ON ST. SANDALIUS, MARTYR AT CORDOVA IN SPAIN,
AT CORDOVA IN SPAIN.
Under Diocletian, as is reported.
The cult from the Roman Martyrology and from the documents of Cordova.
Sandalius, M., at Cordova in Spain (St.)
J. P.
Cordova, a most renowned city of
Baetic Spain, and the fruitful parent
of many Martyrs, on this present
day venerates St. Sandalius, M.,
the public veneration of him Besides the public cult of the Saint which
it kept there having been extended to the
universal Church through the Roman Martyrology,
in which he is thus announced: At Cordova, of St. Sandalius
the martyr. In the notes it is said that mention is made of him
in the Flos Sanctorum of Spain, from the monuments of the church
of Cordova. This Martyr had not yet been recorded
in the Roman Martyrology in the year 1586. Alfonso
de Villegas in the Flos Sanctorum which he published
in Spanish confirms the public cult of the Saint
at fol. 410, saying that the church of Cordova reads of him
on the III of September. That his feast is celebrated there
on the same day is testified by Martín de Roa in his
History of the Saints of Cordova published in Spanish,
fol. 139; where he also affirms that the deeds done
by the Saint lie hidden in such great ignorance that scarcely anything
can be said of him. Here is his text rendered from the
Spanish: Among those holy men who were crowned with martyrdom
at Cordova in that time when
the gentiles were persecuting the Church of God with greater fury
and cruelty, blessed Sandalius has his place:
who kept great fidelity to God
in confessing his faith, and, when he had fought
right well, happily completed his course.
[2] But although the manner and mode of his martyrdom
have not been committed to letters for the memory of posterity,
nothing particular is known of him. yet they are inscribed in the book of life in heaven, where
the crown due to him was kept, which the Lord
gave him at the time (as opinion has it) of the most cruel
persecution of Diocletian. The memorial of this holy
Martyr is found .. in the Breviaries of Cordova
on the III of September. The aforesaid writer, in his Latin book
on the antiquity and authority of the Martyrs of Cordova,
ch. 1, indicates that the things which concern this Martyr
are wrapped in the thickest darkness of oblivion: Blessed
Secundinus and Sandalius, he says, of whom, apart from the bare name,
concerning which there is something in the Roman and other Martyrologies and in the monuments
of the church of Cordova, either little or nothing is had.
Away therefore with the wares of the fabulist Tamayo!
For that epigram is suspect to me which he recites
under the name of Cyprian, archpriest of Cordova,
and which is found among the Ms. poems of Julian and
of others in my codex, he says. Nor
of greater authority with me are the small Acts
which the same Tamayo asserts could have been curdled together
out of the poem of Cyprian of Cordova, and which he produces. Nicolás
Antonio, in vol. 1 of his Bibliotheca Hispana vetus,
bk. 6 ch. 7, observes that many poems are wrongly
ascribed to Cyprian of Cordova. For our purpose,
however, I take a sip of what he writes in that same place, num. 158,
in these words: There are also other poems of the pseudo-Cyprian,
devised for clothing the naked histories of Saints who were truly Spanish.
Let the first example of this thing be
St. Sandalius, who is commonly reported to be celebrated at Cordova
as a martyr, and his Acts to have perished.
The pseudo-Cyprian was therefore at hand to supply this defect
of Acts in that poem which
is circulated concerning the Saint already named. But which
poems the aforesaid author of the Bibliotheca Hispana judges
to be a true offspring of Cyprian of Cordova,
see at the place cited from num. 146. Consulted also
may be those things which he writes in vol. 2, bk. 7 ch. 7
against Aulus Halus, or Halo.