Marcellus of Chalon

ON ST. MARCELLUS OF CHALON, MARTYR NEAR CHALON IN THE DUCHY OF BURGUNDY,

About the year 178.

PREVIOUS COMMENTARY.

Marcellus, martyr, near Chalon in the duchy of Burgundy. (S.)

BY J. L.

§ I. A church in honor of the Saint, with a monastery of monks, founded in the sixth century by St. Guntramn the king, who adorned it with the most magnificent ornament.

[ ] Cabilo, Cabilonum or Cabillonum, a city in the duchy of Burgundy situated on the river Saône, [Brief notices of the city of Chalon, where the cult of St. Marcellus flourished in the sixth century.] which among the ancients, as may be seen in Christoph Cellarius, book 2 of the Ancient Geography, chapter 2, and in others, obtained many other names akin to these, was first inhabited by the Aedui, peoples of Celtic Gaul. The Romans, having subdued it to their empire, assigned it to the first Lugdunensian province. When these had been driven out, it passed into the power of the Burgundians. Then it obeyed the Franks; and when their king Clotaire I died in the year 561, and a division of the dominions was made among his four sons, the kingdoms of Orleans and of Burgundy fell to St. Guntramn. He, setting Orleans aside, fixed his royal seat at Chalon and made it as it were the head of the Burgundian kingdom; whose chief patron that same most pious king seems to have acknowledged to be St. Marcellus, namely that most celebrated martyr who suffered near Chalon under the emperor Marcus Aurelius, and is to this day inscribed in the sacred Fasti. St. Guntramn, whose Acts Henschen gave on the 28th of March, reigned from the year 561 until 593. I do not doubt that before those times the people of Chalon followed their own Marcellus, from whom they glory to have first received the faith of Christ, with a singular veneration. Certainly the festival of the holy Martyr was already solemn among them in the 26th year of king Guntramn, of Christ 587; as is established from the testimony of St. Gregory

bishop of Tours, which will be produced at number 9. The basilica of St. Marcellus, which the same writer mentions in the places to be cited below, is a notable monument by which Guntramn left his piety toward that Saint especially attested.

[2] Claude Perry, among the documents by which he confirms his History of the city of Chalon, St. Guntramn the king built a church with a monastery, produces at page 22 an ancient instrument of king Guntramn under the title, The foundation of the abbey of Saint Marcellus. It is added: From the cartulary of the same abbey. It has seemed good to transfer hither the earlier part of the instrument. By the disposing of divine grace, the servant of the servants of the Lord, Guntramn the king, God reigning, to all the sons of holy mother Church, greeting. Since, our faults requiring it, both because of the immoderate greed of princes and because of the negligence and carelessness of prelates, I grieving see churches founded for heavenly services, alas! brought to ruin, and thereat I grieve; nor do I feel myself effective for all of them according to my will: at least one, lest I return with empty hand to the Lord's ark, namely the basilica of the most precious martyr Marcellus of Chalon, which, God granting, we have built for him, we purpose both to enrich with more solid estates and to fortify with ordinances and offices (that is, buildings for the uses and offices of monks, as Du Cange attests). We decree therefore, and strengthen by royal authority, that the servants dwelling there build a hospice, etc. Then eighteen villages are reviewed by name, all of which Mabillon, volume 1 of the Annals, page 174, says were assigned by the king to the new monastery, and to each are assigned particular parts of the building to be constructed. The whole instrument may be read in volume III of March, page 720. It was drawn up before the year 579, as will be plain from the following number.

[3] which, against Fredegarius, is shown to have existed in the year 579, The old Chronicle attributed to Fredegarius Scholasticus, and published by Thierry Ruinart after the History of the Franks of St. Gregory of Tours, in chapter 1 has this concerning the church built by Guntramn over the sepulchre of the holy Martyr, and the monastery of monks founded there: In the 24th year of his reign, out of divine love, he ordered the church of blessed Marcellus, where he himself, the precious one, rests in body, in the suburb of Chalon — but yet it is Sequanian territory — to be built wondrously and skilfully; and there, monks being gathered, he founded a monastery, and enriched that same church with very many possessions. Fredegarius errs when he defers the building of the church and monastery to the 24th year of king Guntramn; for Gregory of Tours, more ancient than he, in book 5 of the History of the Franks published by Ruinart, chapter 28, says: In the fourth year of Childebert, which was the eighteenth of kings Guntramn and Chilperic, a synod was held at the city of Chalon at the command of prince Guntramn, in which the bishops Salonius of Embrun and Sagittarius of Gap, guilty of grave crimes, are cast down from their episcopate, and are thrust under guard into the basilica of blessed Marcellus. From this passage it is manifest that the basilica of St. Marcellus, by which name Gregory here understands the church with the monastery joined to it, already existed in the 18th year of king Guntramn, which is reckoned with the year of Christ 579. In the place of Sagittarius, bishop of Gap, when deposed, was substituted St. Arigius or Aredius, who in his Life, volume 1 of May, page 109, number 2, is read to have gone, out of the fervor of his longing soul, to the church of St. Marcellus the martyr of Chalon, and to have opened by his prayer its doors, which had been closed against him at queen Brunehild's command.

[4] for the holy Martyr in the suburban field of Chalon, The situation of the place where the church and monastery of the holy Martyr were founded Aimoin, monk of Fleury, thus designates in book 3 On the Deeds of the Franks, chapter 80: This basilica, then, Guntramn himself, kindled with divine love, built most zealously in the suburb indeed of the aforesaid city of Chalon, but in the territory of the Segoni and the forest of Bresse: where, gathering monks, he built a monastery, which he enriched with several estates and resources. The words of Aimoin Hadrian Valois takes up with this observation in his Notitia of the Gauls, page 96: Aimoin calls, corruptly, "the territory of the Segoni," the field of the Sequani beyond the Saône, where in the suburb of Chalon and in the forest and district of Bresse the monastery of St. Marcellus was founded, whereas Chalon is on this side of the Saône among the Aedui. Whence in Fredegarius and in the Chronicle of St. Arnulf, the church of St. Marcellus is in the suburb of Chalon, but yet it is Sequanian territory []. Namely, a part of the district of Chalon, together with that monastery and the suburb of the city of Chalon, is beyond the Saône, by which river the Aedui are divided from the Sequani: which portion of the Chalon field our countrymen even today surname the Chalonnese Bresse,* la Bresse Chalonnoise. This exposition of Valois agrees with the words of the authors whom he praises: yet he does not assent to them, for he prefers to place the Chalonnese Bresse with the monastery of St. Marcellus among the Aedui, led by no other reason than that it is contained within the borders of the diocese of Chalon, and that Chalon is a town of the Aedui. But why should not the river Saône, where it glides past Chalon, have separated the Sequani from the Aedui so exactly that beyond its banks the borders of neither people lay open there? Perry, praised above, at pages 29 and 33 brings forward diplomas of Louis the Pious and of Charles the Fat, by which the goods of the abbey of St. Marcellus, inhabited in the age of both emperors by secular canons, are confirmed. The village in which St. Guntramn founded it is named Hubiliacus by Louis, Ubiliacus by Charles. The diploma of the latter was given in the year 885, that of the former in 835 or the following year.

[5] Paul Warnefrid, deacon of Friuli, in book 3 On the Deeds of the Lombards, in the last chapter but one, narrates and enriched it with the most precious ornament of all Gaul, that there was revealed to St. Guntramn in a certain wondrous vision the place where a huge quantity of gold lay hidden. That place was dug up, he says, and inestimable treasures, which had been placed there of old, were found. Of which gold the king himself afterward made a solid ciborium of wondrous size and great weight, and, having adorned it with many most precious gems, wished to send it to Jerusalem to the sepulchre of the Lord. But when he was by no means able to do so, he caused the same to be placed over the body of blessed Marcellus the martyr, which is buried in the city of Chalon, where the seat of his kingdom was: and it is there unto this present day. Nor is there anywhere any work made of gold which can be compared to it. This most magnificent gift of St. Guntramn Aimoin too, in the Deeds of the Franks, book 3, chapter 3, calls a ciborium, and says that, since on account of the difficulty of the journey and the incursions of the Saracens infesting Palestine it could not safely be sent to Jerusalem, it was by the holy king's command placed in the basilica which adjoins the city of Chalon, of whose founding he himself had been the author, over the sepulchre of St. Marcellus. Then he subjoins this: Which (ciborium), as long as it graced the tomb of the holy Martyr, no work in all Gaul could be found which might be matched with it. Hence it is deduced that that most precious ornament with which the tomb of the holy Martyr was adorned no longer existed in the age of Aimoin, who lived in the tenth century and the beginning of the following. It was still to be seen there in the eighth century, in the times of Charlemagne; for Paul the deacon, who then wrote the Deeds of the Lombards, expressly testifies this in these words: And it is there unto this present day.

[6] what sort this ornament was, is set forth. What I understand by ciborium, which Paul the deacon and Aimoin write was erected over the body of the holy Martyr by the pious munificence of Guntramn, I shall set forth in the words which Du Cange uses in his enlarged Glossary, volume 2, column 602. Ecclesiastical writers call ciborium that which the Roman Ordo calls the covering and canopy of the altar… And it was raised on four columns, and those very high, and, drawn out into a peaked form, covered the whole altar. Col. [ ] He observes this to our purpose: We read that ciboria were for the most part placed over the bodies of the Saints, because these were wont to be laid up under the altars, and accordingly were covered along with the altars by a single canopy. These things suffice for the notion of the word ciborium. He who desires more, let him go to the same Du Cange, book 3 of the Christian Constantinople, in the description of the temple of St. Sophia, number 57 and following. In the Life of St. Sorus the hermit, volume 1 of February, page 202, these things are recorded of king Guntramn: A copious treasure being found at God's nod … he built in the city of Chalon (nay rather in its suburban field) the mausoleum of the holy martyr Marcellus of embroidered work, with a wondrous inlay of gold and gems. By embroidered work, that is, woven with threads of many colors, understand not the ciborium of which we have treated (for Paul the deacon affirms that this was solid gold), but the woven ornament of the sepulchre, or of the altar, or of the ciborium erected over either. Veils of embroidered work could adorn a golden ciborium. See Du Cange in the Work just cited, number 65: whence I transfer hither the words of Anastasius the Librarian under Leo III: He made also round about the altar … other white all-silk veils of rose color [], which hang in the arch of the ciborium, four in number*, etc.

Fredegarius in Ruinart, Cabillonensi and territorium*.

* That is, of a rosy color, or picked out with roses.

§ II. Continual psalmody at the tomb of St. Marcellus, by whose help probably SS. Guntramn and Austregisilus were snatched from the peril of death; a perjurer punished; a precious reliquary; his patronage in the need of rain; a proper Office.

[ ] [St. Guntramn brought it about that at the Saint's sepulchre the praises of God should be sung night and day, in a synod] There are other things also handed down to memory by ancient writers which, as they manifest the piety of St. Guntramn toward our Martyr, so also they illustrate the latter's posthumous glory. In the Chronicle of St. Benignus of Dijon, in D'Achery, volume 1 of the Spicilegium of the earlier edition, page 370, I find that the holy king brought it about that the monks of the abbey founded by him should sing the praises of God night and day at the sepulchre of St. Marcellus. Take the words. Moreover he also instituted that, after the likeness of the monastery of the Saints of Agaune, or of the Theban Martyrs, who suffered at Agaune in the Valais region of Switzerland, the divine office should be performed day and night in this church of the abbey of St. Benignus… He instituted the like concerning the place of Saint Marcellus, where the king himself rests in body; which he enriched with treasures and moneys, and with many possessions also, and adorned with wondrous works and buildings. Mabillon, in the Preface to part 2 of the fourth Benedictine century, number 204 and following, proves at length against Le Cointe that the psalmody which St. Sigismund, king of the Burgundians, had introduced among those of Agaune was perpetual. That this was afterward instituted in the monastery of St. Marcellus, by the exertion of king Guntramn, is confirmed from the Chronicle of Fredegarius in Ruinart, chapter 1: In the 24th year of his reign … he ordered a synod of forty bishops to be held, and, after the model of the institution of the monastery of the Saints of Agaune, which in the times of king Sigismund had been confirmed by Avitus of Vienne and the other bishops at that prince's bidding, by the joint action of this synod Guntramn took care that the institution of the monastery of St. Marcellus should be formed (perhaps formanda, or, as it is elsewhere, firmanda, to be confirmed). What Henschen wrote on the 1st of May, in the Commentary preceding the Life of St. Sigismund the king, from number 3, may be read. Of St. Avitus, bishop of Vienne, Bolland treated on the 5th of February.

[8] The synod of 40 bishops, in which it was decreed whether it was the second of Valence or the second of Mâcon, is disputed. that the monks of St. Marcellus should, after the example of those of Agaune,

sing psalms by day and by night, Fredegarius fixes to the 24th year of king Guntramn, which, although in the reckoning of St. Gregory of Tours it answers to the year of Christ 585, yet according to Fredegarius's manner of numbering must be reckoned with the year 584. This has been most manifestly demonstrated in our Work, both on the 1st of February in the Commentary on St. Sigebert king of Austrasia, §9, and in the preliminary Exegesis to volume III of March on the Genealogy of the Dagobertine kings, chapter 1. Since in that very year 584 the second council of Valence was held at Guntramn's command, and in it were confirmed whatsoever the king, his wife and his daughters had conferred, or should hereafter confer, on the basilica of St. Marcellus and on other sacred places; hence Ruinart in his Notes on the text of Fredegarius preferred to think that the institution of the monastery of Agaune was handed over to the monks of St. Marcellus in that same council, rather than to assent to Valois, volume 2 of the Frankish Affairs, page 277, and others, who judge that this was done in the second synod of Mâcon, which was also convoked at Guntramn's command. Neither opinion can be reconciled with the words of Fredegarius, in the 24th year of his reign … a synod of forty bishops, etc.: not Ruinart's, because at the second council of Valence not 40 but only 17 bishops were present: nor Valois's either; for the second of Mâcon, which 43 bishops, besides three others who had no sees, and the legates of 20 absent prelates subscribed, was celebrated in the year 585, which according to Fredegarius's reckoning was not the 24th but the 25th year of king Guntramn. Yet I would readily believe that one or other opinion is true, and that in Fredegarius's Chronicle either the number of the bishops or the year in which they met is wrongly determined.

[9] When the festival of St. Marcellus was being kept among the people of Chalon in the year 587, it can be ascribed to St. Marcellus that the same king Guntramn was almost killed by an assassin in the holy Martyr's church. Théophile Raynaud, in his Little Index of the Saints of Lyons, treating of our St. Marcellus, writes that he escaped death by his help. But how the thing happened you will best learn from Gregory of Tours. Meanwhile, he says in book 9 of the History of the Franks, chapter 3, there came the festival of St. Marcellus, which is celebrated at the city of Chalon in the seventh month; and king Guntramn was present. But when, the solemnities being performed, he had approached the sacrosanct altar for the sake of communicating, a certain man came as if to suggest something. And as he hastens toward the king, a knife slips from his hand; and, he being suddenly seized, they find another unsheathed knife in his hand. And without delay, being led out of the holy basilica, bound and delivered to torments, he confesses that he had been sent to kill the king, etc. In Gregory, book 9, chapter 27, I again find the pious king in the basilica of St. Marcellus in the year 589. As long as he lived he retained that singular affection of piety with which he was borne toward his Patron: in whose church too he wished to be buried after his death, which happened in the year 593, as Fredegarius testifies in chapter 14, and others.

[10] and St. Austregisilus escaped the peril of death. Those who believe with Raynaud that Guntramn preserved his life by the help of St. Marcellus will also readily ascribe to his patronage that St. Austregisilus, before he presided over the church of Bourges, was snatched from the peril of death. In the Acts of this holy prelate, published on the 20th of May, at number 5 and following, the history is described at length, which Aimoin thus abridged in book 4, chapter 2: Austregisilus also, archbishop of Bourges, who under king Guntramn dwelt long in the palace, had been accustomed to offer him a napkin for wiping his hands. He, on a certain occasion, being falsely accused by a man of the worst mind of having drawn up certain writings without the prince's order, when he earnestly denied it, is ordered by the king to repel the charge by arms. And rising at daybreak, when he had caused all the equipment of his arms to be carried by a servant to the field, and was seeking the church of blessed Marcellus (in the Acts is added, as was his custom) to pray to the Lord, he gave a third of a coin to a poor man who met him and asked an alms: and so applied himself to prayer. Nor was the effect wanting to his prayer; for as he was hastening with the king to the place of combat, a messenger met them, saying that his adversary, while hurrying to reach the appointed place, had fallen from his horse and had run upon the end of his life. Then the king, turning to the blessed man, said: Rejoice, most beloved young man, for the Lord is thy defender, that the enemy may not be able to harm thee.

[11] [The tongue and the whole body of one about to perjure himself by the Saint grew stiff.] This is a fitting place for transcribing what Gregory relates in book 1 On the Glory of the Martyrs, chapter 53: But of the powers or miracles of blessed Marcellus, martyr of Chalon, which can certainly be attributed to him, few memorial records have come down to be transmitted to us: which, however small they may be reckoned in the telling, are nevertheless to be referred to Him who works these things in each. A certain business had arisen for which Fedamius, son of Eunomius, once a presbyter of Auvergne, should go to the city of Chalon; and he had lodging [] at the basilica of the holy martyr Marcellus, receiving the allowance of food from the abbot of the place. For he himself set forth what I relate. Between two men, he said, a dispute [] had arisen: and as they litigated, the suit came to this, that they should settle it by an oath. And having entered the basilica of the holy Martyr, the man with hands lifted to perjure himself, when he wished with open mouth to name the Saint's name, the voice stuck in his throat, and his tongue could not be bent to its office. But lest even this should seem too little for the glory of the blessed Champion, he himself with lifted hands grew wholly stiff as though of brass. Then, prayer being made for him, it obtained that he who was bound by the devil's art should be loosed: and he too, after his loosing, confessing his deed in his own speech, amended what he had negligently done.

[12] [The vicissitudes of the abbey of St. Marcellus, which is now a priory of the Cluniac Order;] The abbey of the holy Martyr, which Guntramn founded for monks of the Order of St. Benedict, secular canons possessed under Charlemagne, king of the Franks, who in the year 779 confirmed their privileges and immunities, mulcting violators in six hundred solidi, two parts of which were to be paid to the treasury of the monastery: but concerning the third, which was to fall to the fisc, he thus decreed: Whatever our fisc may be able to hope for from it, let it go to increase in the lights of that church of Saint Marcellus the martyr, for the stability of our kingdom, or for our succeeding progeny. Pope John VIII, the synod of Chalon held in the year 873, and the emperors Louis the Pious and Charles the Fat also greatly favored the canons of St. Marcellus in the ninth century. The instruments from which I recount these things are extant in Perry, inserted in the Proofs of the History of Chalon between pages 28 and 34. In Labbe, volume 9 of the Councils, I find three synods of bishops celebrated in the Saint's basilica, namely in the years 875, 886 and 915. Now I subjoin a fragment of a record which by the editor Perry at page 42 is noted in the margin to have been drawn up in the year 1075. But the same monastery (of St. Marcellus), arranged in all seemliness according to the religious devotion of its founder, having afterward through the sloth of its inhabitants slipped little by little into perverse manners and pride, could not meanwhile escape the eye of the Judge, but even in the present paid the penalties of its own devices, when the Hungarians burned both the village and the oratory, seizing also whatever was found therein. I believe this happened in the year 937, in which the Hungarians laid waste the whole duchy of Burgundy. And when they had departed, still by the vengeance of the divine chastisement violent men also plundered for themselves the estates belonging to that same place; inasmuch as, the head being cut off, each man seized for himself the limbs lying exposed at will nearby: among which the aforesaid church of Fleury (on which see below at number 18 and following) fell to the lot of those who divided the spoil. But because the contumacy of the wicked, laid low [] in this way, ought not utterly to have deprived the sepulchre of the blessed Martyr of its due observance, a long time afterward the ruins of that same place, being committed to the holy abbot Maieul, who died in the year 994, and handed over to the disposition of the Cluniac Brethren, were by them tolerably restored as regards their former glory and their later overthrow.* Of St. Maieul, abbot of Cluny, it was treated on the 11th of May. The place of St. Marcellus, from the time when it was granted to the holy abbot, has borne the title of a priory and has been inhabited by monks of the Cluniac Order.

[13] Papebroch, returning in the year 1662 from Rome through France into Belgium, where the Saint's bones are kept in a magnificent reliquary. noted among other things seen by himself and his companion Henschen, this: Having gone out at Chalon to the monastery of St. Marcellinus [], once a rich abbey, we saw a reliquary covered with golden plates on the front and silver elsewhere, in which the holy Martyr's body is laid up; likewise the pit in which he is said to have met his death, buried alive up to the waist. Two Benedictine religious of the congregation of St. Maur, in the Literary Itinerary printed at Paris in the year 1717, part 1, page 225, say: There is to be seen in the church (of the priory of St. Marcellus), above the high altar, a superb chest in which are preserved the relics of Saint Marcellus the martyr.* The Saint's reliquary, which Papebroch and the two Benedictine monks mention in their Itineraries, I judge to be the same as that which Perry in his praised History writes was, in the year 1436, covered with silver, on which his martyrdom was represented, by Jean Rolin, prelate of Chalon and at the same time rector of St. Marcellus, and which he narrates to have happily escaped, in the year 1562, the sacrilegious hands of the heterodox image-breakers, who hoped to enrich themselves with it.

[14] The people of Chalon invoke him in the need of rain, That the Saint was wont to be invoked by the people of Chalon for obtaining rain for the fruits of the earth Perry testifies in the often-mentioned History at the year 1603. Take the substance of what is there narrated in the French tongue to our purpose: The custom holds that, when the field of Chalon, growing dry through long fair weather, needs rain, the reliquary of St. Marcellus the apostle is carried into the city. Whence, when the needful rain failed in the year 1603, the monks of the abbey (or rather priory) of St. Marcellus went to Chalon with the reliquary of his relics and with the head of St. Guntramn, founder of the abbey, and carried the sacred bones about through the whole city: then, a great multitude of citizens accompanying them, they returned to their monastery. On the Vigil which precedes the feast of Corpus Christi, the clergy and religious of the city of Chalon appointed a solemn supplication to the church of the holy Martyr, to give themselves there to prayers and other pious works. All the people took part in it, going forward barefoot and carrying a white rod in their hands. Youths and maidens walked clad in white garments. The devotion of the people of Chalon obtained from God, through the merits of the Saint, the rain that was sought. We have seen the same benefit obtained at other times in a like need. The heterodox marvelled, and yet were not converted. Lately a citizen of Chalon informed me that the pious custom still flourishes even now in his country, that, when a scarcity of rain presses, recourse is had to the help of St. Marcellus.

[15] and honor him with a proper Office under a double rite. In the proper Offices of the church of Chalon,

printed in the year 1620 by the authority of Cyrus de Thiard the bishop, the Saint's feast is ordered to be celebrated with a double rite throughout the whole diocese. This Collect is prescribed to be recited: O God, who didst strengthen blessed Marcellus thy martyr with the virtue of constancy in his passion, grant us by imitation of him to despise for thy love the prosperities of the world, and to dread none of its adversities. Through our Lord. The Lessons of the second Nocturn were pieced together from the shorter history of the Passion, which will be given in the first place after this Commentary. That there existed in the Cathedral of Chalon an altar dedicated to the Saint Pierre Cusset testifies in his History of the city, volume 2, page 40.

hospitium*

Elsewhere, contentio*.

Perhaps prostratum*.

* Nay rather, of Marcellus.

§ III. Places outside the diocese of Chalon of which the holy Martyr is patron; churches which honor him with an ecclesiastical Office; Martyrologies.

[ ] An ancient monastery of St. Marcellus near Vienne of the Allobroges: Not only in the diocese of Chalon, but in many other places outside it, has the holy Martyr obtained a cult. In the Life of St. Clarus the abbot, published in volume 1 of January from page 55, from number 3 various monasteries founded within and outside Vienne, the metropolis of the Allobroges, are reviewed, of which two are thus commemorated: The monastery of Saint Marcellus the martyr supported thirty monks, the house of the holy nun-widows of Saint Blandina twenty-five religious women. At number 4 I read that St. Clarus was set over the widows as director, and then over the monks of St. Marcellus as abbot: at number XI, that, laboring under his last illness, he heard from St. Blandina appearing to him: On the third day, at the fifth hour, Saint Marcellus and I, coming to thee, shall lead thee with us to the happy kingdoms. At number 12 it is said that St. Clarus was buried in the church of the nuns of the blessed martyr Blandina and of the forty-eight holy Martyrs, namely those of Lyons, who suffered in the year 177 under the emperor Marcus Aurelius, of whom we have treated on the 2nd of June. In the same persecution in which St. Blandina and her fellow Martyrs suffered, St. Marcellus too was cast into prison at Lyons; but the death which, escaping by flight, he had there avoided, he met a little afterward near Chalon. All these adjuncts lead me to believe, with Tillemont, volume 3 of the Ecclesiastical Monuments, page 36, that the patron of the monastery over which St. Clarus was abbot in the seventh century was our Marcellus.

[17] And so of our holy Martyr I judge that those things are to be understood his cult in the neighboring crypt, where that monastery had been founded: which Nicolas Chorier, in his Disquisitions on the Antiquities of Vienne, published in the year 1658, part 2, book 5, chapter 2, writes in French, and which I communicate to the reader in Latin: The gate of the city of Vienne called St. Marcellus's … draws the origin of this name from an ancient monastery, now for many centuries pulled down or fallen in, which was not far from thence… Near to this is a crypt, in which the rude people have persuaded themselves that St. Marcellus passed some part of his life, whether to escape the cruelty of the pagans by hiding, or that, separated from the society of men, he might deal more familiarly with God. Whence also an altar was there erected to the Saint, and for obtaining from God by his intercession the healing of certain diseases to which suckling children are liable, prayers and votive gifts are often offered there. Far be it from me to disapprove this devotion: but this is true, that St. Marcellus, whom Simeon Metaphrastes calls an archimandrite, never crossed the sea to come into the Gauls. By these and the words immediately following the author indicates that the holy patron of the ancient monastery, whose cult he says persevered in the neighboring crypt down to his own age, was St. Marcellus the archimandrite, who is inscribed in the Roman Martyrology on the 29th of December. To refute this error it is enough to have said that that monastery is named in the Life of St. Clarus, written in the eighth century, the monastery of Saint Marcellus the martyr, which title does not suit the archimandrite, since he rested in peace at Constantinople. The tradition of the people, who believe that St. Marcellus dwelt for some time in the said crypt, I reckon among fables.

[18] Running through the General Catalogue of the Benefices of the kingdom of France, printed at Paris in the year 1698, [parishes which have taken their name from St. Marcellus; whether from ours? To him I believe the church of Fleury sacred,] besides the chapel of St. Marcellus in the church of Champforgeuil in the diocese of Chalon, I found in the archbishopric of Lyons and the suffragan dioceses of Langres and Mâcon five parishes called Sainct Marcel. I am greatly mistaken if none of them venerates our Saint as patron, since they lie in dioceses bordering on that of Chalon, whose metropolis too is Lyons. In the deanery of St. Seine of the bishopric of Langres there is also noted the priory of St. Marcellus of Fleury, a member dependent on the priory of Saint Marcellus of Chalon. As this priory, so also that of Fleury subject to it I believe to have been established under our Saint's patronage. The church of Fleury, situated on the river Ouche [], was of old of the right of St. Marcellus, king Guntramn of pious memory, the founder of the monastery which covers the sepulchre of the aforesaid Martyr, delivering it to him with many other rich estates. This from the instrument which is extant in Perry, cited at number 12 in the last place. There follow immediately the things which I transcribed thence in the same place. Then the restoration of the church of Fleury made to the priory of St. Marcellus is thus narrated: At length, in the time of dom Hugh (I), abbot of Cluny — whose Acts, as a holy man, we gave on the 29th of April — when that same place (of St. Marcellus near Chalon) was governed by a Prior sagaciously prompt in searching out the goods of the holy Martyr, there took place a colloquy of the princes of the Burgundians in the castle which is called Palluel, among whom were Hugh (I) duke of Burgundy, and William count of Burgundy beyond the Saône [], and Hugh (II) count of Chalon, and many others of lower dignities.

[19] [restored to the priory of St. Marcellus of Chalon by the benefit, as is handed down, of the holy Martyr: a church in the diocese of Besançon] Then therefore the aforesaid Prior, thinking it opportune that in an assembly of such great men he should complain of the injury done to his holy Patron, and especially because in the aforesaid church of Fleury Robert duke of Burgundy had lately died disgracefully, and this thing had terrified very many of the common people, approached to make his petition chiefly for that church. So great a favor therefore did the Lord, the blessed Martyr cooperating, grant to His servant, that with one accord the whole assembly of the chief men urged that the often-mentioned church should be restored to the monks. First therefore duke Hugh released and cast away whatever his predecessors had usurped there. Then Hugh count of Chalon, who seemed to hold that place from him by right of a benefice, put it away from himself, and likewise begged pardon for what had been committed, etc. These things happened not long after the death of duke Robert, which most fix in the year 1075, adding that he died by a sudden and ignominious kind of death, but they do not explain what it was. In volume 1 of June, page 696, at the end of the first column, I read this: The same Hugh (II, archbishop of Besançon) being privy to it and favoring it, Hugh lord of Trévas founded a church in his own castle under the patronage of St. Peter the Apostle and St. Marcellus, martyr of Chalon, and another dedicated to him in the diocese of Uzès: relics: in the year of Christ 1073.

[20] In the church of Saint Marcellus of Careyret, of the diocese of Uzès, which is two leagues distant from Bagnols [*], there is read the following inscription carved on a stone monument, adorned with vine-tendrils, leaves, etc.

On the side opposite the inscription a cross is carved on the stone, not unlike the cross of the knights of Malta. These things I received from the new History of Tournus by Pierre Juénin, volume 2, which comprises its proofs, page 37. Of St. Valerian M., who is recorded in the epigraph brought forward, it will be treated on the 15th of September, on which day, near Tournus, a town of the diocese of Chalon, commonly Tournus, he was crowned with martyrdom in the same persecution as St. Marcellus. Dom Lebeuf, volume 2 of the History of Auxerre, in the collection of records, page 145, gives a catalogue of the relics of the cathedral church drawn up about the year 1420, in which is noted: Of the bones of St. Marcellus of Chalon. Perry, often praised, writes that the staff of St. Marcellus the apostle of Chalon, covered with silver, was plundered from the cathedral church of Chalon by the heterodox in the year 1562.

[21] Now take the Breviaries and Calendars of the various churches which honor St. Marcellus with an ecclesiastical Office, his cult widely spread: that from them it may become more known how far and wide his public veneration was propagated. The Breviary of Quimper of an ancient printing, that of Bourg-Saint-Andéol published in the year 1502, that of Vienne in France of the year 1522, that of Beauvais of the year 1554, that of Worms of the year 1576, that of Besançon of the year 1590, that of Langres of the year 1604, that of Bourges of the year 1625, that of Tours of the year 1635, that of Noyon of the year 1680, that of Paris of the year 1700; likewise the ancient manuscript Breviary of the collegiate church of St. Peter of Louvain, that of the abbey of Marmoutier in the diocese of Tours printed in the year 1534, and that of the Order of Preachers published at Paris in the year 1549; all these Breviaries, I say, which are kept in our museum, have on the 4th of September the Office of the holy Martyr, to be read with a simple rite: such as is also prescribed in the manuscript Calendars, the ancient one of Le Mans and that of Orléans of the preceding century, and also in that of Auxerre printed in the year 1720. In the transcribed Calendar of the year 1637 of the diocese of Nevers, on the 5th of this month is placed: Marcellus M., semidouble (yesterday); in the present-day Mozarabic Calendar of the church of Toledo, which the preliminary Treatise to volume VI of July exhibits from page 82, there is noted on this day: Of Marcellus the martyr, of nine lessons.

[22] Since before the end of the sixth century, as was shown in §1 and at the beginning of the following, the Hieronymian Martyrologies which celebrate the Saint: the Saint's cult was already most celebrated in the suburbs of Chalon, and this was afterward propagated most widely, as is clear from what has been said; hence I do not at all wonder that he is read as inscribed in almost all the Martyrologies of the Latin church. The Hieronymian ones which commemorate St. Marcellus are the Greater Corbie one, and the Gellone one collated with the Saint-Remi, the Saint Gall and the Baluzian, which also relate the Saint, in volume 2 of D'Achery's Spicilegium reprinted in the year 1723, pages 17 and 34; the more ancient Martyrology published by Florentini, page 807; the most ancient of Echternach, whose text the cited Florentini produces in his notes; the Blumian, whose readings varying from the more ancient Martyrology the same author exhibits from page 1058; those of Rheinau, of Reichenau, of St. Ulrich of Augsburg, the Labbean, that of the Queen of Sweden or of Sens of St. Columba, in our Work, volume VII of June, after the index of Saints; the other Martyrology of the Queen of Sweden in the most illustrious Francesco Maria de Aste in his notes on the Roman; those of St. Germanus of Auxerre, of Murbach and of Tours, published by Martène in volume 3 of the Thesaurus of Anecdotes, column [ ] and following. Our St. Marcellus is announced also in the ancient Calendar of Corbie, which the praised Martène gives from column [ ]. He is also celebrated by our Hieronymian transcripts, the second Barberini, that of St. Martin of Trier, the Roman-Gallic and that of Aachen, on which the Preface of our Sollier to the Usuardine Martyrology, chapter 1, article 1, §2, may be seen. Among the Martyrologies enumerated, the Echternach, that of the Queen of Sweden or of Sens of St. Columba, the second Barberini and that of Aachen distinguish the Saint with the title of bishop.

In the other Martyrology of the Queen of Sweden he is also called a confessor, but wrongly. Whether he was distinguished with the episcopal dignity will be examined in the last §. The other Hieronymian ones record nothing beyond the Saint's name, his martyrdom, and the arena of it.

[23] eulogies Our manuscript Martyrologies attributed to Bede, that of St. Martin of Tournai, that of St. Mary of Arras and that of Liessies have this: In Gaul, in the city of Chalon [], the birthday of St. Marcellus the martyr, who, glittering with virtues and constantly persevering in the confession of the Lord, in the times of Antoninus (this was Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Verus, surnamed the Philosopher) under the president Priscus, buried in the earth up to his middle, consummated his martyrdom.* This eulogy Papebroch, its editor, judges to have been added to Bede's Martyrology by Florus, before volume 2 of March, page XXXI. Wandelbert, after Moses, sings thus of the Saint:

Then too Chalon grows green with the blood of Marcellus.

The eulogies of Rabanus and of Ado are very different, agreeing almost in this alone, that in both the Saint is affirmed to have consummated his martyrdom buried in the earth up to the waist. That is, they had different Histories of his passion before their eyes. Ado borrowed all his from the shorter. At Chalon [], he says, the birthday of St. Marcellus, who in the times of Antoninus Verus, of the number of the fifty Martyrs who had been thrust into the workhouse-prison at Lyons, fled away with Valerian, the bars of the prison to which they had been consigned being opened by divine power. And when he had converted to the faith of Christ a certain Latinus, by whom he had been received in hospitality, together with his whole household, seeking (all the copies of the shorter Passion which will be reviewed at number 26 have passing by) the city of the people of Chalon, he came upon a certain president Priscus sacrificing to his gods. And when he had been invited by him to a profane banquet, and, execrating feasts of that kind, was rebuking all who were present with free reproach, as to why they served idols; by an unheard-of kind of cruelty he ordered him to be buried [] up to the waist. And so the holy Martyr of God, persevering for three days in the love and praises of God, at the second milestone from the town of Chalon rendered up his undefiled spirit.

[24] from other Rabanus, a little more ancient than Ado, culled this from the longer Passion: In the city of Chalon, the birthday of saint Marcellus the martyr, who suffered under the emperor Antoninus through the president Priscus. For when he refused to adore the idols, he was tortured in manifold ways. The holy Martyr therefore, strengthened in mind by heavenly power, as he changed the places of the idols, so also he changed his punishments. It tears with the grating of chains his limbs stretched on the rack, it burns him with balls of fire, and the burnt elements of his body joined together his limbs when they were loosed by the blows. This period is faulty: nor do the copies of the Passion whence it was taken, which are at hand, help me at all to restore it, since in all it is read corrupted by a most obscure solecism. Of the various kinds of torments with which in the same period the Saint is said to have been tortured, the shorter Passion says nothing. With the author of the longer, Rabanus goes on thus: But the most valiant Champion, keeping within his bowels the passion of his author Jesus Christ, triumphed by a more glorious contest; always answering this to the questioning of the wicked persecutor, that it could by no means be that one who had received the living God into his senses should adore senseless stones or the images of demons. And when the most wicked president perceived him stronger amid the torments by the grace of divine favor, by an unheard-of example of cruelty, raving beyond a persecutor's fury, he ordered him to be buried up to the waist: but persevering for three days in the praises of Christ the almighty Lord and his God, with mouth and love, meanwhile commending his earthly limbs to the earth, he sent forth his holy spirit to the heavens.

[25] The eulogy with which Notker adorns St. Marcellus is a summary of Ado's. Martyrologies. The second part of this, the earlier being cut away, in which the Saint's escape from the prison of Lyons and the conversion of Latinus is narrated, Usuard adopted; whose announcement, afterward slightly changed, passed into the Roman Martyrology, in which the Saint's martyrdom is thus related: At Chalon in Gaul, of St. Marcellus the martyr under the emperor Antoninus, who, when he had been invited by the president Priscus to a profane banquet, and, execrating feasts of that kind, was rebuking all who were present with free reproach, as to why they served idols; was by that same president, by an unheard-of kind of cruelty, buried in the earth up to the waist: and so, persevering for three days in the praises of God, rendered up his undefiled spirit to God. In many Hieronymian and most other Martyrologies the Saint is announced at Chalon, because he suffered in its neighborhood. Rabanus less rightly records the arena of his martyrdom as in the city of Chalon. Florus and others, who for urbs put civitas, are by no means to be blamed: for this word in Julius Caesar and other ancients often comprehends in its meaning both the city and its territory at once. To remove the ambiguity I have preferred, at the head of this Commentary, to place the site of the combat near Chalon.

l'Ouche*

le Franche Comté*

* Bagnols

The Liessies one, Cavallonis*.

Read, Cabilone*.

defodi*

§ IV. Twofold Acts; the shorter probably more ancient than the other, which are vindicated from the censures of Tillemont and others.

[ ] Copies of the shorter Passion, as The shorter Passion of St. Marcellus, from which, as I indicated above, the Adonian eulogy was extracted, Surius first published on the 4th of September; then in the year 1664 our Pierre-François Chifflet in the Proofs of the History of Tournus, from page 52. Surius polished the style after his manner; Chifflet brought forth the original, though sprinkled with some faults, from the manuscripts of Acey, Corneilles and Saint-Chef, and Pierre Juénin, following his edition, in his new History of Tournus printed in the year 1733, volume 2, page 5. Chifflet's printed copy will be published by our types too, collated with a transcript from the manuscript of Sieur du Chesne, cosmographer of the Most Christian King. The other copies which I have found set aside for this day were transcribed from the same codices from which Chifflet published the Passion to be edited by me: but I did not judge that their variant readings should be noted, because they are either of small moment, or do not differ from those which are read in the Chesnian copy.

[27] and of the longer, The longer Passion, whence I have said Rabanus took what he records of the Saint in his Martyrology, Claude Perry, author of the History of Chalon printed in the year 1659, transcribed from an old Legendary of the church of Chalon and transmitted to our elders; in whose Proofs, page XI, I find it inserted, and afterward reprinted in the year 1662 at the end of another History of Chalon elaborated by Cusset. The same Passion also, from the manuscript codices of St. Benignus, of Chalon, and a certain third, the praised Chifflet published from page 55, and from him Juénin from page 7. I shall again follow Chifflet's edition, because it is a little more corrected than Perry's. Yet not a few passages in it are corrupt, some of which I shall restore from two ancient codices of our museum, of which one is marked Q Ms. 6, the other Q Ms. 7. The copy published by Perry, as also two transcripts, of which the first is noted as received from a most ancient codex of Sieur Bouhier, counsellor of Dijon, the second from a manuscript of Sieur André du Chesne, cosmographer of the Most Christian King, will be of no use to us; because whatever correction can be brought from them to the copy to be edited, I shall bring from our two codices.

[28] probably amplified from it. It is certain either that the shorter Passion or Acts of the Saint were abridged from the longer, or that these were amplified from those. To one who compares the two with each other this will appear most evidently. Not only all the substance, but also almost all the circumstances of the things narrated in the shorter Acts you will find in the longer: nay, in both, whole members of periods often occur constructed of the same words: so that the longer differ from the other only in that they have a prologue and an epilogue, relate the same thing more wordily and in a phrasing everywhere more twisted and obscure, and moreover commemorate some facts which are absent from the shorter. That these are more ancient than the other the praised Chifflet affirms at page 60: the same the authors of the Literary History of France judge, volume 3, page 409; for they say that the longer are a paraphrase of the shorter. This opinion is confirmed by the purity of style and a certain simple gravity which everywhere shines out more in the shorter Acts, containing nothing which could greatly offend a critic of moderate wit; but against it are the words with which the author of the longer begins his epilogue: These things therefore, as concerning the triumph of saint Marcellus … they were learned by the relation of the faithful, … a devout mind has written down. It may seem that by the relation of the faithful only those things are to be understood which were current in their talk: whence it follows that the longer Acts were not amplified from the shorter, but these abridged from those, and are not propped up by a weightier authority than the talk of the faithful. Hence it is further inferred that of suspect credit are the Saint's eulogies drawn from the shorter Acts, which are read in the Martyrologies of Ado, Usuard, Notker and the Roman, and which in the Breviaries of almost all the churches enumerated at number 21 are proposed to the clergy to be recited at Matins. To the argument whence these consequences are deduced it can be objected that by the words by the relation of the faithful, from which the author of the longer says that he wrote, there are not excluded the things which are narrated in the shorter Acts; whose substance he may have taken over, spread out in long and rough periods, and clothed with new additions here and there, some things also being intermixed which he received from a narration handed down by the mouth of the faithful. This answer seems to me not to be disapproved, on account of the not obscure indications of greater antiquity which the shorter Acts display, and which appear to me the more manifest the more attentively I run through them and the more exactly I compare them with the longer. Both will be published below, that the reader himself may be able to examine the matter.

[29] Tillemont, volume 3 of the Ecclesiastical Monuments, page 35, affirms generally of the Acts of SS. Marcellus and Valerian MM. Against Tillemont and others that they are not of such antiquity as to avail with great authority. The same judgment he passes on them at page 601 in the Notes; where, concerning the time in which the longer Acts of our holy Martyr were written, he puts forward this conjecture: They seem to have been composed by some monk of the abbey of St. Marcellus of Chalon, that they might be read in the divine Office on his feast day, and accordingly not earlier than toward the end of the sixth century. Of the shorter, which are extant in Surius, he there pronounces thus: They now and then cite common report, which is an indication that they are not sufficiently ancient. Whether he judges them more recent than the longer he nowhere expresses. There is read in Surius's edition: The rebuke with which the Saint reproved Latio — as he is there called — when adoring the idols, is said to have had such force that in a short time his whole household was converted to the faith. This single passage (for the several passages in which the word is said or the like occurs are found neither in the Surian nor in the other copies reviewed at number 26) — this single passage, I say, sufficed for Tillemont to assert that in the shorter Acts common or popular report is now and then cited, and thence to infer that the requisite antiquity is wanting to them. That they labor under this defect also

Baillet writes in his Critical Table on the 4th of September. The continuators of the Gallia Christiana begun by Denis de Sainte-Marthe, volume 4, column 860, say: Certainly they rest on the rumors of the crowd. The authors of the Literary History of France, praised above, say that they are of small moment and of slight authority. Since those Writers bring forward no solid reason why they judge thus, and I see that none can be brought forward, I take no account of their censures. They have, as manifestly appears from the passages cited, blindly followed Tillemont, who detracts from the antiquity and credit of the Acts by this wrongly-twisted argument: they now and then cite common report.

[30] The things which that rigid critic in volume 3, page 35, indicates as displeasing him the authority of the shorter Passion also prove nothing. The Acts, he says (the shorter, namely, for in the margin he here cites Surius their editor) and Ado in his Martyrology say that they (SS. Marcellus and Valerian) were cast into prison under M. Aurelius Antoninus with the illustrious Martyrs of Lyons in the year 177; but, the prison being opened by a miracle — of which, however, the history of the Martyrs of Lyons says nothing — both went away thence. It is easier to believe that, like many others, they too escaped by flight, when inquiry was being made against the Christians. Neither in the Acts published by Surius with the phrasing somewhat corrected, nor in Ado's Martyrology, is it openly said that SS. Marcellus and Valerian went out of the prison opened by a miracle. In Ado there is only read that the Saints fled away, the bars of the prison to which they had been consigned being opened by divine power; but in Surius, the prison being opened by divine power. The very words of him who wrote the shorter Acts I here subjoin: Of whose number of the martyrs of Lyons, Marcellus and Valerian, the bars of that prison to which they had been consigned being broken open [] by divine power … secretly take to flight. And let no one doubt that this was ordained by the providence of God, namely that they should aim to hasten to those places where the consummation of their passion was owed to them, and should strengthen by the examples of their martyrdom the minds of the gentiles who through them were to believe in Christ.* This author asserts indeed that it was done by divine power, or ordained by God's providence, that the bars of the prison were broken and both Saints escaped: but who from that would infer a miracle by a legitimate consequence? Certainly many things are done by divine power, or, what is the same, out of God's singular providence, which neither ought nor can be held for miracles. So if the prison was broken or opened by the Saints by natural means and manner, but by the singular providence of God disposing that these should not be lacking, it is rightly said to have happened by divine power, although without a miracle.

[31] is defended, But be it so: let the Saints have been miraculously freed. Is it therefore more likely that SS. Marcellus and Valerian, when the persecution fell upon Lyons, slipped away in flight, and were not seized and cast into prison? Is it therefore, I say, to be believed on a critic more severe than exact, thrusting forward conjectures contrary to the Acts, which he indeed supposes to be not sufficiently ancient and sincere, but proves it by no argument of any force? Such is not the silence which he objects, of the History of the martyrdom of the Saints of Lyons, that is, of the epistle of the churches of Vienne and Lyons to the faithful settled in Asia and Phrygia, in Eusebius of Caesarea, book 5 of the Ecclesiastical History, chapter 1 and following; for it could very easily happen that the Christians of Vienne and Lyons were ignorant of the manner (whether it was miraculous or not) in which the prison was opened in which SS. Marcellus and Valerian were confined. Without doubt indeed they had heard that both had escaped thence; but since they had proposed to themselves to write out the contests of their Martyrs to the churches of Asia and Phrygia, it is truly no wonder if they silently passed over the fact that those men had slipped out of prison, who perhaps had given no specimens of Christian constancy or fortitude worthy of record, and could seem to have fled away from fear of death and of torments. But neither can it be held for certain that that epistle does not commemorate the imprisonment and flight of both Saints, since it does not survive entire. After Eusebius had transcribed from it into his Ecclesiastical History, book 5, chapter 1 and following, the things which seemed to him to pertain to his design, he subjoins this in chapter 4: But what need is there to review here the catalogue of martyrs set out in the above-said epistle, of whom some were struck with the axe, others exposed to beasts, others expired in prison? What need likewise to relate the number of the confessors who afterward survived? That SS. Marcellus and Valerian are not reviewed among these, or, if they are reviewed, that their imprisonment and deliverance are passed over in silence, let those dare to affirm who have read the whole epistle through and have found the matter so to stand.

[32] and it is pronounced that it must be adhered to. Besides the arguments which I have already weakened, neither Tillemont nor other critics, so far as I know, object anything against the shorter Acts; nor do I see what they could effectively object. Now take my opinion in a few words. Since it cannot be demonstrated that the author of the shorter wrote after the times of St. Guntramn, who reigned from the year 561 until 593, nay, after the fifth or fourth century, and since he appears sincere in his narration, and brings forward nothing which manifestly contradicts reason or truth; I judge that we must stand by his authority, and not depart from it, until it be proved that it is unfit to produce credit: and the burden of proving lies on those who contend that it is such. The writer of the longer Acts, who to Tillemont seems not more ancient than the end of the sixth century, and to me younger than the author of the shorter, will now and then be censured in the notes: for he relates some things which even a most kindly censor will disapprove.

Elsewhere, patefactis*.

§ V. Various things handed down about the Saint and passed over in silence in the Acts; the episcopate denied him; the time of his martyrdom.

[ ] [That SS. Marcellus and Valerian were kinsmen St. Gregory of Tours hints: other things] I find some things handed down in writing by various writers about St. Marcellus which are passed over in silence in both Acts, and accordingly I set them here before their edition. St. Gregory of Tours, book 1 On the Glory of the Martyrs, chapter 54, writes: To this Martyr (St. Marcellus, of whom he had treated in the preceding chapter) is joined, near of kin both in blood and in contest, the blessed champion Valerian, who at the castle of Tournus … his combat being consummated, was buried. If the little word and here performs its office, which is to join things distinct, it follows that the holy Martyrs were brothers or kinsmen. In Théophile Raynaud's Little Index of the Saints of Lyons and in Saussay's Gallican Martyrology our Saint is said to have been a citizen of Lyons, and the chief among those who were seized with St. Photinus in the persecution of Antoninus. I know no one more ancient than Raynaud who affirms that he was born at Lyons. In the shorter Acts in Surius I do indeed read: Of whom (the 50 Christians thrust into prison at Lyons) the chief were the most blessed Marcellus and Valerian: but from all our copies the word chief is absent.

[34] Jacques Severt, in part 3 of his Work on the archbishopric of Lyons, chapter 4, section 5, §4, are handed down about them without fit asserts that St. Marcellus was a disciple of St. Photinus, the first bishop of Lyons; which the authors of the Literary History of France, volume 1, part 1, page 225, say is likely, led by mere conjecture, to which I can bring no probability from authority. Garnier, a monk of Tournus, in the Passion of St. Valerian in Juénin praised above, page 29, writes that St. Photinus labored for the conversion of the people of Lyons, having taken to himself his venerable colleagues and the blessed confessors Valerian and Marcellus: but Garnier's testimony is not fit, since he wrote in the twelfth century, removed by a very long interval of time from SS. Photinus, Marcellus and Valerian, who flourished in the second century. In the epistle of the people of Vienne and Lyons it is said that there were seized from both churches all the most excellent, and those by whose labor and industry chiefly the affairs here had been established: but from this general proposition, which is to be understood as much of men as of women, as much of laymen as of those initiated in sacred Orders, there are not consequently deduced those particulars which are proclaimed about SS. Marcellus and Valerian, who were of their number, by Raynaud, Surius, Severt and Garnier.

[35] That St. Marcellus was a priest the cited Raynaud contends. authority: probably they were not laymen. The shorter Acts, he says, openly establish St. Marcellus as a priest; for they relate that, being bidden to sacrifice to the idols, he answered that he daily offered a sincere victim to God, and therefore could not be defiled with impure victims. To this the praised continuators of the Gallia Christiana reply, from Tillemont, volume 3, page 602: An argument of this kind is of no weight; for there are other sacrifices which even laymen themselves can offer to God: and the same answer was given by those whom it is confessedly impossible for them to have been priests. Thus St. Serapia, whose Acts may be consulted in volume VI of August, page 500, answered to a like command: "Daily I offer sacrifices to Christ, adoring Him and beseeching Him day and night." This answer thoroughly unnerves Raynaud's argument: but from the same Acts another can be sought, whence at least it is drawn out that SS. Marcellus and Valerian were probably not laymen. Their author testifies that they escaped from the prison of Lyons, and that this was ordained by divine providence, that … they should strengthen by the examples of their martyrdom the minds of the gentiles who through them were to believe in Christ; then that they entered on different roads, St. Marcellus to the Sequani, St. Valerian to the Aedui; that they might convert those nations to the worship of the true God by the preaching of the divine word. These passages stand in the way of my daring to call laymen Saints who had undertaken to instruct the Sequani and the Aedui in the Christian faith. Nor will those readily persuade themselves of this about St. Marcellus who believe that he was the apostle of the people of Chalon. This tradition is related by many writers: whom I in no way contradict, unless they mean that the Saint preached the Gospel in the city itself; for he did not enter it, as is clear from both Acts, before he had already been seized by the president Priscus. There could be no other arena of his apostolic labors than that which was the arena of his martyrdom, that is, that part of the territory of Chalon which lies on the left bank of the Saône, and which Fredegarius and Aimoin, cited at number 4, assign to the province of the Sequani.

[36] [St. Marcellus, whom five Hieronymian Martyrologies on this day endow with the title of bishop,] Raynaud denies the episcopal dignity to the holy Martyr, whom he says was a priest, not hesitating to assert that no mention of it is made anywhere, either in the Acts or anywhere else, except in the cited Severt. But of what Marcellus then does the Hieronymian transcript of Echternach, more ancient than the middle of the eighth century, treat on this day, of Marcellus the bishop; of what does that of Aachen, at Chalon, of St. Marcellus the bishop? Is he different from our Martyr? This conjecture seems not to have displeased Florentini, who in his Notes on the more ancient Martyrology writes thus of our Saint: This one the most ancient Martyrology calls a bishop

of Echternach, nay even the manuscript of the Queen of Sweden calls him bishop and confessor, against … the credit of the Acts, so that they bring in the suspicion that there were two Marcelluses of Chalon. The text of the manuscript Martyrology of the Queen of Sweden seen by Florentini is produced by the most illustrious Francesco Maria de Aste, archbishop of Otranto, in his notes on the Roman: At Chalon in Gaul, of St. Marcellus bishop and confessor. Presently he subjoins: From the announcements of this and other Martyrologies there are elicited two Marcelluses there on this day, one a martyr, the other a bishop and confessor. But the Sainte-Marthes did not hand down this Marcellus among the bishops of Chalon. But if St. Marcellus the confessor presided over that church, who is that synonymous bishop-martyr whom the Hieronymian of the Queen of Sweden, or of Sens of St. Columba, published by Sollier in volume VII of June, celebrates: In the Gauls, in the city of Chalon, the passion of St. Marcellus bishop and martyr, and the second Barberini: At Chalon, the passion of St. Marcellus the bishop? If full credit be given to each of these Martyrologies, then two Marcelluses, bishops of Chalon, must be admitted, the one a martyr, the other a confessor; both distinct from our holy Martyr, if he was not a bishop.

[37] Although St. Marcellus is in five Hieronymian Martyrologies, whose texts I have related, is not to be distinguished from our Martyr, called bishop, and in one of them confessor; yet I judge that he is not to be distinguished from the St. Marcellus whom fifteen other Hieronymian ones which I have run through, and also the Martyrologies of Rabanus, Ado, Usuard and others, call only a martyr. A Saint who is announced on the same day in all the Martyrologies, and whose birthplace is marked as the same in most and as different in none, is not straightway to be divided into two, because some represent him as adorned with other titles. It is the common and lamentable condition of old codices, especially of ones in daily use, such as Martyrologies and Legends, that by the drowsiness, rashness or unskilfulness of copyists they are corrupted in many places. Of the Martyrologies none have been more often transcribed, nay, amplified and abridged at will, than the Hieronymian: whence it ought not to seem strange that they swarm with very frequent faults and errors. To these I reckon the appellation of bishop in five transcript copies, and in one that of confessor, attributed to St. Marcellus of Chalon. I therefore acknowledge one Saint of this name at Chalon, and him neither bishop nor confessor, but a martyr only. I know no author to whom even the suspicion has occurred that more can be admitted, except Florentini and the most illustrious Francesco Maria de Aste. Those who confess that there is only one must necessarily deny that he is a confessor, namely in this sense, that he rested in peace with a holy end; for it is established that his martyrdom was consummated.

[38] Those who with Severt make him a bishop can indeed allege the five Hieronymian Martyrologies mentioned in confirmation of their opinion; to whom we deny that dignity. but from what has already been said it sufficiently appears that their authority, propped up by no other weightier one, does not suffice to prove the Saint's episcopate. In the other Martyrologies, in the Works of St. Gregory of Tours, and in so many other ancient documents which celebrate the Saint and have been produced by me above in §§1 and 2, only his martyrdom is expressed: nor is anything narrated in either of his Acts from which the episcopal dignity could be hammered out. Nor is St. Marcellus named in any catalogues of the prelates of Chalon which I have been able to inspect, except that which Severt begins from the Saint. But how could he first occupy the see of Chalon, which, when he was sent to prison at Lyons, had not yet been erected, as is certain among all, and which he himself could not afterward erect: for from the Acts it is manifest that he never halted at Chalon, unless perhaps after he had already fallen into the hands of the tyrant Priscus, nor was he even sent that an episcopate might be instituted there; since he secretly took to flight from the prison of Lyons, and undertook to imbue the Sequani with the true faith, and not the Aedui, in whose land the city of Chalon lay. The first bishop whom these peoples had sat without doubt not at Chalon but at Autun; since this, not that, city was the head of the Aedui. But the first bishop of Autun, St. Amator, is certainly later than the martyrdom of our Saint. Among the synonymous saints there are famous bishops: the martyr of Pamiers, and the confessors of Paris and of Die. The latter is inscribed in the Roman Martyrology on the 9th of April, the next on the 1st of November, the former on the 14th of August. Some one of those three bishops confused with the Martyr of the same name at Chalon could have been the cause or occasion that the episcopate was ascribed to him in one Hieronymian transcript, which error then passed into others. Occasion for the error could also have been afforded by the tradition which holds that the Saint was the apostle of the people of Chalon; whence he could also be thought their bishop.

[39] He suffered about the year 178. That St. Marcellus underwent martyrdom on the 4th, and his companion St. Valerian on the 15th of September, is beyond controversy. But the most blessed Valerian suffered in the one hundred and seventy-ninth year from the Incarnation of the Lord, Marcus Antoninus, surnamed Verus, administering the Roman empire, Lucius Aurelius and Commodus being consuls together. So the Acts of St. Valerian written by Garnier the monk in the twelfth century, who wrongly cuts a single consul, the emperor Lucius Aurelius Commodus, into two; yet he rightly fixes his consulship, in which he had T. Annius Aurelius Verus for colleague, to the year 179. And also the passion of St. Valerian, and of St. Marcellus, who was crowned eleven days before him? Tillemont, volume 3, page 602, says he adopted the year determined by Garnier, because he found no fitter time. The same was designated by the Parisian Martyrology published in the year 1727, by Baillet, Castellanus and others. Juénin, in the chronological Table subjoined to volume 1 of the History of Tournus, preferred the year 177, in which L. Aurelius Commodus was also consul with Quintillus. I have above placed our Saint's martyrdom about the year 178, which time I would not extend more widely than to the years 177 or 179. Certainly he did not suffer before the year 177: for the shorter Acts relate that St. Marcellus encouraged himself to meet death bravely by the example of the companions who had gone before, namely those of Lyons, with whom he had been seized, and who about the end of the month of July and the beginning of August of the year 177 were beheaded or exposed to beasts, Photinus and others excepted, who had died in prison not long before. Nor does the Saint's martyrdom seem to be deferred beyond the year 179: for from the Acts it is sufficiently gathered that he did not prolong his life more than two years after the contests of the Martyrs of Lyons. Nay, the more diligently I weigh the things which the Saint is narrated to have done from his flight from the prison of Lyons until his death, the more likely it appears to me that he did not survive two years, and consequently that his passion is not to be deferred beyond the year 178.

PASSION

by an anonymous author,

From the edition of Pierre-François Chifflet, collated with a manuscript of André du Chesne, royal geographer.

Marcellus, martyr, near Chalon in the duchy of Burgundy. (S.)

BHL Number: 5245

By an Anonymous writer.

[In the persecution under M. Aurelius Antoninus, 50 Christians at Lyons are sent to prison,] When under the prince Antoninus, who governed the summit of the Roman empire, through all provinces and cities ^a the edicts ^b of an impious persecution hung over the Christians, which the governors of all [] dignities and provinces strove to carry out the more urgently, not so much from zeal to obey as from hatred of the true religion, that in all places they raged with the ferocity of beasts in the blood of Christians ^c, beyond human cruelty; at that time in the city of the people of Lyons the madness of persecution was fiercely seething. Where, when at the will of the raging populace both sexes, every age and condition, were being fitted [] for punishment; fifty ^d men given to the worships of the sacred religion, to be made ready for the various torments of punishments, are thrust into the prison-houses at the command of the president ^e.

[2] Of whose number of martyrs, Marcellus and Valerian, [from which St. Marcellus, having escaped, takes his road to the Sequani, to announce the faith to them:] the bars of that prison to which they had been consigned being broken open [] by divine power ^f, according to the Gospel authority ^g, secretly take to flight to another city. And let no one doubt that this was ordained by the providence of God; namely that they should aim to hasten to those places where the consummation of their passion was owed to them, and should strengthen by the examples of their martyrdom the minds of the gentiles who through them were to believe in Christ. And these, that they might the more safely ^h turn aside from that whirlwind of persecution, are divided not in mind but by a river ⁱ, not in faith but in journey: of whom Valerian, taking [] the road of Autun, Marcellus enters upon that of the territory of the Sequani; that they might convert the dwellers on either bank to the worship of the true God by the preaching of the divine word, and might triumph over the devil not only by the pouring out of their own blood, but also by the belief of many in Christ ^k.

[3] And when Saint Marcellus was making his way secretly out of a desire to lie hid, [he converts his host with his whole household to Christ: turning aside from the persecution] our Lord Jesus Christ, not suffering His Confessor to lie hid longer ^l, it came to pass that unlooked-for hospitality was afforded him by a certain Latinus ^m; who used with peculiar worship to adore and venerate an equestrian statue of Mars, and images also of Mercury and Minerva wrought of the same metal, set up in the entrance-hall. And when the Saint of God had seen the error of this profane superstition not without grief, he admonishes [] his host to depart from this wretched superstition, adding that senseless stones cannot furnish the effects of prayers; but that those men are either to be compared with foolish cattle, or differ not much from unpolished stones, who worship [] as gods those which a human hand has fashioned in the likeness of demons. Whose rebuke is reported ⁿ to have availed so far that in a short time it converted the whole household of his host, error being spurned, to belief in Christ. And when he lingered there a little while for joy at his labor's not being in vain, he learns that the urgency of the persecution was raging in all places ^o.

[4] Then, passing by [p] the town of Chalon and taking the way of the causeway of Argentomagus [q], he falls in with the president Priscus, who, after various torments he comes upon the president Priscus sacrificing with solemn preparation in profane rites to his own deities; whom he invites [*] to a banquet after the manner of hospitality. But the holy Martyr of God, abhorring the feasts, thought the guests should rather be rebuked than imitated. And when by his chastisement he had betrayed himself as a Christian, those who were present decreed that he should be afflicted with new torments; so that he should be stretched with nooses through the branches of a tree, which nature had spread out in different directions, so as to be pulled apart in his whole body: and when these were drawn together and returned to their natural strength, the framework of his limbs, his joints being fastened, should be torn asunder.

[5] But when the Martyr, by the constancy of his faith, remained unmoved in the purpose of his confession, threatened against him, constantly refusing to sacrifice to the idols it seemed more atrocious to the bloody counsel of the persecutor's most wicked cruelty that he should perish in the sight of the people by various punishments of penalties [r]. He orders him therefore to be led to the statue of Saturn, which overhung the bank of the Saône [*], and to the image of the sun, which, placed on the other side [s] of the river, they adored: with which

if he did not consent to sacrifice, he should be punished [*] with the sword. But the faith of the Martyr, strengthened by the Holy Spirit, could not be broken, always answering this to their questions: Whosoever shall have received the living God with all the powers of his soul and with the perfect belief of his heart, will not be able to sacrifice to senseless idols. And it is an impious thing that a soul given from heaven should, neglecting the Author of its life, worship the images of demons, which the devil persuades men to adore for the perdition of the human race: that he would never be polluted with such profane sacrifices, who daily offered to Christ a victim of sincerity; but that he would rather follow the examples of the companions who had gone before him [t], with whom he trusted that he would be rewarded with the prizes of eternal glory.

[6] [ordered him to be buried in the earth up to the waist, in which torment he dies after three days.] And when the president saw him fearing neither threats nor torments, goaded by the stings of raging anger, by an unheard-of kind of cruelty he orders him to be buried upright up to the waist; that burial, which is granted to the dead for rest, might be for punishment to a living man. So the holy Martyr of God, at the second milestone from the town of Chalon, living to Christ, is buried up to his middle: who on the third day, persevering in the love and praises of God, rendered up his undefiled spirit, leaving us the spoils of his holy body for our patronage: our Lord Jesus Christ reigning, to whom is honor, glory and power with the Father and the Holy Spirit unto ages of ages. Amen.

ANNOTATA.

p. The longer Acts here add that the Saint crossed the Saône; which is also gathered from these words, for in the following number they have: Priscus therefore orders him to be led to the statue of Saturn, which overhung the bank of the Saône, and to the image of the sun, which, placed on the other side of the river, they adored; and when he refused to sacrifice to it, he is buried in the earth up to the waist. But this happened on the left bank of the Saône, where St. Guntramn afterward built a notable basilica with a monastery for the holy Martyr: therefore the image of the sun was placed on that same bank. But the bank over which the statue of Saturn hung must have been the right, since the image of the sun was adored by the gentiles on the other side of the river. From these things it is plain that the Saint crossed the Saône, and that by the Sequani, in whose

province he had converted Latinus, he came to the Aedui dwelling along the right bank of the river. Here, making his journey by the Argentomagensian way, he fell in with the president Priscus; who ordered him to be led to the statue of Saturn overhanging that same right bank, and then to the image of the sun, erected on the other side of the river; where the martyr fell. So therefore he who a little before had passed from the Sequani to the Aedui, being brought back again from the Aedui to the Sequani, consummated his martyrdom among the Sequani.

q. From what has been said it follows that the causeway or Argentomagensian road was among the Aedui. Pierre-François Chifflet inserted into the Proofs of the History of Tournus, from page 59, a lengthy note about that causeway, at the end of which he brings forward this conjecture of his about the site of Argentomagus: What then was Argentomagus, from which the Argentomagensian causeway was led out from Chalon? It must be sought among the Aedui, and in a place not far off. Argilly is distant from the city of Chalon about five leagues of an hour's march. It is a place of no obscure name, and once a royal villa of the dukes of Burgundy; but it has (so far as I know) no vestiges of Roman antiquity. Not far from Argilly is the mound of an ancient city. The place itself the neighbors today call Bolart; empty indeed of all buildings standing above the soil, but teeming with rubble, and with coins and other monuments of the Roman empire, on which now and then the mattocks and ploughs of the farmers strike. The conjecture is that from the revived material of this ancient town Argilly was built in a more recent age, which drew its appellation from Argentomagus. I recognize the old Argentomagus there, which gave its name to the Argentomagensian causeway: until God set something else nearer the truth before one searching out the ancient topography. In some geographical maps exhibiting ancient Gaul and its military roads under the Roman empire, I find one led from Chalon as far as Langres in such a way that it must necessarily have passed through the field of the Aedui, near to the place where Argilly now lies, commonly Argilly; which in the geographical chart of the duchy of Burgundy in Blaeu is marked not so far from the Saône, between Chalon and Dijon. I would say that that road is the Argentomagensian causeway which the Acts of St. Marcellus record, if the ancient city whose vestiges Chifflet testifies existed near Argilly in his age was Argentomagus: but as this, so also that is uncertain. To me, trying to dig out the old Argentomagus, whence the causeway or road led out from Chalon received its name, nothing occurs which seems to me to come nearer the truth than the conjecture of Chifflet just set forth.

r. The observations with which I shall take up the following Passion, under the letters q and aa, may be seen.

s. Read again the annotation given at the letter p.

t. Of the Martyrs of Lyons, with whom he had been cast into prison.

In the Chesnian manuscript, universitas*.

Ibid., raperetur*.

Ibid., patefactis*.

Ibid., compita*.

Ibid., ammonuit*.

Ibid., crederent*.

Ibid., invitavit*.

Ibid., littoris*.

Ibid., perimeretur*.

ANOTHER PASSION

by an anonymous author,

From the edition of the same Chifflet collated with two ancient manuscript codices of our museum, marked Q Ms. 6 and Q Ms. 7.

Marcellus, martyr, near Chalon in the duchy of Burgundy. (S.)

BHL Number: 5246 a

By an Anonymous writer.

Prologue. The Passion of saint Marcellus the martyr, by whose patronage the walls of the city of Chalon are at once exalted and guarded ^b, as it has come, Christ helping, through succeeding times down to our own memory by the relation of the most holy Fathers, confirmed by divine authority ^c, we have thought fit to write out with zeal for truth and in the observance of obedience, for the confirming and the gratifying of the vows of the Catholic people of the faithful: that while the heavenly victory of the Martyrs is reviewed, there may be praise of Jesus Christ our God and Redeemer, who in the several contests of the Martyrs has triumphed; that while it is known through the revolving spaces of the years, it may be propagated to eternal ages. For very many things handed down to memory are retained as though written ^d, and, made clearer by constant relations, are preserved rather by the wonder of the things themselves.

[2] [He is seized with the holy Martyrs of Lyons; but freed from prison by angelic help] Therefore under the emperor Antoninus there had gone forth generally against all Christians the orders of an impious persecution, which by the prefects, and their vicars the presidents, and the prefects of provinces, both from zeal to obey and from hatred of the Christian religion, and by the urgency of a sacrilegious persecution [], were most vehemently kept and fulfilled: and [] throughout all cities the appointed governors most savagely raged with hostile ferocity against the blood of the Christians. And so at that same time in the city of Lyons fifty most excellent men of the worship of the Christian religion were thrust [] into the keeping of the prison-houses, to be subjected to monstrous torments. Of which number saint Marcellus and saint Valerian were venerable martyrs: for whom, when they had been shut in [], at night-time, by the affection of an angelic visitation ^f, the bars, being again unlocked by divine power, lay open for a free going out. But the happy consummation of the rest was not unknown, through the manifest order of their passion ^h, to the chief men of Lyons and to the supreme senate, or to the towns lying about that same city of Chalon ^g, and to the peoples, as is read of them — the victory of their glorious contest. But let us return to the order of the present martyrdom, as the favor of the relation begun requires.

[3] he undertakes to instruct the Sequani in the true faith; The holy Martyrs ⁱ therefore being loosed, as was said above, from the keeping of the prison-houses — those, namely, to whom by divine ordinance the glorious consummation of their passion was owed in other places — it was the will of God that saint Valerian should take the fortified causeway of the territory of Chalon ^k, and blessed Marcellus, the Saône lying between, the woodland road of the Sequani, so that the Champions of Christ, there [*] whither they had been destined, before the consummation owed and prepared by Christ their author, might draw the dwellers on either bank to the worship of the true God by apostolic teaching, as far as they could, or as they had been directed. For divine grace earns merit by the advancement of others ^l. To the city of Chalon, therefore, both their departure from the city of Lyons and the order of their journey is made public, fame swiftly carrying it — that these two only had been withdrawn from the pressing persecution ^m.

[4] Meanwhile saint Marcellus, taking his road through the province of the Sequani, [to which he converts his host with his whole household: withdrawing himself from the persecution] is received by a certain man named Latinus for the sake of hospitality, who, in the error of the gentiles, with profane rites, venerated a statue of Mars in an equestrian figure, shaped by the working of polished stone, and images of Mercury also and Minerva of the same metal, placed in a much-frequented [] entrance-hall. And when the Servant of God could not see this without torment of mind, he admonishes his host with the greatest patience and teaching to depart from this vain and wretched superstition, asserting that dumb images, or stones lacking sense, cannot impart anything to those who ask, nor grant the effects of prayers: and that those men do not differ much from the very stones who believe that these [] things made are better than themselves. Whose great rebuke is reported to have availed so far that in a short time it presented the whole household of his most happy host to the worship of the true religion. But when, rejoicing there for the redemption of souls at his labor's not being in vain, he lingered for a short space of time, he learns that the decrees ⁿ of the neighboring city were raging in all places.

[5] It seemed good to him therefore, the city of the people of Chalon being passed by, [he falls in with the president Priscus, who, when he recognized him as a Christian,] to cross the Saône ^o in the more secret places. Entering upon the way of the Argentomagensian causeway, the river being crossed, saint Marcellus of God enters the lodging [p] of the president Priscus: with a solemn preparation of feasts he finds the president himself sacrificing to his own and to the gentile deities. And he, when he saw him hastening swiftly, invites him after the manner of courtesy to the banquet prepared with sacrilegious worships. But saint Marcellus, the witness of Christ, shrinking from feasts polluted with profane error, believes [*] that the guests should rather be rebuked than avoided. And when, being questioned, he had confidently betrayed himself as a Christian, the command of the savage president forthwith decreed that he should be afflicted with new torments.

[6] So therefore, when, lifted with bonds onto a tree, he was being stretched by nooses set on his whole body through the diverging branches, [orders him bound to the branches of a tree to be tortured, and then, when by his profession of the true] and, the framework of his limbs being drawn apart, the stretched joints, fastened by the knots, were being joined together [q], the old crime of his father [r] consumed him upon a tree, and he, imitating the glory of the heavenly Christ, of the new regeneration of the Lord, declared it upon the wood: that while he ate the fruit-bearing food, he might go forward to the unconquered triumph of the cross. While saint Marcellus, in his purpose, unmoved by the near chill of death, endured by the heat of faith, it seemed more fitting to the most wicked handling of the persecutor that he should be punished in the sight of the people by the torments brought upon him. Then the most cruel president said: Thy name, Marcellus, and thy error we have learned. The divine precepts of our most sacred emperor stand [s], that those who refuse to adore the chief of the venerable deities, Saturn the father, and Jove almighty, and their sons and kinsmen, be punished with the head. And unless thou do this, thou shalt be punished with savage torments.

[7] faith and detestation of the idols he had tried his constancy in vain, Saint Marcellus answered: These images which thou namest were so mortal that, polluted with their own crimes, long since dead and buried in hell, they have perished. And whosoever shall believe in them, [] shall sustain the eternal and terrible judgment of punishments from almighty God, who was before the ages, and always is, and always shall be. I am a Christian: with free and irrevocable voice [] I profess that I believe Christ the Son of God, coequal with the holy Father [t], maker of heaven and earth and sea, and founder of all things [u]. But the president Priscus, kindled with indignation of mind, handed over saint Marcellus the martyr to be butchered by impious executioners; and he ordered them [*] that before the images of the statues which were in the city, with the crowd of the gentiles looking on, he should receive manifold torments at the pleasure of the madmen. First therefore he was stretched on the rack at the statue of Saturn, which overhung the bank of the Saône, and received countless scourgings of blows. Then he is brought, at the president's command, to the image of the sun, which within the walls of the Sequanian [x] gate was venerated with the chief error of the gentiles, and also to the court of the divine Hamon [y], where an image all of glass [z], placed on the lofty summit of a column, was adored, at the second milestone from the city.

[8] when he had tried him in vain with various other torments, Which holy Martyr, enduring by the power of a heavenly mind, changed his punishments as he changed his places: his limbs stretched on racks, torn by the grating of chains, a ball of fire, which joined together the nourishments [] of his burnt body, his joints being loosed by the blows [aa], the most valiant Champion, keeping the faith of his author Jesus Christ within his bowels, triumphed by his glorious passion, bearing away the contest [bb]: and the newness of the torments could not change his ancient faith, always answering this to the wicked [] questioning; that it could by no means be that one who had received the living God into his senses should adore senseless stones, or the images of demons: that he would rather follow the examples of the Apostles, and the glorious contests of the martyrs [*] who had gone before: and that, if the matter so stood, he was to be separated from his fellow-soldiers in the place of his martyrdom, but never in faith.

[9] he orders him to be buried alive up to the waist. And when the most wicked president perceived him stronger amid the torments by the grace of divine fervor [*], by an unheard-of example of cruelty, raving beyond a persecutor's fury, he ordered him to be buried upright up to the waist: and thus, now buried up to his middle,

but wholly alive, hastening to the kingdoms of heaven, he did not flee the punishments of earth: but persevering for three days in the praises of Christ, the almighty Lord and his God, with mouth and love, meanwhile commending his earthly limbs to the earth, he sent his spirit to the heavens.

[10] Epilogue. These things therefore, as concerning the triumph of saint Marcellus and most blessed martyr they were learned by the relation of the faithful, a devout mind, Christ being its author, has written down for the confirming of the minds of the Catholic people: that while the festival of the holy Martyr is celebrated in happy times, by his own patronage, as the circles of the year revolve [] through the age; we, beseeching the patronage of our renowned Patron and martyr for the state of the Catholic religion, for the defense of our own city, for the safety of the supreme Pontiff, for the veneration of the priests, for the felicity of our unconquered prince and the preservation of the whole people, and for the recompense of him who obediently composed this Legend, may honor with diligent vows so great [] a solemnity of the day, our Lord Jesus Christ granting it [cc], who with God the Father and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns through the infinite ages of ages. Amen.

ANNOTATA.

p. It is not likely that St. Marcellus, who, in order to withdraw himself from the persecution, had fled from among the Sequani, crossing the Saône, to the Aedui, and who seems to have carefully shunned the city of Chalon for the same cause, entered of his own accord the lodging of the president Priscus, and hastened swiftly, as is presently said, toward him when he saw him sacrificing to the idols. Our codices for lodging have office: by which word, if there be understood the region in which he was discharging the office of president, the whole narration will be more credible.

q. In the other Acts it is said that those who were present, namely the guests, being reproved by the Saint on account of the feasts furnished from the sacrifices of the gods, decreed that his body, bound to the branches of a tree violently drawn together, should be torn apart when these were suddenly let go. Immediately it is subjoined: But when … the Martyr remained unmoved in the purpose of his confession, it seemed more atrocious to the bloody counsel of the persecutor Priscus … that he should perish in the sight of the people by various punishments of penalties. These things seem to me to insinuate that the punishment which had been decreed by the sentence of the guests, or of Priscus and them together, was not inflicted on the Saint; but that the president changed it into various other penalties, by which the noble Fighter of Christ, for his constancy in the profession of the faith and in the detestation of idolatry, was to be tortured in the sight of the whole people. But whatever be the mind of the author who wrote the former Acts, from his words there cannot be elicited the things which are here narrated in obscure phrasing.

r. Our codices here have of Adam the earthly father, and a little below, for ate, they have despises. The rest in them is no less inept, twisted and obscure than in this copy, whether you regard the words and members of which the period is composed, or their meaning.

s. In the Fulda codex: The divine precepts of our most sacred emperors ordain.

t. In both: Christ the Son of God, the Holy Spirit, coequal with the Father and the Son.

u. The words of the president Priscus to St. Marcellus, and of the latter to him, with which the interpolator in this and the preceding number amplified the history of the martyrdom, are not read in the former Acts.

x. I believe indeed that at Chalon there was a Sequanian gate, so called because by it one went to the Sequani: but I doubt whether the image of the sun, to which the president ordered St. Marcellus to be led, stood within the walls of that gate. The other Acts at number 5 testify that it was placed on the other side of the river from the statue of Saturn; and since this overhung the right bank of the Saône, as was proved in the annotation subjoined to the letter p of those same Acts, the image of the sun must have been erected on the left side of the river. But did the Saône, flowing between, in the times of St. Marcellus divide the city of Chalon into two parts, of which the smaller, lying on the left side, was girded with walls and had a Sequanian gate?

y. In codex Q Ms. 7, Decubaconis; in the Fulda one, Divionis. Valois in the Notitia of the Gauls, page 522, in another manuscript copy reads Divibavonis: which name he says was Gallic, of a God: as one may find Abellio among the Convenae, Agho among the Bigerriones, others elsewhere.

z. That is, wholly of glass, from the Greek ὅλος and the Latin vitrum. In the Fulda codex and elsewhere it is an image of electrum. Electrum, besides amber, also signifies a kind of metal, of which a fifth part is silver, the rest gold. See Pliny, book 33, chapters 4, 9 and 41.

aa. From the other copies not enough light shines upon me by whose aid I might clearly explain this obscure period: accordingly I do not transfer their various readings hither. The different kinds of torments with which St. Marcellus is here asserted to have been tortured the author of the other Passion does not record. He writes indeed at number 5 that it seemed good to Priscus that the Saint should perish in the sight of the people by various punishments of penalties; but whether he underwent them, and of what sort they were, he does not express.

bb. In each of our codices it is thus read: keeping the passion of Jesus Christ within his bowels, he triumphed, bearing it away by a more glorious contest.

cc. In codex Q Ms. 7 the Acts are thus concluded: our Lord Jesus Christ reigning, to whom be honor and glory unto eternal ages. Amen.

In both codices, instinctu*.

In the Fulda one, tunc*.

In both, retruduntur*.

In the Fulda one, obserata*.

In both, illic*.

Ibid., there is added in*.

Ibid., a se*.

Ibid., credidit*.

Ibid., there is added cum ipsis*.

Ibid., denuntiatione*.

Ibid., idemque*.

Ibid., elementa*.

Ibid., iniqui persecutoris*.

Lugdunensium*

Ibid., favoris*.

Ibid., revolutis*.

Ibid., tantæ*.