ON SS. ABUNDIUS AND ABUNDANTIUS AND MARCIAN AND JOHN, MARTYRS,
AT ROME.
Under Diocletian.
PRELIMINARY COMMENTARY.
Abundius, priest and M. at Rome (S.)
Abundantius, deacon and M. at Rome (S.)
Marcian, M. at Rome (S.)
John, M. at Rome (S.)
BY U. S.
§ I. The memory of the Saints in the Martyrologies: the Acts published by various men and to be published.
[ ] While Diocletian raged against the Christians,
there are said to have been crowned with glorious
martyrdom at Rome SS.
Abundius the priest, The memory of the Saints Abundantius
the deacon, Marcian and his
son John. Baronius
in his Annals writes Martianus; in ancient codices
and documents there is often read Habundius and
Habundantius, and such an inscription was found when
their sacred remains were found with their coffins
in the year 1582 in the church of SS. Cosmas and Damian. I myself have followed the exemplar of the Roman Martyrology, which announces our Saints on the present day in these words: At Rome on the Flaminian Way, the holy martyrs Abundius the priest and Abundantius the deacon, whom the emperor Diocletian ordered to be struck with the sword at the tenth milestone from the City, together with Marcian, a man of illustrious rank, and John his son, whom they had raised from the dead.
[2] Although the martyrologists reckon up several men named Abundius, several named Abundantius, and several named Marcian, in the Martyrologies as Fulvius Cardulus observes in the Notes to his History (to be commended below) under the letters c and v, nevertheless I have found these four holy Martyrs read of in no other Martyrology than the Roman. Grevenus, in the Auctaria of Usuard as given by Sollerius at the twenty-eighth day of August, has this: Of the martyrs Abundius and Abundantius. I am altogether of the opinion, however, that those mentioned by Grevenus are not to be distinguished from our Abundius and Abundantius; for in the Bodecensian codex, of which below, we read thus: Here begins the Passion of SS. Abundius the priest and Abundantius the deacon, which falls on the fifth of the Kalends of September — and perhaps Grevenus used this codex or another like it. That he should mention Abundius and Abundantius alone may have arisen from this, that these alone are named in the title, Marcian and John being passed over.
[3] Concerning our Saints, the most eminent Baronius speaks thus in tome 1 of the Ecclesiastical Annals, at the year of Christ 303: and in Baronius in the Annals, Under these emperors, then (Diocletian and Maximian), Abundius the priest and Abundantius the deacon are held to have been crowned with martyrdom on the Flaminian Way; whom Diocletian (as the ecclesiastical records have it) ordered to be struck down at the tenth milestone from the city, together with Martianus, a man of illustrious rank, and John his son, whom they had raised from the dead. Their Acts are extant, restored from ancient memorials and also excellently illustrated with notes by the college of the Society of Jesus, and the same enlarged with the account of their translation: for the venerable bodies of SS. Abundius and Abundantius were translated to the Farnesian basilica, the principal house of the same Society of Jesus at Rome. There is likewise found in the same Acts mention of another twenty-three martyrs, who were ordered to be led outside the City by the old Salarian Way and there beheaded: whose bodies, gathered by John the priest … and by the pious and noble woman Theodora, … were buried in the cemetery set on the same way at the Slope of the Cucumber.
[4] and other writers. A few things Ferrarius wove their eulogy out of the Acts mentioned by Baronius, in his Catalogue of the Saints of Italy, page 594. Our Saints are also mentioned by Ughelli in Italia sacra, tome 1, among the bishops of the city of Civita Castellana; by Bartholomew Piazza in part 2 of the Hemerologium sacrum; and by others, of whom the discussion will return below. Meanwhile a few small points must here be noticed in passing. The memory of the twenty-three anonymous holy martyrs was inserted into our Work at the fifth day of August by Sollerius, out of the Acts commended by Baronius, which he promised in that same place to sift in due time. Aringhus, in Roma subterranea, book 4, chapter 25, number 5, calls these twenty-three martyrs soldiers; but this condition of their life I have found neither in the Roman Martyrology, nor in the Acts of Cardulus — the only two that Aringhus cites when treating of those Saints — nor in any Acts, whether manuscript or printed, that have come down to us.
[5] are here to be noticed. That John who committed to honourable burial the said twenty-three martyrs, and those of whom we are now treating, is perhaps the same as he of whom we read at the eighteenth day of August in the Roman Martyrology: At Rome, the blessed John and Crispus, priests, who in the persecution of Diocletian buried very dutifully the bodies of many Saints, and by whose merits, being afterwards joined to them, they merited the joys of eternal life. Certainly, although others of the same name were distinguished by an equal devotion toward the holy Martyrs, yet none is marked in the Roman Martyrology by that title and under the same tyrant. Of this John together with Crispus we have treated at the aforesaid eighteenth day of August. But as to the matron Theodora, whom we read to have ministered diligently to the martyrs in that same persecution, what is to be determined will be seen on the following day, on which she is inscribed in the Roman Martyrology. Let us now consider the Acts of our Saints.
[6] I have seen nothing given to the press older than what Fulvius Cardulus, The Acts, from old manuscript codices a priest of the same Society, published at Rome in the name of the Roman college of the Society of Jesus, from the press of Franciscus Zanetti in the year 1584: there were added pictures representing the Saints' confession, their torments, their death, and their last translation to the Farnesian basilica. Of these Acts the aforesaid editor speaks thus in addressing the most holy lord Gregory XIII, Supreme Pontiff: Wherefore, out of three most ancient manuscript codices — one of which is kept in the town of Arinianum (where the bodies of the Martyrs, buried by the blessed Theodora, lay for about seven hundred years) in the keeping of that most noble man Lucius Sabellus, lord of that town; a second is extant at Rome in the archive of the venerable basilica of St. Mary Major; and a third, which agrees almost word for word with the Arinian exemplar, is preserved in the very ancient convent and church of nuns which Pippin, son of the emperor Charlemagne, named and anointed king of Italy by the Supreme Pontiff Leo III, built for these holy Martyrs in Etruria near the city of Siena.
[7] Out of these old writings, I say (which, published by Fulvius Cardulus, since they savour of that early simplicity and piety, are believed to have flowed from the notaries of the Holy Roman Church), we have gathered a brief narrative of the whole martyrdom, together with the first translation, made by the emperor Otto III about the year of the Lord 1001, when the sacred bodies were brought from Arinianum to Rome and placed in the church of St. Adalbert, bishop and martyr, built by the same emperor between the two bridges, which was afterwards called by the name of St. Bartholomew. Concerning the second translation, by which they were brought into the church of SS. Cosmas and Damian, although we have investigated and searched out everything, yet, as we have nothing ascertained, so we are able to suspect or conjecture something, which we shall explain in our Notes to the History. This third translation, made by Thy command, we have added, that the memory of so great a benefit may stand for ever. Thus far Fulvius Cardulus, whose judgment concerning the simplicity and sincerity of the manuscript codices he used we shall presently weigh.
[8] Besides the Acts published by Cardulus, we have a Life of the holy martyrs Abundius and Abundantius composed in the Italian tongue and published at Siena by Silvester Marchetti in the year 1616, and by Juditta Lati, with a prefixed which the venerable sister Juditta Luti, a nun of the convent called Santabunda outside the city of Siena, likewise gathered from most ancient manuscripts and inscribed to Marie de' Medici, most serene queen of France and Navarre. This Life, as regards the whole account of the martyrdom and of the things done at that time, agrees almost word for word with the Acts of Cardulus: whence what we shall presently say of those must here be determined of this Life of Juditta also. It is, however, fuller, having prefixed a brief history of the conversion of SS. Abundius and Abundantius to the faith, which she attaches to the year of Christ 286, and in which she relates that these Saints were Roman citizens, sprung of most noble birth and brothers according to the flesh; that from worshippers of idols they were made soldiers of Christ, and afterwards washed in the sacred waters by Pope Cyriacus; and she writes that Abundius was made a priest and Abundantius a deacon by the same Cyriacus.
[9] in these last a history of the conversion, This history Juditta doubtless drew from the Sienese exemplar, in which, as Cardulus teaches under the letter c in his Notes to the History, there is contained not only the martyrdom of these Saints but also the hourly prayers and even a proper Mass. Yet he himself, for what reason I do not know, did not insert it into his Acts, although, if he held it worthy of belief, it ought to have seemed to him likely to leave a more exact account of them to posterity. As I cannot safely affirm it, so neither do I intend altogether to deny, that SS. Abundius and Abundantius were brothers german, sprung of a Roman and indeed illustrious lineage, and led from profane superstition to the rites of Christ; yet the few points I subjoin make me the less ready to assent to this whole account. Who is that Cyriacus whom Juditta names a holy Pastor and Pope? If she understands a Roman Pontiff, no Cyriacus at that time held the Roman chair of the divine Peter, as will become plain to anyone consulting the catalogues of the Roman Pontiffs.
[10] which is by no means exact, Next Juditta says that after receiving Baptism and holy Orders they lived hidden in concealment alquanto tempo, for some time, or, as it is rendered by several, for a short time, and, with many companions gathered to them, made increase of the faith. But how comes it that the space which ran from the year 286 to 303 should be called some time, or a short time? Now their martyrdom cannot, if one is to hold to the Acts which Juditta follows, be placed before the year 303. How is it that those who recorded their conversion and the comrades gathered by them did not also commit to writing at least some of the things done by them in the intervening space of so many years? This too occurs as singular in Juditta's Life, that the martyrdom of our Saints is tied to the year of Christ 284: but this I cannot but ascribe to the carelessness of the typesetters; for however much it be believed that Juditta studied edification rather than historical truth in her writing, who could yet persuade himself that she was so far distracted in mind as seriously to fix the year of death at 284, where she had assigned the year 286 to their conversion? But of the year of death more below.
[11] are examined, and of doubtful credit Tillemont, in tome 5 of the Monuments, in the persecution of Diocletian, article 48, affirms that the Acts of these holy Martyrs were not seen by him; but having considered the compendium which Ferrarius drew out of them, One may judge, he says, that there is nothing in them properly authentic or of great weight. And indeed, although Cardulus calls the codices from which he gathered his History most ancient, although he asserts that they savour of the early simplicity and piety, there are nevertheless not a few things which raise doubt of their sincerity, and render the codices used both by Juditta and by Cardulus altogether suspect of interpolation: some of these I subjoin here. In the first place, the rather long conversations of SS. Abundius and Abundantius with Diocletian, and the more prolix prayers to God of themselves and of the other twenty-three martyrs — often most ingeniously stuffed with manifold phrases of the sacred Scriptures, as being most apt for adorning the history — seem to have been inserted into the Acts by writers who spent their industry upon this, that they might attribute to the Saints those words which they believed the Saints could have used, after the example of other Saints, according to the circumstances of things and times. I know indeed that not all credit is on that account to be withdrawn from the Acts: but since these longer speeches and prayers are not read in the manuscript Acts which we have, it plainly appears that it may at least be doubted whether the Saints really spoke as the printed Acts relate that they spoke.
[12] Another thing, which I subjoin, gives even greater
suspicion in me, and they are shown to be suspect of interpolation. and no one will easily adjudge it to the Saints. After the benefits of God have been commemorated, after their own contest has been commended to Him, the Saints are brought in speaking thus: But requite the malignant Diocletian, as he has wrought upon thy innocent servants: afflict his unbelieving heart and his hardened and stony spirit, unto the correction of those who despise thy greatness. These words, I say, are less than fitting for holy Men: for no one will easily believe that they, on the very point of being joined to Christ, were so ill disposed in mind toward the tyrant as to call down divine vengeance upon him. If deeds of this sort were found in Acts otherwise altogether approved and authentic, we should say that they seem rather to be wondered at than imitated, such as are now and then found in the Lives of the Saints. But these Acts are not of such authority that it is necessary to admit such things as true: for the Saints are not wont to wish ill to their enemies, even for the correction of others or the manifestation of the divine omnipotence.
[13] Wherefore, passing over the Acts of Cardulus and of Juditta, The manuscript Acts from the Bodecensian codex, simpler than the rest, I shall give below other manuscript Acts of our Saints, which Father Gamans, a priest of our Society, extracted from the notable parchment manuscript Passional of the month of August, folio 262, of the monastery of Böddeken, of the Order of Regular Canons of St. Augustine in the diocese of Paderborn, and transmitted to our Museum in the year 1641. These agree entirely with the printed Acts as regards the sequence of the whole affair, and differ from them only in certain lighter matters, as I shall observe in the Annotations. Since these Acts have neither those longer speeches, of which at number XI, nor that imprecation, of which at number 12, they seem to me simpler than the others and for that very reason to be preferred: yet I offer them to the reader not as indubitable and plainly authentic; for if we except those points which I have just mentioned, these labour under the same difficulties as those; and it will not be beside the purpose to touch here in few words upon one or two of them.
[14] In the first place, both in these manuscripts and in the Acts published in print, Diocletian always in his own person interrogates the Saints, yet not indubitable refutes them, stands by while Abundius and Abundantius are tortured on the rack, and himself passes capital sentence upon them; whereas Christians were for the most part interrogated, tortured, and condemned by judges and prefects delegated by the tyrants themselves. Whence what Sollerius said must often be done in the Observations upon his Usuard, I judge must be done here also — namely, that the persecution of Diocletian be substituted in the place of the persecutor himself. Another doubt about the sincerity of the Acts is raised by the city of Lubra or Lubræ, unknown to the older geographers, of which Cardulus writes thus in his Notes under the letter t: Of which city no mention is found among the writers; from which it becomes likely that it was at that time a new and small town; some suspect that it lay on the left of the Flaminian Way as one sets out from Rome, at about the twelfth milestone, in those parts where now, five hundred paces from the way, certain small traces of buildings and ruins are discerned.
[15] This suspicion and conjecture of Cardulus by no means brings it about that I should dare to assert and plainly genuine and authentic, that Lubra ever really existed: but neither does the authority of certain more recent geographers prove it; for since they adduce the Acts of Cardulus as their witness, it is of no greater weight than the Acts themselves are. For my part, if it is permitted to indulge conjecture a little more here, I rather suspect that anciently it was written juxta delubra, "beside the shrines": for since we read in approved authors that in the time of Diocletian's persecution images of the idols were set up beside springs, at crossroads and in market-places and in all the streets indiscriminately, with attendants added to compel everyone to sacrifice, why may we not presume that like images were placed on the Flaminian Way also, and that certain shrines (delubra) were built for them? Now it may have happened that from the word delubra some smatterer, or careless copyists, in the lapse of time fashioned a city Lubra: but, as I have warned, this is mere conjecture.
[16] to be printed below. The story of Marcian too is not without its own difficulty: for Cardulus places Lubra at about the twelfth milestone from the City, five hundred paces distant from the road; and it was beside Lubra that Marcian, mourning his dead son, met SS. Abundius and Abundantius, by whom, being revived with the hope of seeing his son alive again if he should believe in Christ, he departs to fetch the corpse, the attendants meanwhile being unwilling to halt. But since no copy of the Acts sets the arena of the martyrdom further than the fourteenth milestone from the City, how could Marcian, however swift his course, complete his whole journey — upon which, by Cardulus's reckoning, a thousand paces had to be spent — early enough, especially since on the return he walked burdened both with his son's corpse and with a pitcher of water? Bartholomew Piazza in part 2 of the Hemerologium sacrum, and Philip Ferrarius in the Catalogue of the Saints of Italy, doubtless felt this difficulty, and therefore, seeking probably to avoid that troublesome going and returning, related the story of Marcian as though at the very first meeting he had laid his dead son before the feet of SS. Abundius and Abundantius. Besides these things I find nothing in the Acts which can be greatly called into doubt by anyone.
§ II. The birth and condition of the Saints: the time of the martyrdom uncertain.
[ ] Nobility of blood is attributed to the Saints Although I hold it as most plainly seen that our lineage and our forefathers and what we have not ourselves done are less to be called ours, and that little accrues to the glory of the Saints from brightness of blood, yet, since it is as wicked to deny a true nobility as it is ridiculous to build up a fictitious one, it pleases me briefly to investigate the birth of our Saints. And as regards SS. Marcian and John, since absolutely all the Acts address Marcian by the title of a most illustrious man, and nothing occurs in them contrary to this prerogative, no one can prudently deny that they were born in a distinguished station: Cardulus adds in the Notes under the letter v, Marcian, … a Roman, as is believed, and one who perhaps had estates at Lubra. Juditta Luti, as I observed at number 8, writes that SS. Abundius and Abundantius were sprung of illustrious stock, which prerogative of nobility Cardulus endeavours to claim for them in the Notes under the letter c: I think the examination of his arguments will not be unwelcome to the reader.
[18] by Cardulus and others The aforesaid editor has it thus: This same thing, moreover, can easily be understood from the history itself. For when Diocletian, interrogating twenty-five Christians brought together before the tribunal, sees them steadfast in the confession of the faith, he orders twenty-three indeed to be beheaded forthwith on the Salarian Way at the second milestone; but these two, whom he had accused as being the others' teachers, leaders, and deceivers, he first casts into chains, then, after twenty-two or twenty-five days, having led them out of prison and probing them again with interrogation, urges them to the worship of idols; afterwards, when he persuaded them in vain, he tortures them on the rack; at last, made the angrier by their patience, he commands them to be struck with the axe on the Flaminian Way at the tenth milestone. Why does he separate these two from the rest of the company? Why does he not kill them at once along with those? Why does he keep them so many days for a change of purpose? Why finally does he send them so far from the walls of the City to their death? And this, the otherwise most bitter enemy of the Christian religion? Assuredly no other cause can be brought forward than a certain notable nobility and authority of theirs, and the respect and dignity of the Roman name.
[19] Bartholomew Piazza followed Cardulus in the place cited above, asserting their that, because they were noble Romans, they were ordered by the tyrant to be beheaded at the twelfth milestone from the City, lest a sedition of the people be stirred up. It is not my mind, as I said at number 9, to impugn the distinguished birth of our Saints: but since neither in the Acts published by Cardulus nor in the manuscripts to be printed below does any word occur which certainly indicates nobility, I leave it as doubtful, and upon the credit of the Sienese manuscript and of the others from which it was drawn; and the arguments of Cardulus do not prove that nobility. For if the notable nobility of the Saints moved the tyrant to grant them some days for a change of purpose, why is this not signified at least by a little word, as we read to have been often done in the Acts of other Saints? If fear of a sedition being stirred up by the people brought it about that they were ordered to be beheaded so far from the City, it is strange that they were not led to death secretly, which nevertheless certainly did not happen, since they are read to have been slain with an immense crowd looking on, as Cardulus has it in his own Acts: Then, he says, the multitude of peoples, who had come together to the spectacle of the death, etc.
[20] Accordingly the mere postponement of death and the distance of the arena from the City does not seem an argument efficacious enough to prove the nobility of SS. Abundius and Abundantius; reasons are weighed. for many reasons could move the tyrant to rage at once against the anonymous ones but later against these, and to wish those slain not far from the City and these further off; but there is no leisure to dwell on such matters. Nothing occurs in the Acts either which favours the fear of civil disturbances on account of the nobility of Abundius and Abundantius asserted by Piazza; on the contrary, there is not a little that stands against it: for by their slaying the tyrant seems to have aimed at deterring the people from the Christian religion. For when, brought a second time before Diocletian, they persevered most steadfastly in the faith of Christ, the Acts of Cardulus, with which others also agree, have it thus: The legal counsellor said, in Diocletian's presence: if these men be not put out of the way, there will be no manifest fear, and the whole Roman commonwealth will run to their sect. And what of the fact that the Acts themselves record a sedition stirred up by the pontiffs and priests of the pagans, demanding decrees against the Christians and desiring that they be punished as sacrilegious men? See also what is to be said below at numbers 29 and 30.
[21] But as regards the manner of life of the Saints, Their holy Orders are given not in the Roman Martyrology, the Acts plainly relate that Abundius was resplendent with the priestly dignity, and that Abundantius held the grade of the diaconate: in his first encounter with the tyrant Abundius calls himself a priest, saying: By my first name in particular I am a Christian, and I am called a presbyter. This same thing is confirmed by the inscriptions found in the year 1582 upon their coffins, which Cardulus reports thus in the history of the third translation: And on one of them indeed, under the Gospel horn of the altar, was a marble tablet marked with the sign of the cross and with this epitaph: HERE RESTS SAINT HABUNDIUS, PRIEST AND MONK AND MARTYR. But on the other, under the Epistle horn, a second tablet likewise inscribed with the same sign and this title: HERE RESTS SAINT HABUNDANTIUS, DEACON AND MARTYR. Gregory XIII too, in Cardulus page 38, in his Apostolic letters by which he commanded the aforesaid translation to be made, calls Abundius a priest and Abundantius a deacon: Tillemont therefore is not right in saying that their titles were inverted by the Roman Martyrology, which marks Abundius as priest and Abundantius as deacon.
[22] but in the Catalogue of Ferrarius, Ferrarius seems to have given occasion to this opinion of Tillemont: for after relating in compendium the history of our Saints, although he himself
had earlier called Abundius a priest and Abundantius a deacon, yet in an annotation he writes thus: In the brick altar there were found two other coffins full of sacred bones: in one of which was an inscription of this sort: HERE RESTS S. ABUNDANTIUS, PRIEST, MONK AND MARTYR. But in the other: HERE RESTS S. ABUNDIUS, DEACON AND MARTYR. On what authority he rests in writing thus, I do not find noted: certainly Ferrarius confesses that the whole history of the Martyrs, together with the translations of the sacred bodies, was drawn by him from no other documents than from the monuments of the church of Civita Castellana and the passion of the same Martyrs lately printed by the Society of Jesus: for these two alone does he cite at the end of his narrative.
[23] they have been wrongly inverted. What those monuments of the Castellan Church adduced by Ferrarius may be, I do not enquire: certainly Ughelli, among the bishops of Civita Castellana, sets down to the credit of the often-mentioned History of Cardulus the fact that the memory of Crescentianus was preserved, writing thus: Which (History of our Martyrs), had it been silent, perhaps no mention of Crescentianus would have flowed down to posterity. But in the Arinian codex, from which is read the translation of SS. Marcian and John to the Castellan church, and that of the Saints Abundius and Abundantius to the basilica of St. Adalbert, it stands baldly, every title being omitted, of the martyrs Abundius and Abundantius: while the words adduced at number 21 from Cardulus show abundantly and more that the title of priest belongs to Abundius. It must be, then, either that Ferrarius himself transcribed his own original faultily, or, what I rather suspect, that some careless typesetter did not observe Ferrarius's writing accurately enough. But of Cardulus's fidelity in this part there can be no doubt, both on account of the Apostolic letters commended above, and also from this, that he published his History in the year immediately following the translation, when certainly very many were still surviving who had seen the inscriptions with their own eyes: it does not therefore seem doubtful that St. Abundius was a priest.
[24] Was St. Abundius a monk? But it is not so certain whether he really professed the monastic life: this manner of life is attributed to him by the inscription mentioned above; but since the Acts are silent about it, and no such inscription is read of before the finding of the sacred bodies in the church of SS. Cosmas and Damian, I should not dare to assert that he was a monk. Perhaps after the first finding under Otto III this title was placed upon the tomb by someone who, out of his own veneration for monks, thought that St. Abundius could be held such from what he read in the Acts, that SS. Abundius and Abundantius lived in hiding with twenty-three other companions, to whom they ministered and whom they imbued with the divine mysteries of Christ. Nor do I deny that it may have happened that before the beginning of Diocletian's persecution he led a solitary life, which, when the tyrant was harassing the Christians, he abandoned in order to confirm those wavering in the faith, and so could at least be called a monk in a less strict sense of the name: for whether in the first ages of the Church there existed monks such as she now gladly embraces in her bosom, it is nothing to the purpose here to dispute. But of these matters enough now.
[25] I said at number 10 that the contest of the Saints of whom we are here speaking cannot be fixed before the year of Christ 303, Holding to the Acts, they suffered that is, if we interpret the Acts in their proper sense: for since they are said to have been struck with the sword at Rome under Diocletian, he himself passing capital sentence upon them, they could not have suffered before the persecution begun by him; but that did not begin before the year 303. For in the book On the Deaths of the Persecutors, reprinted at Paris in the year 1748, chapter 9, Lactantius writes — whose testimony alone in this matter is as good as that of very many: Diocles (for so he was called before his reign), while he was overthrowing the commonwealth by such counsels and such associates, … nevertheless reigned in the highest felicity just so long as he did not stain his hands with the blood of the just. Then, having interposed the cause of persecuting the Christians, he speaks thus in chapter 12: A fit and lucky day for carrying out the business is sought, and by preference the Terminalia are chosen, which fall on the seventh of the Kalends of March… And when that day had dawned, both the aged men holding the consulship, the eighth and the seventh time, etc.; which words evidently designate the year of Christ 303, as Baluze in his Notes on this passage of Lactantius proves unanswerably against Onuphrius, Baronius, Petavius, and others who contend that that persecution began in the year 302 — whom, if you please, consult.
[26] But neither, if, as the Acts declare, they suffered under Diocletian in his own person, can the illustrious martyrdom of the Saints be extended beyond the year 303: in the year 303 and in no other. for, by the testimony of the same Lactantius, chapter 17, Diocletian, this crime (of the persecution of the Christians) having been perpetrated, … since felicity had now departed from him, straightway proceeded to Rome, that he might there celebrate the day of his vicennalia, which was to fall on the twelfth of the Kalends of December. But when the vicennalia had been celebrated, not bearing the freedom and sharpness of tongue of the Roman people, he burst out of the City sick at heart even before the Kalends of January of the following year, and never again entered it up to the Kalends of May of the year 305, when Diocletian laid aside both the empire and the purple, as chapters 17, 18, and 19 of the aforesaid work most clearly demonstrate. If therefore one is to press closely upon the Acts of our Saints, it is altogether necessary to shut up their martyrdom within the bounds of the year 303: nor does anything seem capable of being brought forward whereby it might be shown that the opinion which assigns the glorious triumph of these holy Martyrs to the year 303 is repugnant to historical truth.
[27] For although Eusebius in book 9 of the Ecclesiastical History, chapters 2 and 3, writes An answer is made to the authority of Eusebius, that in the first year of the persecution the savagery of the persecutors raged against the presidents of the churches alone, and that only in the second year were the emperor's letters sent, by which, he says, it was commanded by a general precept that all men everywhere, in all places and among all nations, should publicly offer sacrifices and libations to the idols — yet it is more likely that not long after the harassing of the Christians was begun, all men everywhere were driven to punishment: for Lactantius (to whom more deference is here to be paid than to Eusebius) has it thus in chapter 13: On the next day (after the church of Nicomedia had been demolished on the very feast of the Terminalia) an edict was published, by which it was provided that men of that religion should be deprived of all honour and dignity, and be subjected to torments, from whatever order or rank they came: which words, from whatever order or rank, signify something more than can rightly be taken of those only to whom the government of the churches had been committed.
[28] by arguments drawn from Lactantius, Lactantius supports this opinion still more clearly in chapter 15, saying: Men of every sex and age were seized for burning; … the household slaves were plunged into the sea with millstones tied to their necks. Nor did the persecution press with less violence upon the rest of the people… The prisons were full. Unheard-of kinds of torments were devised. And chapter 16: The whole earth therefore was harassed, and, except for the Gauls, from the East even to the West three most savage beasts raged.
> Not if a hundred tongues were mine, and a hundred mouths, > A voice of iron, could I comprehend all the forms of crimes, > Or run through all the names of the punishments
which the judges through the provinces inflicted upon the just and the innocent. And then at last, in chapter 17, he narrates Diocletian's journey to Rome, which certainly fell in the year of Christ 303. In that year, therefore, both torments and the penalty of death were dealt out against the faithful of every sort; for that Lactantius here used a prolepsis does not seem capable of being shown by any reasoning.
[29] and by other reasons it is shown, It also makes it altogether likely that the martyrdom of the Saints can be tied to the year 303, that in their Acts mention is made of a sedition stirred up against the Christians by the pontiffs: for in the Passion of St. Sabinus, in Baluze's Miscellanea, book 2, we read thus: Under Maximian Augustus, on the fifteenth of the Kalends of May, at the sixth race sent off in the Circus Maximus, the Blues winning, the greater part of the people cried out, saying: Let the Christians be done away, and our pleasure is assured. It was said twelve times. By the head of Augustus, let there be no Christians, etc. Although here it is the people, but in the Acts of our Martyrs the pontiffs, who are said to have demanded the destruction of the Christians, I nevertheless suspect that one and the same sedition is recorded in both places, so that our Acts reckon up the first kindlers of the disturbances, while the Passion of St. Sabinus records the common folk, who, stirred up against the Christians by the priests of the idols, spread the conflagration of fury more widely. Tillemont does not dare to embrace the history of that sedition, because the Acts of St. Sabinus do not seem to him sufficiently authentic. This is not the place to weigh them; yet meanwhile let the opinion of Sollerius at the thirtieth day of December, in his Observation on the Martyrology of Usuard, find place here: Certainly, he says, so many rays of simple sincerity strike the eyes amid the darker little clouds, that I do not despair that the aforesaid Acts will one day be vindicated, by us or by our successors, from Tillemont's censure.
[30] that the martyrdom can be tied to the year of Christ 303: What makes still more for the present matter, Tillemont in Note 14 on the persecution of Diocletian confesses that the decree which the Acts of St. Sabinus mention cannot be tied more aptly than to the year 303, if Herculius really passed it against all the Christians: But, he says, from another quarter, the edict condemning all Christians to death was, according to Eusebius, not passed until the second year of the persecution, and according to Lactantius on the authority of Diocletian, who wrote about it to Maximian. But since the whole context of Lactantius, as was briefly shown at numbers 27 and 28, manifestly hints that even in the first year of that most savage persecution all the faithful of Christ were adjudged to death, what Tillemont adds in the same place casts no scruple upon me: At least it appears by no reasoning that Herculius undertook a matter of such moment without consulting him (Diocletian): and yet between the seventeenth day of May, on which the people demanded this edict according to the Acts of St. Sabinus, and the twenty-second, on which Maximian granted it in the senate, he had probably not consulted Diocletian, who was then at Nicomedia. For the people demanded that edict on the seventeenth day not of May but of April, as the Acts have it: on the fifteenth of the Kalends of May — whence the force of Tillemont's argument is not a little lightened. But neither was it necessary to consult Diocletian, since Lactantius writes in chapter 15: Letters too had gone to Maximian and Constantius, that they should do the same … and indeed the old man Maximian, a man not so very merciful, obeyed willingly throughout Italy. Now he had prefixed the words which I gave at numbers 28 and 29, describing the horrible slaughter of all the Christians, which, after reporting Diocletian's letters to Herculius, he goes on in chapter 16 to depict in a lamentable manner.
[31] What we have thus far discussed concerning the year of death has this effect, yet the time that it is indeed altogether probably permitted to contend that the year of Christ 303 may have been made illustrious by the martyrdom of our Saints; but it by no means proves that it must be assigned to that year beyond doubt. For after the persecution was begun Diocletian reigned two years more and some months and days, and it is well ascertained that in that time much Christian blood was shed both at Rome and elsewhere. Also, after Diocletian had abdicated
and Maximian had laid down the empire, the harassing lasted eight years, Galerius being then Augustus — he who had first been the instigator of evils against the Christians to his father-in-law — and the other emulators of Diocletian's impiety indulging, so far as they could, their rabid ferocity against the faithful of Christ. If therefore, according to what was said at number 14, we expound the Acts of the Saints more mildly, I shall say that everything which was done either by Galerius or by the prefects of the emperors and Caesars could be ascribed to him by whose authority and cruel enactments the Christian people had begun to be afflicted in almost the whole world.
[32] But nothing hinders either the martyrdom of the Saints from being referred to times earlier than the year of Christ 303: it cannot be determined with certainty. for what Eusebius asserts, that the Christians enjoyed great liberty in their religion during the first years of Diocletian's reign, seems to pertain rather to the East than to the West. Nor indeed is it to be doubted that many attained the laurel of martyrdom before the edicts published by Diocletian, whom either the savagery of Herculius, a most ferocious man who held Italy as the seat of empire, or the particular prefects of cities or provinces — alleging in their own favour the ancient edicts of the emperors, out of private superstition or for other causes — put to death, as you will find proved at the twenty-third day of August, in the Commentarius prævius on SS. Claudius, Asterius, etc., at numbers 18 and 19. Now those slayings could be attributed to Diocletian, as holding the first place in the empire, by those who committed to record the Acts of the Saints of whom we here treat and of other martyrs, and the biographers who followed them may have taken up the name and person of Diocletian. I judge therefore that our Saints are, with Baronius and others, to be reckoned among those for whom the certain year in which they suffered is by no means expressed; and for that reason at the beginning of this Commentary I fixed their martyrdom broadly under Diocletian.
§ III. The most ancient cultus of the Saints: churches erected to them; several places ennobled by their relics: certain doubts discussed.
[ ] The cultus of our Saints is most ancient, It remains now that we here append what is found among writers concerning the lawful cultus of our Saints and its antiquity. That it is most ancient does not seem capable of being denied; but the determined time of its beginning I have found expressed in no monuments, and so it cannot be assigned with certainty. The Arinian codex, from which Cardulus transcribed the History of the first finding and translation, made at the beginning of the eleventh century, mentions a church of SS. Abundius and Abundantius the martyrs, from which the sacred remains both of them and of Marcian and John and others were carried away into others: nor do I doubt that the building of that church is much earlier than the tenth century. Cardulus, thinking that the observances of public veneration were shown to our Saints by the faithful not long after their glorious contest, judges thus of that church in Note 18 to the History of the translation: Which (church) still stands, built, as is believed, many centuries ago, namely when the storms of the persecutions had been stilled. But in the Notes to the History of the martyrdom, under the letter y, he writes thus: Moreover, on this estate of B. Theodora (this was the place, as the Acts declare, where the pious matron buried the Martyrs), which lay on the Flaminian Way, it is certain that as time went on a church was built under the name of the most blessed martyrs Abundius and Abundantius, which is seen even now; and Blondus affirms that he has read that the town of Arinianum, which is in the same place, was built in the age of the blessed Gregory the Great, Roman Pontiff.
[34] and perhaps began not long after their death. Aringhus in Roma subterranea, book 4, chapter 40, number 2, has it thus: The estate (of B. Theodora) stood on the Flaminian Way near Mount Soracte, chiefly in that place where now the town of Regnanum is situate; for a church is seen erected in their honour there; where Theodora herself besides, joined to the Martyrs by a worthy fellowship of merits, was buried with equal honour also. And from these things indeed we know the place of the church erected to them, but we cannot dig out its epoch. If what Cardulus piously believes stands, perhaps an oratory was erected by Theodora herself over the tomb of the Martyrs, which either she afterwards, if she survived the persecution, or others emulating her piety toward the Martyrs, enlarged by pious liberality. Perhaps Gregory the Great erected that church, in whose age Blondus writes that the town of Arinianum was founded, situate in that place where formerly the estate of Theodora had been. Certainly the faithful in the time of Gregory the Great could, whether from tradition or from another source, have known the place of the Saints' burial, and have flocked thither in numbers for religion's sake; and the most holy Pontiff could have been induced by that devotion of the faithful both to build the town, as Blondus writes, and to build a church too, so that by the frequency of inhabitants the veneration of the Saints might be rendered more celebrated: but let these things be said by way of conjecture; for through the lack of monuments they cannot be investigated more deeply.
[35] A second church erected to the name of SS. Abundius and Abundantius at the beginning of the ninth century, with a convent of sacred virgins added to it, A church is said to have been erected to SS. Abundius and Abundantius is recorded by Cardulus in the above-mentioned annotation to the History of the martyrdom, whose words it has seemed good to transcribe here. It is not to be passed over in silence, what is read in the Sienese manuscript codex concerning a second church built long ago for these holy Martyrs: for it is a thing most worthy of record and of knowledge. And it stands thus. Pippin the son of Charlemagne (who was anointed and consecrated king of Italy by Leo III, Supreme Pontiff, in the year of Christ 801, and reigned until the year 810), when on his way to Rome he had come to the city of Siena, moved by the fame of these holy Martyrs, took up the thought of building a basilica for them. Having sought out and summoned workmen, he lets out the work at a great price. They, as had been commanded, on the first day begin to lay the foundations of the church near the city on the public road, in a level place at the roots of the mountain which was then called Plasanus and today is named St. Abundius's; on the following day, returning to the place, they find no trace of the begun work.
[36] Searching, when they had by chance climbed to the summit of the mountain, by divine agency: they see the begun building there: pulling it down, they carry the material to the level ground, and repeat the foundations in the former place; but on the next day's light they met with the same thing that had happened the day before. Astounded and stupefied by the novelty and miracle of the thing, they briskly pursue the building of the church begun on the mountain's peak by a divine nod and angelic ministry, giving thanks to almighty God, who had shown where He wished a church to be built for Himself and for His holy Martyrs. Accordingly the building was completed with royal munificence and piety, which Pippin, returning from Rome, took care to have dedicated and consecrated to the holy martyrs Abundius and Abundantius on the seventh of the Kalends of September: and he assigned to it most ample yearly revenues, and joined to it a large convent of sacred virgins of the Order of St. Benedict; which even today is celebrated with singular praise and repute for religion and holiness, and is ennobled by the sacred body of B. John Colombini, a citizen of Siena and founder of the Jesuati (who had dedicated his virgin daughter to Christ in that same convent, and had kindly and piously given a third part of his goods to it). From which it is not obscurely perceived how many centuries ago these most blessed Martyrs were in honour among the faithful and the orthodox.
[37] I do not indeed assert that the heavenly building of this church is utterly fictitious; but the credit of that assertion, since writers yet I should not dare to thrust it upon the reader as well established and solidly built up, without better documents to create belief. Mabillon does not mention it in the Annals of his Order, as Cuper observed before me in the Life of B. Colombini. Henschen, in the Acts of B. Peter Petroni, tome VII of May, page 211, when he had related that B. Colombini's daughter had been handed over by her own parent to that most ancient and noble convent of sacred virgins, has this in the Annotations: Now SS. Abundius and Abundantius are venerated on the sixteenth of September, on which day we desire that whatever can be had concerning the foundation of that monastery and the relics of the Saints there, which gave occasion to the name, be suggested to us. Cuper expressed his own wish on the same matter in the same words in tome VII of July, in the Commentarius prævius to the Acts of B. John Colombini, number 43: but hitherto we have neither received nor been able to procure any sufficiently authentic documents.
[38] As to the Sienese codex commended by Cardulus, which doubtless also lighted the way for Juditta, I do not know of what mark and time and credit it is, and whether it is of such a kind as easily to draw a prudent reader to give assent to so memorable a prodigy, disagree about the time and the author of the building, especially since this wondrous building is made further doubtful by the diversity of the Pippins to whom it is ascribed by various writers and by a difference of nearly 50 years. For the Sienese Fasti of the Academy of the Intronati say thus: In the year 758, under king Pippin, exceedingly bountiful toward the nunnery named from SS. Abundius and Abundantius, the heavenly powers are said to have bestowed their labour upon building its wall: and thus they manifestly hint at Pippin the father of Charlemagne; but the very word are said, as is plain of itself, is exceedingly weak. Cardulus on the contrary makes Pippin the son of Charlemagne the author of that convent: Who, he says, was anointed and consecrated king of Italy by Leo III, Supreme Pontiff, in the year of Christ 801, and reigned until the year 810. Juditta too attributes this praise to Pippin the son of Charlemagne.
[39] is unsteady. And this disagreement of the writers about the years and the kings seems to me sufficient to make it justly permissible to be in doubt about the whole matter. Therefore let what Cuper declared in the place cited above hold good here also: We leave this angelic construction of the Benedictine monastery … upon the credit of the Sienese reporters; upon the credit, I say, of the codices on which Cardulus and Juditta rest, and others, if there be any, who assert that prodigy: we meanwhile shall always count it a kindness, if anyone desirous of vindicating this glory for the said convent shall deign to send us suitable monuments. Nor is it clear enough what was the cause of naming that monastery from SS. Abundius and Abundantius — whether on account of the founder's particular veneration toward these Saints, or on account of their sacred relics: the first, however, seems to me the more likely. For, as Cardulus shows on occasion of another controversy, to be mentioned briefly below, the first finding and translation of our Martyrs is read to have taken place only at the beginning of the eleventh century, and in the last, made in the sixteenth century as it drew to its close, almost nothing was missing except the head of St. Abundius, which is seen in the church of the blessed Mary of Aracœli: certainly it is established that in the year 1584 the nuns of Siena obtained some part of the relics from Gregory XIII; nor have I found any document by which it could be proved that before this year any sacred remains of our SS. Abundius and Abundantius rested in the aforesaid convent.
[40] Indulgences granted by Pius II and Gregory XIII. Pius II, Supreme Pontiff, increased the cultus of SS. Abundius and Abundantius, when in the year 1464, having venerated in the convent of the nuns of Siena the sacred pledges of B. John Colombini, he bestowed in perpetuity upon each and all visiting this church … on the feast of the holy Abundius and Abundantius, seven years and as many quadragenes
of indulgence, as appears from the inscription cut upon a marble tablet, concerning which see Joseph Bonafede, book 2, chapter 22, in the Life of B. John Colombini. Nor did the most pious will of Gregory XIII contribute less to the enlarging of the veneration of SS. Abundius and Abundantius, which he expressed in this manner in his Apostolic Letters given on the tenth day of September in the year 1583: We have decreed to adorn the church of the professed house of the Society of Jesus of the City … with the bodies of SS. Abundius the priest and Abundantius the deacon, martyrs distinguished by the shedding of their blood for the name of Christ … so that, being placed there, they may be venerated with greater devotion and concourse of the people. And toward the end he has this: And that the faithful of Christ may come together to the translation of the same holy bodies in greater numbers and with greater zeal of devotion, to all the faithful of Christ themselves of either sex, truly penitent and confessed and refreshed with the sacred Eucharist, who shall have been present at the aforesaid translation, we mercifully bestow in the Lord a plenary indulgence and remission of all their sins. All which things abundantly demonstrate the immemorial and lawful cultus of SS. Abundius and Abundantius.
[41] Neither can anyone by any means doubt of the antiquity of the cultus shown by the faithful to SS. Marcian and John: The cultus of SS. Marcian and John is most ancient: for the things we discussed at numbers 33 and 34 in asserting the public veneration anciently bestowed on SS. Abundius and Abundantius also make for the most ancient cultus of SS. Marcian and John. It is indeed certain that they were laid away by Theodora in the same tomb as SS. Abundius and Abundantius; it is certain too that a church was afterwards erected over the tomb, which indeed was named only from SS. Abundius and Abundantius; yet since it is not likely that the memory of these was preserved while that of the holy Marcian and John was utterly obliterated at the time when the church was founded, I persuade myself that these too were venerated and invoked there, until, when SS. Abundius and Abundantius had been translated to the church of St. Adalbert, Crescentianus, the most religious bishop of the Castellan church, emulating the piety of Otto III, had the bones of SS. Marcian and John carried with the greatest solemnity into the basilica of the most blessed Mother of God: which translation, as will be seen in the Appendix, the divine goodness deigned to illustrate with more than one prodigy, for the manifesting of the glory and merits of His Saints with Him.
[42] For the rest, as Aringhus writes in Roma subterranea, book 4, their relics are in Civita Castellana. chapter 40, number 3, in the same Castellan church the bodies of SS. Marcian and John are to this day religiously preserved. With Aringhus agrees Ughelli in Italia sacra, tome 1, among the bishops of Civita Castellana, speaking thus of the bodies of Marcian and John translated to the Castellan church: And there they are to this day most honourably preserved, on the very octave day of the Lord's Manifestation. By these last words Ughelli likely hints that their festival is celebrated there on the thirteenth day of January, which is consecrated to the Octave of the Epiphany; on that day certainly the Arinian codex notes that the relics of SS. Marcian and John were laid away and elevated by bishop Crescentianus in the church of the most blessed and ever Virgin Mary, and so it can be held as sacred to the translation. But whether besides this the Castellan church celebrates the day of those Saints' death, which is commonly reckoned the sixteenth of September, I have nowhere found noted: likewise I cannot declare whether the entire bodies of SS. Marcian and John rest in the said church, or whether other churches besides have been made partakers of that precious treasure.
[43] That many churches have been ennobled by the sacred pledges of SS. Abundius and Abundantius A doubt concerning the head of St. Abundius is discussed. can both be gathered from what has been said above and will appear more fully from what is to be said below; wherefore I forbear to reckon them up singly here. A doubt might arise for someone, whether any relics of our St. Abundius are preserved at Augsburg: since it is read in the Life of St. Ulric, bishop of Augsburg, in our tome 2 of July, that the head of a certain St. Abundius was brought from Rome to Augsburg by the aforesaid holy bishop. Cardulus raised this doubt in the Notes under the letter c toward the end, and resolved it from the time at which St. Ulric's twofold Roman pilgrimage took place: but since the dates of the earlier journey adduced by Cardulus can with difficulty be reconciled, as Pinius observed in the Commentarius prævius to the Acts of St. Ulric, number 10, I judge that the doubt can be removed more easily, while still keeping to the footsteps of Cardulus, in this manner. It is certain that St. Ulric died in the year 973; but it does not seem capable of being shown by any document that any relics of our St. Abundius were brought to Rome before the year 1000, in which the bodies of those holy Martyrs are known to have been first found in the Arinian church, and the bodies of SS. Abundius and Abundantius were carried to Rome to the basilica of St. Adalbert, and those of the holy Marcian and John to Civita Castellana, as will be seen more fully in the Appendix: what therefore St. Ulric brought to Augsburg cannot be the head of our St. Abundius. Now I set before the reader the Acts of our Saints, under that caution which I intimated at number 13 and following.
PASSION
By an anonymous author,
From the Bodecensian manuscript, collated with the Acts published by Cardulus and by Juditta Luti.
Abundius, priest, M. at Rome (S.)
Abundantius, deacon, M. at Rome (S.)
Marcian, M. at Rome (S.)
John, M. at Rome (S.)
BHL Number: 0017
aBy an anonymous author.
Accused before the emperor, In the times of the emperors Diocletian and Maximian there arose a sedition b in the city of Rome of the pontiffs of the temples, saying: Against our welfare c certain men of the * Sepiani, seducing the people, persuade them to abandon the temples of the gods; through their abominable sect unbelievers insult our gods. Let your clemency therefore command that they either give way d, or set incense and libations before our gods: but as for those who refuse to sacrifice, let your piety order that authority be exercised against them as against sacrilegious men, by an edict e set forth in the city of Rome. Now it came to pass after two days that a certain counsellor of the law stood before the emperor and said: I suggest to your piety that you command search to be made in the city for those in hiding who are the authors of this sect and seduce the people from the temples of the gods, and cause them to be held and to end their life through divers torments, or else to set incense before the almighty gods and sacrifice.
[2] and brought before him, they freely At the same hour soldiers went into the quarter which is called Canarius f, and found in the house of a certain most Christian matron Theodora the Saints of God in hiding, to the number of twenty-five. Among whom they laid hold of Abundius g the priest and Abundantius the deacon, and led them bound before the emperor. Diocletian h says to them: Whence are you, or of what religion are you? Abundius the priest answered and said: The men whom you behold are Christians, and their names i are written in heaven. Diocletian said: As I see, you seduce them, that they may not sacrifice to the almighty gods. Then all as with one mouth said: May it never be well with your demons whom you worship k, that we should bow to them or sacrifice to them; but we offer our very selves as a sacrifice of pious devotion to our God Jesus Christ for an odour of sweetness.
[3] Then the emperor Diocletian said to Abundius the priest: preach Christ. What are you called? Abundius the priest answered and said: By my first name in particular l I am a Christian, and I am called a presbyter; but by my second and bodily name I am called Abundius, servant of my Lord Jesus Christ; for m these men, who have once been enrolled, never obey your gods. Abundantius answered the emperor Diocletian and said: Do you think that we adore idols dumb and deaf, without sense and without soul, to the injury of the most high God who made heaven and earth? Our necks too we bow to Him who ought to be adored, who made that which has been made. Diocletian answered and said: And what did he make, that has been made? Abundantius the deacon answered and said: God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ made heaven and earth and all things that are in them: for your idols, whose structures are of cedar and of marble, shall perish in everlasting burning together with those who worship them.
[4] Then the emperor Diocletian said: Why do you shift about through many words? The anonymous ones are hurried off to death, the others to prison, Sacrifice to the god Hercules n and depart unharmed. The holy Men answered and said: We never sacrifice to your demons. But Diocletian ordered the holy Abundius the priest and the holy Abundantius the deacon to be led away and shut up in the Mamertine o prison: but the other thirteen [p] faithful in Christ he ordered to be led outside the walls of the city and there beheaded; who were beheaded by the executioners on the eighth of the Ides [q] of August; whose bodies John the priest and the matron Theodora gathered, and they buried them in a crypt at the Slope of the Cucumber [r]. Then the matron Theodora went to the prison [s] to the blessed Abundius the priest and Abundantius the deacon, and told them how they had received the holy martyrs with glory, and how the blessed John the priest gathered the bodies of the Saints and buried them with spices and linen cloths. On the same road, in the crypt there, the mysteries of Christ are received in peace.
[5] But after thirty days [t] the emperor Diocletian ordered the Saints of God, Abundius the priest and Abundantius the deacon, to be brought forth from custody to him and to be presented in the telludes [u] in the forum [x] before the temple: and then, after the torments of the rack, who were presented bound with chains. Then Diocletian addressed them with these words: What are you contriving for your welfare? Lay aside your obstinacy and do not trust in magic arts, lest you perish, as did those with whom you were seized. The Saints answered and said: They have not perished, but now glory with Christ. A certain counsellor of the law answered, in Diocletian's presence, and said: If these men be not put out of the way, there will be no manifest [y] fear. At the same hour the emperor Diocletian ordered them to be hoisted upon the rack and long tortured. And they, while they were long tortured, kept saying: Glory to thee, Lord Jesus Christ.
[6] Diocletian says to them: Do you name Christ again? I will presently extinguish your obstinacy by the power of the great Hercules; they are condemned to death. Meeting Marcian on the way, and he ordered them at once to be led onto the Flaminian Way [z] at the fourteenth [aa] milestone from the city of Rome, that there they might be beheaded. And they, as they were being led bound with chains, came near the city of Lubræ [bb], and there met them a most illustrious man named Marcian, who, mourning and weeping, said: Woe is me, for I have lost my son. The blessed Abundius says to him: And who took your son from you? Marcian answered: He is dead. At once the holy Martyrs say: Bring him to us quickly, and you shall see the works of our Lord Jesus Christ. And when he had gone away to fetch his son, the servants of the devil were unwilling to wait until he should come from the city of Lubræ.
[7] they raise his son from death, and with both of them, But after they had come to the aforesaid place,
behold, Marcian came at a most rapid run, and carrying his dead son in his arms he rolled at the feet of the Saints, saying: By Him for whom you suffer these things I adjure you, that you make me come together with you to the crown after the resurrection of my son. Then the people, who had come to the spectacle, marvelled whether the dead man could be raised by them. At the same hour, prostrate on the ground, they prayed with tears to the Lord, saying: Lord Jesus Christ, who didst deign to raise Lazarus, four days dead and stinking in the tomb, do thou deign to send thy holy angel, that he may call back the spirit into this extinguished body, and that all may know that thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God, who camest to make firm a broken world, who with God the Father almighty and the Holy Spirit livest and reignest for ever and ever. Amen.
[8] and after he has been washed in the sacred waters, they are struck with the axe. Then the holy Abundius, rising from prayer, said to the dead man: To thee I say, dry earth, arise in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, who lives and shall not die, in whose name the dead shall rise again and shall live for ever with Him. And straightway the eyes of the dead man were opened and he rose again. Then Marcian offered a pitcher with water, and the blessed Abundius the priest, taking it, baptized him in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, together with his son who had been raised again. At the same hour the executioners themselves, rising up, seized [cc] Marcian and his son. Then they placed their knees upon the ground, and, when they had given thanks, they were beheaded on the fifth of the Kalends [dd] of September. And on that same night the matron Theodora came with her servants, and placed them in her chamber [ee] and carried them away to her little estate at the twenty-eighth [ff] milestone from the city of Rome, and there buried them honourably with spices and linen cloths in peace, by the bounty of the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom be honour and glory for ever and ever. Amen.
ANNOTATIONS.
p. Here there is an error of the copyists: for from what has gone before, and from the added word Ceteros, "the others," it is plain that one should read not thirteen but twenty-three.
q. In Cardulus it is read on the Nones of August, on which day they are inscribed in the Roman Martyrology.
r. Of this cemetery Aringhus writes thus in Roma subterranea, book 4, chapter 35, number 1: It was built on the old Salarian Way at about the second milestone from the City. And it was inscribed and named by this title (to fetch its origin from further back) either because it was situate beneath a certain slope which presented to beholders the shape of a cucumber; or certainly because that kind of fruit was wont to be sown there by the farmers; or lastly, that nothing at all may escape the reader, on account of the shape of that same fruit carved upon some stone or building, from which the place afterwards drew its name, as has happened in very many other places in the City, etc.
s. That there was a sufficiently ample liberty of visiting captive Christians, various Acts of the Saints prove. Consult, if you please, tome III of September, the Commentarius prævius to the Acts of St. Adrian, number 22.
t. The printed Acts write only twenty-two days: but neither space seems ample enough, if on the days on which they are venerated there suffered both the 23 anonymous martyrs and SS. Abundius and Abundantius: for between the fifth day of August and the sixteenth of September there intervene forty-one days: and however long they are said to have been tortured on the rack, it is nevertheless not credible that they were afflicted with that torment for ten whole or more continuous days: nor yet is any mention made in the Acts either of other torments, or of a second detention in prison.
u. In the Sienese exemplar, says Cardulus in the Notes, it is written in tellure, "on the ground": and hence he is of opinion that Tellus was so called, as it were the temple of Tellus. Now that temple, according to Publius Victor, On the Regions of the City of Rome, was situate in the fourth region, called the Temple of Peace.
x. Baluze in the Notes to the Acts of St. Sabinus has this: That the judges were accustomed to judge Christians in the forum, with the people looking on, is proved, besides other testimonies, by the Acts of the holy Saturninus, Dativus and companions, chapter III, and the Acts of St. Pontius the martyr, chapter XVI. The latter, composed by Valerius an eye-witness, you have in our Work at the fourteenth day of May; the former at the eleventh day of February.
y. The sense seems to be this: unless these men be taken out of the way, the people will not be sufficiently deterred from the worship of Christ, but, as it follows in Cardulus's Acts: the whole Roman commonwealth will run to their sect.
z. This way … takes its beginning from the gate which formerly was called Flumentana, … but afterwards Flaminia … But in this age of ours … it is named the People's Gate, inasmuch as it is worn by a more frequent tread of those approaching than the rest, and is celebrated in the mouth of those flocking together everywhere, through which, that is to say, the people, so to speak, flows into the city daily in troops: so Aringhus, book 4 of Roma subterranea, chapter 38, number 2. Others believe that it was called the People's Gate (porta Populi) from the poplar tree (populus) frequent in that place. That this way was named from Flaminius, a man of consular rank, authors in the aforesaid Aringhus relate; but some assign it to the elder Flaminius, others to the younger.
aa. At the tenth milestone from the City read both the Roman Martyrology and the Acts of Cardulus, who writes thus in his Notes under the letter s: In the Sienese exemplar it is read at one milestone (yet the Life of Juditta Luti has at the tenth) but doubtless wrongly and by a fault, since it is repugnant to the following narrative. The aforesaid editor certainly designates Marcian's meeting them at the city of Lubra, continuing thus: The Roman has XIV, which indeed cannot be reprehended: but whichever way it be written, X or XIV, it matters little or nothing at all: for neither disagrees with the truth of the history. But if it be written at the tenth milestone, Cardulus's conjecture about the city of Lubra does not seem apt enough: for according to it Lubra was distant from Rome by about the twelfth milestone, and in the Acts the Saints are said to have gone still further to the place destined for their contest.
bb. It is also read, says Cardulus, Lubra in the singular number. See what we said of Lubra in the Commentary at number 15.
cc. Either the soldiers had received from the tyrant this power of butchering any Christian they met who refused to sacrifice to the idols, or perhaps some prefect or judge was present, who, driven into a rage by this accession to the faith of Christ, at once ordered Marcian with his son John to be beheaded.
dd. The Acts of Cardulus have on the sixteenth of the Kalends of October, which day the Roman Martyrology keeps as sacred to their birthday.
ee. This seems to be ascribed to the drowsiness of the transcribers, and one should read with Cardulus vehiculo, "in her carriage."
ff. Consult what is said of the estate of Theodora in the Commentary at numbers 33 and 34. Cardulus in the Notes says that only twenty miles are now counted, because miles were formerly shorter than they are today, and he proves this by examples, whom, if you please, consult.
\ read Christianis*.
APPENDIX
On the various translations of the sacred bodies, and the places to which their relics have been granted.
Abundius, priest, M. at Rome (S.)
Abundantius, deacon, M. at Rome (S.)
Marcian, M. at Rome (S.)
John, M. at Rome (S.)
BHL Number: 0018
BY U. S.
CHAPTER I.
On the first translation from the Arinian church:
PART I.
Certain doubts about the author and the time of the translation are discussed.
[ ] Whence the Histories of the translations are to be published. From the foregoing History of our Saints' martyrdom
it is established that their bodies were religiously gathered and carried away to the estate of B. Theodora, concerning whose situation, and the church erected there in the lapse of time, we discussed some things in the Commentary at numbers 33 and 34. Cardulus writes that the remains of the Martyrs lay in that place for about seven hundred years (I gave his words at number 6), and rightly: for I find no translation, even of some part of the relics, recorded by anyone before the bodies of SS. Abundius and Abundantius were translated from the Arinian church by Otto III into that of St. Adalbert, and those of the holy Marcian and John by Crescentianus into the Castellan basilica of the most blessed Virgin. Of this translation and of the others we tasted a little in §3 of the Commentarius prævius, where also we touched on some things concerning the places erected for their veneration, and others in which their sacred remains rest and are honoured with ecclesiastical cultus: but what we there said briefly of the translations and of the places which have been ennobled by the relics of those Martyrs, it has seemed worth the labour to pursue here more fully. I shall use the accounts published in print by Cardulus and Juditta: yet what shall seem superfluous I shall, for brevity's sake, either omit or report in a very few words, and I shall in the course of it, where it is necessary, make some observations.
[2] The Arinian codex, from which Cardulus transcribed the history of the first translation, Otto III erected a basilica to St. Adalbert prefixes much about the Life of St. Adalbert, bishop of Prague, and his martyrdom: these things the curious reader will find fully set out in our Work at the twenty-third day of April, and since they do not pertain to the present matter I have judged them to be cut away; but before I report the translation itself, some things must be discussed. And in the first place, the erection of the sacred building to which the relics of SS. Abundius and Abundantius were brought from the Arinian church is wrongly ascribed by some to the emperor Otto II: for Otto II departed this life in the year 983; but St. Adalbert fell as a martyr only in the year 997: and yet the basilica which is now called St. Bartholomew's is never read to have been distinguished in earlier times by any other title than that of St. Adalbert. See, if you please, tome V of August, the Posthumous Glory of St. Bartholomew, chapter 3, §4, number 227. The author of this church, therefore, is to be held to be Otto III, whom the Arinian codex marks as the founder of the aforesaid basilica in these words: Who (Otto III), taking away his hand (Dlugosz and others write arm) (that is, of St. Adalbert), adorned it wondrously with gold and gems, and built a church to his name between the two bridges, and endowed it with great dignity. Cardulus indeed says that it was endowed by Otto with many estates, gifts, and privileges, as is established from the letters of the emperor Frederick I Barbarossa.
[3] on the Tiber island. It will not be useless to set forth more fully the situation of that church also. The island which was formerly called Tiberina from the Tiber, and Lycaonia from the temple of Jove Lycaonius, is now everywhere called St. Bartholomew's: there once stood on this island three temples of the idols, namely of Jove Lycaonius, of Aesculapius, and of Faunus: that the basilica of St. Adalbert was erected by Otto III at the shrine of Aesculapius, Cardulus writes in the Notes, and he says that it is called between the two bridges on the same principle by which certain other places of the City are named among the images, between the two laurels, between the two gardens. Of these bridges the aforesaid Cardulus writes thus: One bridge, which joins the island to the City, was called Fabricius from its builder… Today it is commonly called the Bridge of the Four Heads, from the marble images of Janus, or of the four-fronted Terminus, fixed in the ground at the bridge's entrance. The other likewise, which touches the Trastevere region, was formerly called Cestius from its builder, and now St. Bartholomew's from the neighbouring basilica of the blessed Apostle, etc. Nor indeed is there any doubt that both the church and the bridge and the island itself took on the name of St. Bartholomew on account of the tradition of the body of this holy Apostle preserved there.
[4] The first translation seems altogether It remains that we fix the epoch of the translation of which we here treat, from which will flow of itself the time of the church erected to St. Adalbert: for, as the Arinian codex testifies, this basilica was erected by Otto III for the honourable laying away of St. Adalbert's relics, and for the adorning of it the bodies of other Saints were sought out and translated. The aforesaid codex does not express the year of the translation, but marks the day in these words: And their (our Martyrs') holy relics were found and brought, or translated, on the twelfth of the Kalends of December. The translation therefore cannot have taken place before the year of Christ 1000, and that already advanced by many months: for, as is established from the Chronicle of Hildesheim, which begins the year from the Lord's Nativity, Otto III came to the tomb of St. Adalbert for the sake of prayer only in the year 1000, at the time of Lent, and in the same year, having returned to Rome, celebrated the Nativity of Christ there: and concerning the relics of St. Adalbert given to Otto III by Boleslaus, duke of the Poles, it is clear from Dlugosz, although he wrongly refers that journey of Otto to the year 1001.
[5] to be tied to the year 1000: Cardulus, as we said in the Commentary at number 7, ties the translation to about the year 1001, and in the Notes refers the building of the church of St. Adalbert and consequently the translation itself to the same year: but I judge altogether that the translation is to be tied to the year 1000. Many things favour our epoch, and in the first place the authority of Leo of Ostia, who in book 2 of the Cassinese Chronicle, chapter 24, asserts that Otto III in the year of the redeemed world 1000 asked of the men of Benevento the body of the apostle St. Bartholomew, and honourably buried on the island the body of St. Paulinus received from them: for since in that year Otto thought of translating the remains of the holy Apostle, the translation of our Saints does not seem capable of being placed at a fitter time, for the obtaining of whose bodies he does not seem to have had to labour so much. The aforesaid Arinian codex likewise favours it, assigning to the translation of the Saints Abundius and Abundantius the twentieth day of November, which by no means, as we shall presently see, can be reconciled with the year 1001. Finally, the reckoning of the time is no obstacle to its being said that that event happened on the twentieth day of November of the year 1000, as I shall show by arranging the chief deeds of Otto III in the later years of his life, about which some dispute could be raised. And the whole discussion tends to this, that the writing of the Arinian codex may be preserved unharmed in its proper sense — the veneration which is due to ancient monuments, when nothing can be brought forward whereby their credit may be lightened: and I have read nothing anywhere by which it might be shown that an error lurks in the day marked by the author of the Arinian codex.
[6] Let us now hear what Cardulus brings forward in confirmation of his epoch, the opinion of Cardulus is discussed speaking thus in the Notes at number 15: This must have been done by him (Otto III) in the year of Christ 1001, in which year he betook himself back into Italy with great speed; … then, having discharged the care and labour of war, in order to perform the expiatory offices long since enjoined upon him by the blessed Romuald, because he had slain Crescens, or Crescentius, the Roman consul, against the faith he had pledged (since already before, on that account, he had passed the whole of Lent with a few of his household at Ravenna in the monastery of St. Apollinaris in Classe, …), he went to Cassino and gave two silver crowns to St. Benedict; thence he hastened barefoot to Mount Gargano, etc. This Cardulus drew for the greatest part from Sigonio, book 7 On the kingdom of Italy, toward the end. But, as the learned men who illustrated Sigonio's History with annotations have rightly observed, Otto had returned into Italy much earlier, which will become manifest from what is to be said. Concerning the year in which Otto III passed Lent in the monastery of Classe, although it is nothing to the purpose to speak here, I should nevertheless prefer to be of the mind of Mabillon, to be commended below, and to tie that penance to the year 1001, to which it seems altogether to belong, as the reader will easily be able to observe.
[7] But Otto III's journey to Cassino and the offering of the two crowns must be tied to the year 999 or 998, who ties it to the year 1001. both of which Cardulus attaches to the year 1001. For the year 998 makes what Leo of Ostia writes in book 2 of the Cassinese Chronicle, chapter 22: He (John, abbot of Cassino, the third of this name) in the first year of his ordination received the precept of confirmation of the whole abbey from the emperor Otto the third… At which time also the same emperor, having withdrawn hither for some days, offered two silver crowns to the blessed Benedict. For the first year of John III as abbot coincides with the year of Christ 998, as Peregrinus shows in the Series of the Abbots of Cassino, page 43: Nuceus too annotates thus on the aforesaid passage of the Ostian: Given (the precept of Otto) on the eighth of the Kalends of June in the year of Christ 998. Register number 125. That diploma of Otto III is reported entire by Erasmus Gattula in the Additions to the Cassinese History, page 91 and following, and is read as given at Rome on the aforesaid day and year: if therefore we take the words At which time also so as to designate the current first year of abbot John, the donation of Otto recorded by the Ostian must be fixed in the year 998: but since the same words can not unfitly be so taken as to admit an extension of some months, especially since Nuceus observes on that passage, "At which time also" is wanting, nothing forbids tying Otto's journey to the church of Cassino to the year 999: for the rest, let the reader determine what he will about that year, for it does not properly concern the present controversy. Let us discuss the rest.
[8] The credit of Leo of Ostia is vindicated, For establishing my epoch I adduced at number 5 Leo of Ostia, and accordingly his credit must here be vindicated by me. The learned observers mentioned above say thus at the end of book 7 of Sigonio: But Otto's pilgrimage to Mount Gargano after the silver crowns were offered on Monte Cassino he (Leo of Ostia) fixes in the thousandth year, but short of the truth, since the emperor Otto passed almost that whole year in Germany. Otto's pilgrimage to Mount Gargano is truly tied by the Ostian to the year 1000. Of the time at which he offered the votive gifts on Monte Cassino, determine from what has already been said: but Otto did not so pass the year 1000 in Germany that what the Ostian writes of his journey to the temple of the archangel Michael, undertaken in the same year, is false. I subjoin the chronology of Otto's chief deeds in the years 999 and 1000, in so far as it serves to illustrate and confirm the epoch asserted by me above, and at the same time I intend to show from the ordering of it that the sayings of Leo of Ostia are undeservedly charged with falsity, since Otto's journey into Poland by no means stood in the way of his being able in the same year 1000 to go to Mount Gargano to perform expiatory offices, and to seek the bones of St. Bartholomew from the men of Benevento and carry them to Rome — whether the body of the holy Apostle (which we do not here enquire) or of any other Blessed one.
[9] and from the series of Otto's deeds, The tyranny of the pseudo-pope John and of his supporter Crescentius
no one will now with justice deny that the disturbances at Rome were settled by his death in the year 998. Pagi in the Critica ties this event, from the author of the Life of St. Nilus the Hegumen, to the month of March. Both the end of this schism and certain other deeds of Otto which followed it Sigonio wrongly refers to the year 997, who likewise anticipates the death of Gregory V by one year, and accordingly what he narrates as done by Otto in the year of Gregory's decease must be drawn back to the year 999. A diploma of Otto III, mentioned in Gattula, Cassinese History, century VI, page 312, testifies that he stayed at Capua in this year, but it is doubtful, as Gattula acknowledges, whether one should read in the month of March or of May: the latter reading pleases me better, because, Gregory V having died on the twelfth of the Kalends of March, Silvester II succeeded only on the fourth of the Nones of April, nor is it likely that before Silvester's ordination the emperor was far away from Rome, being most solicitous about the right ordering of the affairs of the Church, and whose favour helped exceedingly to raise Silvester up, as the writers relate.
[10] and by various diplomas In the month of June or July of the same year 999 Otto was at Benevento: Thence (the words are Sigonio's in the place commended) in the month of August Otto was in the territory of Lucca, but through December at Ravenna; and a little after: In that year (1000) Otto, having set out for Germany, spent the fifth of the Ides of May at Aachen, whence also he issued diplomas: such a one granted to the church of Cremona on the said day and year is reported by Ughelli in tome 4 of Italia sacra. He had by then already returned from Poland, as is established from the Hildesheim chronographer, and was making again for Italy with the relics of St. Adalbert: and time abundantly suffices for the completing before the Kalends of November of the journeys asserted by Leo of Ostia; before the Kalends of November, I say, because it is established that he was at Rome on the Kalends of November of the year 1000 from the diploma given in favour of the church of Vercelli, which the curious reader will find in Ferrerius, On the Bishops of Vercelli. Those journeys Mabillon arranges thus in tome 4 of the Benedictine Annals, page 141: Thence (from Aachen) Otto, having again crossed the Alps, makes again for Italy… When he arrived at Pavia, he confirmed the goods and possessions of the suburban monastery of the holy Saviour … on the day before the Nones of July. Thence, having advanced toward Rome, at Romuald's urging, … he goes barefoot to Mount Gargano …, having on the way visited the Cassinese monastery, where he gave two silver crowns …
[11] All that arrangement of Mabillon is certainly such as deserves belief, and by other monuments it is shown, nor do I see anything which could overturn it: but since the words of Leo of Ostia do not require the emperor's journey to the Cassinese for the year 1000 — nay, Leo ties Otto's gifts to the year 998 or 999, as we said here at number 7 — let the Beneventan journey be substituted for that to the Cassinese, unless one prefers (which nevertheless is not necessary for our purpose) that both journeys, to the Cassinese and to the Beneventans, took place in that year; and anyone will easily perceive that the space of nearly four months which ran from the sixth day of July, when he halted at Pavia, up to the last day of October, on which Otto must be said to have returned again to Rome, is long enough for him to have been able, after the relics of St. Adalbert had been laid away on the Tiber island, to go to the mountain of St. Michael, to meet the Beneventans for the obtaining of the sacred pledges (add, if you please, the Cassinese too), and to return to the City. Time is by no means lacking either, between the first and the twentieth day of November, for the seeking out of the bodies of the holy Martyrs and their carrying from Arinianum to Rome, as is manifest: nothing therefore stands in the way of adhering to the epoch of our Martyrs' translation fixed by me at the year 1000, and of preserving, as I warned before, the writing of the Arinian codex.
[12] But on Cardulus's view, which assigns the year 1001 to the translation, that this event cannot be placed later than the year 1000. the day attributed to that solemnity by the author of the Arinian manuscript must be plainly abandoned. For Otto, of whom the aforesaid manuscript speaks as present at Rome when the bodies of SS. Abundius and Abundantius were found and translated, does not seem to have been at Rome on the twentieth day of November of the year 1001, but at Ravenna. This I gather from his diploma by which various privileges are granted to the archbishop of Ravenna. It may be seen in Ughelli, among the archbishops of Ravenna, column 359, where it is noted in the margin that it is held by Fontanini as supposititious, but is vindicated by Muratori. But whatever be the case with this diploma, given at Ravenna on the tenth of the Kalends of December, it manifestly follows from another quarter that in the last months of the year 1001 Otto III had a far other care than that of adorning the basilica of St. Adalbert at Rome: for the Romans were then stirring up new disturbances either against Pope Silvester, as Sigonio writes, or against Otto himself, as B. Peter Damian, presently to be commended, asserts; and upon the settling of these Otto then bent his whole effort. This is established both from the Life of St. Heribert, archbishop of Cologne, in our tome 2 of March, page 470, number XI, and from the Life of St. Romuald, in our tome 2 of February: some things from the latter I transcribe here.
[13] Romuald therefore, seeing that he could not labour there (in Pereum, or the island Pereta, twelve miles distant from Ravenna) according to the ardour of his own will, it cannot be placed. straightway went to the king (Otto III the Emperor) and, as one exacting the promise he had received, that the king should become a monk, began to press him more vehemently. But he asserted that he would indeed do what was demanded, if, however, he might first attack Rome, which was rebelling against him, and, when it had been overcome, might return to Ravenna with victory. To whom Romuald said: If you go to Rome, you shall not see Ravenna again… And so the king, according to the holy man's prophecy, scarcely beginning to return from Rome, was soon seized with sickness and died at Paterno. Otto's death is placed by no one later than the twenty-eighth day of January in the year 1002, and it happened some days earlier according to the Hildesheim chronographer, Hermann Contractus, and Ditmar. And from what has thus far been discussed my epoch comes out, if not altogether certain, at least far more probable: but I have discussed the matter here more fully than could seem necessary to anyone, for the reason adduced at number 5 toward the end. Now I subjoin the History of the aforesaid translation.
PART II.
The first finding and Translation, transcribed from the Arinian codex, and published by Fulvius Cardulus, S.J.
On what occasion and whither were translated Then a he began to seek out the bodies of the holy martyrs, and gave order that, wherever they should be found, they should be carried to the church of the blessed Adalbert: and it was announced to him that in the church b of the blessed martyrs Abundius and Abundantius, which is near Mount Soracte c, there were several bodies of holy martyrs; and he sent his messengers, bishops and clerics and monks, that they might carry them with all honour and diligence and hymns of God to the church of the blessed Adalbert d. And they went at once and began to seek out where their tombs were. And they found in one tomb the bodies of the blessed Abundius and Abundantius laid, and in another the body of the blessed Theodora e, who had buried them on her own estate. They found also among them holy martyrs f who had gilded and wondrously adorned vestments, and above their altar a table carved and exceedingly decorated. And all these things were carried, according to the emperor's command, to the church of the blessed Adalbert the martyr.
[15] the bodies of our Saints. Then the bishop who presided over the holy Castellan church, Crescentianus g by name, after the bodies of the aforesaid holy Martyrs had been carried away, began to be sorrowful and even to weep; and, coming to that same place, he began to search diligently, and caused digging to be done still deeper, in case any bodies of Saints had remained there which might afford him consolation: which was done by God's will; and he found there the bodies of the blessed martyrs Marcian and John his son, whom the blessed Abundius, priest and martyr, had baptized; and with great honour and reverence, the clergy having been gathered, he carried those bodies with gladness to the city of Civita Castellana h.
[16] The translation of SS. Marcian and John And as they were passing near the church of the blessed Eutychius i the martyr, those who were carrying them saw water beginning to flow down from the image of the blessed Theodora which was painted there, so that even the priests who were celebrating the vigils there could wash their faces with it. Which the Almighty is to be thought to have shown for this reason, that by the absence of the holy Martyrs the place in which they had been buried, on the estate of the blessed Theodora, remained captive k. This flowing of water indeed had neither been seen before nor was seen afterwards; and they were carried into the church of the blessed Hippolytus the martyr, which is built in a crypt above the gate of that same city. And when they had been brought into that church, a new miracle arose there. For the lilies, which in the aforesaid church had long since withered, although it was then cold winter, straightway at their entrance put forth flower and fragrance, as in the spring season, when by the will of almighty God both the lilies bloom and every herb grows green and flourishes. Which the bishop and the count and all the citizens testified that they had seen.
[17] And that bishop Crescentianus at once sent his messengers to Lambert, bishop of the holy church of Polimartium l, to the city of Civita Castellana, it is made illustrious by miracles and to the bishop of the holy church of Gallese m, that they might be carried with honour, hymns, and praises of God to the church of the glorious Mother of God and ever Virgin Mary n. And the bishops and clerics, coming together, gave themselves to God the whole night in vigils, prayers, and hymns: and that night, with the south wind rising, was flooded with frequent rains from evening until morning. But when morning came, all the inhabitants of that city being gathered, together with the count and his wife, bearing forth the aforesaid bodies of the Saints, they brought them into the church of the blessed Virgin above named; but as soon as those bodies of the Saints had been led out of the aforesaid church of the blessed Hippolytus, the flooding of the rain stopped, and clearness of sky likewise followed. And thus with joy each returned to his own home, Masses having first been solemnly celebrated.
[18] But I relate in a wondrous manner another miracle. A certain girl and by benefits. From tablets who was in that city, held by a very great infirmity, kept vigil day and night and could not sleep at all; whom her parents brought to the relics of the same holy Martyrs to obtain health: and thus by the merits of those Saints she was brought back sound, as if she had been held by no infirmity. Another miracle also I relate. There had been found in the tombs of the holy Martyrs marble tablets adorned with a snowy whiteness, of such weight and size that they could not be drawn even by four yoke of oxen, which, to the honour of God and of the aforesaid Martyrs, being yoked to one poor pair of oxen were carried with such speed as if they had had no weight in them; and when before the aforesaid church of God
the Mother of God they had come, many gathered to bring them into that church.
[19] But one of these marble tablets, which on account of its excessive breadth could not be brought in to the altar, found in the tomb was so huge that it could scarcely be carried by fifteen men. A marble column and a beam which was before the altar fell with this tablet upon the neck of the bishop and of those who were present with him, but by the Lord's grace it was neither broken nor damaged, nor did any man feel any hurt. Then bishop Crescentianus, having gathered the clergy, caused the altar of the blessed Mother of God to be built anew out of that same marble tablet and the others above written: and that one which he found over the body of the blessed Abundius and Abundantius o he placed in the upper part of the altar; and another, which he found over the body of the blessed Theodora, he set on that side where the celebrating priest stands.
[20] The others he attached to the other parts of that altar; and thus through the four corners he built the altar from the foundation. a new altar is built. There were found also in their tombs iron frames which enclosed their sepulchres, and out of the iron of these the same lord bishop caused a certain little wooden chest, newly made, to be encircled and bound: and there he laid away the holy relics, and set it within that same altar. Now the holy Martyrs suffered on the sixteenth of the Kalends of October under Diocletian and Maximian, most cruel emperors: and their holy relics were found and brought, or translated, on the twelfth of the Kalends of December under the lord Otto III, the great emperor: but they were laid away by bishop Crescentianus in the church of the blessed and ever Virgin Mary, Mother of God, on the Ides of January in the Octaves of the Theophany [p], to the honour of God and of our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom is honour and glory and power and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.
ANNOTATIONS.
p. This word Theophania, which was formerly used both for the festivity of the Lord's Nativity and for that of His Manifestation, as Du Cange teaches in the Glossary, is here determined well enough by the adjoined Ides, so that we understand the elevation of the sacred relics to have been made on the Octave day of the Manifestation; and the word is from the Greek Θεὸς, God, and Φαίνω, I appear.
CHAPTER II.
On the other translations, and the relics sent to various churches.
[ ] Cardulus's conjecture about the time It is established from what has been said that the bodies of SS. Abundius and Abundantius were brought into the church now called St. Bartholomew's in the year of Christ 1000, and there honourably laid away: but by how great a space of time they rested in that basilica is unascertained, as also in what century and year they were carried thence into the sacred building of SS. Cosmas and Damian, from whose brick altar on the eighteenth day of August in the year 1582 the coffins of these Martyrs were dug out. Cardulus, as we saw in the Commentary at number 7, investigated everything concerning the author and time of this translation; and yet he could not discover anything that might deserve a credit not at all doubtful: nevertheless the aforesaid writer suspects that this translation fell within the pontificate of Innocent II, who succeeded Honorius II likewise on the fourteenth or fifteenth day of February of the year 1130, and who either on the same or on the following day got as an adversary Peter Leonis, called Anacletus II by his schismatic supporters, who, as he was powerful in the world and supported by the wealth of his kinsmen, compelled the lawful Pontiff to depart from Rome, and usurped the Apostolic See by sacrilegious force until his death.
[22] at which the second translation was made Cardulus brings forward for his conjecture the following reasons, which it will suffice to set before the reader compressed into fewer words. Anacletus is said to have dedicated an altar in the church of B. Mary of Aracœli, situate before the sacristy: but this deed cannot be ascribed to St. Anacletus the Pope, in whose time there still stood in that place the shrine of Jove Feretrius, in whose ruins St. Gregory the Great is said to have built a church according to the Christian rite: it must therefore be that the dedication of the aforesaid altar be attributed to Anacletus the pseudo-pontiff. In the said church the head of St. Abundius, covered with silver, is preserved, and Cardulus contends that it is our Abundius's from this, that almost that alone was missing from the sacred bones when the sacred pledges of SS. Abundius and Abundantius were found in the year 1582; and at last he concludes: It could therefore have happened that this pseudo-pope, when he wished at once to honour with some notable gift the deaconry of SS. Cosmas and Damian, which he himself had obtained, and at the same time to adorn that altar which he had determined to consecrate with a solemn rite, with the relics of these Martyrs also and especially with the head of St. Abundius, which was afterwards brought into the open: it could have happened, I say, that he carried the sacred bodies at that time from the Tiber island into the church of SS. Cosmas and Damian at the Roman Forum.
[23] to the Church of SS. Cosmas and Damian, Since for lack of documents nothing certain can here be determined, I think we must adhere to Cardulus's conjecture, and I embrace it as altogether likely. Baronius favours this opinion in tome 12 of the Ecclesiastical Annals, page 202, writing thus of Anacletus the pseudo-pontiff at the year of Christ 1130: For we read that several altars at Rome were dedicated and consecrated by him, and that through the carelessness of the sacristans the inscriptions were still preserved, which we had blotted out. Then the same most eminent man reports, from the title of the consecration inscribed on a marble tablet, that by that Anacletus the church of St. Lawrence was dedicated in the year 1130 on the twenty-fifth day of May, and that in its high altar several bodies of holy martyrs were laid away. That pseudo-pontiff therefore could likewise both consecrate an altar in the church of B. Mary of Aracœli, and translate the bodies of the holy Abundius and Abundantius to the basilica of SS. Cosmas and Damian.
[24] And this conjecture is made the more likely from this also, that the bones of those Martyrs lay unknown in the church of SS. Cosmas and Damian until the year 1582, is further illuminated. as Cardulus asserts in the description of the third translation. For if the translation had been made by the authority of some lawful Pontiff, it ought surely to seem strange that its memory had been so obliterated among the faithful that it is found recorded by no monument anywhere: which is less to be wondered at concerning the deeds of a pseudo-pontiff, hateful to all for his crimes, even though some of his
deeds must be said to have persevered in memory. Now that translation, made, as we suppose, by the pseudo-pontiff Anacletus, cannot be tied more aptly than to the year 1130, because, as Baronius relates, when he saw that the recollection of the sacrilegious plundering of the churches perpetrated by himself could not be abolished among the faithful, he tried by another road to win the favour of the peoples for himself, through the largesses made by him to certain sacred buildings in the year 1130. And so much for the second translation, for which no better documents are at hand.
[25] The third translation of SS. Abundius and Abundantius rendered the year of Christ 1583 notable in the Fasti of our Society, The bodies of our Saints being found, when the beneficence of Gregory XIII deigned to adorn with these sacred pledges the church of the professed house, called the Farnesian from its founder Alexander Farnese, Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church, whose excellent merits toward our Society our Fasti proclaim. This translation Cardulus describes at length. It will be enough for me to have tasted the chief points. When by the Pontiff's order the workmen, about to restore a chapel in the church of SS. Cosmas and Damian, were pulling down an old altar, which is on the left as one enters the rear part of the church, after the bodies of other Saints had been found there, on the eighteenth day of August in the year 1582 the coffins of our Martyrs were dug out. And on one indeed (the words are Cardulus's) under the Gospel horn was a marble tablet marked with the sign of the Cross and with this epitaph: HERE RESTS SAINT HABUNDIUS, PRIEST AND MONK AND MARTYR. But on the other, under the Epistle horn, a second tablet likewise inscribed with the same sign and this title: HERE RESTS SAINT HABUNDANTIUS, DEACON AND MARTYR. Their relics, transferred into leaden coffers sealed with the seal of Cardinal Sabelli, the Pontiff's vicar in the City, Gregory XIII ordered to be translated into the Farnesian basilica by his Apostolic letters, which I here recount from the edition of Cardulus.
[26] Pope Gregory XIII, to all the faithful of Christ who shall inspect these present letters, Gregory XIII orders health and Apostolic benediction. We have decreed to adorn the church of the professed house of the Society of Jesus of the City, lately completed with a notable and sumptuous structure, with the bodies of the holy Abundius the priest and Abundantius the deacon, martyrs distinguished by the shedding of their blood for the name of Christ, which rest in the church of SS. Cosmas and Damian, so that, being placed there, they may be venerated with greater devotion and concourse of the people. Therefore by these presents we command that the aforesaid bodies be taken out of that church of SS. Cosmas and Damian, where other relics of Saints and also bodies remain to be visited, together with the leaden cases in which their names are inscribed, and be devoutly translated and honourably laid away in the new church of the aforesaid professed, dedicated to the most holy name of Jesus, with the greatest pomp that may be, by our vicar in spirituals of the City, on a Sunday or even on a non-festal day, to be prescribed and ordered at his pleasure.
[27] them to be carried to the basilica And we enjoin and forbid the superiors, brethren, ministers and persons of the house of the aforesaid church of SS. Cosmas and Damian, and any others whatsoever, that they dare not in any way, by themselves or by another or others, hinder the aforesaid taking out and translation: those who do otherwise, let them incur excommunication by that very fact. And that the faithful of Christ may come together to the translation of the same holy bodies in greater numbers and with greater zeal of devotion, to all the faithful of Christ themselves of either sex, truly penitent and confessed and refreshed with the sacred Eucharist, who shall have been present at the aforesaid translation, we mercifully bestow in the Lord a plenary indulgence and remission of all their sins. Given at Rome at St. Mark's under the fisherman's ring on the tenth day of September 1583, in the twelfth year of our Pontificate. Cæ. Glorierius. Nor did the most pious Pontiff's munificence stop here; but he liberally added money besides for the increasing of the solemnity of the translation, as part 5, book 3, near the beginning, of the History of our Society makes attested.
[28] of the name of Jesus. Indulgences granted: In the aforesaid Pontifical letters there is read only an indulgence granted to those who should be present at the translation: but doubtless, that all might the more easily share in this sacred treasure, the Most Holy Lord enlarged it in that manner in which it is stated in the programme publicly set forth to the faithful. That I subjoin from the aforesaid edition: A most ample indulgence is granted by our Most Holy Lord Gregory XIII, Supreme Pontiff, to all those who, cleansed by sacred confession and fed with the most sweet Body of Christ, shall have earnestly begged of God with pious prayers the felicity of the Catholic faith, the conversion of heretics, and the concord of Christian princes, and shall either have religiously attended the translation of the bodies of the holy martyrs Abundius the priest and Abundantius the deacon, which will take place from the church of SS. Cosmas and Damian to the basilica of the name of Jesus on Thursday the seventeenth of the Kalends of October at the nineteenth hour, or shall on the remainder of that day or on the following day, which is sacred to the bloody birthday of the Martyrs themselves, have visited either building (of the name of Jesus, or of SS. Cosmas and Damian), or shall on the Saturday or Sunday have visited the church of the name of Jesus. He to whom it shall not be permitted to do these things, let his confessor have power to commute what shall seem good as a penalty. But the rest, who shall have determined to undertake an expiatory confession and communion at a fixed time, let them obtain an indulgence of seven years.
[29] the time of the translation, a part of the relics Before I narrate the rest that pertains to this solemnity, a few things are to be observed. The Romans begin to number the hours from the setting of the sun and always go up to the twenty-fourth; since therefore at that season of the year in which the translation took place the sun sets about the sixth hour, the nineteenth hour among the Romans ought to correspond about to the time between one and two o'clock of our afternoon. Now it is clear from what has already been said that the translation to the church of the professed house was made on the fifteenth day of September, as Baronius also marked in the Notes to the Roman Martyrology in these words: The same (Acts of our Martyrs) the college of the fathers of the Society of Jesus lately published at Rome, into whose Farnesian basilica … they were translated on the seventeenth of the Kalends of October, in the year of the Lord 1583. Tillemont certainly saw this note, and yet in tome 5 of the Monuments, in the persecution of Diocletian, article 48, writes thus: Their (our Martyrs') bodies were translated on the sixteenth of October 1583 to the college of the Jesuits. The day and the month Tillemont marked wrongly out of a slight inadvertence and a mistaken interpretation of the Kalends; the place too, to which the sacred bodies were translated, he supposed to be the college of the Society, perhaps because he had read in the annotations of Baronius that the Acts of these holy Martyrs had been published at Rome by the college of the Society of Jesus. I take up again the interrupted thread of the narrative.
[30] Before the sacred relics were borne out of the basilica of SS. Cosmas and Damian, granted to the church of SS. Cosmas and Damian. The solemnity Gregory XIII granted that an entire shin-bone of St. Abundius and four little bones, and the whole arm of St. Abundantius, should be kept in the aforesaid church; which portions of the sacred remains were drawn from the coffins on the thirteenth day of September; and at last on the fifteenth day of the same month the sacred bodies, brought out of the sacristy and exposed on the principal altar, were carried with solemn array and the greatest solemnity to the Farnesian basilica. I pass over the longer description both of the ornament and of the streets through which the religious procession went, which the curious reader will find in Cardulus. There were present at this festal solemnity twenty-three families of Religious men; the pupils of the colleges and seminaries which in the City are committed to the care of the Society of Jesus; the canons and guardians of eleven lesser churches; the sodalities of the clergy of St. Mary in Trastevere and of St. Lawrence in Damaso; the colleges of the basilicas of St. Mary Major, of the Vatican and of the Lateran; the most illustrious Vincent Porticus, archbishop of Ragusa, acting in Cardinal Sabelli's stead; several archbishops and bishops, and among these the bishop of St. Asaph, an Englishman, suffragan of the Cardinal Vicar; also the senator of the fostering City, the consuls, the magistrates, and men of the foremost nobility, who, while ten priests of the Society at a time bore the sacred bier by turns, counted it an honour to carry the canopy and to take up the pious burden again and again.
[31] An innumerable multitude filled all the streets, for the moving back of which and at the same time for the dignity of the sacred bodies the Pontiff had granted fifty of his praetorian Swiss. of the translation, and the fruit of souls from it. The sacred offices and divine Mysteries both on the very day of the translation and on three others following were performed by the bishop of St. Asaph, all of which may be read fully set out in Cardulus, who at last describes in these words the immense gains of souls thence obtained: Wherefore, on the occasion of obtaining so ample an indulgence, with the intercession of these most blessed Martyrs also helping, very many, having duly confessed their sins, came to the saving table of the Eucharist, testifying besides their devotion and piety toward them, now by bringing rosaries or beads to the sacred bier, now, which is rarer, by a profusion of tears. And this concourse of men of every sort would doubtless have lasted longer, had not, when four days had already elapsed, the holy relics been taken from the church after the first hour of the night and laid upon the altar of the sacristy, there to remain for a while, until the basilica itself … should be consecrated and dedicated, where at last, with what honour and dignity is fitting, a sarcophagus having been prepared, they may be enclosed in red Punic marble and laid away.
[32] After a few things interposed, Cardulus goes on thus: Meanwhile, while the sacred bones are kept in the sacristy, something was taken from them and sent into Japan, Another part of the relics is carried to Japan, another a region of the new world, for the nourishing and confirming of the neophytes' constancy in Christian piety: and afterwards, at the asking and entreaty of the nuns of Siena, who inhabit the church and convent of these holy Martyrs, and by the concession of the Supreme Pontiff, from the same coffins, the chest being opened in the presence of a notary, on the Nones of May in the year of the Lord 1584 two other little bones were taken, that is, a particle of the arm of St. Abundius and a fragment of the jaw of St. Abundantius, and handed over there to the most reverend lord Francis Bandini Piccolomini, archbishop of Siena, who should see to their being carried to Siena, at once for the adornment of the church of those same holy Martyrs, and for the increasing of the piety and devotion of those nuns and of other faithful toward the Saints. Moreover, with how great veneration and with how great array the sacred pledges were received by the people of Siena, the narrative of Juditta Luti teaches, from which I have thought only the chief points should be tasted.
[33] to the nuns of Siena The relics granted to the nuns of Siena Cardulus reported to be a particle of the arm of St. Abundius and a fragment of the jaw of St. Abundantius, to which Juditta adds one finger of each Saint, and likewise one tooth; but below, enumerating the same relics enclosed in a little chest covered with gold, she assigns to her convent a bone of the arm of St. Abundius, a joint of a finger, and a tooth; and of St. Abundantius the jaw, likewise a joint of a finger, and a tooth. However that may be, on the third day of June of the year 1584 the sacred relics were carried to Siena and for a short time deposited with the utmost devotion of the whole clergy in the metropolitan church, the nuns being admonished by order of the most illustrious Piccolomini to prepare all things most becomingly for the thirteenth day of the same month, for the honourable reception of the sacred relics: the aforesaid archbishop besides, as Juditta asserts, on the ninth of June
on the Sunday ordered the whole people to be invited, in the metropolitan and many other churches, to accompany the sacred relics and to gain the indulgences granted by the Supreme Pontiff. The tenor of the Apostolic Brief in Juditta is this, that all the faithful of either sex, truly penitent, and having confessed at Siena and been refreshed with the sacred communion, or having accompanied the relics as far as the convent of St. Abundius, should obtain remission of all their sins: which indulgence the Pontiff granted to the nuns in perpetuity, but to the laity for ten years, on the feast day of the solemnity.
[34] with the greatest array, and no less fruit. There were present at the translation several families of Religious, the whole clergy, the two vicars — Camillus Borghese of the clergy, Antony Martellinus of the Religious — and the most illustrious bishop of Grosseto, Claudius Borghese. Four priests carried the relics, four men likewise of the foremost nobility of Siena bearing the canopy. An immense multitude of people flowed together to the solemnity, so that seven thousand men were easily counted in the train of the sacred relics: brought into the church, they were exposed to the veneration of the faithful on an altar prepared for this end; and since the church was somewhat narrow and not sufficient for so great a number of those flocking together, they were placed on an altar erected outside before the church, to satisfy the pious desires of all. Great also was the fruit of souls, so much so that Juditta writes that at that altar five hundred men were at once refreshed with the most sacred Body of Christ. I add no more here about the adornment of the church and of the streets through which the sacred relics passed: some smaller matters too pertaining to this I pass over, which the curious reader will find in the often-commended Juditta.
[35] By way of a crown I subjoin a very few things about the special cultus with which SS. Abundius and Abundantius are honoured to this day in several churches at Rome. [The cultus of SS. Abundius and Abundantius in the Farnesian basilica, and in St. Mary's] In the Farnesian basilica of the Society of Jesus their bodies are laid away beneath the principal altar, and there the Office of them is read with a double rite and Mass is sung at the sixteenth day of September. On the same day the fathers of the Order of St. Francis at Aracœli recite yearly a double Office of the same Saints, from the common of many Martyrs in the first place. From their Directory, which I have in hand, receive the following: 16 (September). SS. Abundius and Abundantius, MM., lesser double … (the bodies are present)… In the Martyrology, first place, solemn commemoration. But that those words the bodies are present cannot be understood of the entire bodies of SS. Abundius and Abundantius is clear from what was mentioned above. They are therefore to be taken of some part of the bodies, as the book also relates which is entitled in Italian: Historical Memoirs of the church and convent of St. Mary in Aracœli, by Casimir of Rome, Friar Minor; which book was published at Rome in the year 1736. And in chapter 8, on the relics of the church, the following are read in Latin: In the church of St. Mary of Aracœli are the underwritten relics of Saints… Likewise the heads of SS. Abundius and Abundantius, martyrs, in two vessels. For the rest, that list of relics is said to have been made under the pontificate of Martin V.
[36] of Aracœli, where the heads are said to be kept, That the head of St. Abundius which is seen in the church called Aracœli is our Abundius's, I plainly judge with Cardulus, commended here at number 22. But of the head of Abundantius I should not dare so to assert: for Cardulus, who wrote a hundred and fifty years and more after the pontificate of Martin V, speaks thus in the History of the second translation: On which altar indeed (in the church of B. Mary of Aracœli) both the bones of other Saints, and also something of the relics of the martyrs Abundius and Abundantius, are thought to be laid away. In the same basilica certainly the head of St. Abundius … covered with silver is religiously preserved and seen: which alone is missing from the remaining bones of both Martyrs. Which last words manifestly denote that even in the year 1583, in which the last translation was made, the head of St. Abundantius was joined with the remaining sacred bones; for if the whole head of St. Abundantius had then been wanting, he seems by no reasoning to have been going to write that the head of St. Abundius alone was missing, especially since he published his History in the year immediately following the translation, when doubtless many were still surviving who had inspected the sacred remains with their own eyes. Therefore the head of St. Abundantius, which is said to be kept in the church called B. Mary of Aracœli, is either that of some other Abundantius, or must be taken for some particle of the head.