ON ST. ÆMILIANUS, BISHOP OF VERCELLI AND CONFESSOR IN ITALY,
At the beginning of the VI century.
A HISTORICAL-CRITICAL COLLECTION
On the deeds, age, and cult of the Saint, who has been wrongly confounded with one of the same name.
Æmilianus, bishop and confessor, at Vercelli in Italy (S.)
BY C. S.
Vercelli, an ancient episcopal city under the archdiocese of Milan, situated on the river Sesia on the very border of the duchy of Milan, His memory in the Martyrologies. to which it once belonged, but now added to Piedmont, honors on this day among its bishops S. Æmilianus, whose memory is extant in the Roman Martyrology in these words: At Vercelli, of holy Æmilianus the bishop. The way was lighted for the Most Eminent Baronius, author of the Roman, by the Tables of the church of Vercelli, and by Pietro Galesini, as is said in the Annotations. Receive the words of the latter: At Vercelli, of S. Æmilianus, bishop and confessor. He lived forty years in the desert most holily: afterward, being made bishop of Vercelli, flourishing with every praise of Christian piety, he came to Rome three times to the councils which Pope Symmachus convoked. At last, having religiously performed many labors for the glory of Christ, heaped with merits, he passed into heaven. So he, asserting in his Annotations that these things are drawn from the ancient tables of the church of Vercelli: nevertheless what of these seems to be admitted and what rejected we shall say below. More briefly Molanus in the Auctaria of Usuard in Sollerius: At Vercelli, of S. Æmilianus, bishop and confessor. I pass over Ferrari and other moderns.
[2] The Saint's eulogies The Saint's deeds, or rather his eulogy, have been published by various moderns, drawn from the praised Tables of Vercelli. Among these the most illustrious Giovanni Stefano Ferrero, bishop of the same see, published at Rome in the year 1602 a catalogue of the bishops of his church, and dedicated it to Pope Clement VIII, in which he writes this of our Saint, as the eleventh bishop: Æmilianus, born of humble station in Spain at Libyum, which is a town of Aragon, instructed in religion by bishop Felix, burned vehemently with zeal for Christian piety; inflamed with which ardor, and given to the practice of the Religious life (whose discipline was at that time most flourishing), that he might rest more freely in the contemplation of divine things, casting away all care of human things, he hid himself in the desert. In which place, the examples of the holy fathers being set before him, by incredible abstinence, by assiduous vigils, and by frequent fasting, he repressed the assault of the flesh and the unbridled wantonness of the body. Moreover by every kind of discipline he restrained the various enticements of desires; and, given above all to prayer, he spent a great part of day and night in praying. Therefore he pursued a most holy kind of life for forty whole years in the desert, with great testimony of his heavenly virtues.
[3] The report of the holiness with which the Man of God shone forth having spread into all parts, or compendia of a Life, he was by divine counsel made bishop of the men of Vercelli. He so took up the truly episcopal ordinances of life that he omitted nothing either in the cultivation of piety, or in the mildness of gentleness, or in the offices of charity, or finally in zeal for the Evangelical discipline. And so by the examples of his noble institution he turned men away from the filth of vices and from the habit of sinning, and again kindled them to every virtue. Further, that Evangelical lowliness and humility of a Christian mind shone out in him most of all. And attentive to the duty of his pastoral office, he diligently performed those notable parts of contemplation and action which are proper to a bishop; adorned likewise with divine ornaments and enriched with many merits, he profited the Church exceedingly much in those times: he came to Rome for the III, IV and VI councils which Pope Symmachus held in the years DI, DII, DIV, for the sake of the Christian commonwealth. Thence he returned to Vercelli to his own church, which, when he had piously administered it for many years according to the will of God, he rested in the Lord, famous for the praise of his holiness and of deeds wonderfully and divinely wrought. Thus far the most illustrious Ferrero, praising in the margin the Offices of the Saints of Vercelli.
[4] The said Offices, printed at Vercelli in the year 1581, we have in our Museum, composed by certain persons, and they are conformable to Ferrero's statements even as to the words, except that in these it is only said of the Saint's presence at the Roman councils: He came to Rome to the councils which Pope Symmachus held, once and again and a third time also, for the sake of the Christian commonwealth. The same has Ughelli, vol. 4 of the Italia sacra, col. 762; where, however, he warns that our holy Bishop is said by Corbellino to have been by native land a man of Vercelli, of the nobles of Terrione. Filippo Ferrari in the Catalogue of the Saints of Italy at the XI day of September likewise narrates the same things as the most illustrious Ferrero, from the Lives of the bishops of Vercelli and the Offices of the same church; but at the same time he indicates that other Acts besides had been seen by him: for he then notes the following: Otherwise, as regards his origin, it stands in a manuscript Life and in ancient monuments of the church of Vercelli; for in them he is read to have sprung from a noble family at Cæsarianum, an ancient village of the territory of Vercelli; but in this matter credit must be given to the new Lessons approved at Rome, from which we have woven the Life in few words.
[5] From all these the narration of the most illustrious Francesco Agostino Della Chiesa, bishop of Saluzzo, differs somewhat in certain circumstances, things to be discussed are cited: in the Chronological History of the Cardinals of the H. R. C., etc., of the region of Piedmont, in which at p. 136 he writes thus: S. Æmilianus, the first of this name, who was present at the three councils held at Rome under Pope Symmachus, was by nation a Spaniard, born in the castle of Lybium, which is of Aragon, or, as Vasæus writes, in the region of Castile, in the place which is called Rioja. He, from being a shepherd of sheep by Mount Cachus, and brought up by the holy man Felix the hermit, was made a shepherd of men: for after he had dwelt nearly forty years in the desert, he is chosen to the church of Vercelli (and not of Urgel, as Lucio Marineo, a writer of Spanish affairs, hallucinates); which, when he had piously administered it for many years, famous for the praise of his holiness and of deeds wonderfully and divinely wrought, he rested in the Lord, at the age of a hundred years … There are, however, certain persons who suppose this Bishop to have led the eremitic life in Spain, but in the mountains of Biella. Corbellino says that he was not a Spaniard, but a noble of Vercelli, of the lords of Cerridone.*
[6] whatever in these Now it must be inquired what of these things can and ought to be admitted as true, and what rejected as false. First of all, what the most illustrious Della Chiesa narrates about the Saint's shepherd's office, and about his upbringing under Felix the hermit, and about his stay of forty years in the desert, belongs to another Æmilianus, a monk and presbyter in Spain, whom the Most Eminent Baronius in the Roman Martyrology at the XII day of November thus mentions: At Tarazona in Tarraconensian Spain, of B. Æmilianus the presbyter, who was famous for innumerable miracles: whose admirable life holy Braulio, bishop of Saragossa, described. Of S. Braulio, who died about the middle of the VII century, there has been treatment in our Work at the XVIII day of March, and there in §3, from S. Ildephonsus, it is said of him to our purpose: He wrote the Life of a certain Æmilianus, a monk, which by its own tenor alike commends and illustrates both the memory of this man and the virtue of that holy man. This Life we have in manuscript, and Prudencio de Sandoval published it in the Benedictine Monasteries of Spain.
[7] concerning the Saint's native land Further, to come to the matter, S. Braulio thus begins the deeds of his B. Æmilianus from his shepherd's care, in the praised Sandoval: He who was to be a shepherd of men was a shepherd of sheep, and drove his sheep to the inner parts of the mountains. Then, after he has narrated that he, after a sleep divinely sent upon him, being desirous of a holier life, thought of the desert, he subjoins: Report had told him that there was a certain hermit by name Felix, a most holy man, to whom he might not undeservedly offer himself as a disciple, who was then staying in the castle of Bilibium; taking the road, he came to him, and, when he submits himself ready to his service, he is instructed by him … After he had been most excellently taught by him the ways of life, and enriched with the riches of discipline and the treasures of salvation, he returns to his own, … and so came not far from the villa Vergegium, … and staying there no long time, he sees that the multitude of men flocking to him will be a hindrance to him. He seeks higher places, and made light steps up the steeps … But when he came to the more remote secret places of Mount Distertius, … deprived of the fellowship of men, he enjoyed only the consolations of angels, dwelling there for nearly forty returning years.
[8] and his deeds before his episcopate After these things he says that he, the report of his holiness having been spread abroad, was, after resisting for some time, initiated into the priesthood by Didymus, who then bore the pontificate at Tarazona, and performed the office of a presbyter in the church of Vergegium; from which duty, being accused by the clerics as a squanderer of ecclesiastical goods, and afterward removed by the bishop, he led a private life. Then, he says, being released from the ministry long since taken up, where his oratory is now called, he passed the remaining time of his life harmless. It has seemed good to report these things here at some length, that the learned reader may himself discern what is to be laid down about the Spanish native land of S. Æmilianus, bishop of Vercelli, about his discipleship under Felix the hermit, and about the life led in the desert before his episcopate. For my part I do not doubt that the most illustrious Della Chiesa, or whoever lighted his way, adapted all these things, drawn from the Acts of B. Æmilianus the monk, to S. Æmilianus the bishop of Vercelli, and that what S. Braulio had said about the former's being taken from the desert to the priesthood, he himself referred to the other's episcopate.
[9] This certainly is persuaded by the conformity of the deeds, and finally by the extreme age of both; is narrated, for the praised author says that the holy Bishop of Vercelli died in the hundredth year of his life, and the same Braulio affirms of B. Æmilianus in these words: About a year before his passing, but in the hundredth of his life, … he turns to a stricter life. Further, occasion for this error could have been given by the conformity of the name of each, and by the agreement or nearness of the time in which each Saint flourished, and perhaps also by the fabulous Additions to the pseudo-chronicle of Marcus Maximus, falsely ascribed to Heleca, bishop of Saragossa, if these were then known to the author. For from them Bivar in his Commentary, p. 562, reviews the following: About these times a good part of the body of S. Æmilianus, bishop of Vercelli, first a hermit in Aragon, was translated and brought to the town of Torre-de-las-Pajas, and there buried. But what is to be thought of this translation also, we shall see below.
[10] Finally, that error could have arisen from the likeness of the names of the churches belongs to another Æmilianus over which each Saint had charge: for the church of Vergegium, which Æmilianus the presbyter administered, is in Spanish called Vergegio in the Sandoval praised above, and Vergegiensis by Bivar in his Commentary on the pseudo-Chronicle of Maximus, p. 563; whence he too suspects that his Heleca (nay rather, whoever else it was), when he wrote that Æmilianus the presbyter was raised to the chair of Vercelli, was deceived by the affinity of the word. I strongly suspect, he says, that Heleca stumbled at the word VERGEGIENSIS in Æmilianus, and read for it VERCELLENSIS. And that error once admitted, since he knew for certain from other sources, from the acts of the councils gathered under Symmachus, that an Æmilianus had presided over the see of Vercelli, he changed the one into the other by a new kind of metamorphosis. Thus, not improbably, Bivar.
[11] It is not equally manifest that a like error crept upon the most illustrious Giovanni Ferrero is shown. and those who agree with him: for these write that S. Æmilianus was instructed in the precepts of Christian piety by a certain Felix, indeed, but not a hermit, rather a bishop, before he hastened to the desert, and thence was raised to the episcopate. They have also recorded nothing about the shepherd's office performed before this, nothing finally about the Saint's hundred years of age. Nevertheless it appears to me far most likely that Felix the hermit was changed by them into a bishop: for both the rest agrees, and they themselves say that their Æmilianus, although they do not make him a shepherd, was nevertheless born in a humble station. And so whatever they narrate of the life led by S. Æmilianus before his episcopate, we judge to belong not to him but to that other Æmilianus, and accordingly that the deeds of our holy Prelate down to his receiving the mitre are unknown.
[12] Of what antiquity or note are the manuscript Life and the ancient monuments of the church of Vercelli, in which Filippo Ferrari, reported at num. 4, affirms our Æmilianus to be said to have been born in Cæsarianum, an ancient village of the territory of Vercelli, I have not ascertained. Uncertain to me also is whether Corbellino, praised likewise at num. 4 and 5, whom I have not been permitted to consult, rests upon these or upon other documents, when he says that the same was a man of Vercelli and sprung from the noble family of Terrione or Cerridone: nevertheless I should prefer to believe Æmilianus born at Vercelli, or in its territory, than to seek his origin in Spain, and to drag him from some desert of Spain, in the manner we have reported, to the see of Vercelli.
[13] He is present at three councils From the subscriptions of the councils we know that S. Æmilianus presided over the church of Vercelli at the beginning of the VI century; for besides these I find nothing which makes his age manifest. Ferrero, Francesco Della Chiesa, and Ughelli with unanimous consent lay him down as the eleventh bishop of Vercelli, and assign S. Lanfranc as his predecessor, Eusebius the second as his successor. That Lanfranc flourished in the year 480 the most illustrious Della Chiesa and Ughelli note, and nothing besides: but Ferrero, the time of his see being passed over, writes only that he was adorned with the ornaments of all the virtues and was famous for the holiness of his life. On Eusebius the same Ferrero likewise notes nothing about the time, but the two others just mentioned ascribe to him the year 520. There has been treatment of him in our Work among the Prætermissi at the XV day of March, where he is also said to have flourished about the aforesaid year, with words cited from Ferrero which are not found in our edition, perhaps by an error. For the rest, my Elders warn there that they could learn nothing more about this Eusebius when at Vercelli in person; wherefore neither can we dig out anything from the episcopate of this man and of Lanfranc for the time when our Saint entered upon his episcopate, or laid it down by death.
[14] held at Rome under Symmachus. This one thing we know, that he was present at the Roman synods, the third, fourth and sixth, celebrated by Pope Symmachus at the beginning of the VI century: for at these, at the years of Christ 501, 502 and 504, in the Collections of Labbe and Hardouin, Æmilianus of Vercelli is read as subscribed among the bishops. Hardouin warns, however, that in the first place, for Æmilianus of Vercelli, elsewhere is read Æmilius of Sora; and Labbe likewise notes Suranus in the margin; but in the fourth and sixth both mention simply Æmilianus of Vercelli. Hence we learn the age in which the holy Bishop flourished: but at what time he ascended that chair, or how long he survived the last of the said synods, is unknown, as are also his other deeds. The often-praised Ferrero indeed recites a Sermon, which he supposes to have been written about our Saint by S. Isidore of Seville, and which he says is kept in the archive of Vercelli; but whoever be its author, we learn nothing from it beyond common eulogies, which, the name of Æmilianus being changed, can be adapted to any strenuous bishop.
[15] A twofold raising of his body: Of his cult Ferrero has this: When his body had long lain hidden in the ground (namely from the year MCLXXXI, in which, on the XVI of the Kalends of June, the transposition of B. Æmilianus the bishop is held to have been made by Eusebius the tenth (read: of Eusebius the tenth), as is contained in the ancient Calendar of the church of Vercelli, which keeps the memory of that translation on that very day) at last, by the will of God, it was found, and was honorably and piously laid up in the cathedral church with a great throng of clergy and people; and his feast day is celebrated yearly in the whole diocese of Vercelli on the III of the Ides of September. The first of these translations happened under bishop Guala; for he was at that time sitting at Vercelli, and therefore the praised Ferrero, when he treats of him, notes this at the year 1181: In this same year the translation of the body of S. Æmilianus the bishop was made by S. Eusebius the tenth, as we have reported in his Life. With Ferrero agree Ferrari and Ughelli, whose words I subjoin: They brought his body into the church of S. Eusebius (the first bishop and martyr of the same see whom they know). Then, having found it in the year MCLXXXI, on the XVI of the Kalends of June, they translated it with pomp, where it lay honorably down to these our times, in which, having again been found, they placed it more honorably in the same cathedral, with an incredible concourse of people. In what year that last solemn raising of the same sacred body happened, I do not find: Ughelli, who asserts that it was done in his own times, is said in his epitaph, prefixed to vol. 1 of the reprinted Italia sacra, to have died in the year of Christ 1670, in the 75th of his age; and accordingly it seems to have fallen in the XVII century.
[16] There is extant in our Museum a Proper of Vercelli printed there in the year 1581, his cult in which a twofold memory of S. Æmilianus is had. For first, at the XI day of September, his feast — his birthday, doubtless — is prescribed to be celebrated yearly with a double rite throughout the whole diocese, with an Office from the common of a confessor bishop, except the Lessons of the second Nocturn and the antiphons at the Magnificat and Benedictus. The antiphon at the said Canticle at both Vespers is this: Blessed Æmilianus, burning with zeal of piety, emulating for forty years in the desert the zeal of religious monks, meditated on the law of the Lord, which is undefiled, converting souls. But at the Benedictus this: Conformed to the ordinances of the Evangelical discipline, and filled with the spirit of truth, the blessed Bishop by word and example impressed on his flock the footprints of divine love. Of the Lessons we treated above at num. 4.
[17] This same Office is enjoined to be recited again on the feast of the Translation of the body of S. Æmilianus, in the diocese of Vercelli: bishop of Vercelli, confessor, likewise under a double rite; but the day, which, as we saw at num. 15 from Ferrero, is the XVI of the Kalends of June, is here perhaps omitted by an error. Yet lest anyone should suspect that the Office of the holy Bishop was then first introduced, I observe that Giovanni Francesco Bonomi, bishop of Vercelli, by whom those Offices were published, when he had said that he had brought back the Office of S. Eusebius, bishop and martyr, which … is performed according to the custom of the same church, … to the standard of the Roman rite, and ordained that it should be retained; then subjoins: And the same moreover concerning the Office of the holy Honoratus, Æmilianus and Peter, bishops of Vercelli, …
we have ordained and decreed: whence it is clear that Giovanni Francesco only brought back the old Offices of the Saints of his church to the Roman rite.
[18] where in the 12th century he was famous for miracles. Of the miracles obtained through the Saint's invocation, and of the festival decreed in his honor toward the end of the XII century, I find certain things briefly noted in Filippo Ferrari in the Catalogue of the Saints of Italy. That he was famous also for miracles, he says, is proved from this, that in the year of the Lord MCXCII, on account of the miracles which were daily done at his tomb, and especially because he had freed the city from an impending scourge, B. Albert the bishop, who was afterward bishop of Jerusalem, together with the clergy decreed that the festival already decreed by vow in a synod should be solemnly kept on this day. The Life of B. Albert written by an ancient author Ferrero sets forth in the Catalogue of the bishops of Vercelli, and from him our Papebroch in the Acts of the same Blessed illustrated at the VIII day of April: but that biographer, who does not review his particular deeds, left nothing written on this matter. Nor has Ferrero anything about it, except that he says he celebrated a synod in that year, in these words: In the year MCXCII, on the IV, V and VI feria after Pentecost, he held a synod, in which he issued salutary decrees for the church, which are still extant: but these decrees, from which some light might perhaps have shone both on the miracles done at the Saint's tomb and on the scourge turned away from the city, I have not been permitted to consult.
[19] He has been wrongly inserted in the Spanish Martyrology, Before I make an end, a few things must be observed concerning the Spanish Martyrology of Tamayo. He, from that opinion which lays it down that S. Æmilianus, bishop of Vercelli, was born in Spain, seized occasion for ascribing him to the sacred Fasti of the Spaniards, and at the present day adorns him with a eulogy drawn from Ferrari's Catalogue of the Saints of Italy, and with some things sought from elsewhere, and then subjoins: Lo, the Acts which Ferrari has supplied us, for among our own writers there is nothing but deep silence. He too would have been more right to be silent; for, as I think has been sufficiently shown, S. Æmilianus, bishop of Vercelli, had nothing in common with that Spanish hermit who is mentioned in those Acts; nor is it needful to refute the same things here anew.
[20] nor is the translation mentioned in it true. Of the part of the sacred body translated into Spain he speaks thus: Whose sacred body, honorably buried there (at Vercelli), rested for some years, until the greatest part of it was translated from Vercelli to the Castle of Lybium, or Torre-de-las-Pajas. But the part which had remained at Vercelli, having long been unknown, was found in the year MCLXXXI, and, placed in the cathedral basilica, is there honorably venerated. Of this translation he has as sole author the supposititious Heleca, whose words we gave at num. 9, which ought not to detain us, and which were suspect to Bivar himself, as was there shown. Hence the same author there suspects that the miracles which are painted in the apse of the church of Torre-de-las-Pajas belong likewise to another Æmilianus, for which opinion he is reproved by Tamayo. But whosesoever those may be, that translation will be held by me for a fable, until they produce monuments other than Heleca's.
Annotataadd: not*