Vigilius

ON ST. VIGILIUS, BISHOP OF BRESCIA,

IN LOMBARDY

ABOUT THE SIXTH CENTURY.

COMMENTARY.

His memory in the Fasti; the time in which he flourished; the place of his burial; his relics and their translations; his cult.

Vigilius, bishop of Brescia, in Lombardy. (S.)

BY J. P.

Here recurs that same scarcity of ancient documents, necessary for illustrating the Acts of the Saints, which reigns in very many places of our Work The Saint, whose memory is only in more recent where we have had to treat of the holy bishops of the city of Brescia in Lombardy. In the manuscript Martyrology of Brescia, which Ughelli gave as a gift to our elders, he is indeed announced thus: On the sixth of the Kalends of October. At Brescia of saint Vigilius, bishop and confessor, who, having carried out the institutions of the episcopal life in prayers, in fastings and in every exercise of the virtues, attained with great testimony of piety to the heavenly reward. He lived in the times of St. Leo the Great, Pontiff. His holy body is held in the church of St. Laurence. But that Martyrology we cannot reckon among ancient documents, since in it there are more than once commemorated deeds of the sixteenth century, and by name, at the fifth day of May, a thing done in the year 1597. In the printed Martyrologies St. Vigilius is first announced today in Galesini, and thence passed into today's Roman in these words: At Brescia of saint Vigilius the bishop: Galesini adds and confessor, and cites in his Notations Rampertus the bishop in the Tables of the bishops of Brescia. Ferrari follows with a fuller eulogy in his Catalogue of the Saints of Italy; likewise Brautius, bishop of Sarsina, in his poetic Martyrology, singing thus:

By night and day the watchful Shepherd sweated and shivered, Lest any sheep of the flock committed to him should perish:

and lastly Bernardino Faino in the Martyrology of Brescia, as follows: At Brescia of saint Vigilius the bishop, in the church of saint Laurence, illustrious for holiness and doctrine. Who in the pastoral office passed to the heavenly reward with the increase of all the virtues. Castellanus too indeed inserted St. Vigilius in his universal Martyrology, with the words of the Roman Martyrology translated into French, but warned in the margin that there is no ancient tradition of his cult — whether rightly or otherwise, the reader will judge from what follows.

[2] The aforesaid Faino in his Annotations to his recited announcement assigns the documents, the Fasti, and after his manner weaves a long series of writers in whom mention of St. Vigilius occurs: All the Tables, he says, and catalogues of the see of Brescia bear witness of him. Also the Annals of Capreolus, books 3 and 12; of Camillo Maggi; of the abbot Patrizio Spini; of Giovanni Battista Nazari, and of Ottavio Rossi. Ottavio Ermanno, provost of St. Laurence, in the Life of the Servant of God Alessandro Luciago; the Martyrology of Galesini, the manuscript of Brescia; the abbot Ascanio Martin. in his Little Book of the Saints; Obizio the Capuchin on the Nobility of Brescia; the abbot Ughelli, volume IV of the Italia sacra; Giovanni Battista Zanetti and Ottavio Cortesi the monk in the Life of St. Titianus; Lorenz Beyerlinck in the Theatre of human life; Rampertus the bishop in his Sermon on the translation of St. Philastrius, and also the Roman Martyrology on this day. Of the Tables named in the first place he recites some below, and those most probably the chief ones, which I too, as pertaining only to the Saint's relics, shall describe from thence when I come to proving his cult.

[3] By the Catalogues, if I am not mistaken, he understands also those which were used both by himself in the Heaven of the holy church of Brescia

church, and the deeds of his life published in the year 1658, and before him by Giovanni Francesco Florentini in his chronological Index of the bishops of Brescia, published in print in the year 1614, and in another fuller manuscript one, from which the same Faino communicated to our elders the article on St. Vigilius excerpted. But, so far as I conjecture, they found nothing in the said Catalogues beyond the Saint's name; the rest was either taken from the authors appended, or else pertains to his relics and cult. Further, at what time those Catalogues were written, or with what authority they are strong, is unascertained by me. This one thing I note, that they most probably differ among themselves in the order and number of the bishops: since St. Vigilius, who in Florentini is set down as the fifteenth, comes in Faino and Ughelli only in the seventeenth place. But what sort of authors are those, reviewed by Faino in so long a series, and what do they bring forward about St. Vigilius? One among them, Rampertus, bishop of Brescia, flourished before the middle of the ninth century; among the rest I know of not one older than Capreolus, who is read to have died in the year 1519. But I have consulted the Works, whether published or in manuscript fragments, of various of them which I had, and could hammer out from them nothing conducive to our purpose. For some mention nothing beyond the bare name of the Saint on occasion of others of whom they treat; others add one or another particular deed in his life, but both are today deservedly denied to St. Vigilius of Brescia by the learned.

[4] Let us take our beginning therefore from the more ancient man, they are unknown, Rampertus, I mean, the bishop: he, in the History of the translation of St. Philastrius, made by himself in the year 838, reprinted by us in volume IV of the month of July, page 388, gives a list of the bishops who down to his own times succeeded St. Philastrius, and nothing further about St. Vigilius: These are, he says, the third from him and the second from Gaudentius, Paul, then Theophilus and Sylvinus and Gaudiosus, Optatianus and Vigilius, Ticianus, etc. Let us hear also Capreolus, a native of Brescia, by profession a jurist, whose Books on the Affairs of the men of Brescia are extant in the Thesaurus of the antiquities and Histories of Italy, part 7 of volume 9, published in print at Leiden in the year 1723, and who has it thus in book 3, where he likewise commemorates the bishops of Brescia: Whom (Gaudentius) Paul immediately succeeded in the bishopric: whom afterwards Theophilus; whom Sylvinus, whom Gaudiosius; whom Optatianus, whom finally Vigilius, succeeding as much in holiness as in doctrine — all are numbered in the Catalogue of holy pontiffs: although concerning their excellent deeds nothing else has hitherto come into our hands. The same author mentions St. Vigilius again in book 12; but only by reason of the translation of the relics made in the fifteenth century.

[5] he flourished about the sixth century. From these things — for more or more ancient we should seek in vain — we learn at least broadly the time in which St. Vigilius lived; since St. Optatianus, who by all is set down as his immediate predecessor, and of whom we have treated in volume III of July, page 652, subscribed about the middle of the fifth century the synodical Letter directed by Eusebius of Milan and other bishops to St. Leo the Pope. The subscription indeed is thus in Labbe, volume 3 of the Councils, column [ ]: I Octavianus, bishop of the church of Brescia, have consented and subscribed to all the things written above, etc.; but that Octavianus was written by an error for Optatianus all acknowledge, since in none of the catalogues of the bishops of Brescia does an Octavianus appear. Hence broadly, I say, we deduce that St. Vigilius flourished about the sixth century of Christ. For what Faino writes, namely that St. Optatianus sat until the year 504, and Vigilius his successor until 525, we reckon among conjectures. To the conjecture for establishing the beginning of St. Vigilius's episcopate about 504 there once favoured another conjecture, which long flourished among writers, especially those of Brescia.

[6] [He was not present at the council of Agde; nor did he write 5 books against Eutyches.] For since in the council of Agde, celebrated about the year 506, a Vigilius was read as subscribed among the bishops, without the addition of any note of his see or city, they supposed that he was their own; until our Sirmond published the canons of the same council, and from the Pithou codex added to the names of the bishops the names of their cities, omitted in the other editions; whence we learn that that Vigilius was bishop of the city of Lectoure in Aquitanian Gascony; the subscription is this: I Vigilius, bishop of the city of Lectoure, have subscribed. There falls to the ground now also that conjecture from which writers of Brescia commonly thought that the five books against Eutyches, published in the Library of the Fathers under the name of St. Vigilius, bishop of Trent, were to be attributed to Vigilius of Brescia: since Eutyches was later than Vigilius of Trent, as both they themselves prove and Baronius and others, and as our Papebroch acknowledged in the Commentarius prævius to the Acts of St. Vigilius of Trent, volume V of June, page 164, signifying that on this day the foundations of the men of Brescia were to be shaken out. But Father Pierre Chifflet, another priest of our Society, forestalled us in that labour. For he, in his Vindiciæ of the Works of Vigilius, bishop of Thapsus in the African province of Byzacena, published at Dijon in the year 1664, proved by such solid arguments that those books pertain to Vigilius of Thapsus, that he not only brought other learned men over to his opinion, but that Paolo Galeardi himself, a canon of Brescia, in his Annotations to the second edition of Ughelli, warned us thus: The Bollandist Fathers at the twenty-sixth day of June profess that they wish in due time to shake out from the foundations the opinion of the writers of Brescia, by which they hitherto claimed the books against Eutyches for Vigilius bishop of Brescia; but they will be able to spare themselves a superfluous labour, as they please; since we ourselves of our own accord willingly deny books of this sort to Vigilius of Brescia.

[7] From these conjectures Faino in his Annotations to the Martyrology passes to the tradition He died and was buried at Iseo; his body in the year 1524, which he declares in these words: That this saint Vigilius founded the parish church in the town of Iseo by the Sabine lake in honour of St. Andrew the apostle, and there breathed out his soul to God, is an ancient written tradition there. Which his sacred bones also seem to affirm, always preserved there under the altar in a subterranean chapel: and in the year MDXXIV, when the altar was restored, raised and examined, with this leaden tablet added: Here the relics of St. Vigilius, founder of the parish of Iseo, were laid, on the VII day of July MDXXIV. Tito Porfirio de Aliprandi, archpriest of Iseo. Mention of the same tradition is also made in an instrument drawn up afterwards on occasion of another inspection and translation of the relics, about which the same Faino says in the same place: Afterwards in the year MDCXXXIII, for the greater cult of the same Saint and the guarding of his relics (with the assent of Vincenzo Giustiniani, bishop of Brescia), they carried these from that obscure oratory into a noble chapel dedicated to so great a Patron, into a new chest, with the greatest solemnity, and the hand of a physician accurately described them; with this memorial carved on the same chest: The sacred bones of the most blessed father Vigilius, bishop of Brescia, founder of this church, laid here more becomingly in the year MDCXXXIII; whom, O worshipper, seek as thy best Patron with God the Best and Greatest.

[8] Of the instrument concerning the translation just mentioned, drawn up by a public notary, and again in the year 1633 Faino sent hither a manuscript copy. It is written in the Italian tongue, except at the beginning and the end, which are Latin; but the words are frequently contracted into abbreviations, and the proper names especially are so difficult to read that, lest I err, I have preferred to omit them here and there, and to exhibit only the substance of the instrument itself, so far as seems necessary here. It begins thus: In the name of Christ. In the year one thousand six hundred and thirty-three, in the first Indiction, on the last day of the month of November, there being in the parish church of St. Andrew of Iseo, of the district of Brescia, present (here follow the names of the witnesses, passed over by me for the said reason), all the inhabitants of Iseo, witnesses, etc., asserting, etc., and to me the notary, etc. More is not expressed in Latin. Then in Italian the notary says, after the usual manner, that he wishes that, for the perpetual memory of the matter, and for the veneration and cult of St. Vigilius, bishop of Brescia, particular patron and founder of the archpresbyteral church of the notable town of Iseo, where the same Saint departed this life, it may be known and indubitably manifest to all, that by the commission and mandate of the most illustrious and most reverend lord Vincenzo Giustiniani, bishop of Brescia, the lord Giovanni Maria Machario, archpriest of the said town, who together with a distinguished body of the inhabitants had urgently requested it, translated the relics of St. Vigilius.

[9] The cause of the translation, the same notary signifies, was that the subterranean oratory under the high altar of the church, it was translated to a more becoming place; in which the sacred bones were preserved, was a damp place and liable to flooding in heavy rains, and that therefore it was neither sufficiently adorned, nor easy of access, nor finally suited for due veneration. The aforesaid archpriest therefore, accompanied with solemn rite and order, according to the custom usually observed in pious cases of this kind, by the whole clergy both secular and regular and by the people, raised the sacred bones from the altar of the subterranean oratory, consecrated to St. Vigilius. They were then examined according to the mandate alleged above, and each was described in order, together with the inscription of the leaden tablet found in the old chest, by the most excellent lord Giorgio de' Medici, physician of the same place. Then they were carried to the chapel of the same church, situated on the left side of the high altar, where they may more becomingly and conveniently be honoured by the people. And all were placed, except one arm, which is exposed separately in a silver shrine, in a chest lately made for that end, and locked with two keys, of which one is in the keeping of the archpriest, the other in that of the governors of the place. This is the substance of the Italian instrument, and this the Latin clause: Of all which things I, Girolamo de Rossi, public notary, have been requested to draw up an instrument.

[10] his sacred bones, preserved there, are enumerated. For the rest, as the same notary testifies, the aforesaid physician also described with his own hand the series of the sacred bones, and annexed it to that instrument; but a copy of it has not reached us. Perhaps from thence was taken the enumeration of the sacred bones which Giovanni Francesco Florentini gives in his manuscript catalogue of the bishops of Brescia after a brief commemoration of the translation just mentioned: At Iseo , he says, one principal bone of the arm; a smaller bone of the arm; one hip-bone of the larger ones; one leg-bone of the larger ones; two shoulder-blade bones; a bone of the breast of the part next the neck; a bone of the back near the neck above the shoulder-blades; two small bones, belonging to the joint of the shoulder-blades; six whole ribs; three small fragments of ribs, and other ashes are preserved.

[11] Thus Florentini, who, after a few things interposed, adds the following: His notable relics On the front of the confession is painted the effigy of the Saint with these words: Here rest the bones of Vigilius, holy bishop of Brescia, except the head and the left arm, secretly carried away. Hence a part is at St. Laurence's. By the confession he designates the subterranean oratory, whence in the year 1633 the relics were removed: but by the words:

Hence a part is at St. Laurence's, he points to the relics of St. Vigilius which are preserved at Brescia in the church of St. Laurence, and about which Faino has it thus: The head of this holy Prelate, with the bones lacking there (at Iseo), from an ancient translation made before the year MCC, the parish church of St. Laurence at Brescia holds, with the following tablet indicating it: Here the body of the most blessed confessor Vigilius, bishop of Brescia, was solemnly laid, on the day of St. Sixtus. The same is indicated on the front of the parish confession, or subterranean oratory, beside the effigy of the same Saint, by that accusing inscription — the same, namely, which I gave just now from Florentini, and from which each of them deduces the true existence of the relics of St. Vigilius in the church of St. Laurence at Brescia. Yet each of them also acknowledges that the word body in the Brescian inscription is to be taken figuratively for the greater or the greatest part of the body.

[12] are honoured also at Brescia; Faino brings forward nothing to prove the translation which he alleges to have been made before the year 1200; Florentini appeals to tradition, saying: For although the report has spread abroad that the Saint died there (at Iseo), and that his mortal remains were venerated there for many centuries, yet we are instructed by an ancient tradition that the greater part of them was brought to Brescia before the year one thousand two hundred and placed in the church of St. Laurence. Against the truth of this tradition I have nothing to oppose; on the contrary, since according to the inscription affixed to the effigy of St. Vigilius the people of Iseo acknowledge that the head and the left arm are wanting among them, and since Iseo is subject to the church of Brescia, I judge it more than probable that these were translated nowhere else than to Brescia, whether this was done secretly, lest tumults be stirred up among the people of Iseo, or in some other way. Further, I find two translations of the relics at Brescia. The first Capreolus relates thus in book 12 on the affairs of the men of Brescia, at the year 1497: In the following March the relics of the saints Optatianus and Vigilius, formerly our bishops, were translated with the greatest reverence from the old altar into the new one of holy Laurence by Bernardino Fabio, bishop of Hvar and apostolic referendary, our fellow citizen. The same, together with the other translation, Florentini declares in his Catalogue of the bishops, published in print at Brescia in the year 1614: His relics, he says in Optatianus, and those of St. Vigilius his successor, laid up in the church of St. Laurence, Bernardino Fabio, bishop of Hvar and provost of the same church, translated in the year MCCCCXCVII from the older high altar into the new one: from which afterwards, when the wall was adhering, they were extracted and, carried through the city in solemn procession, were brought in the year MDXCVI into another more august altar, which Ottavio Ermanno the provost had set up in the middle of the choir.

[13] Yet that there are relics of St. Vigilius at Bologna, Antonio Masini teaches in his Bologna perlustrata, and at Bologna: and after him Faino, whose words I set forth from his Annotations to the Martyrology of Brescia: At Bologna also, in the church of St. Francis, there are notable relics of this Saint, preserved with fitting honour, and translated thither either before the year MCC or in the year MDXXIV, when his sarcophagus was uncovered. The feast of whose translation is there celebrated with a solemn Office on the twenty-sixth day of August: as Antonio Masini in his book entitled Bologna perlustrata demonstrates. Let us now hear Masini; at the twenty-sixth day of August he speaks thus in Italian: The relics of St. Vigilius, bishop of Brescia, are preserved in the church of St. Francis. He repeats the same at the twenty-sixth day of September, except that he names a notable relic. Hence we easily gather that on each day a special cult and veneration is there shown to the sacred relics; but that the feast of the translation is celebrated with a solemn Office we by no means see demonstrated: and whether the people of Bologna obtained the sacred relics from the people of Iseo, among whom, as we said in num. 7, the Saint's tomb was opened in the year 1524, or from the people of Brescia, we are not able to determine.

[14] his ancient cult is proved from the various places dedicated to him. As regards the yearly cult of the Saint at Brescia and Iseo, the authors hand down nothing in particular; that it is nevertheless famous in both places, Florentini in his manuscript catalogue bids me believe; for treating of the sacred bones in the town of Iseo, he adds this: Where they keep the solemnity of him, as we do, on the VI Kalends of October. But how famous and how ancient the cult of the same Saint is throughout the diocese of Brescia, the churches and oratories consecrated to his name and patronage make manifest. Faino in the fourth catalogue of the Heaven of Brescia exhibits all the churches with their titles and prerogatives existing both in the city and in the whole diocese: I have run through the said catalogue with a light eye, and among the churches which are noted as situated outside the city, and which for greater convenience are divided into eight districts, I have come upon various ones dedicated to St. Vigilius. In the first district, which is distinguished by the title of the Val Camonica, on page 201 these things are found: The church of Cevo, whose patron is St. Vigilius, comprising three altars, is a parish rectory. In the second district, under the title of the Val Trompia, page 216: The church of Lodrino, having the title of St. Vigilius, bishop of Brescia, and four altars, is a parish rectory. In the third district, by name the Val Sabbia, page 219: The oratory of St. Vigilius the bishop. In the sixth district, which is called the Western Piedmont, page 248: The church of Monterotondo, whose patron is St. Vigilius, bishop of Brescia, containing three altars, is a parish rectory, having under its rights the old church of St. Vigilius, where there is a cemetery, which was the first parish church. In the same place, page 253: The church of the Land of St. Vigilius, established under the name of St. Gregory the Pope, with three altars, is a parish rectory, which contains within its limits a church standing on a hill under the name of St. Vigilius, which was the ancient parish church. Finally in the eighth district, which is entitled the Plain of the Brescian territory, page 265: The oratory of St. Vigilius in a country place.

* at Iseo

* perhaps of others