ON ST. VICTORINUS OF COMO, BISHOP AND CONFESSOR,
AT COMO IN ITALY,
Probably about the middle of the VII century.
A COLLECTION.
The cult is proved chiefly from Tatti's Martyrology and the Annals of Como: what more recent writers hand down of his deeds and age is weighed.
Victorinus, bishop and confessor, at Como in Italy (S.)
BY J. L.
We give on this day a second St. Victorinus, bishop and confessor of Como or Novum Comum by the Larian lake in Subalpine Italy. Of his cult we are taught chiefly by Luigi de Tatti, theologian of the Congregation of Clerks Regular of Somascha and consultor of the Holy Office, in the Martyrology of Novum Comum, of St. Victorinus, of whom printed in the year 1675, and in the Sacred Annals of the same city, published in the year 1663, decade 1 book 9 num. 25; where he has this: Our Victorinus, according to some, happily fell asleep in the Lord in the year DCXLIV on the V of September. The day agrees with the tradition of the church of Como, which then celebrates the holy Bishop's feast (here there is added in the margin: Proper Office of the Saints of the church of Como, V Sept.) in the church of St. Abundius; where he received a tomb from our forefathers, and where he is venerated even now. In the Martyrology he praises the Saint thus: On the Nones of September. At Novum Comum, in the basilica of St. Abundius, of St. Victorinus bishop of Como and confessor, who, summoned to govern this church in the time of the Lombards, endured from the princes of that nation, defiled with the Arian plague, continual insults and calamities, that he might preserve the sheep committed to him by the Lord from the evils that pressed upon them, which also he gloriously obtained. At last, wearied with many labors for his church, he exchanged the episcopal mitre for the crown of eternal beatitude.
[2] To the Saint's eulogy the following is immediately subjoined: The proper Offices of the Saints of the church of Novum Comum various authors have made mention, treat of St. Victorinus on this day, together with Benedetto Giovio, History of his Country book 2; Feliciano Ninguarda in the Description of the Churches of the City, where he treats of the basilica of St. Abundius; Filippo Archinto in the List of his Predecessors; Lazzaro Carafino, both in the Diptychs of the Bishops of Como n. XVII, and in the Catalogue of the Saints and Blessed whose bodies rest in the city and diocese; Francesco Ballarini, Chronicle of Como p. 2; Roberto Rusca, book 1 of his Antiquities; Quintilio Lucino Passalacqua in the 1st Historical Letter; Ferdinando Ughelli, tom. V of the Italia Sacra, in the series of the bishops of Como n. XVII; Lelio Fravezzi in the Perpetual Diary of Como; and Filippo Ferrarius in the New Topography to the Roman Martyrology. We too have discoursed of him at more length in the Annals of Como, decade 1 book IX from n. XVI to XXV. Of those enumerated, only the Works of Benedetto Giovio, Ballarini, Ughelli, Ferrarius and Tatti are at hand. Both these and the other writers, into whose age I have inquired, Giovio surpasses in antiquity, whose Work, reprinted in the Thesaurus of the Antiquities and Histories of Italy tom. 4 part 2 at Leiden in the year 1722, thus concludes: Here ends the History of his Country, or Chronicle of Benedetto Giovio of Como, from the beginning of the city to the year of the Lord MDXXXII.
[3] and the cult of the other 21 prelates of Como: After the praised Giovio at the beginning of book 2 had written of the first 22 bishops of his country, among whom St. Victorinus sat seventeenth in order, he pronounces of them all: These are the twenty-two bishops inscribed in the catalogue of the Saints. Ferrarius in the New Topography to the Roman Martyrology, published at Venice in the year 1609, treating of Como, distributes the Saints of this city into two classes. In the former are ten bishops of Como out of the first twenty-two, whom he says to be honored with an ecclesiastical Office. The latter class is made up of the remaining twelve, of whose number is St. Victorinus. The names of each being expressed, Ferrarius subjoins: But of the aforesaid bishops, although they are held among the Saints, the church of Como recites no Office. Tatti in the Martyrology of Novum Comum, which saw the light in the year 1675, celebrates those twelve Prelates on various days, and affirms in the Notes to their eulogies that all are venerated with a proper Office, except St. John I, surnamed Orcus, who is reported among the Prætermissi of the day XXXI of August in our Work. A more honorable place will be granted him in its Supplement: for what Tatti passed over in silence in his Martyrology, he had already before asserted most clearly in the Annals, printed in the year 1663, decade 1 book 8 num. 9, namely that on the XXXI of August a proper Office of St. John I is read. With a like cult SS. Flavianus I and Prosper, prelates of Como, are honored, the latter on the 2nd of March, the former on the XXVI of February; and they too are wanting in our Work: in which, of the said 12 bishops, we have given only one, St. Martinianus, on the III of September. To St. Victorinus the day V of September is sacred: the feasts of the other seven fall on days of the last three months of the year.
[4] [many of these, among whom St. Victorinus, are honored with a proper Office in the church of St. Abundius alone] What Tatti in his Martyrology and Annals writes here and there of the cult of the holy Prelates of the church of Como I have diligently turned over, and I have learned that the proper Offices which he repeatedly praises were published before the middle of the XVII century, that is, before the year 1651, after the decree of Pope Urban VIII promulgated in the year 1634, while Lazzaro Carafino administered the bishopric of Como. It must altogether be presumed that then the recitation of the proper Office of St. Victorinus and of others, of whom none had before been read, was lawfully begun, and that among them there is none whose public veneration was forbidden by that decree, because namely all had obtained it from time immemorial before that same decree. Older than the hundred completed years, which according to the Pontiff's mind constitute time immemorial, is Giovio's History, in which the first twenty-two bishops of Como are said to be inscribed in the catalogue of the Saints. From Tatti's Martyrology and Annals it has also become known to me that many of them are venerated with proper Offices not throughout the whole diocese of Como, but only in the church of St. Abundius, in which their bodies rest. Among these I reckon St. Victorinus, whose feast Tatti in the Annals says is celebrated with a proper Office on the V of September in the church of St. Abundius. In the Martyrology too he announces the Saint at Novum Comum in the basilica of St. Abundius &c. The tomb, he says at the end of the annotation added, which Victorinus received at his death from our forefathers, he still keeps before the high altar in the aforesaid church of St. Abundius, beneath his own outer canopy.
[5] Further, the church (I use Giovio's words, excerpted from book 2 of the History of his Country) the church of St. Abundius situated outside the city, which is called St. Abundius's, was formerly consecrated to the apostles Peter and Paul; and it is most ancient. Here at one time was the see of the bishops of Como… It formerly had a college of canons… In the year one thousand and thirteen, on the Nones of August, Alberic bishop of Como, having removed the canons, established there an abbatial monastery of the Order of St. Benedict, the see and clergy being translated within the city to the church of the Virgin Mother of God… After eighty-two years Urban the second, Supreme Pontiff, about to set out for Gaul, … turned aside to Como, and dedicated that basilica anew under the name of St. Abundius… After Sixtus the fourth, Supreme Pontiff, began to make so many commendams of monasteries, this too … lacked an abbot, being commended now to cardinals, now to bishops. In the year 1618 the church of St. Abundius was handed over to nuns of the Order of St. Augustine, as Francesco Ballarini testifies in the Compendium of the Chronicle of Como, published in the year 1619, part 3 pag. 279.
[6] In the eulogies of St. Victorinus in Ballarini, part 2 of the praised Compendium from pag. 104, and in Ughelli tom. 5 of the Italia Sacra among the bishops of Como, some of his deeds are narrated. [Of the Saint's deeds nothing is brought forward from ancient monuments: Ughelli's eulogy,] Of these Tatti in the Annals fashioned a longer discourse, whose marrow is contained in the announcement which I reported from his Martyrology at num. 1. Now the writers of the preceding century already named bring forward, among the monuments of letters which have made mention of the Saint, none older than the History of Benedetto Giovio, completed in the year 1532; in whose book 2 the bishops of Como are treated of expressly, and only Victorinus's name is recorded as inscribed in the catalogue of the Saints. Hence a not slight suspicion arises in me that the few things which the moderns have published of the holy Prelate's life cannot be confirmed from sufficiently ancient documents, and that nothing certain about him has survived oblivion save his name and his sanctity. Meanwhile receive the eulogy with which the Saint is adorned in the Ughelli cited: Victorinus, from Bithynia, a citizen of Nicomedia, ascended the see of Como after Martinianus in the year DCXXVIII. He was famous for learning, and an implacable persecutor of the Arians, who at that time, with king Rothari favoring, were trying to infect all Italy. When therefore he had bravely gone through the storm of persecutions at Como which he had suffered from the Arians for the protection of his flock, and there had succeeded to Rothari king Cundipertus, outstandingly pious, Victorinus obtained from him several privileges and immunities in favor of his church. This holy Prelate met his last day in the year DCXLIV on the day V of the month of September, and was buried in the cathedral of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, now St. Abundius's.
[7] [his errors and Ballarini's: he is believed to have presided over the church of Como] The same things, if you regard the substance, Ballarini had handed down of St. Victorinus before Ughelli, determining the time of his death thus: He passed to the heavenly life in the year of the Lord DCXLIV on the day V of September, under the Pontificate of Theodore I, in the time of the emperor Constantine III. Now hear Tatti in the notes to his Martyrology: It is not sufficiently established in what year Victorinus died, although most of the moderns assert without hesitation that he was taken from this vale of miseries in the year of the Lord DCXLIV. For if this our Prelate died in the year DCXLIV under Theodore (I) the Pontiff, as they hand down, how could this have happened under the emperor Constantine III, who three years before had alike ceased to reign and to live, namely in the year DCXLI? How did he enjoy an intimate familiarity, as Ballarini writes, with Gundebert king of the Lombards, and how was he adorned by him with many immunities, as is read in Ughelli, if Gundebert took up the reins of the Italian kingdom only in the year DCLXI? The certain year therefore is hidden from us, as we have said elsewhere (in the Annals, decade I book 9 num. 25), as it is also of very many bishops of Como, although those same moderns assign it not without a mark of error, as is most plainly evident, and of imprudence. It is agreed between Tatti in the often praised Annals and the others, whom by the words just given he shows to have fallen into a shameful anachronism, that St. Victorinus presided over the church of Como under Rothari king of the Lombards, who, as is the more probable opinion of the learned, departed this life in the year 654, the 17th of his reign. Hence above in the margin at num. 1 I have fixed the Saint's death about the middle of the VII century, taken in a wider sense, yet with doubt; because it is not certainly established that his bishopric coincided with Rothari's reign.
[8] St. Victorinus under the Arian king Rothari, which is not improbable. Raulus Warnefridus the deacon, book 4 On the Deeds of the Lombards chap. 44, writes thus of king Rothari: Not holding the right line of the Christian faith, he was stained with the perfidy of the Arian heresy… In his times in almost all the cities of his kingdom there were two bishops, one Catholic and the other Arian. In the city of Pavia too it is shown to this day where the Arian bishop, residing near the basilica of St. Eusebius, had a baptistery, while nevertheless another bishop presided over the Catholic church. These things afford a ground for supposing that in the city of Como also, subject to Rothari's rule, two bishops then sat, an Arian and an Orthodox. Whether St. Victorinus was this latter is not certainly established, as I said just now: yet, the matter being examined, I have found that the Saint's bishopric is not without probability referred to the times of king Rothari, and that consequently this care must chiefly have lain upon him, that he should defend the true religion and the flock committed to him against the Arians. What Tatti in the Annals writes that the Saint did and suffered under Rothari for the cause of the Catholic faith is of such a kind as to represent a bishop most heaped up with the most perfect virtues: such indeed I would by no means deny St. Victorinus to have been; but I could wish that particular facts proving it could be produced from monuments of fit authority.