been translated to Lucca. But since the memory of bishop Walprand does not exceed the year of Christ 754 in the documents of this church, how can it be taught from them that the translation of B. Regulus was made by Walprand? Add to these the most ancient passionaries of this church existing in the capitular archive, the hymns, antiphons, and lessons of the Office which was anciently wont to be recited on the feast of St. Regulus; add finally that all the writers of Lucchese affairs constantly agree in affirming the translation of B. Regulus made by bishop John: so that the credit of the Vatican manuscript parchment seems in no way able to be shaken. By this demonstration not only is Lucenti altogether convicted, who says that the translation happened under Walprand, whom John succeeded after Peredeus; but also Florentinius, who writes, forsooth, that it is plainly established for him that it was made about the year seven hundred.

[53] It has now abundantly been shown that the Acts of the translation err neither concerning the time at which, nor concerning the bishop by whom, the cathedral church of Lucca was enriched with the sacred treasure. That it received it from Walda, Coleti's confutation also makes certain. Whence those are deceived who believe that the Saint was translated to Lucca from the territory of Populonia. Deceived also are Florentinius and others, who think that this is designated in the Ughellian document. It writes indeed this of bishop John, the translator of the sacred deposit: For in his time he went every year to the maritime place where the tomb of St. Regulus was: but Walda was situated in the maritime tract of the territory of Lucca, not far from the places Massarosa, Pedona, and Fabialla. The things alleged at number 9 put this beyond doubt: to which I here add that none of the three places just named, if they be accurately noted on geographical maps, is farther from the sea than about two hours' journey, nor any farther from the city of Lucca than about five. And that the document published by Ughelli does not treat of Populonia or its neighborhood can in a manner be elicited even from this, that in it John is said to have made his journey each year toward the sea to venerate St. Regulus, and to have had an estate near the place where his body lay. These things are more fitly understood of Walda, a maritime place of the diocese of Lucca and not so far distant from the city itself, and are affirmed with greater verisimilitude, than of the territory of the city of Populonia, which is at the least sixty Italian miles, or twenty hours' journey, distant from Lucca.

[54] It remains that we should forewarn the reader of some things concerning the Acts published by Ughelli, which have now been vindicated and will presently be published. [these seem to us more worthy of the light than those which are subjoined to the Life of St. Regulus.] In them, as in the others which are subjoined to the Life of St. Regulus, there occur the four verses wrongly ascribed to Reda, which were said above at number 4 to have been taken from the corrupt Lucchese Martyrology of Wandelbert. Whence it must be confessed that neither set of Acts surpasses the tenth century in antiquity, as is plain from number 15. I should readily believe that more ancient documents were not lacking to their authors: but they did not use them with equal fidelity. He who composed the Acts published in print by Ughelli asserts that the Saint's body was carried to Lucca from a maritime place: which is most true, if by that

you understand Walda, as has already been sufficiently shown. The author of the others says that the maritime place from which the translation was made was the neighborhood of Populonia: which it is permitted to suspect that he found in no document, but in his own brain indulging in light conjectures, because it is certainly false. Besides that error, which detracts not a little from his sincerity and credit, he mingles into his narration other things making nothing to the purpose; such as what he writes of the origin of the city of Lucca, which he extols with the highest praises, and upon whose name, which is akin to the verb "to shine" (lucere), he plays in the manner usual with writers of the eleventh or twelfth century. Follies of this kind I do not find in the Ughellian Acts, nor yet the said error; which accordingly appear to me more sincere than the others and more worthy of the light. Yet I do not judge that these are to be approved on every side: for in the annotations at the letter ^f the reader will be warned that some things in them are reported not consistently enough, nor, as it seems to me, in a verisimilar manner. Here and there also, on account of solecisms, their narration is ambiguous and very obscure. The things which are more clearly set forth in the other history of the translation will be inserted in the annotations in their place.

* that is, territorium

THE TRANSLATION

by an anonymous author,

Published by Ughelli in tome 1 of Italia sacra, column 847, from a manuscript parchment of the Vatican library.

Regulus, African bishop and M., at Lucca in Tuscany. (S.)

BHL Number: 7104

[The praises of bishop John; every year he visits the tomb of St. Regulus, by whom he had been healed;] For therefore, dearest brethren, let us most diligently narrate and announce in what order the body of blessed Regulus, archbishop ^a and martyr of the Lord, was brought into the city of Lucca. There, in that city, John had been ordained bishop ^b, angelic in aspect, brilliant in speech, holy in work, Catholic in faith, great in counsel, most powerful among the clergy, diffused in charity; when he sanctified the victim to God, a copious throng ran to his preaching. For in his time he went every year to the maritime place ^c, not so much for the digging of his estate as only that he might adore at the tomb of blessed Regulus ^d. And he used also to recall to his faithful what had happened in his infancy: I was held by a great infirmity; in sleep blessed Regulus healed me.

[2] [he is admonished by an angel to translate him to Lucca; he proclaims a three days' fast and prayers;] As he was narrating these things, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in that very night ^e, and said to him: God will show thee in this quarter the body of his blessed Regulus [f]; take him and lead him with thee into the city of Lucca: and as that is the province of provinces ^g, so it is fitting that B. Regulus should have his own tomb within the basilica of blessed Martin, confessor of Christ, which the blessed bishop Frigidianus ^h built from the foundations. From this day onward he will be there as guardian and defender. When the bishop awoke, and most diligently reported all the things which he had heard in his sleep from the angel to all who were present there, it pleased them. Then the bishop proclaimed to his faithful a three days' fast, and likewise instancy in prayer, and said: May our Lord Jesus Christ, who is the Savior of all, deign in this place to demonstrate the power of his horn-bearing ⁱ martyr Regulus.

[3] the body incorrupt and breathing a sweet odor he carries in religious procession The three days' fast and prayer being completed, the presbyters, deacons, and clerics being called together, the prelate himself first approached as digger of the earth: the other clerics, following and digging, came to the tomb ^k; which opening, they found the body of blessed Regulus the martyr he carries it to the basilica of St. Martin; as though it had been slain in that very hour, breathing * from the tomb a wondrous odor like cinnamon and balsam, the precious fields ^l of chrism. And the bishop with his clerics and with the praises of God raised up the most blessed body of blessed Regulus, and wrapped it in clean linen cloths, and they placed it in a new bier with psalms and hymns and praises: with all haste they brought him into the city of Lucca, into the basilica of blessed Martin, as the angel of the Lord had admonished the bishop.

[4] And after these things, most diligently and with all zeal and with all the people of Lucca, he built a church and a confession like that of the blessed apostle Peter of the city of Rome ^m. he builds for the Saint an honorable tomb and above it an altar in a new crypt: And in that confession he placed with all diligence the body of B. Regulus in a new marble tomb, and above it built an altar; but the first honor to B. Martin ⁿ. Thus it is read in the parts beside the altar of B. Martin: The prelate John made it, loosed of metal, with steps and doorways ^o; he brought hither the body of blessed Regulus, and raised and built the altar above. At his head lies buried Pascentius his archdeacon [p]: for there it is read and seen on a short stone tablet. B. Bede in the Martyrology of the Saints, in metrical art , commemorating blessed Regulus, thus says: September Regulus holds and opens the Kalends, Regulus the prelate, who carried his own head, cut off by the sword, for two furlongs, Christ so effecting it: whose relics the city of Lucca now venerates [q].

[5] When the renowned bishop John, whom we have commemorated above, benefits at his tomb; an annual solemnity decreed. was celebrating the solemnities of the Masses in honor of B. Regulus, signs of very many miracles appeared through the divine power and the honor of blessed Regulus: the blind received sight, the lame their step, the deaf hearing, men oppressed by a demon were freed, and many were cured and saved from infirmities and languors. From this custom therefore it was decreed that all the holy churches of God of the people of Lucca, far and wide, should most devoutly and with joy celebrate the solemnities of B. Regulus, and that all the people should come there to adore and to celebrate the solemnities of the Masses [r] on the day which we have foretold, the Kalends of September.

ANNOTATIONS.

deferred him, because his festival is then chiefly kept at Lucca.

p. Pascentius, otherwise unknown to me, I believe to have been the archdeacon of bishop John: for among the companions of St. Regulus none is found by the name of Pascentius, or by the dignity of archdeacon.

q. Concerning these verses various things have been observed at numbers 4, 15, and 54.

r. Consult the things which we said at numbers 10 and XI at the end.

* read fragrans

* read artis

* elsewhere, Lucensis