Victorinus the Martyr

ON ST. VICTORINUS THE MARTYR, PRESBYTER, NEAR CUTILIÆ A TOWN OF THE SABINES

IN ITALY,

At the end of the first century or the beginning of the second.

HISTORICO-CRITICAL COMMENTARY.

Victorinus, presbyter and martyr, near Cutiliæ a town of the Sabines in Italy (S.)

BY J. L.

§ I. Two SS. Severinus and as many Victorini, confounded with one another by the martyrologists, are set forth separately: the deeds and passion of St. Victorinus who is venerated today, from the Acts of SS. Nereus and Achilleus: the places of his exile, servitude, martyrdom and burial.

The authors of both Roman Martyrologies, the Little or old and the present one, together with Ado, Usuard and Notker, announce at the VIII of January a St. Severinus welded together into one out of two, A distinct account of St. Severinus the abbot, and they say that he was the brother of St. Victorinus. The same authors refer at the V of September to a St. Victorinus likewise compounded out of two, whom the author of the Little Roman, Ado and Notker say to have been the brother of St. Severinus. That the confusion and the errors arising from it may appear more plainly, I have thought that the four Saints announced in a jumbled fashion by those martyrologists should first be set forth here distinctly. Of him who is venerated today I shall adduce whatever survives that is worthy of credit and transmitted to the memory of posterity; of the other three I shall bring forward only the chief heads of the matter, and when these are known beforehand you will easily perceive how the several statements are to be separated and to which Saint they are to be assigned — statements which the martyrologists named proclaim in their confused eulogies, to be exhibited below. Most renowned for the spirit of prophecy and for miracles, there died in the year 482 St. Severinus the abbot, the apostle of the Norici, whose body, by the authority of St. Gelasius the Pontiff, who departed this life in the year 496, was carried away to the castle of Lucullanum near Naples. In the year 909 that castle was overthrown and the sacred bones conveyed to Naples, and laid in the church of the monks of the Order of St. Benedict, which was even then called St. Severinus's from the apostle of the Norici, its patron. The Acts of this Saint and the history of both translations, faithfully composed, Bolland published at the VIII of January, on which day his birthday is celebrated at Naples, in tom. 1 of that month from pag. 484, and in the same volume in the Appendix from pag. 1098.

[2] In the times of the emperor Justinian another St. Severinus shone with an outstanding sanctity of life, Of the holy brothers Severinus bishop of Septempeda and Victorinus confessor, taken from the desert to the bishopric of Septempeda in Picenum, or, as we now speak, the March of Ancona. Out of the ruins of Septempeda arose the town of San Severino, so called from Severinus, the holy bishop of the destroyed city. The people of San Severino celebrate the solemnity of the cathedral church consecrated in his name on the VIII day of June, on which day it is inscribed in the present Roman Martyrology; but they keep the Saint's birthday on the VIII of January, on which day accordingly Bolland judged that he should be given. This St. Severinus had for brother St. Victorinus the confessor. When both were dwelling in the desert not far from Camerino, a city of Umbria, Victorinus (such is human frailty), overcome by the temptations of the demon, consented to the sin of unchastity; but after his fall, by the grace of a merciful God, he came forth an outstanding conqueror of himself and of the demon: doing penance, he raged long against his own body with a pious cruelty, and so far advanced in virtue that he attained both the glory of the Saints in heaven and honors on earth. In the present Roman Martyrology he is announced on the day on which he is venerated at Camerino, the VIII of June: but because Bolland had published the twin Acts of him and of his brother Severinus in tom. 1 of January from pag. 500 and in the Appendix from pag. 1103, he was placed among the Prætermissi of the said day. But he will not, I think, be referred to in the Supplement of our Work, where those things will be brought forward which pertain to his cult not yet illustrated, and where it will at the same time be possible to consider whether St. Victorinus, the brother of Severinus the bishop, ought to be distinguished from that Victorinus the monk whom St. Gregory the Pope, toward the end of the 34th homily on the Gospels, relates to have appeased by tears, vigils and other pious exercises the God whom he had offended by the sin of luxury, and to have learned of its remission from a heavenly voice. Further, St. Victorinus, of whom we are now speaking, is asserted in his own Acts and those of his brother Severinus — which the aforesaid Bolland adduced in the first place, and which are older than the others — to have been promoted, shortly after the performing of his penance, to the priesthood of the city of Amiternum.

[3] and likewise of the St. Victorinus martyr of this day, from the Acts There is also another St. Victorinus, bishop, as tradition (to be refuted below) has it, of Amiternum, who at the end of the 1st century or the beginning of the next underwent martyrdom near Cutiliæ among the Sabines. He himself is our Presbyter and martyr, disfigured today in the sacred Fasti with an episcopal dignity and with other men's deeds. He must be restored to himself out of the Acts of SS. Flavia Domitilla, Nereus, Achilleus and the other Martyrs, published in our Work at the XII of May; from which I transfer hither the following. After St. Flavia Domitilla, a most noble Roman virgin, at the urging of SS. Nereus and Achilleus the eunuchs, who were her chamberlains, had withdrawn her mind from marriage with Aurelianus the son of the consul and had consecrated her virginity to God, she was denounced by her betrothed as being a Christian, and banished to the island of Pontia. Eusebius, in book 3 of the Ecclesiastical History, chap. 18, testifies that he had read in the records of writers utterly estranged from the faith of Christ that St. Fl. Domitilla was driven into exile, together with very many others, in the fifteenth year of the principate of Domitian, which began to run from the Ides of September of the year 95. Of their number were SS. Nereus and Achilleus, of whose martyrdom SS. Eutyches, Victorinus and Maro, who were in exile on the island of Pontia with St. Fl. Domitilla, informed by letter Marcellus, a Christian man; and this is the conclusion of that letter: It will be a mark of thy charity to act solicitously concerning us, and to send to us such a man as may make both us gladder of thy welfare and thee of ours. Their birthday (that of Nereus and Achilleus) is the fourth of the Ides of May.

[4] Having received this writing, Marcellus sent his own brother to the island, Of SS. Nereus who was with these confessors of Christ (Eutyches, Victorinus and Maro) for a year. Afterward, having returned to Marcellus, he reported these things: When Aurelianus, after the martyrdom of Nereus and Achilleus, was contriving how he might reach Domitilla's consent, it was told him by a certain person that she had a greater affection for Eutyches, Victorinus and Maro than she had had for her eunuchs Nereus and Achilleus, who had taught her to believe in Christ. Whence it came about that he asked of the emperor Nerva that they should be given to him, if they should refuse to sacrifice. And when they bore themselves manfully, Eutyches, Victorinus and Maro, and utterly disregarded the threats of Aurelianus, he removed them from the island, and distributed them singly through his own estates as though they were slaves: Eutyches at the sixteenth milestone from the City on the Numentan way; Victorinus at the sixtieth on the Salarian way; and Maro at the hundred and thirtieth on the same Salarian way: and he commanded them to dig the earth the whole day long, but toward evening to eat bran (that is, the siftings of meal, or rather bread made from them). But almighty God gave them grace in those foreign places: for Eutyches freed from the devil the daughter of the lessee of the place; Victorinus by his prayer made whole the steward of the place, a paralytic who had not risen from his bed for three years; and Maro freed the procurator of the city of Septempeda, who was suffering from the disease of dropsy. Meanwhile, delivering discourses to the people, they taught many to believe in Christ; and, being made presbyters, they increased the people of believers.

[5] Then the devil filled the mind of Aurelianus with wrath; and he sent men, and Achilleus; who should put them to death by divers kinds of punishments. For he ordered Eutyches to be beaten a long while in the midst of the road, until he should breathe out his spirit… But Victorinus he ordered to be held head downward for three hours in that place which is called Cotiliæ, where stinking and sulphurous waters flow out, and to be hung up again. Having suffered this for three days for the name of Christ, Victorinus passed to the Lord. And Aurelianus commanded that his body should not be buried: and when it had lain one day at Cotylæ, the Christian people of Amiternum came, and carried him off, and into their own territory

they carried him, and there buried him. But Maro &c. So the Acts of SS. Nereus and Achilleus, as they are commonly called, in our edition at the XII of May: from certain manuscript codices of our museum, however, I have supplied a number of lacunæ. With how much authority they are furnished will be said at num. 47. Meanwhile hold this for a thing beyond doubt, that whatever worthy of credit concerning St. Victorinus M. has survived oblivion is contained in those Acts. SS. Eutyches and Maro, whom those same Acts celebrate along with him, are announced together with St. Victorinus in the Martyrologies of Ado, Usuard and Notker, and likewise in both the Roman, the Little and the present, at the XV of April, on which day Henschen treated briefly of them all. Whether those three holy Martyrs were delivered over into slavery to Aurelianus by the emperor Nerva, as is asserted in the same Acts, will be considered in §5: where, once the emperors have been assigned under whom they more probably suffered exile, servitude and martyrdom, some observations will be made concerning their servile condition and the life they afterward led. An account of the places in which St. Victorinus M. lived in exile, in which, carried off into servitude, he tilled the field by digging, in which by an unheard-of kind of punishment he fell a martyr, and in which he was committed to burial, will now be given from various authors.

[6] and it is explained where he suffered exile, servitude and martyrdom, The island of Pontia, ennobled by the exile of Victorinus and of the other Saints who are commemorated in the Acts just praised, Ferrarius describes thus in his New Topography to the Roman Martyrology: Pontia, Ponza, an island of the Tyrrhenian sea before the gulf of Formiæ, over against Gaeta, very near the islands of Palmaria and Sinonia. Now Palmaria lies over against Terracina, distant from it XLV miles to the south, and is altogether uninhabited: but Pontia has some dwellings, and is famous for the exile and deportation not so much of Roman citizens as of Christians, and lies XXX miles back from the nearest shore. St. Victorinus served a hard servitude near the palæstra of his martyrdom, that is, near the lake, into whose stinking and sulphurous waters, when for three days he had been let down again and again head downward for the space of three hours each day, he rendered his soul to God. Of that lake and of the town of the same name adjoining it Lubin writes thus in the 5th geographical Table of the Roman Martyrology Illustrated: Cutiliæ or Cutilia, and Cotylia or Cotyle, a town and lake among the Sabines, in the territory of Rieti, distant eight miles from Rieti, at the sixtieth milestone from the city of Rome: a city situated on a mountain, not far from which was the lake that was called Cutiliæ or the Waters of Cutiliæ. Pompeius Angelottus, in the description of Rieti his native city, chap. 9, says that Cutiliæ was destroyed by the Goths, and that among the colonies founded by the scattered inhabitants was the present Contigliano, which lies farther from the Waters of Cutiliæ — now the Lago di Contigliano, as Ferrarius testifies in his Geographical Lexicon — than did the ancient town, from which it has retained its name.

[7] and where he was buried. The site of Amiternum, whose citizens carried the holy Martyr's body into their own territory after it had lain one day unburied near the Waters of Cutiliæ by order of Aurelianus, receive from Baudrand. Amiternum, a city of the Sabines [] in Italy according to Livy and Pliny, which is assigned to the Vestini by Ptolemy, once episcopal, afterward destroyed; and its ruins are now to be seen on the level ridge of a mountain, near the castle of S. Vittorino, so called from the name of St. Victorinus bishop of Amiternum (rather, presbyter and martyr), in Farther Abruzzo, a province of the kingdom of Naples, on the testimony of Ferrarius and Cluver, near the sources of the river Aternus, now commonly called the Pescara, distant V miles to the north from Aquila (which succeeded to it and to the destroyed city of Forcona, over against Amiternum), once great, as the ruins indicate. The people of Amiternum buried honorably the sacred body which they had carried into their own territory, in a suburban place, as ancient custom bore, where now the village of S. Vittorino is to be seen. Antonio Antinori, in chap. 2 of his Introduction to the History of Aquila, in Muratori, tom. 6 of the Antiquities of Italy, col. 500, says: Ruins, the testimonies of writers, and tradition show that its (Amiternum's) site was near the village of S. Vittorino; and that village afterward stood as the episcopal see:* which opinion will be confirmed in §3. The Saint's body was religiously preserved in the church which the men of Amiternum had erected over it in their suburb, down to the times of the emperor Otto I; under whom the greater part of it was translated to Magdeburg in Germany, and some relics to Metz in Gaul, as will be seen in the last §.

[8] Now you have, studious reader, a distinct account of the two SS. Victorinus, [The Martyrologies so intermingle the said SS. Severinus and Victorinus that it is hard] martyr and confessor, and of as many SS. Severinus, abbot and bishop; of whom the two former are welded by Ado, Usuard, Notker and the authors of both Roman Martyrologies at the V of September into a single Victorinus, and the two latter at the VIII of January into a single Severinus: and just as here by all a Victorinus is assigned as brother to the confounded Severinus, so there by most a Severinus is assigned as brother to the confused Victorinus. So great a confusion of persons has poured a dense mist about the Saint whom the Church today sets forth for veneration, and has given occasion to not a few errors. Some of these Bolland did not pass over unobserved, tom. 1 of January pag. 498 and 499; where he distinguished the intermingled SS. Severinus; but he left the St. Victorinus of this day wrapped in his own darkness. Nor did Henschen dispel it, tom. 2 of April pag. 374, where he pronounced him to be the same as the St. Victorinus who suffered near the town of Cutiliæ. Sollier, in his Observations on the text of Usuard which announces St. Victorinus today, perceiving that the unravelling of the entangled matter was not easy or expeditious, suggested only so much as he judged sufficient to indicate the difficulties, to be discussed, he says, in full elsewhere.

[9] Being about to perform this here in its own place, I first took refuge there whence I hoped light would be brought me, to distinguish the Saint: the Hieronymian Martyrologies bring no light. namely to Martyrologies older than the Little Roman or than Ado. But as I turned them over, none came to hand which commemorates St. Severinus on the VIII of January, or St. Victorinus on the V of September. They are indeed referred to in some Martyrologies which are attributed to St. Jerome or to Bede; but these are of the number of those which Papebroch, in the Prologue to the Martyrologies of Bede, Florus and others published before tom. 2 of March, and Sollier in the Preface to Usuard, chap. 1 art. 1 §2, judge to be in some part epitomes of Ado or Usuard, put together at the varying discretion of the compilers. At the XXIV of July, however, Rabanus, who is older than Ado, adorns St. Victorinus the confessor with a eulogy drawn from the older Acts of himself and of his brother Severinus, bishop of Septempeda. On the same day also, in the Hieronymian Martyrologies of the best note, whose text I shall produce below, St. Victorinus martyr is announced at Amiternum. Sollier gave this more briefly than I could wish. Taking occasion from it to make mention of the St. Victorinus who is venerated on the V of September, he subjoins this only: Whether he is the same as, or other than, he who is referred to on this day (the XXIV of July) in the Hieronymian Martyrologies, is not so far ascertained. We have preferred to keep today's Victorinus, whoever he be, in his own place, from the codices cited. My own opinion in this question I shall deliver in §4.

. Sabinorum.*

§ II. St. Victorinus at the V of September and St. Severinus at the VIII of January are exhibited from the Martyrologies, each welded out of two into one: errors concerning the St. Victorinus of this day.

[ ] The Little Roman, Ado, Now I exhibit the twin SS. Victorinus, today entangled into one by the martyrologists. Those things in their eulogies which belong to the bishop of Amiternum and confessor I shall enclose in brackets, that they may conveniently be distinguished from those which pertain to the Presbyter and martyr. The author of the Little Roman leads and misleads the column of martyrologists who confound the Saints: At Rome, of Victorinus the martyr [the brother of Severinus, who after a wonderful repentance was made bishop of the city of Amiternum] and martyr. Ado has this most prolix eulogy: In the suburb of Rome, the birthday of blessed Victorinus the martyr. [Now there were two brothers, Victorinus and Severinus. These, after the death of both their parents, tutoring one another, vying with one another in mutual services with an equal watchfulness, approved by the bond of brotherhood, offered themselves to God as a living victim. And when they had grown to such a point that with a view to perfection they left all that was theirs, and, selling their goods, laid out their value upon the poor, that they might serve God more unencumbered, they remained stripped of all means. And so the one, serving the other, served in mutual turn and with emulous charity. Command was liberty. Nothing was wanting to them, since they had nothing. Victorinus therefore, breathing higher, and reckoning imperfect the very fact that they obeyed one another, and that not enough had been done for him if either had power over the other, or the one rendered service to the other, entered the desert, and settled in the cave of a lofty rock, which the double chasm of the water flowing beneath had hollowed out — a lodging for one man only, so that seated he might take sleep, or, if he received another, he must stand to pray. He had covered the little doorway with wickerwork: he remained assiduous in reading and prayer.

[11] who gives a prolix Meanwhile the envier of every good perceives the progress of the man, and, unable to bear it, feigns himself a girl, and before the man's door redoubles words of lamentation: Alas, she says, wretched me, wandering in the woods, in error and darkness! The place is not recognized: a road is sought. Whoever thou art that dwellest in this place, heaven on every side and the woods carry the fame of thy virtues and thy work; snatch me from the gnashing boars, snatch me from the raging wolves and from the jaws of bears. What I shall live on shall be thine; if I die, thine. Let it suffice, and more than suffice, to be sheltered by thy threshold. I seek no long lodging, I shall be a guest for one night only. Victorinus opens his cell again, and, while he pities, shuts in the enemy with himself. Scarcely the space of an hour had passed, when amid her strivings and the continual movement of her body she touched the Man of God with her outstretched foot, and, as though pricking him with a wound, kindled him with a noxious heat. The sweetness of her speech adds a spark; solitude urges on the crime. Why do I delay? The column of the tree falls, which had long stood founded on a deep root: stolen love accomplishes the sin. Then cries out the devil, now the conqueror of Victorinus: What doest thou, he says, most perfect man, to whom even a brother was burdensome? Art thou now joined to another, thou who didst withdraw from thine own? What doest thou, who, setting up a new teaching in the woods, didst preach chastity to the rocks? Flinging out these words, he vanished from the eyes of the man he had deceived, like smoke. But he who had fallen lay as one bloodless.

[12] Ado continues: But coming at length to himself, he left the woods, eulogy from the Acts of both and returned to his brother Severinus: long suppressing his voice for shame, he at last set forth the cause of the deed, appointing his own penalty for himself. For splitting a tree, and inserting his hands through the cleft, and barring it fast, hardened with wedges, he closes the scar of the tree. But soon Severinus announces his brother's deed and penalty to his bishop. He, coming, first tries to loose him: but when he saw him resist, he prays, blesses, consoles,

and departs. But the Man of the Lord, who had condemned himself to a most grievous penance, took only on the Lord's day, and under compulsion from his brother, a little bread and water; and his brother too wasted himself with like food and fasting. And so in a constraint of this kind three years roll by. And when now his humility, to be imitated in Christ, had moved almost all men, the bishop of the city, returning, could scarcely bring it about that he should suffer himself to be released from the punishment to which, mindful of the dread judgment, he had condemned himself, his flesh being nearly consumed. But of how great sanctity he afterward was, and how mighty in miracles, no man's tongue will easily set forth. Being then chosen by the whole people, he obtains the priesthood of the city of Amiternum.]

[13] The same things are related more fully of St. Victorinus the confessor in tom. 1 of January from pag. 500, in the Acts of himself and of his brother St. Severinus of Septempeda. ill-wove together from the Acts, Notker, That St. Victorinus lived in the VI century: the Martyr of the same name was crowned near Cutiliæ not later than the beginning of the 2nd century. Saints separated from one another by so great an interval of time Ado joined into one person, when to the foregoing he annexed the following from the history of SS. Nereus and Achilleus: Thence afterward, under the emperor Nerva, he is with the other servants of God, Eutyches and Maro, first banished by the judge Aurelianus to the sixtieth milestone from the City, on the Salarian way; then at that place which is called Cottiliæ, where stinking and sulphurous waters flow, he was ordered by the impious judge to be held hung head downward in them for three hours. And when he had suffered this for three days for the name of Christ, being gloriously crowned, he passed to the Lord. And when his body had lain one day unburied by order of Aurelianus, the men of Amiternum came, and seizing it carried it into their own territory, and buried it honorably on the Nones of September. Ado's eulogy, compiled from the Acts of the two SS. Victorinus, is found in various books of our museum which contain the Lives of the Saints, both manuscript and printed. It was also formerly recited, whole or in part, at Matins in most of the dioceses to be named below at num. 57. Notker begins his lengthy eulogy thus: Of Victorinus the martyr, in the suburb of Rome. He, with his brother Severinus &c. I do not transcribe more. Let it be enough to have pointed out that this martyrologist ascribed indiscriminately to one and the same St. Victorinus the sin with the demon under a woman's form, the stupendous penance, the bishopric of Amiternum, and the martyrdom near Cutiliæ.

[14] Though less evident, the confusion is in my judgment no less certain in the Martyrology of Usuard and in the present Roman. At Rome (I report Usuard's text), of blessed Victorinus the martyr, who, renowned for sanctity and miracles [obtains the priesthood of the city of Amiternum by the election of the whole people.] Thence afterward, under the emperor Nerva, he was ordered to be hung head downward where stinking and sulphurous waters flow out. Usuard and the present Roman confound them, And when he had suffered this for three days for the name of Christ, being gloriously crowned, he passed a victor to the Lord. The present Roman has this: At Rome in the suburb, of blessed Victorinus bishop and martyr, who, famous for sanctity and miracles, [obtained the priesthood of the city of Amiternum by the election of the whole people.] Afterward, under Nerva Trajan, being banished with the other servants of God to Cutiliæ, where stinking and sulphurous waters flow out, he was ordered by the judge Aurelianus to be hung head downward. And when he had suffered this for three days for the name of Christ, being gloriously crowned, he passed a victor to the Lord. Whose body the Christians seized and laid up with an honorable burial at Amiternum. Those things which in both the texts just given I have inserted in brackets will be denied to be borrowed from St. Victorinus the confessor by those who believe that St. Victorinus the martyr of Cutiliæ was bishop of Amiternum: but that this dignity was transferred from the confessor to the Martyr will appear from what is to be said in the following §.

[15] with various errors Some of the classic Martyrologies just praised not only attribute to St. Victorinus the martyr what belongs to the confessor of the same name, but even err in various ways about the things which do belong to the holy Martyr. Ado concludes with these words the eulogy which he had begun thus, In the suburb of Rome, the birthday of blessed Victorinus the martyr: And when his body had lain one day … unburied, the men of Amiternum came, and … buried it honorably on the Nones of September. How could the Saint on the Nones of September both be born into heaven by martyrdom and have his body buried by the men of Amiternum, if it lay unburied for one day? But Ado by the word natale understood not the day on which the Saint suffered, but that on which the memory of his passion is kept. Rightly. But what of the ancient Hieronymian Martyrologies, which, as will be seen in §4, refer him to the day XXIV of July, which they say is his birthday? Will you deny that this day too is the day of the Saint's death, in order to excuse Ado, who fixes his burial to the V of September and his martyrdom to one of the days immediately preceding? Secondly, Ado at num. 13 writes of the holy Martyr: With the other servants of God, Eutyches and Maro, he is first banished by the judge Aurelianus to the sixtieth milestone from the City, on the Salarian way, where Cutiliæ lies. The present Roman has: At Cutiliæ … banished with the other servants of God, he was ordered by the judge Aurelianus to be hung &c. The Roman's words may seem to have the sense which Ado's have, namely that SS. Victorinus, Maro and Eutyches, after they had been handed over into slavery to Aurelianus, were all sent away to one and the same place — which contradicts the Acts of SS. Nereus and Achilleus; for in these we read: Aurelianus removed them from the island of Pontia, and distributed them singly through his own estates as though they were slaves, Eutyches at the sixteenth milestone from the City on the Numentan way, Victorinus at the sixtieth on the Salarian way near Cutiliæ, and Maro at the hundred and thirtieth on the same Salarian way.

[16] mixed in. Thirdly, the same Roman asserts that St. Victorinus's martyrdom, and also, as it seems, his banishment to the place where he underwent the yoke of servitude, befell under Nerva Trajan: but in the Acts of SS. Nereus and Achilleus, and in the Martyrologies of Ado, Notker and Usuard, only the name Nerva is expressed. Who would understand by that the emperor Trajan, who indeed was wont to be called Nerva Trajan, but never simply Nerva? Whether the Saint's servitude and martyrdom are to be fixed to the reign of Nerva or rather to that of his successor Trajan will be examined in §5. Fourthly, according to the aforesaid Acts — in which the order of events ought not to be presumed inverted, but proved so — St. Victorinus, Eutyches and Maro had not yet been ordained presbyters when they were led away from the island of Pontia into servitude: for in them there is related first the Saints' exile on that island, then their dispatch to the places of servitude; and only then are they all affirmed to have been made presbyters. But St. Victorinus M., in the Roman Martyrology, in which he is endowed with the title of bishop, is said first to have obtained the priesthood of the city of Amiternum by the election of the whole people, and afterward, under Nerva Trajan, to have been banished to Cutiliæ, where he suffered servitude. This error flowed from the confusion of St. Victorinus the bishop and confessor with our Presbyter and martyr, and passed into the Roman from Ado; as anyone will easily observe who reads again his words at the end of num. 12 and at num. 13. Why the Little Roman and Usuard announce the holy Martyr at Rome, but Ado, Notker and the present Roman in its suburb, will be seen elsewhere.

[17] The two Severini, namely the abbot who rests and is venerated at Naples, [In the same Martyrologies two SS. Severinus also have coalesced into one at the 8th of January, whom] and the bishop of Septempeda, whose brother was St. Victorinus the confessor, the Little or old Roman thus intermingled at the birthday common to both, the VIII of January: At Naples, of Severinus the confessor, the brother of Victorinus. Ado, Usuard, Notker, and after them the younger martyrologists everywhere, all adopted that confusion. If it please you to read the announcements of the chief ones, you will find them in Bolland, in the commentary on St. Severinus of Septempeda. Again the leader, or rather the misleader, of them all was the author of the Little Roman, as Sollier himself acknowledges in his Observations on Usuard — the same Sollier who in the Preface to that Martyrology had vindicated its antiquity and authority. The present Roman announces each St. Severinus separately, the bishop of Septempeda on the VIII of June, the abbot or apostle of the Norici on the VIII of January: and on this latter day it moreover refers separately to a St. Severinus compounded out of those two, in almost the same words as Usuard: At Naples in Campania, the birthday of St. Severinus the bishop, brother of blessed Victorinus the martyr, who after the performance of many virtues rested full of sanctity. The glory of martyrdom ascribed to St. Victorinus makes the confusion here more obscure: for Severinus the abbot had no brother Victorinus; and he whom the bishop of Septempeda had died in peace. Baronius, finding the memory of both Severini distinctly set down in the new Roman, and seeing that the confused announcement which I have just given fitted neither of them entirely, thought that it treated of some third St. Severinus, bishop of Naples, and that the brother of this man was St. Victorinus the martyr who is venerated on the Nones of September.

[18] But perhaps the reader would rather learn what Baronius's opinion was from his own words. [Baronius and others believed him to be bishop of Naples and brother of today's St. Victorinus M.:] In his annotation on St. Severinus bishop of Septempeda, who with his brother Victorinus the confessor is announced in the Roman at the VIII of June, he says: The narrative concerning St. Severinus of Septempeda still remains ambiguous and somewhat obscure, on account of the almost complete likeness which it seems to have in all things with St. Severinus bishop of Naples, with whom he agrees not only in name and in the dignity of the episcopate, but (which is to be wondered at) each had a brother by the name of Victorinus, the bishop of Naples a martyr, the bishop of Septempeda a confessor: whence it could very easily come about that what belonged to the one was attributed to the other; which indeed Ado seems to have done on the sixth of the Ides of January and on the Nones of September, when he judged that Victorinus the confessor, who in the VI century led a most arduous life in the desert, was the brother of Severinus of Naples, whose brother by no means cultivated the desert, but long before was made a martyr. Nor is it to be wondered at that two Severini had two brothers named Victorinus; since it is established that it was the custom of Christians to impose on their sons the names of Saints, so that, following in their footsteps, they might also be supported by their patronage. Dionysius of Alexandria in Eusebius, book VII chap. XX. Now we have read the Acts of these brothers, Severinus of Septempeda and Victorinus the confessor, received from their own church, from which we know that these brothers were born of the same mother, and cultivated the eremitical life: of whom Victorinus, when he had at one time fallen, bound himself over to stricter bonds of discipline, and rested in a holy end. But Severinus, taken up to the government of a bishopric, famous for sanctity, departed this life.

[19] this supposed Severinus is to be struck out of the Roman Martyrology. In this annotation of his Baronius makes it plain that he had not observed that out of St. Severinus the abbot, who is venerated at Naples, and out of the bishop of the same name, brother of St. Victorinus the confessor, there had coalesced in the Little Roman, in Ado, Usuard and Notker a monstrous St. Severinus bishop of Naples. Since this

man also, and the two Saints out of whom he was welded, have each a distinct eulogy in the new Roman, and since the author of the Little Roman, Ado and Notker at the V of September assign to St. Victorinus the martyr a brother Severinus, and at the VIII of January say that the monstrous bishop of the same name is the brother of St. Victorinus, and indeed, as Usuard and the Roman add, of Victorinus the martyr — hence Baronius, as I said before, judged that St. Severinus bishop of Naples had really existed, and that today's martyr St. Victorinus was his brother. Supposing the truth of these errors, he advises that Ado is to be corrected at the VIII of January and the V of September, where things belonging to the brothers SS. Severinus of Septempeda and Victorinus the confessor are sprinkled into the eulogies of the supposed brothers St. Severinus of Naples and Victorinus the martyr, because he has mingled the twin pair of brothers of the same names. By the martyrologists who deceived the unwary Baronius, many others too have been dragged into the same errors. Against them all it must be laid down that St. Victorinus the martyr had no brother Severinus bishop of Naples, and that this man is to be struck out of the number of the prelates of that church, and out of the Roman Martyrology which the Church now uses; since he never existed, save in the minds of those who did not know that he took his origin from the SS. Severinus, the apostle of the Norici and the bishop of Septempeda, intermingled with one another. To establish what has been said it is not necessary that I should add anything to what Bolland transcribed, tom. 1 of January pag. 457, from the letter of Fr. Antonio Beatillo S.J. sent to him from Naples, and pag. 499 from Ferrarius's Catalogue of the Saints of Italy. In the same place, pag. 498, he refutes certain moderns who wrote repeatedly that the monastery and church of St. Severinus the apostle of the Norici, which still stand at Naples, were first named from the fictitious St. Severinus the bishop, but thereafter retained the same name from the apostle of the Norici.

§ III. The episcopal dignity transferred from St. Victorinus the confessor to the Presbyter and martyr of this day: a new St. Victorinus bishop of Camerino thrust in by Jacobilli: I know not what bishop of Amiternum Ferrarius and Castellan suggest.

[ ] Baronius, who did not perceive the confusion of the SS. Severinus at the VIII of January, Baronius perceived the confusion of the SS. Victorinus less well: did indeed distinguish St. Victorinus the martyr from the confessor, but not sufficiently, as may be gathered from his annotation on the Roman Martyrology at the V of September. When on the VIII of June we treated above of Victorinus the brother of St. Severinus of Septempeda, we sufficiently showed that those err who confound these two Victorini into one, and attribute to this Martyr the things which are known to belong to the other; namely that pitiable fall which Ado describes here, who gave the rest the occasion of erring: for this too is found added to the Plantin Martyrology of Bede, whereas in his old manuscript Martyrology nothing of the sort is read, just as neither in the old Roman nor in Usuard. Of the waters of Cutiliæ, where this man suffered, Pliny writes, book II chap. XCV and book III chap. XII. Now the martyrdom of this Victorinus is found described in the Acts of the holy Nereus and Achilleus in Surius, tom. III, on the day XII of May, from which the rest have received it. Mention is made of the same man above at the XV of April together with Maro and Eutyches; although there no mention is made of a bishopric; which ought to have been omitted at the V of September also, as will soon appear.

[21] Baronius, in the Notes transcribed in the preceding number and above at num. 18, reprehends Ado for having transferred the eremitical life and the fall into the sin of unchastity from St. Victorinus the confessor to the Martyr of Cutiliæ. the bishopric of Amiternum fits not the Martyr but the confessor: He says that nothing of that fall is read in the old Roman and the Usuardine Martyrologies; nor does he note any confusion in them. Did then Usuard, with whom the Roman agrees which Baronius calls old, write truly of St. Victorinus the martyr: He obtains the priesthood of the city of Amiternum by the election of the whole people? It cannot be doubted that these words must be understood of St. Victorinus the confessor, who in his own Acts and those of his brother St. Severinus, published in tom. 1 of January pag. 500, at num. 9, is said to have been taken up shortly to the priesthood of the city of Amiternum after the sin of luxury had been expiated by a most grievous penance of three years. Those Acts Ado certainly saw to be older than the others which are found at the end of the same volume from pag. 1103, and he inserted them for the greater part, abridged, into his eulogy, retaining these words, the priesthood of the city of Amiternum, which are read also in Usuard and in the new Roman; whose words I here bring forward again: At Rome in the suburb, of blessed Victorinus bishop and martyr, who, famous for sanctity and miracles, [obtained the priesthood of the city of Amiternum by the election of the whole people,] afterward under Nerva Trajan at Cutiliæ &c. You will have corrected the Roman Martyrology if you delete what you see here set apart in brackets and restore it to him from whom it was taken, namely to St. Victorinus the confessor, who at the VIII of June, stripped of the due title of bishop, is thus referred to: At Camerino, of St. Victorinus the confessor.

[22] with arguments of no strength Orlendi asserts the episcopal dignity for the holy Henschen at the XV of April likewise denies the bishopric to St. Victorinus the martyr, understanding of a simple presbyterate the words of Ado and Usuard by which he is asserted to have been elected by the whole people to the priesthood of Amiternum; of which they are also explained in the Lübeck-Cologne edition of Usuard: At Rome in the suburb, of blessed Victorinus presbyter and martyr, who, renowned for sanctity and miracles, obtained the priesthood of the city of Amicerrima Amiternum by the election of the whole people &c. Orlendi, in the Sacred and Profane World, part 2, book 4, chap. 15, num. 10, judges that the priesthood of the city of Amiternum more correctly signifies a bishopric, which is clearly expressed in both Romans and in the Martyrology of Notker; but since, as sufficiently appears from the preceding number, the martyrologists borrowed this sacred dignity from St. Victorinus the confessor, he opposes them in vain to Henschen, who adheres to the Acts of SS. Nereus and Achilleus, in which St. Victorinus the martyr and his companions Eutyches and Maro are said to have been made presbyters. Orlendi objects further: The church of Amiternum too, and the church of Aquila substituted in its place, name Victorinus a bishop in their sacred diptychs. The diptychs of the church of Aquila prove nothing, unless in antiquity they surpass the city itself, which was endowed with the right of a city and with an episcopal see after the middle of the XIII century; for I shall readily grant that the tradition of the bishopric of St. Victorinus M. is older than the church of Aquila: but how will you persuade us that it did not arise from the confusion by which the author of the Little Roman, Ado, Usuard and Notker entangled St. Victorinus the bishop and confessor with the Martyr?

[23] [Martyr, to whom Antinori more rightly denies a place among the prelates of Amiternum;] I shall believe that Orlendi saw no monuments of the church of Amiternum sufficiently ancient and attesting the holy Martyr's bishopric, until they be produced. Certainly in those which Antinori, a citizen of Aquila, diligently collected and adduced in chap. 2 of the Introduction to the history of his native place, mention is made of St. Victorinus several times, with no trace of his bishopric appearing. Hence Antinori, having noticed the confusion of the SS. Victorinus in the Martyrologies, did not reckon the holy Martyr among the bishops of Amiternum, prefixing to their series this declaration of his mind: There are those who place St. Victorinus among the bishops in the first Christian century. His Acts, whatever they be, are contained in those of SS. Nereus and Achilleus: but there he is in no wise called a prelate… Ado and the Usuardine supplements, confounding him with St. Victorinus the confessor, of whom here at num. III, made him a bishop. Then among the prelates of Amiternum whose memory survives he places first Valentinus, who sat at the end of the V century and the beginning of the next. Second he sets Castorius, whom St. Gregory the Great mentions, book 1 of the Dialogues chap. 4: third, St. Victorinus the confessor, who, he says, lived in the VI century, was brother of St. Severinus of Septempeda, and was bishop of Amiternum, as the Acts say clearly enough in the Acta Sanctorum, VIII January, T. 1 p. DI n. IX. Of him many have written many things, and, adhering to Ado, have entangled him with Victorinus the martyr of the first Christian century. But in truth Amiternum had two Victorini, namely that Martyr, and the other a bishop: one in the first, one in the sixth century of the Church [*].

[24] since in an ancient monument There follows St. Cetheus, of whom we treated in our Work at the XIII of June; then Leontius, who presided after the middle of the VIII century; then Quodvultdeus, in whom Antinori produces two ancient inscriptions establishing his opinion and mine. Quodvultdeus bishop, he says, of whom there is read, in the church of the town of S. Vittorino, an inscription carved on the marble sepulchral chest of St. Victorinus martyr of the first century, not brought forward entire by Baronius in his Notes on the Martyrology at the day XV of April: AT THE COMMAND OF GOD CHRIST OUR LORD, TO THE HOLY MARTYR VICTORINUS, QUODVULDEUS BISHOP MADE THIS AT HIS OWN COST. Though the characters do not savor of an epigraph of the first centuries [], they must precede the year CMLXIX, in which, from the Chronicle of Sigebert, we are taught that the body of St. Victorinus was translated to the city of Metz, probably from that chest: for another stone, now laid on the floor of the same church, on which is carved: … HERE RESTS BICTORINUS PBR. — that is, Victorinus presbyter, V passing into B by a derivation famous in so many instances; that stone either, because ruder, was older, or was the lid of the Quodvultdeian urn, which Antinori judges to be older than the year CMLXIX; I add "about," because I believe that the body of St. Victorinus the martyr was translated to Magdeburg in Germany about the same time in which the Chronicle of Sigebert, at the year 970 in Miræus's edition, but 969 in others, testifies that there was carried from Amiternum to Metz Eutyches the martyr with the relics… of Victorinus*, for which relics Antinori substitutes the body. That the men of Magdeburg can boast with better right than those of Metz of the Saint's body translated to them will be proved in the last §.

[25] Besides the inscriptions already adduced from Antinori, another, [and in the Acts of SS. Nereus and Achilleus he is given only the title of presbyter.] set up in the year 1170, will be reported at num. 51, in which the Saint is called only a martyr. The title of bishop is also absent from a document of the X century, which see at num. 61, and from all the Hieronymian Martyrologies at the XXIV of July, whose texts will be given in the following §. But although the Saint's presbyterate is likewise not expressed in them; yet since he himself, and Maro and Eutyches, whom no one, so far as I know, has hitherto called bishops, are affirmed in the Acts of SS. Nereus and Achilleus to have been made presbyters; and since the men of Amiternum of old held their Victorinus not for a bishop but only for a presbyter, as the old inscription teaches, … HERE RESTS BICTORINUS PBR., that is, presbyter — I judge that this dignity is the one due to the Saint, but the episcopal one undue, nay attributed to him by an error born of the confusion already so often indicated; and consequently that the bishopric of Amiternum is to be struck out of the text of the present Roman for the holy Martyr, in whose place, in the Martyrology of Paris,

printed in the year 1727, I read the appellation of presbyter rightly substituted: In the territory of Amiternum, the birthday of St. Victorinus, presbyter and martyr.

[26] In Cassiodorus, book 8 of the Variæ, the eighth letter is inscribed thus: Jacobilli is refuted King Athalaric to Victorinus, venerable man, bishop. It was written in the year 526, after the death of Theodoric king of the Goths in Italy, whom Athalaric signifies to Victorinus that he has succeeded. Of what see this man was bishop cannot be dug out of the letter: yet Ludovico Jacobilli, in tom. 2 of the Saints and Blessed of Umbria pag. 232, asserts with wonderful confidence that he presided over the church of Camerino for about 30 years, that he died holily on the IX of September in the year 540, that he was honorably buried in the cathedral, and that he was held one of the ancient patrons of that city. That he may find credit with the reader, he cites the twin instruments of William and Guido, bishops of Camerino, confirming the possessions of the monastery of St. Mary. In the one, which was given by William in the year 1254, mention is made of the blessed confessors and pontiffs Ansovinus and Victorinus; in the other, granted by Guido in the year 1261, there is added bishops of Camerino. Then he distinguishes his St. Victorinus from the brother of St. Severinus of Septempeda, whom he wrongly denies to have been a bishop. Of St. Ansovinus, prelate of Camerino, we treated at the XIII of March. To Victorinus, bishop of that same city, no place among the celestial ones will be granted in our Work, until greater certainty be had of his existence and cult. Since the brother of St. Severinus administered the diocese of Amiternum, and since in the neighboring diocese of Camerino his body has rested and his cult flourished from time immemorial, I have a strong suspicion that the bishop who is commemorated with St. Ansovinus in the said instruments is not to be distinguished from him, and that Jacobilli added the word of Camerino to the names of both by conjecture, into which he was doubtless led by the presumed opinion that St. Victorinus the brother of Severinus held a bishopric nowhere.

[27] multiplying the SS. Victorinus. In that suspicion I am confirmed first by the fact that I have been able to find no writer, Jacobilli excepted, who reckons him among the bishops of the church of Camerino: secondly, by the fact that the same Jacobilli says that his sacred bones were laid in the cathedral within the chest or vault of the body of St. Ansovinus, but that Victorinus the brother of St. Severinus of Septempeda rests at Prolaqueum: whereas Giovanni Battista Cancellotti, in book 2 chap. 7 of the Acts of the holy brothers, and others in manuscript documents transmitted from Italy to our elders, expressly testify that the body of this Victorinus is in veneration at Camerino. To the Life of the same St. Victorinus, divided into nine lessons, which Matteo Pascucci, the writer of the Acts of St. Ansovinus published at Rome in the year 1682, sent us, this is prefixed: Found in the city of Camerino in the cathedral church … where also his body rests in a marble chest … together with the body of St. Ansovinus, bishop of the said city. Behold, St. Victorinus the brother of Severinus is here said to rest in the same chest in which Jacobilli places his new Victorinus. Who does not see that this writer, who multiplies SS. Victorinus, is not to be assented to out of hand (that I may say nothing harsher)? I acknowledge therefore no St. Victorinus who was bishop of Camerino; nor any bishop of Amiternum of that name save the brother of St. Severinus of Septempeda, whose sacred remains are religiously kept at Camerino in the cathedral, and whose feast is celebrated on the VIII of June. Yet Ferrarius and Castellan may seem to have wished to establish at the V of September a St. Victorinus different not only from the Martyr of Cutiliæ but also from the brother of Severinus, and to have made him bishop of the church of Amiternum.

[28] It is obscure what bishop of Amiternum of this name Ferrarius Ferrarius in his Catalogue of the Saints of Italy follows up his eulogy of St. Victorinus bishop of Amiternum and martyr with this annotation: Nearly all writers confound the Acts of Victorinus the bishop and martyr with the Acts of Victorinus the confessor at Camerino. Baronius thinks this Victorinus is the same as he who is treated of in the Roman Martyrology on the day XV of April and in the Deeds of SS. Nereus and Achilleus; who is handed down to have suffered with Maro and Eutyches. But if it be so, the Martyrology would have to be corrected, which recounts the martyrdom of the same martyr twice; for it cannot be said here that at one time the martyrdom, at another the finding or translation of the same man, is commemorated. Then it would be strange that in the aforesaid Acts of SS. Nereus and Achilleus, where the martyrdom of Victorinus and his companions is described at some length, no mention at all is made of a bishopric. I fear that the Acts of this man have been confused with the Acts of him of whom we treat on the day XV of April, and that on that account this man seems the same as that one. Ferrarius, as I gather from his own words, inclines to this opinion: that St. Victorinus the martyr of Cutiliæ, of whom the Acts of SS. Nereus and Achilleus speak, is commemorated in the Roman Martyrology only at the day XV of April, and was not adorned with the episcopal dignity; but that the Victorinus of the same name who is referred to therein at the V of September was bishop of Amiternum. But who is that Victorinus the bishop? Is he the brother of St. Severinus of Septempeda? He indeed really sat at Amiternum: but Ferrarius, like other moderns, seems to have been ignorant of this or not to have believed it. Certainly neither in the eulogy with which he adorns him at the VIII of June, nor in the annotation subjoined, does he make any mention of that saint's bishopric. Yet Ferrarius seems rather to hint that his bishop Victorinus was also a martyr, and consequently different from the confessor, the brother of St. Severinus. If that be so, in what century did that third Victorinus flourish? Where did he suffer? &c.

[29] Castellan in his Universal Martyrology separated by brackets from the rest of the Roman text [and Castellan would have venerated on the 5th of September: I acknowledge no other St. Victorinus who sat at Amiternum] the things which he judged to belong to the Martyr of Cutiliæ, thinking that another Saint than he is venerated today, to whom he left this: At Rome in the suburb, of St. Victorinus … who, famous for sanctity and miracles, obtained the priesthood of the city of Amiternum by the election of the whole people; or, as he has it in French: who for his sanctity and miracles was elected bishop of Amiternum by the whole people of the city. In the left margin is read: He died in peace. He differs from St. Victorinus of Cutiliæ, martyr of the first century, buried at Amiternum. In the right is noted the number VI, by which the century of the holy prelate's death is signified. You would say that Castellan is indicating St. Victorinus the brother of Severinus of Septempeda: for he administered the bishopric of Amiternum in the VI century, and in the same passed to a happier life. Yet I doubt whether this was Castellan's opinion: for he was not ignorant that St. Victorinus the confessor, whom the Roman at the VIII of June refers to without the title of bishop, is the brother of St. Severinus of Septempeda — for he noted this in the margin; but nowhere did he advise that he himself was a bishop, or that he is venerated on the V of September also, as he was elsewhere accustomed to do: and in the index of his Martyrology comprising the names of the Saints he seems to have distinguished him from the prelate of Amiternum and confessor, to whom he makes this day sacred, since he set down each distinctly thus: Victorinus of Amiternum, bishop, dead in peace, V Sept., and, after two intervening entries, Victorinus of Camerino, confessor, VIII of June.

[30] Further, whatever be the mind of Castellan and Ferrarius, [other than the brother of St. Severinus, whose cult on this day cannot be proved from the Martyrologies.] I for my part lay down this above all: The Martyrologies at the V of September afford no ground for supposing that there existed among men a St. Victorinus bishop of Amiternum different from the confessor, the brother of St. Severinus; for the words After a wonderful repentance he … was made bishop of the city of Amiternum, which are found in the Little Roman; Afterward he is elected bishop of the city of Amiternum, which Notker subjoins to the Saint's penance as related; Being then chosen by the whole people, he obtains the priesthood of the city of Amiternum, which Ado subjoined to the penance performed by the Saint, and which passed with slight change into Usuard and the new Roman — those words, I say, must be understood of no other St. Victorinus than the confessor, the brother of St. Severinus, as has been proved above. Secondly, no solid reason grounded in the Martyrologies can be brought forward why anyone should affirm that this day is consecrated to the veneration of the holy confessor so often mentioned, on which day, in the eulogies of Ado, Usuard, Notker and the new Roman, there is reported the passion of St. Victorinus crowned near Cutiliæ, to whom also belongs the appellation of martyr twice expressed in the Little Roman. Against Baronius, who judges that the Martyr of Cutiliæ is announced in the new Roman both on the V of September and on the XV of April together with SS. Eutyches and Maro, Ferrarius above objects: But if it be so, the Martyrology would have to be corrected, which recounts the martyrdom of the same Martyr twice &c. A futile argument surely: for neither the authors of the new Roman nor those of the older Martyrologies did anything deserving censure when, commemorating St. Maro first on the day XV of April, on which his feast is kept at Rieti, they added mention of his fellow martyrs Eutyches and Victorinus, adorned them all with a common eulogy, and then announced St. Victorinus separately on the day V of September, on which he is venerated, as will presently be said.

. Add floruit* flourished.

. epigraphen.*

§ IV. The cult of St. Victorinus M. on the Nones of September is proved: he is not to be distinguished from him whom the Hieronymian Martyrologies celebrate at the XXIV of July: did the LXXXIII holy Soldiers, martyrs of Amiternum, arise from a corrupt announcement of the Saint in them?

[ ] [The day now dedicated to the veneration of St. Victorinus M. of Cutiliæ is the 5th of September,] Baronius above at num. 20, and many others, affirm that St. Victorinus M. of Cutiliæ is venerated on this day; of the truth of which matter I am made secure first by a fragment of a letter of Fr. Antonio Beatillo, given at Naples on the XIII of November of the year 1638 to Bolland, which I found laid aside for this day, and which runs thus: I received these things from Amiternum, or from the city of Aquila: and they say that there a feast is celebrated every year in the month of September of St. Victorinus the martyr, and that from time immemorial: and they say that he himself was that Victorinus who was the companion of SS. Maro and Eutyches the martyrs. Secondly, by the account which Giovanni Marangoni, a presbyter of Vicenza, apostolic protonotary and canon of the cathedral of Anagni, transmitted to us from Rome in the year 1736. Since concerning St. Victorinus bishop of Amiternum near Aquila many doubtful and false things occur, inasmuch as his Acts have been confused by writers with the Acts of St. Victorinus of Camerino, on the occasion when I once approached the city of Aquila among the Vestini, I went on also to Amiternum, or rather to the very poor little village named after S. Vittorino, that I might survey the cemetery of the LXXXIII holy Soldiers MM., of whom in the Roman Martyrology of Baronius at the XXIV of July. Of the 83 Soldiers MM. inscribed in Baronius's Roman Martyrology we shall treat at more length a little below. In the same place I saw the tomb, but empty, with the inscription which I believe I gave at num. 24 from Antinori, of St. Victorinus, and the cemetery beneath that ancient church, in which I also found two most ancient stone fragments, in which is seen expressed the martyrdom of St. Victorinus, his head stretched out over the waters of Cutiliæ, and also the cutting off of his head, of which the Acts of SS. Nereus and Achilleus

have recorded nothing. Then, after some intervening matter, Marangoni testifies of the same St. Victorinus of Cutiliæ: whose memory is kept on the V of September — which day he also set at the head of the account sent to us.

[32] [and which I judge to have been sacred to the Saint of old also, at least from the time] The testimonies of Beatillo and Marangoni do not permit me to doubt that St. Victorinus M. of Cutiliæ now obtains a cult in the diocese of Aquila on the V of September. Did he obtain one of old as well? Bolland, at the VIII of January in the Commentary on St. Severinus of Septempeda num. 2, says: We suspect that on the V of September St. Victorinus the confessor, bishop of Amiternum, was formerly celebrated; whose name is now inscribed in the Roman Martyrology on the VIII of June. If Bolland's suspicion be true, I wonder that I have been unable to find, among the ancient Martyrologies in which the memory of St. Victorinus is set down on the V of September, a single one which celebrates the confessor by a pure announcement; whereas on the contrary many have occurred which report the Martyr without any admixture. To the Martyrology of Ado, which Domenico Giorgi brought to light at Rome in the year 1746, revised by himself and illustrated with notes, there is subjoined from pag. 656 another, from the codex of the Queen of Sweden CDXLI p. XLVI of the X century, which the editor calls the Fulda Martyrology, and which he says was excerpted from Ado and Usuard. Its author did not follow his leaders in the St. Victorinus of this day, when he adorns the holy Martyr with this eulogy, vitiated by no confusion: At Rome [], the birthday of St. Victorinus the martyr, who under the emperor Nerva was ordered by the president Aurelianus to be hung head downward for three days in the place where stinking and sulphurous waters flow out. And so the holy Martyr, gloriously crowned, passed to the Lord. In the same place, from pag. 704, the praised Giorgi gives the Palatine-Vatican Calendar, prefixed to a Gregorian Sacramentary of the XII century, in which is read at this day: Of Victorinus M. The ancient Pulsanensian codex of Usuard in Sollier has: At Rome, of blessed Victorinus the martyr; the Centula codex in the same Sollier, and the manuscript Martyrology of St. Lambert of Liège attributed to Bede: In the suburb of Rome, of blessed Victorinus the martyr: our Roman transcript from tom. 21 of the Vallicellan library of the Fathers of the Oratory: At Rome, of St. Victorinus M.: likewise another from the codex of the basilica of St. Peter, which Sollier surnamed the Second Vatican: At Rome, the birthday of Victorinus M.* Each transcript is Hieronymian in style; but it reports Saints received from the Little Roman, from Ado, or from elsewhere.

[33] The texts adduced suffice for anyone to judge with me [at which the author of the Little Roman wrote: the Hieronymian Martyrologies, older than that,] that St. Victorinus the martyr was formerly venerated on the day V of September, on which he is now venerated in the diocese of Aquila, in the diocese of Amiternum also, which now for nearly five centuries has constituted a part of that one; and that Ado and the other classic martyrologists so often mentioned meant to treat of the holy Martyr on the same day, but erred when they transferred to him what belonged to the confessor. That the veneration of St. Victorinus attached to the day V of September is of such antiquity that it flourished also in the centuries nearer to his martyrdom, I would neither dare to affirm nor yet to deny. Not the first, because among the Martyrologies which announce the holy Martyr on that day I know none older than the Little Roman; whereas the Hieronymian Martyrologies, written before it, refer him to the day XXIV of July, which they call his birthday. Nor yet the second, because it could have come about that at Amiternum in early times a double festivity was instituted: the one on the XXIV of July, on which his birthday, the other on the V of September, on which the translation of his body was celebrated — namely that translation which the Acts of SS. Nereus and Achilleus mention: When he had lain one day unburied at Cotylæ, the Christian people of Amiternum came, and carried him off, and translated him into their own territory, and there buried him.

[34] However the matter stood, it does not seem possible to doubt that the men of Amiternum kept the holy Martyr's birthday from the beginning on the XXIV of July; [without doubt refer our Martyr to the day 24 of July, which they call his birthday: a grave] at which day in the Hieronymian which Florentini published under the name of the Older, we read: In the city of Amiternum, at the LXXXIII milestone from the city of Rome, on the Salutary (Salarian) way, the birthday of St. Victorinus. In other codices, below at num. 36, martyr is added. Sollier, treating of St. Victorinus M., whose memory is most celebrated at the XXIV of July in the Hieronymian Martyrologies, had not yet ascertained which St. Victorinus was venerated on the V of September: whence he left in the middle the question whether this one was the same as that or different. But since I am now sufficiently instructed that today's St. Victorinus is the Martyr who suffered near Cutiliæ, and since the announcement adduced fits exactly a man laid in the city of Amiternum (a word whose signification embraces the city together with its suburban territory) on the Salarian way, why should I distinguish the St. Victorinus whom this commemorates from him of Cutiliæ? But if in the Hieronymian which Florentini published we rightly read: In the city of Amiternum, at the LXXXIII milestone &c., what is to be determined about this announcement of Ado at the same day XXIV of July: At the city of Amiternum, of eighty-three Soldiers? The same number of holy Soldiers is attributed to Amiternum by Usuard, Notker and the Roman of Baronius, in which they are indicated to be martyrs.

[35] [difficulty is raised concerning the 83 Soldiers, martyrs of Amiternum, who from a corrupt] Another might answer that the text of the older Hieronymian Martyrology is reported by Florentini in the Notes from two other codices, with almost this sole difference, that instead of miliario LXXXIII is written mil. LXXXIII; and that the abbreviated word mil., that is, miliario, was taken for militibus soldiers: which error, once committed by an older copyist, was thereafter adopted by more recent ones. I could wish that I were able to remove from this answer every appearance of truth, and to demonstrate that the holy 83 Soldiers of Amiternum were not formed out of an equal number of milestones. Orlendi in the Sacred and Profane World, part 2 book 4 chap. 15 num. XI, writes that their feast is kept in the diocese of Aquila on the XXIV of July. There are also those whom I have read to expose to public veneration certain bodies and notable relics of the same. These men, and especially the men of Aquila, neighbors to ruined Amiternum, I beg and adjure to supply arguments by which the difficulty objected may be met. Baronius, in his Notes on the Roman concerning that cohort of Soldiers martyrs on the XXIV of July, and concerning SS. Florentius and Felix on the XXV of the same, affirms that these two were of their number. Ferrarius in the Catalogue of the Saints of Italy agrees, and others, who hand down that they obtained the palm of Martyrdom under the emperors Maximian and Diocletian. But from what Sollier discussed concerning SS. Florentius and Felix at the said day XXV of July, and concerning Justa V. and M., the daughter of the former, at the 1st of August, it is manifest that the opinion of Baronius and his followers is propped up by no probable reason nor by any authority fit to produce belief.

[36] announcement of St. Victorinus in some codices, which I here propose as genuine, Those who would take up the cause of the 83 Soldiers MM. may not take refuge in this, that they should say the announcement of the older Hieronymian to be corrupt in miliario LXXXIII: for first, that manner of speaking is most frequent in the ancient Hieronymian Martyrologies, that Martyrs who were crowned or laid on some famous Roman road — as the Salarian is there — should be announced with a note of the number of milestones by which the city itself is distant from the palæstra of the contest or from the place of deposition. If you desire examples, turn over Florentini, the editor of the Older, and very many will occur. But that for those going from Rome to Amiternum by the Salarian way a journey of 83 milestones was not to be accomplished, no one who keeps to the ancient manner of computing milestones will prove. Secondly, the same number of milestones is most clearly expressed in the Greater Corbie codex in Florentini's Notes: In the city of Amiternum, at the eighty-third milestone from the city of Rome, on the Salarian way, the birthday of St. Victorinus the martyr. And this text Sollier pronounces to be beyond doubt genuine; and it is confirmed from the abridged Hieronymian Martyrologies. The manuscript of the Queen of Sweden in the praised Florentini has: In the city of Amiternum, at the 83rd milestone from the city of Rome, of St. Victurinus. Another under the name of the Queen of Sweden, in tom. VII of June after the Index of Saints: in the city of Namiternina [], at the LXXXIV [] milestone from the city of Rome, the birthday of St. Victurinus. The Corbie codex more briefly in the same place: In the city of Armia Termina [], at the LXXXIII milestone, the birthday of St. Victorinus the martyr. The milestones are passed over in silence in the Roman codex of St. Cyriacus in the same place: In A … to (read, as it stands in our second Cassinese transcript, In Amiternum) of St. Victorinus the martyr.*

[37] I have thought good to transcribe these texts from the Hieronymian Martyrologies, first, may be judged to have drawn their origin. that I might confirm that the men of Amiternum formerly kept on the XXIV of July the birthday of St. Victorinus the martyr, whom it is not permitted to distinguish from the Martyr of Cutiliæ laid in the city of Amiternum on the Salarian way: for what reason or authority persuades us to attribute two SS. Victorinus, martyrs, to the men of Amiternum? Secondly, that those who now venerate on the same day the 83 Soldiers MM. of Amiternum might more clearly understand that the argument objected above is not destitute of foundation — the argument which renders the existence of those holy Soldiers very suspect — and might thus be the more roused to vindicate it. The dread by which I am pressed, that that argument cannot be sufficiently dissolved, they will never have removed unless they prove that this handful of the 83 holy Soldiers MM., which is ascribed to Amiternum by Ado and other martyrologists, was received from some other source than the Hieronymian Martyrologies: for it seems to me beyond doubt that in them this or a similar reading, In the city of Amiternum, at the LXXXIII milestone from the city of Rome &c., is the original one. If other documents than the Hieronymian cannot be adduced, I must be pardoned for being unable to lay aside a fear which everyone will confess prudent, that in place of miliario LXXXIII there were substituted, by a drowsy, unskilled or unfaithful copyist, Milites LXXXIII; which error passed into the Martyrologies of Ado, Usuard and others, and at length into the Roman of Baronius also.

[38] Since St. Victorinus M. consummated his martyrdom about 60 miles from the city of Rome near the town of Cutiliæ, [Those who so believe will easily give the reason why on the 24th of July and the 5th of September he is announced at Rome or in its suburb] but the suburban place at Amiternum where his body was laid is farther distant from Rome, it will seem strange to some why on the XXIV of July in some Martyrologies, and on the V of September in all which mention him, he should be announced at Rome, or in the suburban district or in the suburb of Rome. Another, about to give the reason, would again use this censorious reasoning. When the former part of the Hieronymian text, In the city of Amiternum at the LXXXIII milestone, had been turned into the holy 83 Soldiers of the same city, it was bound to happen that the other part, From the city of Rome, on the Salarian way, the birthday of St. Victorinus the martyr, as the Greater Corbie has it, should be taken for the full and separate announcement of St. Victorinus M., and that for from the city of Rome there should be put the suburb or the suburban district, or the city of Rome itself. Hence Notker at the XXIV of July: At Rome, the nativity of St. Victorinus. In the city of Ammiternum, of eighty-three Soldiers. In the Epternach Hieronymian in Florentini, who calls it most ancient, and

in the abridged Rheinau and Reichenau Martyrologies, published by Sollier in the last volume of June, the 83 holy Martyrs are dispatched to Lesser Armenia. The words of the Epternach codex are: In Lesser Armenia at Sebaste, of Theogenes, Victor and LXXXIII others. At Rome, of Victorinus &c. This Saint is passed over in silence in the Rheinau codex; but in the Reichenau, after and of eighty-three others, there follows: Elsewhere the birthday of Victurinus.

[39] so many Martyrologies announce the Saint, entangling the 83 Soldiers MM. Sollier at the XXIV of July brought back the 83 anonymous MM. from Lesser Armenia to Amiternum, and gave them together with St. Victorinus M., whom nevertheless he confesses was not sufficiently known to him. They are similarly joined in the Beneventan Martyrology in Holstenius's Notes on the Roman: At the city of Amiternum, of LXXXIII Soldiers and of St. Victorinus the martyr. The same is done in the Second Vatican. St. Victorinus M. is sent back to Rome in the headless Barberini codex in the praised Sollier: At Rome, the birthday of St. Victurinus. Those 83 Soldiers who are here passed over in silence, Ado, Usuard and other younger martyrologists commemorated on the same day XXIV of July; but St. Victorinus they transferred to the V of September, beginning their eulogies At Rome, or In the suburban district of Rome &c., whence which words came has already been assigned. They had as their leader the author of the Little Roman, whose reason for announcing St. Victorinus on the V of September may have been that in his age the birthday, the XXIV of July, or rather its celebration, had been transposed to the V of September, the former day being destined for the cult of the 83 Soldiers of Amiternum, already by then fashioned out of the same number of miles' distance from the city of Rome as far as Amiternum.

[40] [in perplexities from which those who would vindicate them for Amiternum will hardly extricate themselves.] The objections raised at num. 38 and following involve in new perplexities those Saints who are believed by their worshippers to have suffered at Amiternum or in the neighboring places — perplexities from which I wish I could extricate myself! If I say that in the Epternach and other Hieronymian Martyrologies, in which they are attributed to Lesser Armenia, there was an error from Amiternum into Armenia, the opposing side will not indeed deny it, judging this text about St. Victorinus M. to be genuine: In the city of Amiternum at the LXXXIII milestone &c.; but it will contend that the author of the Beneventan Martyrology, Ado &c. similarly wandered from 83 miles into as many soldiers of Amiternum; and that hence it came about that the second part of the same text, from the city of Rome, on the Salarian way, the birthday of St. Victorinus the martyr, was believed to be a complete announcement, and that now for from the city of Rome there is read in the Martyrologies its suburban district, its suburb, or the city itself. To this it may be replied that the holy Martyr is set down in them at Rome &c. because he was crowned on a Roman road, namely the Salarian. So it is: Martyrs who suffered or were laid in places lying on some Roman road, though far from the city itself, are often ascribed to Rome in the ancient Martyrologies: but often too they are announced in the places of their passion or deposition, with their distance from the city either passed over or expressed. But now, since St. Jerome, or the author of the Martyrology which is believed to be St. Jerome's, noted St. Victorinus M. not at Rome but where he was laid, In the city of Amiternum, at the LXXXIII milestone from the city of Rome, on the Salarian way &c., there remains not only the difficulty about the 83 Soldiers of Amiternum, but also the probability of the reason given for the first origin of the words at Rome, in the suburban district or in the suburb of Rome, with which the commemorations and eulogies of St. Victorinus begin in some Hieronymian codices and in the Little Roman, in Ado, and in other Martyrologies.

. Romæ.*

. Read Amiternina.*

*. Read *LXXXIII.*

. Read Amiternina.*

§ V. A dissertation on the time of the exile, the servitude and the martyrdom.

[ ] [St. Victorinus M. and others sent into exile under Domitian: with the Roman Martyrology at the 15th of April and the 5th of September] It remains to consider under what emperors St. Victorinus bore his exile on the island of Pontia, his servitude near Cutiliæ, and his martyrdom. It is established from the testimony of the ancients in Eusebius, book 3 of the Ecclesiastical History chap. 18, that in the fifteenth year of the principate of Domitian — which is made up of the year of Christ 95 from the Ides of September, and of 96 up to the same day — Flavia Domitilla, the niece by a sister of that Flavius Clemens who at that time was consul at Rome, was deported to the island of Pontia together with very many others, namely Nereus, Achilleus, Victorinus &c., on account of the confession of Christ. When Domitian was slain on the XIV of the Kalends of October of the year 96, Nerva was substituted for him, after whose death at the end of January of the year 98 Trajan reigned. In the present Roman Martyrology at the XV of April, SS. Maro, Eutyches and Victorinus are asserted to have been freed under the emperor Nerva from the exile into which they had been cast with St. Flavia Domitilla under Domitian, and to have been put to death by various punishments in the persecution of Trajan. Receive the text itself: On the same day, of the holy martyrs Maro, Eutyches and Victorinus, who first were exiles with blessed Flavia Domitilla at the island of Pontia in the confession of Christ; afterward, being freed under the emperor Nerva, when they had converted very many to the faith, were ordered in the persecution of Trajan by the judge Valerian to be put to death by various punishments. For Valerian should be read Aurelianus: for so have the Acts of SS. Nereus and Achilleus, Ado, Usuard &c., and the Roman itself at the V of September; where of St. Victorinus we read: Under Nerva Trajan at Cutiliæ, where stinking and sulphurous waters flow out, being banished with the other servants of God (see above at num. 15) he was ordered by the judge Aurelianus to be hung &c. These words seem to signify that not only St. Victorinus's martyrdom, but also his dispatch to the place where he suffered servitude, befell under Nerva Trajan.

[42] That the Saints were freed from exile under Nerva, but under Trajan sent away to the places of servitude and visited with the supreme punishments, [Baronius affirms that the Saint with his companions was freed from exile under Nerva,] is Baronius's opinion also. In the Ecclesiastical Annals at the year 98, to which he attaches the murder of Domitian and Nerva's succession to the empire — things which should be drawn back to the year 96 — he says there at num. 12: As soon as Nerva began to guide the free reins of empire, he had nothing more at heart than to restore by postliminy the Christians condemned by Domitian under the title of impiety and made exiles; and moreover to forbid that anyone thereafter who did not worship the gods and who followed the Christian religion should be accused as guilty of impiety. Then, having adduced the testimony of Dio who asserts both things, he thus concludes: Wherefore it must be affirmed that both Flavia Domitilla the elder and the younger, and other of their number — among whom he presently reckons St. Victorinus and his companions — who had been banished to the island by Domitian, returned to Rome, although the Acts of them which survive have nothing of these matters. St. Flavia Domitilla, whom I mentioned before, is the younger of that name, or the virgin, the cousin of T. Fl. Clemens the consul, who was put to death by order of Domitian for the faith of Christ. Concerning Fl. Domitilla the elder, the widow of the same Clemens, banished for the same cause to Pandataria, an island of the Tyrrhenian sea, on the testimony of Dio in Xiphilinus, see Henschen, tom. III of May pag. 9.

[43] [then to have undergone servitude and martyrdom under Trajan; which things contradict the Acts.] Just as Baronius holds that SS. Victorinus, Eutyches and Maro, exiled on the island of Pontia with Fl. Domitilla the younger, remained there until Nerva's death, so also he denies that they were sent into servitude while that emperor lived, in the annotation with which he takes up these words of the Roman at the XV of April, being freed under the emperor Nerva. These words, he says, seem to have been added of set purpose; from which also their Acts must be corrected, where it is read that they were reduced to servitude under Nerva: for it is established that the emperor Nerva not only did not bind the Christians, but rather led the bound out of custody, and restored the exiles and the proscribed… An error crept into those Acts, so that in place of Nerva Trajan there is found simply Nerva. Francesco Maria de Aste, archbishop of Otranto, dissents from Baronius in his chronological disquisition on the eulogy of St. Victorinus and his companions in the Roman at the XV of April: Not only do these Acts set forth under Nerva without the addition of Trajan, but so do Ado, Usuard, Bellinus, Maurolycus, Felicianus, Galesinius, Canisius and others: from which it is drawn that the Acts, cited and followed by so many writers, must be adjudged genuine. After a few intervening words, he says that in the Acts it is affirmed that the Saints not only were consigned to servitude under Nerva, but also consummated their martyrdom. Then, after Usuard's text at the XV of April, in which they are said to have been crowned under the emperor Nerva, he exhibits the eulogy of the present Roman, which I gave entire at num. 41, mutilated of these portions: being freed under the emperor Nerva, and in the persecution of Trajan by the judge Valerian [*]; and he judges it expedient that without these it should be read in the Church.

[44] I think that St. Fl. Domitilla remained in Pontia under Nerva, and that there I agree neither in all things with the most illustrious prelate of Otranto, nor yet with Baronius, who embraces and defends as true what the other would prefer struck out of the Roman Martyrology. St. Jerome, in the letter to Eustochium which is inscribed the Epitaph of her mother Paula, says: Paula was carried to the island of Pontia, which the exile of Flavia Domitilla the younger, once the most illustrious of women, ennobled; and seeing the little cells in which she had led a LONG MARTYRDOM &c. But now, since it is certain from the Eusebius cited that the same Fl. Domitilla began to be in exile with very many others in the fifteenth year of the principate of Domitian, and since this emperor, when that year had elapsed, survived among the living only five days; and since Nerva his successor, who lived after him only 16 months and some days, willed at the beginning of his reign that the Christian exiles should be restored to their country: how did the holy virgin lead a long martyrdom in Pontia, if she returned to Rome under Nerva? To me these things do not seem capable of being reconciled with one another in any sufficiently probable manner. It appears to me more credible that the holy virgin remained in exile the whole time in which Nerva reigned, and even after his death, until under Trajan she was carried over to Terracina, where she consummated the glorious course of her long martyrdom. Tillemont, tom. 2 of the Ecclesiastical Monuments pag. 127, observes that Nerva may have had special reasons why he did not wish Flavia Domitilla the elder and the younger to appear quickly at Rome, or permitted them to be detained in exile: namely, because he feared some evil to himself from their restoration; for they were kinswomen of Domitian, who was beloved of the soldiers after his death, and who had openly destined as his successors the sons of T. Fl. Clemens the consul and of Fl. Domitilla the elder — the cousins of the younger — while they were still little children, and had ordered that, their former name being abolished, the one should be called Vespasian and the other Domitian. So Suetonius in Domitian the emperor. Perhaps too Fl. Domitilla the younger bore a voluntary exile under Nerva, because she knew that she could not serve God so freely nor guard so securely the virginity consecrated to him, if she lived at Rome more exposed

to the vexations of Aurelianus, who was trying by every means to wring from her a consent to the marriage.

[45] If St. Fl. Domitilla the younger remained in Pontia under Nerva, [St. Victorinus and his companions clung to her in her exile, until they were led away into servitude;] why should there not have stayed with her not only SS. Nereus and Achilleus, who were her chamberlains, but also SS. Victorinus, Eutyches and Maro, who are called her household by Baronius in the Annals at the year 100 num. 12, and whom the Acts hand down to have been joined to the exiled virgin by a pious and intimate familiarity? For they relate that, when Aurelianus was trying everything that he might reach Domitilla's consent, it was reported to him that she had a greater affection for Eutyches and Victorinus and Maro than she had had for her eunuchs Nereus and Achilleus — beheaded at Terracina — who had taught her to believe in Christ. As these two clung to Fl. Domitilla in her exile in Pontia until they were led to the palæstra of their martyrdom, so, more probably, did the others until they were led away into servitude, confirming her in the faith of Christ and in her purpose of preserving her virginity. But that the Saints were carried to their passions and to the places of servitude neither from Rome nor from anywhere else than from the island of Pontia, the Acts expressly affirm. Therefore with the most illustrious Francesco Maria de Aste I judge it expedient that from the eulogy of SS. Victorinus and his companions which stands at the XV of April in the Roman, these words should be absent: being freed under the emperor Nerva, that is, as Baronius explains and maintains, restored from exile to their country. Ado favors us, writing of the Saints at the same day: Who with blessed Flavia Domitilla at the island of Pontia, leading a LONG EXILE, and cherishing her in the confession of Christ with pious consolation, by the envy and persecution of Aurelianus her betrothed &c. Notker has the same. In Usuard too I read that the Saints led a long exile. If this is true, not only must their return to their country under Nerva be denied, but their banishment also from exile into servitude, and their passion, seem to be deferred to the reign of Trajan. Yet the same martyrologists recall both to the times of Nerva; for after asserting the length of the exile Ado and Notker thus proceed: Afterward they were handed over by the emperor Nerva into servitude to the same Aurelianus; and Usuard: Afterward, under the emperor Nerva, they were ordered to be put to death by various punishments. The two former martyrologists at the V of September attach St. Victorinus's servitude and passion — and Usuard also the passion — to the reign of Nerva. Their eulogies are drawn from the Acts, which assert that only the Saints' servitude befell under Nerva. Whether these and the praised martyrologists are to be agreed with, let the reader judge from what follows.

[46] To the Church which Domitian had persecuted which more probably befell under Trajan: their servitude, and also, his successor Nerva restored peace as soon as he began to reign, and, as Dio in Xiphilinus, translated into Latin by Sylburg, testifies, he absolved those who had been made defendants for impiety… He also permitted no one to be accused of impiety or of the Jewish rite. Judaism, atheism, or impiety toward the gods were the crimes of Christians, on account of which in Domitian's persecution very many were stripped of their goods, cast into bonds and prisons, thrust into exile, and condemned to death. If that best of emperors Nerva did not even permit anyone to be prosecuted as guilty of the Christian faith — to profess which was, among the heathen, to have committed those crimes — it is hard to believe that Aurelianus denounced to Nerva himself the fact that SS. Victorinus, Eutyches and Maro were Christians and despisers of the gods; and moreover asked of him that he would hand them over to be subjected to servitude, if they should refuse to sacrifice to the gods; and then that the Saints, refusing to do it, were condemned to servitude. Yet these things must have happened under Nerva, if the Acts do not err; for they say: Whence it came about that Aurelianus asked of the emperor Nerva that they should be given to him, if they should refuse to sacrifice. And when they bore themselves manfully, Eutyches, Victorinus and Maro, and utterly disregarded the threats of Aurelianus, he removed them from the island, and distributed them singly through his own estates as though they were slaves. These things agree so little with the testimony of Dio and with the kindly disposition of Nerva, through whom the Christians were permitted, immediately after Domitian's murder, to practice the true religion tranquilly and freely, that I cannot disapprove that pronouncement of Baronius: An error crept into those Acts, so that in place of Nerva Trajan there is found simply Nerva. The most illustrious prelate of Otranto contradicts him, led by this argument alone, that not only the Acts, but Ado, Usuard and other martyrologists expressed the bare name of Nerva: whence, however, nothing else can be inferred than that Ado, whom the rest followed, found it so written in the exemplar which he used. Let others stand by the judgment of the prelate of Otranto: to me Baronius's opinion is more pleasing, conformable to the Roman Martyrology at the V of September. I gave its words at num. 41.

[47] [as others think, his martyrdom, the Acts fix to the reign of Nerva, whose authority proves nothing:] The most illustrious prelate of Otranto believes that SS. Victorinus and his companions not only were consigned to servitude under Nerva, but also consummated their martyrdom then; which nevertheless the Acts do not say, although they seemed to him and to others to say it: for they name no emperor when they narrate the Saints' supreme contests. But from the fact that they affirm that these men underwent the yoke of servitude under Nerva, it can in no way be deduced that that emperor was still among the living when they suffered their last. Whence Henschen, treating of the Saints at the XV of April, opposes the Acts in vain to the Roman Martyrology, which says that on the same day they were crowned in the persecution of Trajan. That these words be taken away from the Roman's text is the counsel of the praised prelate, which I neither approve nor think will ever be carried out. Even if it were manifestly laid down in the Acts that martyrdom was inflicted on the Saints under Nerva, I would not acquiesce in them; because under that emperor, most averse from the shedding of Christian blood, martyrs are not to be posited without the gravest authority. And this authority is not to be attributed to the Acts. How much they are worth, receive briefly from Sollier's observation on Usuard's text concerning St. Fl. Domitilla at the VII of May. The knot recurs about the Acts themselves, praised by Henschen at the XII of May in the Commentary on SS. Nereus and Achilleus &c. num. 2 as OF THE BEST FAITH, although Baronius had long since acknowledged, tom. 1 at the year LXVIII num. XXIII, that those Acts are in some things held not of entire credit. More recent scholars treat them more rigidly; nor could Tillemont, elsewhere so moderate, refrain here from drawing a sharp censure upon them, tom. 2 of the Ecclesiastical Monuments pag. CXXVII, calling the work a very bad one, and worthy to be numbered among the fictions of the Manichæans, who assail the sacred bonds of matrimony. He pronounces neither nothing nor everything rightly: the judgment of the most eminent annalist is preferable.

[48] What is to be answered to the Martyrology of Ado and the rest, which at the XV of April and the V of September attach the servitude and martyrdom of SS. Victorinus and his companions to the reign of Nerva, difficulties to be solved by those who adhere to the Acts and the Martyrologies. is gathered from what has been said before; namely that that emperor passed into the Martyrologies from this place in the Acts: Whence it came about that he asked of the emperor Nerva &c.; but that here for the name Nerva there should more probably be substituted or added Trajan: which at num. 46 I seem to myself to have sufficiently proved. Yet perhaps there will not be wanting those who will judge that the Acts and the ancient Martyrologies are rather to be adhered to. To these I propose the following difficulties for solution. In the 15th year of the emperor Domitian, in the course of which Victorinus, Eutyches and Maro were sent into exile with Fl. Domitilla the younger, Nereus and Achilleus, when not yet 17 full months had rolled by, Trajan was already reigning: but Ado, Usuard and Notker at the XV of April say that the three former Saints led a long exile with Fl. Domitilla; and the same they write also at the XII of May concerning Nereus and Achilleus, after whose martyrdom the Acts openly declare that SS. Victorinus and his companions survived alive more than a year: and so these Saints could not have fallen as martyrs before the reign of Trajan. Now I ask further, under whom did Nereus and Achilleus, the eunuchs of Fl. Domitilla, shed their blood for Christ, if, as the same martyrologists with the present Roman hand down, they endured a long exile in Pontia? I expect no other answer than that their passion must be deferred to the times of Trajan: for the length of the exile asserted of the holy eunuchs, the short reign of Nerva — which he began to administer a little while after their banishment into exile — and his kindliness toward the Christians altogether require it. But again the Acts clearly affirm that Victorinus, Eutyches and Maro lived for some while as exiles in Pontia with Fl. Domitilla after the martyrdom of Nereus and Achilleus: therefore under Trajan they not only suffered martyrdom, but were also sent away from Pontia to the places of servitude.

[49] The Acts have it that SS. Victorinus, Eutyches and Maro, [The Saints' most harsh servitude; the rest of their life; martyrdom at the end of the 1st century or the beginning of the 2nd.] dragged off into servitude and distributed through the estates of Aurelianus, had to dig the earth the whole day long, but toward evening to eat bran, that is, bran-bread. Baronius above at num. 43 signifies in no obscure words that the Saints were moreover bound with fetters and detained in custody. He deduced this, namely, from the fact that men formerly condemned to rustic servitude were wont to till the field in chains and to be kept in workhouses. This ancient custom among the Romans the testimonies of the ancients place beyond doubt: from which I have learned that it flourished in Trajan's times also. Hence I shall readily believe that the Saints dug the earth in fetters, and, when this hard labor was done, were thrust into the workhouses. There follows in the Acts: But almighty God gave them grace in those foreign places, where they served their servitude; for Eutyches freed from the devil the daughter of the lessee of the place; Victorinus by his prayer made whole the steward of the place, a paralytic who had not risen from his bed for three years; and Maro freed the procurator of the city of Septempeda, who was suffering from the disease of dropsy. Those who were visited with such great benefits could return this favor to the Saints, that they either manumitted them or procured their manumission. Certainly what is subjoined immediately after is by no means consonant with the servile condition of the Saints, even if you suppose that they were neither bound nor shut up in workhouses: Meanwhile, delivering discourses to the people, they taught many to believe in Christ, and, being made presbyters, they increased the people of believers. And this was the cause why at length they were put to death by various punishments. The time cannot be exactly determined. This alone can be held for certain, that they were crowned with martyrdom not later than the beginning of the 2nd century. They may have consummated it at the end of the 1st century under Trajan, who began to reign at the end of January of the year 98. The opinion which binds their servitude and passion to the reign of Nerva has been weakened above.

. Read Aureliano.*

§ VI. The village of St. Victorinus M., in which a church was consecrated to him in the year MCLXX, is illustrated with various pieces of information: the Saint's cult very widely propagated.

[ ] [The diocese of Amiternum in the 12th century was united to that of Rieti, whose bishop Dodo] Among the prelates of the ancient church of Amiternum I know none later than Lodoicus, who subscribed to the Roman council celebrated in the year 1059. Ughelli, in the Italia Sacra of the new edition, tom. 1 col. [ ], brings forward a letter of Pope Anastasius IV given to Dodo bishop of Rieti in the year 1153, in which I read that the parish of St. Sixtus in Amiternum… the parish of St. Victorinus near Amiternum… and in those parishes the oratories… of St. Severinus and of St. Avita in Amiternum, of St. John the Baptist of S. Vittorino are subject to the bishopric of Rieti. The other parishes and oratories subject to it, which had previously belonged to the diocese of Amiternum, Antinori designates from the Pontifical letter in chap. 2 of the Introduction to the History of Aquila num. 9: where, after he had rightly observed that instead of the day IX of the Kalends of February, on which they are noted in Ughelli as given, one should rather read the IX of the Kalends of September, he writes that the same Dodo, bishop of Rieti, consecrated the holy Martyr's church on the XXIV of July in the year 1170 in the castle of S. Vittorino; and [*] a stone fixed to the wall on the Gospel side of the high altar of the parish church attests it.

[51] [in the year 1170 consecrated a church to St. Victorinus M. in the village which has retained its name from him:] Antinori subjoins this inscription carved on the stone: ✠ IN THE NAME OF THE LORD, AMEN. IN THE YEAR OF THE LORD'S INCARNATION M.C.LXX, ON THE VIII OF THE KALENDS OF AUGUST, I DODO BY THE GRACE OF GOD BISHOP OF RIETI, TOGETHER WITH ANSELM OF FOLIGNO AND BERARDUS OF FORCONA, BISHOPS, CONSECRATED THE CHURCH OF S. VICTORINUS M. IN THE HIGH ALTAR I LAID UP OF THE WOOD OF THE CROSS OF CHRIST AND OF HIS SEPULCHRE AND OF THE VIRGIN MARY AND OF HER GARMENTS AND OF THE RELICS OF S. ANDREW THE APOSTLE AND OF THE PROTOMARTYR S. STEPHEN AND OF SEBASTIAN M. AND OF ELEUTHERIUS AND OF ANTHIA HIS MOTHER AND OF BLESSED BARBARA AND OF S. STEPHEN POPE AND OF BLESSED AUGUSTINE CONFESSOR, OF MARCELLINUS AND PETER AND OF CALLISTUS POPE AND OF VICTORINUS AND OF VICTORINUS. TO THIS END WE GRANT TO ALL WHO COME DEVOUTLY ON THE FESTIVAL OF THE SAME AND UP TO THE OCTAVE, OR WHO SEND OF THEIR GOODS, A YEARLY REMISSION OF THREE YEARS AND XL DAYS; AND THIS IN THE TIME OF LORD TODINUS SON OF GUETULUS, LORD RA. BEING ARCHPRIEST. The words of the inscription IN THE HIGH ALTAR I LAID UP … OF THE RELICS … AND OF VICTORINUS AND OF VICTORINUS may be understood thus, that in the high altar were deposited the relics of both SS. Victorinus, namely of the martyr and of the confessor, bishop of Amiternum. But it may have happened that through the carver's inadvertence the name of the holy Martyr, to whom the church was consecrated, crept in twice. Certainly to him alone are to be referred the things which immediately follow the doubled name of St. Victorinus: TO THIS END WE GRANT TO ALL WHO COME DEVOUTLY ON THE FESTIVAL OF THE SAME AND UP TO THE OCTAVE, OR WHO SEND OF THEIR GOODS, A YEARLY &c. To the little word AN, which is perhaps redundant, Antinori appended THUS, judging that it can or ought to be so corrected. The last words of the inscription are: LORD RA. BEING ARCHPRIEST. The abbreviated name RA. is, for Antinori, Raynaldus, whom he says to have been archpriest of S. Vittorino in the year 1170, in which the dedication of the church was made.

[52] The see of Forcona was established at Aquila by Pope Alexander IV, [I think that the archpriest with the canons migrated thence to Aquila after the middle of the 13th century] which city lies midway between Amiternum and Forcona and grew out of the ruins of both, in the year 1256; as can be proved from two letters of that same Pontiff, written toward the end of the said year, which Bernardino Cirillo produces in the Collection of certain documents appended to his Annals of Aquila. In the following year the prelates of the diocese of Amiternum, which, being united to that of Rieti, had long wanted a pastor of its own, swore obedience and reverence under certain conditions to Berardus de Padula, the first bishop of Aquila. Antinori in chap. 4 of the Introduction num. 7 brings forward the public instrument on this matter, drawn up on the XXI of January in the year 1257, in which the prelates of the church of Amiternum — among whom Thomas, archpriest of S. Vittorino, is named in the first place — are said to be inhabitants of the city of Aquila. I believe that the archpriest of the church of S. Vittorino, with the college of canons — with which it was then distinguished, as a monument of the year 1296 to be cited at num. 54 teaches — migrated to Aquila within the space of time in which that city was founded, or at any rate greatly enlarged with buildings, endowed with the title and right of a city, and adorned with an episcopal see, that is, within the five years immediately preceding the year of Christ 1257. The same chapter still stands today at Aquila, and the same archpresbyteral dignity, in the collegiate and parish church of S. Biagio.

[53] It cannot be called into doubt that the men of Amiternum, according to the ancient custom, buried St. Victorinus in a suburban place, and that the prelates of Amiternum, at least the last of them, to which afterward the name was given from the holy Martyr, and that over his body — of whose translation we shall treat in the last § — they built a church. Antinori in the praised Introduction, at the beginning of chap. 2, affirms that it was at one time the cathedral of the diocese of Amiternum. The place of the episcopal see, he says, was Amiternum, a city most famous among the ancients… Ruins, the testimonies of writers, and tradition show that its site was near the village of S. Vittorino; and that village afterward stood as the see … The title of the church is St. Victorinus's &c. I do not know whether it can be proved by fitting testimony that the see of the ancient prelates of Amiternum was first established in a church situated within the city walls, and afterward in the suburban church of S. Vittorino. This only seems to me able to be gathered from the documents presently to be brought forward, that the last prelates of Amiternum had their see in the holy Martyr's church.

[54] When the episcopal see of Forcona was translated in the year 1256 to Aquila, sat in the village and church of S. Vittorino, which is near the village and church of S. Vittorino, the prelates of the church of Amiternum, as I said before, swore obedience and reverence under certain conditions to Berardus, the new prelate of that city. Among others this was laid down, that the archpriest of the church of S. Vittorino, the chief of the prelates of Amiternum, should preserve the episcopal rights which he had been accustomed to exercise in various places. The instrument of the agreement made on the XXI of January in the year 1257 between the said prelates and Berardus bishop of Aquila, which I mentioned at num. 52, sets forth those rights thus, not without solecisms: The church of S. Vittorino has been accustomed to take cognizance of matrimonial causes and to have episcopal rights in the castle of S. Vittorino, of Piczulum, of Porcinarium, of Rocca de Venis and of Clarenum; and the aforesaid have been accustomed to receive the holy Chrism from the church of S. Vittorino: and it has judged concerning oppressions in the aforesaid castles, and in the castle of Preturium and in the whole land of Pretorianum, and to give Chrism and Oil to the aforesaid, and in the castle of Arischium the holy Chrism. The lord bishop answers: It is agreeable, provided it be proved that it is held by an approved and canonical custom. Nicholas de Castrocello, the third bishop of Aquila, when he had diligently examined the rights of the archpriest of S. Vittorino, declared on the X of September in the year 1296 that the Archpriest and chapter of S. Vittorino and their predecessors had from that time whereof no memory exists, and still have and ought to exercise, in the aforesaid churches and places a spiritual and temporal jurisdiction in those matters which are known to pertain to the ecclesiastical forum &c. The sentence of the prelate Nicholas Antinori gives entire in note 35 to the catalogue of the bishops of Aquila, in Muratori tom. 6 of the Antiquities of Italy from col. 944. What I have transferred hither from the two instruments of the XIII century, joined to Antinori's testimony, leads me to believe that the village famous for the name and church of St. Victorinus M. was the seat of at least the last prelates of Amiternum. Whoever desires to know more fully the privileges and episcopal rights of the archpriest of S. Vittorino, let him read the aforesaid instrument of agreement drawn up in the year 1257, and what Ughelli extracted from the bull of Pope Innocent VIII, given in the year 1489, tom. 1 of the Italia Sacra last published, col. 392.

[55] [which afterward, as Antinori believes, was dedicated to St. Michael the archangel:] The church of S. Vittorino, which according to Antinori was once the cathedral of the prelates of Amiternum, and afterward, under the prelates of the diocese of Rieti, was distinguished by an archpresbyterate of episcopal jurisdiction, began to be merely parochial a little after the middle of the XIII century, when, as was said before, the archpriest and canons fixed their domicile at Aquila. Antinori in chap. 2 of the Introduction num. XI says: The church of S. Vittorino… in the centuries later than the twelfth, as is gathered from what precedes, seems to bear the title of St. Michael the archangel. See on Boëtius Raynaldus, note CXCVIII. And even now the festivals of the Apparition and of the Dedication of St. Michael are solemnly celebrated on the days VIII of May and XXIX of September. Ant. Boët. ft. DCXXXII note XCIII. Let the reader consult Muratori tom. 6 of the Antiquities of Italy col. 676 and 793; where he will find what is here cited, the notes on the Italian poems of Boëtius Raynaldus and Antonius Boëtius, in which the former wrote the affairs of Aquila from the year 1252 to 1362, and the latter continued them to the year 1382. Antinori, who deduces from the rhythms of those poets that St. Michael the archangel was substituted in the place of St. Victorinus M., the church's chief patron, believes that it was restored in the XIII or XIV century, and … either by the devotion of the restorer, or by the completion of that work on the feast, was dedicated to St. Michael, the old title being suppressed, as commonly happens. Yet the village nearest to the ruins of Amiternum has retained from its ancient patron the name of S. Vittorino, by which I find that church itself also several times called among more recent writers. If this church was dedicated to St. Michael the archangel, I judge that it happened after the archpriest and canons had migrated thence to Aquila: and that this was done after the middle of the XIII century is the more probable. See above at num. 52.

[56] Pope Stephen V, called IV, in the Chronicle of the monastery of Farfa in Muratori tom. 2 of the Writers of Italy part 2 col. 368, among many other goods and rights of the same monastery [various churches elsewhere, at least some of which I suppose consecrated to our St. Victorinus.] which he confirms by a bull given at the beginning of the year 817, also reckons from the estate of Marcianum 2 ounces and a half, where is the church of St. Victorinus; … from the estate of Vassianum VI ounces, in which is the church of St. Victorinus; … from the estate of Paternum VI ounces, where is the church of St. Victorinus. In the said Chronicle, in the same place col. 669, a diploma granted to the abbey of Farfa in the year 1118 by the emperor Henry V places the same churches, namely St. Victorinus in Martianum, St. Victorinus in Bassianum, and St. Victorinus in Paternum, in the territory of the Sabines. Among the churches of the diocese of Aquila which its bishop Philip reckoned up about the year 1313, in Muratori tom. 6 of the Antiquities of Italy col. 947 and following, three are thus commemorated: SS. Bartholomew and Victorinus of Paganica, … S. Victurinus

with its chapels, … S. Victorinus of Ripa de Fagnanis. Of these the second, which is S. Victurinus with its chapels, is beyond doubt the very one concerning which I have already brought forward various pieces of information. Of the other five churches mentioned I believe that at least some were consecrated to our St. Victorinus; since they lie in regions in which no other saint of the same name shone with a greater celebrity of name or cult, namely in the Sabine country, in which he obtained the laurel of martyrdom near Cutiliæ, and in the diocese of Aquila, to which for nearly five centuries has belonged the place of his burial, once suburban to Amiternum, now called S. Vittorino; where his cult in early times most flourished. Whether Amiternum, whose ancient diocese is now a part of that of Aquila, was a city of the Sabines or rather of the Vestini, the geographers dispute.

[57] That the Saint's cult was widely propagated outside Italy [In many places outside Italy he obtained a cult on the 5th of September: on the 2nd of November] I have learned from the breviaries of various churches. An Office under the simple rite, or of three lessons, to be recited of the Saint on this day, is prescribed by the Quimper breviary of an old impression, the Majorcan of the year 1506, and the Parisian of the year 1640. In the last I find two, in the former two three, lessons proper to the holy Martyr, drawn from Ado, who confounds him with St. Victorinus the confessor. The Bamberg breviary of the year 1575 proposes our St. Victorinus for veneration with the same rite together with St. Herculianus, as is read there. The prayer is common to both Martyrs: but the three lessons are of Herculanus M., not the one of this day, but the bishop of Perugia, of whom we treated at the day 1st of March. The Calendar of the Ratzeburg breviary printed in the year 1506 has: Of Victorinus bishop and martyr. Three lessons. The religious Teresian virgins of the monastery of St. Joseph at Vienna in Austria chant the Office of our holy Martyr under the semi-double rite. Read below at num. 68. Of his festivity, celebrated under the double rite throughout all Bohemia from the times of Pope Gregory XI and the emperor Charles IV, see num. 64. The clergy of the diocese of Münster in Westphalia had been accustomed to perform the Office of our Saint not only on the V of September, as elsewhere, but also on the 2nd of November, in the greater church with a double rite, but in the others with a Sunday rite, as is noted at both days in the Calendar of the Münster breviary printed in the year 1489.

[58] The festivity of the day 2nd of November was instituted throughout the diocese of Münster that there might be commemorated the translation to the cathedral church of SS. Victorinus and Florian MM., whose bones were dispersed by the fury of the Anabaptists in the XVI century; [his translation celebrated by the men of Münster: it is referred by Galesinius to the 23rd of May.] which translation is thus mentioned in the enlarged Usuard of the Lübeck-Cologne edition: On the same day (the 2nd of November) at Münster, the translation of the holy martyrs Victorinus and Florian. Greven agrees, and our manuscript Florarium of the Saints. In the German Martyrology of Canisius we read: Likewise at Münster the elevation of the holy martyrs Victorinus (of whom at the V of September) and Florian. Whether St. Victorinus's body, or the relics whose translation used formerly to be kept in the diocese of Münster on the 2nd of November, and perhaps still is, are truly those of our holy Martyr, the reader will understand from the following §. Here I say only what I certainly know from the praised breviary of the year 1489 and from other documents, namely that the men of Münster celebrated the birthday of our St. Victorinus on the V of September, but the translation of him and of Florian M. on the 2nd of November. The Martyrology of Galesinius at the XXIII of May has in the first place: In Germany, of St. Victorinus the bishop. He, bishop of Emiternum [], was cut down for the name of Christ by the worshippers of impiety and impure superstition. This Galesinius notes that he received from a manuscript codex and from the Annals of Artimamus the monk. That Artimamus is unknown to me, unless he be Hartmann Schedel, who in his Annals published at Nuremberg in the year 1493, folio 109 verso, reports the passion of our holy Martyr, and likewise makes him bishop of the city of Emiterna []. But nowhere do I find that this writer was a monk by profession; nor in the eulogy with which he adorns St. Victorinus does he make any mention of Germany or of the day XXIII of May. Yet I suspect that this day was consecrated somewhere in Germany to the cult of the holy Martyr, and that Galesinius read this in the manuscript codex which he cites, or elsewhere, and therefore inserted the Saint at the same day in his Martyrology, in which he is besides announced at the XV of April and the V of September.

. ut.*

. Amiternensis.*

. Amiterninæ.*

§ VII. His body translated neither to Münster nor to Metz, but more probably to Magdeburg under the emperor Otto I: the middle part carried thence to Leitomischl in the 14th century: a festivity instituted throughout all Bohemia: relics honored in various places.

[ ] [The body of our St. Victorinus long since denied to the men of Münster in our Work] Fr. Hermann Crombach S.J., the author of two huge volumes on the holy three Kings and on St. Ursula, asked by letter of the most noble and learned Bernard von Mallinckrodt, dean of that same church, the following questions concerning the bodies or relics of SS. Victorinus and Florian MM., formerly kept in the cathedral church of Münster and held in great veneration: 1. Which of the several men of the same name they were whose relics were at one time at Münster; 2. by whom and whence they were brought to this church; III. with what cult, and with what fruit and event, both the Saints and their remains were there venerated; IV. in what place the sacred bodies were kept; V. in what manner they were profaned and burnt by the heretics. Mallinckrodt's answer to each question, transmitted to Bolland by Crombach and interpolated with two observations of the latter, Papebroch inserted in our Work, tom. VII of May pag. 576; where the reader will find various proofs of the singular veneration with which the men of Münster followed our St. Victorinus and St. Florian M. of Lorch: but he will at the same time learn that both Martyrs were honored by them on account of bodies or relics which Mallinckrodt and Crombach indicate to be at the very least uncertain as to whether they were theirs. To the statements of both Papebroch prefixes and subjoins things from which it is plain that in his judgment neither the bodies of our St. Victorinus nor those of St. Florian M. of Lorch, nor parts of them, were ever possessed by the men of Münster.

[60] Crombach, in the observation with which he takes up Mallinckrodt's answer to the first question, the body of our St. Victorinus was denied, objects to the men of Münster, who believed our Saint's body once translated to them, in the same place num. 4, first, that concerning the translation of St. Victorinus bishop of Amiternum (at least according to Baronius's opinion) and of his companions Maro and Eutyches, made to Metz in the year DCCCCLXIX, it is established from Sigebert; secondly, that the men of Magdeburg claim the same for themselves; for in the manuscript catalogue of the relics of that church, written in the year MDI by doctor Sebastian Weyman, and inserted by Pomarius into the addenda of the Saxon Chronicle at the year MCCXX, in the first class in the sixth place is set: A tomb, in which the body of Victorinus, who was the brother of Severinus bishop of Naples. Of this fictitious brother of our Saint, and bishop, see above at num. 19. Papebroch favors the men of Magdeburg no more than those of Münster, among whom he judges that the body of a St. Victorinus M. different from ours was in veneration. The same, he says at pag. 578 num. 9, I would say of that Victorinus whom the men of Magdeburg once had (for now, the Lutherans possessing all things there, I believe the relics neglected and scattered); and of whom I have no information from any other source than Crombach's annotation. But I at num. 62 and following shall produce various pieces of information from other sources, from which the reader will understand that the body of St. Victorinus which formerly rested at Magdeburg was more probably that of our holy Martyr, and that notable relics of his, translated thence, still survive elsewhere. The relics which, as the Chronicle of Sigebert relates in Miræus's edition at the year 970, in others at 969, were placed at Metz in the church of St. Vincent M. by Theodoric I, bishop of that city, were not, as will presently be seen, so considerable that it can truly be said that the Saint's body was there.

[61] Sigebert, cited above, testifies nothing else than that the prelate Theodoric received from Amiternum Eutyches the martyr with the relics of Maro and Victorinus his companions, and translated them to Metz. of which the men of Metz in the 10th century received only some relics. Now receive the reason why by the words with the relics… of Victorinus one may not understand his body. What Sigebert relates in his Chronicle concerning the bodies and relics of several Saints carried to Metz, he himself abridged from an older monument; which entire he inserted into the Life of Theodoric I, bishop of Metz, by whose zeal those relics had been collected. This Life Leibniz published, tom. 1 of the Writers of the Affairs of Brunswick, from pag. 294. But that monument is adduced by Sigebert in chap. 16 of the Life, in the same place from pag. 303, after these words: Now therefore let that page be brought into the midst, most fully set forth by those who were present, concerning the translation of the Saints. Let us hear their testimonies. Coming [] next after this into the territory of the city of Amiternum, which itself too shows only ruins, Theodoric received from the same Alberic bishop of the Marsi, from a monastery subject to his jurisdiction at Rieti [], the precious martyr Eutyches; whose blessed companion Victorinus's relics he had already obtained in the previous year (namely 969, for the beginning of the monument is, In the year of the Lord's Incarnation DCCCCLXX), and at the same time a part of St. Maro who likewise suffered: whose places of passion also we beheld, and Cotilæ breathing with a foul smell, in which the martyr (Victorinus) had been hung with his head turned downward. Finally the Writings of the holy Nereus and Achilleus preserve their passion. Who, attending to that period, in which Theodoric is said to have received the martyr Eutyches, a part of St. Maro, and the relics of St. Victorinus — who, I say, weighing the different manner of expressing the sacred pledges, would not confess that that prelate obtained relics of St. Victorinus too small to be called his body? But Sigebert understood by them no more, or at any rate ought to have understood no more, than the sense requires in the praised instrument, whose chief heads he transcribed into his Chronicle: and so his words with the relics… of Victorinus may not be so interpreted that St. Victorinus's body was translated to Metz.

[62] [Monuments which teach that the men of Magdeburg possessed the body of St. Victorinus in the 11th century,] I return whence I digressed, to Magdeburg, whose founder, the emperor Otto I, brought it about that the church of St. Maurice M. which he had founded in it, with a monastery of Benedictine religious, was erected into a metropolitan church in the year 968. Thietmar and other old writers testify that that church was enriched by the pious care of the same emperor with the bodies of very many Saints, translated from Italy. It is exceedingly probable that of their number was the body of St. Victorinus, which the Chronicle of Magdeburg in the Meibomii, tom. 2 of German Affairs pag. 313, mentions: Werner himself also, archbishop of Magdeburg, in his days by the prompting of a divine revelation, the principal one, with the whole greater church

altar, which was destroyed by fire, consecrated in the year of the Lord MLXXIIX, the former one being destroyed, and enclosed the entire bodies of many Saints, namely of Benningus (Benignus, I suppose), of Victorinus &c. It is not to be doubted that the body of St. Victorinus which Werner in the year 1078 laid up in the chief altar of the metropolitan church was the same as that whose middle part Albert von Sternberg, archbishop of Magdeburg, transported after the middle of the XIV century to Leitomischl, a town at that time distinguished by an episcopal see, in the district of Chrudim in Bohemia, situated not far from the borders of Moravia.

[63] [that Albert the archbishop in the 14th century carried the middle part to Leitomischl and gave an arm to the church of Prague] Albert had obtained through the emperor Charles IV from Pope Gregory XI the faculty of exchanging the administration of the archbishopric of Magdeburg for the government of the church of Leitomischl, from which he had been promoted to that of Magdeburg by Pope Urban V through the same Charles. That this exchange was made not earlier than the year 1371, nor later than the year 1374, I have ascertained. Albert therefore, returning within the time just assigned to his former see of Leitomischl, carried over many flying relics from the church of Magdeburg into Bohemia; among which were the head of St. Felicitas the martyr, half the body of Bl. Victorinus bishop and martyr &c. So the Chronicle of Magdeburg in the same place pag. 347. Mencke, tom. 3 of the Writers of German Affairs col. 374, in the Dresden manuscript codex rightly reads for flying volatiles notable notabiles relics; and before the Collations of the same codex with the Meibomian edition, col. 359, he informs the reader that the author of the praised Chronicle lived in Albert's age and ended in it, being thereafter continued by another and younger writer. On the testimony therefore of a contemporary writer, Albert translated to Leitomischl half the body of Bl. Victorinus bishop and martyr. But of which Victorinus? The Bohemians, and Albert himself too, as will appear from what follows, did not distinguish him from our St. Victorinus, martyr, and, according to the opinion which has now for many centuries prevailed, bishop of Amiternum.

[64] Thomas Johannes Pessina de Czechorod, dean of the metropolitan church of Prague, in his Work on the Majesty and Glory of that church, [and that a little after our Saint began to be venerated under the double rite in Bohemia,] which he entitled Phosphorus Septicornis and published at Prague in the year 1673, at pag. 475 places among the notable relics with which it is enriched the Arm of St. Victorinus bishop and M., adding: Whose body the emperor Otto the Great in the year DCCCCLXV, returning from Italy, carried to Magdeburg; and Albert von Sternberg, archbishop of Magdeburg and bishop of Leitomischl, in the year MCCCLXXIII carried it (rather, the middle part of it) from Magdeburg to Leitomischl, and at the petition of Charles IV and of John I, archbishop of Prague, gave the arm as a gift to the church of Prague, together with a notable part of the head of St. Sebastian M. Finally in the year MCCCLXXVII, when God deigned to illustrate this Saint there at Leitomischl with many miracles, Charles obtained from Gregory XI that his feast day should thenceforth be held throughout Bohemia among the more celebrated ones and under the double rite. That feast, instituted in the XIV century, is even now celebrated throughout all Bohemia on the day V of September; at which day in the proper Offices of the archdiocese of Prague, printed in the years 1679 and 1732, is read: Of St. Victorinus bishop and martyr, double. Prayer. Almighty and everlasting God, who art the wonderful splendor of thy Saints, and who on this day didst raise blessed Victorinus, thy martyr and pontiff, to the glory of eternal beatitude; grant propitiously that we, who venerate his glory on earth, may by the help of his intercession be fortified before thy mercy in heaven. Through our Lord. In the lessons of the second Nocturn the deeds of St. Victorinus, his martyrdom near Cutiliæ, and his burial in the territory of Amiternum are narrated from the Acts of SS. Nereus and Achilleus; then the Saint's body, or rather, as the contemporary author writes, half the body, carried by Otto I in the year 965 to Magdeburg, is said to have been transported thence to Leitomischl by Albert von Sternberg in the year 1373, and that he obtained from Gregory XI the Supreme Pontiff, with the help of the emperor Charles IV and of John archbishop of Prague, Cardinal and legate-born, that his feast should be celebrated under the double rite throughout the whole of Bohemia.

[65] It follows from what has been said that the middle part of the body [make it credible that his body really rested at Magdeburg, translated thither under Otto I.] carried from Magdeburg to Leitomischl was believed to be of no other Saint than our Martyr. Which St. Victorinus rested at Magdeburg in the Metropolitan church, Albert could know excellently well, who translated his sacred bones in part into Bohemia, being archbishop of that same city. Since, having returned to the see of Leitomischl in Bohemia, he brought it about a few years after the translation was made that a festivity of our St. Victorinus should be instituted under the double rite throughout the whole kingdom, it must be presumed that he had learned from the monuments of the church of Magdeburg or from elsewhere that he had received thence half the body of that same Saint. In Pessina and in the proper Office it is said that the emperor Otto I carried the body of St. Victorinus from Italy to Magdeburg in the year 965: I would add, "or sent it"; for the Saxon chronographer, who wrote in the XII century, in Leibniz in the Historical Accessions at the year 973, the year of Otto I's death, says: Formerly, when he was established in Italy, the emperor, by sending very often through Dodo his chaplain and others many bodies of Saints and innumerable relics, had exalted that (the metropolitan church of Magdeburg) with their patronages. I conclude briefly that Magdeburg can boast with better right of the body of our St. Victorinus translated to it than can Münster and Metz.

[66] [The Hussites in the year 1425 probably scattered the sacred bones deposited by Albert at Leitomischl,] J. T. A. Berghauer, who in the year 1736 published the Life of St. John Nepomucene and the ecclesiastical history of Bohemia illustrated in many points, in the series of the bishops of Leitomischl pag. 271 subjoins the following to the words reported at num. 64 from the Office of St. Victorinus: Then, by the disturbances of wars, this sacred body is thought to have been carried back again from Leitomischl to Magdeburg. Those who so opine concerning the whole body of the Saint are certainly deceived; for, as I have now repeatedly noted, Albert is asserted by the Magdeburg chronologer of his own time to have brought only the middle part of it to Leitomischl in the XIV century. But neither will anyone safely believe that this part was afterward carried back to Magdeburg, although Crombach above at num. 60 read in the catalogue of the relics of the church of Magdeburg, drawn up by Sebastian Weyman in the year 1501: A tomb, in which the body of Victorinus &c.; for first, as the proper Office, Pessina and Berghauer called the part of the body deposited at Leitomischl a "body," so the author of that catalogue could call by the same word the other part which remained at Magdeburg. Secondly, the part brought to Leitomischl probably perished with the cathedral church in the year 1425, when the Orphans — that is, the Hussites, who after the death of their leader Žižka assumed that name — having compelled the town to surrender, took by force its castle, in which the cathedral church stood with the dwellings of the bishop and canons, and overthrew it. The praised Pessina, raised in the year 1675 to the bishopric of Samandria, two years later brought to light his Work on the Moravian Mars, in which at pag. 513, after describing the monstrous cruelty of the Orphans, who butchered all whom they met in the stormed castle of Leitomischl, he thus proceeds: Things sacred and profane were driven, carried and snatched together: the cathedral basilica dedicated to the honor of the most blessed Virgin, and another parish church sacred to St. Clement … were despoiled of all their ornaments, pulled down, and levelled with the ground. In the margin he notes the archives of the cathedral church and of the court of Leitomischl, n. XXVI. In the year 1425, when these things happened, the church of Leitomischl was presided over by John of Prague, Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church, who died at Gran in Hungary in the year 1430. And Berghauer places him last of those who administered that bishopric, which was erected by Pope Clement VI before the middle of the XIV century.

[67] where now a part of the arm or shin is honored, which Eva von Sternberg gave. The same Berghauer in the place cited says: In the parish church of Leitomischl a part of the arm or shin of St. Victorinus is still piously venerated, which Eva Johanna, countess of Sternberg, wife of Adam Matthias count of Trauttmansdorff, lord in Leitomischl, received from Jaroslav Sternberg bishop of Leitmeritz and gave to the church, so that a second translation of St. Victorinus to Leitomischl is also owed to the Sternbergs. Pessina above at num. 64 writes that Albert von Sternberg gave the arm of St. Victorinus to the metropolitan church of Prague. The whole arm? Among the relics of that church, recognized in the year 1537, in the same Pessina in the Phosphorus pag. 492, there is set: Of the arm of St. Victorinus bishop and M.; by which words it is insinuated that the arm was not then whole. If a part had previously been separated from it, this could at length have come to Jaroslav Sternberg, who from the year 1676 until 1709 presided over the church of Leitmeritz in Bohemia. But it is no less probable that the part of the arm or shin, which Eva Johanna von Sternberg received from the prelate Jaroslav and gave as a gift to the parish of Leitomischl, was taken from the church of Magdeburg.

[68] In tom. V of May from pag. 8 there are enumerated the relics of many Saints Cult and relics at Vienna in Austria: which at Vienna in Austria the discalced or Teresian Carmelite nuns expose to public veneration in their church, sacred to St. Joseph; whose first stone was laid in the year 1633 by Eleonora, the most august consort of the emperor Ferdinand II and the most munificent foundress of the monastery which is inhabited by those religious virgins at Vienna. Certain Saints are honored by them with an ecclesiastical Office, of whom they obtained more notable relics from the same most pious empress Eleonora and from others. Among the empress's sacred gifts is mentioned a whole bone of the leg of St. Victorinus, bishop and martyr: who is to be venerated with an ecclesiastical Office under the semi-double rite on the V of September. I suspect that this bone was one of those which the often-praised prelate Albert, returning to the see of Leitomischl, had left at Magdeburg: in which city, since the Lutherans now rule, I judge that no relics of the Saint any longer exist there, save neglected or scattered ones.

[69] Further, when you read above that the body of our St. Victorinus was translated to Magdeburg, the head at Aquila; an arm translated thence to Naples: but his relics to Metz, under the emperor Otto I, do not so understand it as though the church of S. Vittorino, of which I treated in the preceding §, retained nothing of him: for from the inscription adduced at num. 51 it is certain that the Saint's relics were laid up in its high altar by Dodo bishop of Rieti in the year 1170. In the Italian Acts of the Saints and Blessed of the Diocese and City of Aquila, written out by a recent hand and transmitted to our predecessors by I know not whom, the eulogy of Ado, who confounds the twin holy Victorini, is thrust forward as the Life of our holy Martyr, with this added at the end: The head of this most holy Bishop and martyr is preserved at Aquila in the collegiate and parish church of S. Biagio, whose archpriest exercises over his subjects a quasi-episcopal jurisdiction: the skin which is seen on the Saint's head is as soft as if it were that of a man

living. Fr. Antonio Beatillo S.J., who died at Naples at the beginning of the year 1642, in the accounts of certain Saints of the kingdom of Naples which he transmitted to Fr. Bolland, writes among other things this of our St. Victorinus: Whose arm in my days we had from Amiternum or Aquila in the college of Naples; where it is still kept in a gilded reliquary, and on feast days is publicly exposed with other relics of the Saints.

[70] [I somewhat doubt whether the relics of St. Victorinus formerly carried to Aquila are not in part those of the bishop and confessor.] When Dodo bishop of Rieti in the year 1170 consecrated the church of St. Victorinus the martyr, he placed in its high altar OF THE RELICS … AND OF VICTORINUS AND OF VICTORINUS, as stands in the praised inscription. Although it may have happened that through inadvertence the holy Martyr's name was set down twice, yet it seemed otherwise to Antinori, who in chap. 2 of the Introduction to the History of Aquila num. 3 says: In truth Amiternum had two Victorini, namely that Martyr who is venerated today, and the other a bishop: one in the first, one in the sixth century of the Church flourished. This is most plainly carved in the inscription of the consecration of the church in the year MCLXX … AND OF THE RELICS … OF VICTORINUS AND OF VICTORINUS. Now I ask, whence did the church of S. Biagio at Aquila receive the head, and the arm which was translated thence to Naples, and the other relics which perhaps it once possessed, or even now possesses, under the name of St. Victorinus? Nothing more probable can be answered than that the canons of the church of St. Victorinus the martyr carried them with them when they migrated to Aquila after the middle of the XIII century, as was said at num. 52, and that they or their successors, who to this day perform the divine Offices in it, deposited them in the church of S. Biagio. But according to the not improbable assertion of Antinori there were also laid up in the chief altar of the church of St. Victorinus the martyr by the prelate Dodo the relics of St. Victorinus the confessor, bishop of Amiternum; it ought therefore not to seem strange if I somewhat doubt whether the sacred bones transported thence to Aquila, which are now believed to be of the Martyr alone, are not in some part those of St. Victorinus the confessor. The title of bishop, which is attributed to St. Victorinus the martyr in most of the documents adduced in this paragraph, clung to him from the confessor of the same name, with whom he was confounded.

. D'Achery, tom. 2 of the Spicilegium, second edition, pag. 133, veniens.*

. Ibid., of his jurisdiction, subject at Rieti.*