ON SS. ROSA OF SULCI AND PLATANUS, PERHAPS A MARTYR, AND MARTYR, HER SON AS IS REPORTED, AT SULCI IN SARDINIA,
IN SULCI IN SARDINIA.
Under the emperor Trajan, as is reported.
The topography, the cult, and various uncertainties concerning these saints.
Rosa, perhaps M., at Sulci in Sardinia. (S.)
Platanus, M., her son as is reported, at Sulci in Sardinia. (S.)
BY J. P.
Sulci, once an episcopal city in the southern part of the island of Sardinia, and suffragan to the archbishop of Cagliari, now lies utterly destroyed, yet so that the place is even now called Sulci, in the island of Sulcis near the castle of Palma, The place, and the proof of their public veneration: commonly called from it Palma de Solz, on the testimony of Baudrand, who adds that the city of Iglesias succeeded to it in the neighbourhood, and that the episcopal see was translated thither in the year 1504 by Pope Julius II. In this city of Iglesias those two martyrs are venerated, whom Ferrarius announces thus in his General Catalogue: On this same day (the first of September), at Sulci in Sardinia, St. Rosa the mother, and St. Platanus the martyr, brother of St. Antiochus. And he affirms in his notes that he brings these things forward from the records of the church of Cagliari, to which the church of Sulci is joined, called Villa Ecclesiæ. Dionysius Bonfant, in his Triumph of the Saints of the Kingdom of Sardinia, published in Spanish, book 3, chapter 38, confirms the cult of St. Rosa, saying that a church was built to her by the Christians on the place of her martyrdom, and that after she was buried her feast was celebrated in the kingdom with the title of mother of St. Antiochus. He relates besides that at the place called, as he names it, Celarios, there anciently stood a church of this saint, and that only its foundations survive; but that at the place of Barumini there is another ancient church, and because it has lost the memory of that holy martyr, the festival of the Blessed Virgin of the Rosary is celebrated in it, though the church is to this day called by the name of St. Rosa. He asserts, finally, that in the territory of the place of San Vittorio, near the ruins of another place which in ancient times bore the name of Orri, there stood a sacred building of that saint, but that it was destroyed, and that in it there was a painting which represented the mother with her two sons in the manner which is there read.
[2] The Bonfant cited mentions that this saint had her birth in the city of Sulci, concerning various matters, and that she was among the first fruits which the care, diligence, and preaching of Melito produced: that she was married, and bore two sons, of whom one was named Antiochus, the other Platanus, each of them an heir of his mother's holiness and virtue. That those two brothers were her sons, he asserts to be attested by a most ancient tradition, as he calls it, handed down from fathers to sons, and by ancient paintings, which exhibit the saint together with her two sons. The same author narrates besides that they were separated in the persecution of Trajan, that she was seized at the bidding of his governor, and that, after he had tried her like gold with various torments, he ordered her to be taken from life. These things, which I have excerpted from the Spanish of Bonfant and transferred hither, I could wish to see confirmed from elsewhere, and something of greater weight brought forward than a tradition and paintings of uncertain date and of authority not sufficiently proved: especially where the matter concerns the first or second century, in which Trajan lived.
[3] which are attributed to these martyrs, is not sufficiently established. The Roman Martyrology, on the thirteenth day of December, treats of the said Antiochus as having suffered under the emperor Hadrian, and Baronius in his Notations cites his Acts written more fully, and (as they are wont to be recited on his solemnity) divided into lessons, with this opening: Sicut Sanctorum omnium, etc. Our Acts have the same opening, and are likewise distributed into lessons, which we keep for the thirteenth day of December; but in them I should wish for the characteristic marks of a better history. Yet whatever they may be — for I determine nothing prematurely, since they belong to the said day — they relate nothing at all
by which it could be proved that St. Rosa was the mother
of Antiochus. As concerns Platanus, they report
in the ninth lesson that St. Antiochus asked these things among others from God:
Hear the prayer of thy servant, hear
me graciously, and, as thou didst receive my brother
Platanus in peace, and didst number him with thy holy
Martyrs … into the heavenly kingdom, so
receive now my spirit. But whether St. Rosa
was crowned with martyrdom is not sufficiently established, nor at what
time she died.