ON ST. EPICHARIS, MATRON AND MARTYR,
PERHAPS AT CONSTANTINOPLE
from the sacred Fasti.
CommentaryEpicharis, matron, martyr, perhaps at Constantinople. (S.)
BY J. C.
[1] Her memory in the sacred Fasti Saint Epicharis, whom we noted at the preceding day among the Omitted as mentioned by Galesinius, Baronius thus announces at the present day in the Roman Martyrology: At Rome, of St. Epicharis, a woman of senatorial rank, who in the same persecution (of Diocletian) was beaten with leaded scourges and struck with the sword. Ἐπίχαρις is a Greek name, and from the Greeks the veneration of the Saint proceeded, from whom Galesinius, Baronius, Ferrarius, and others borrowed and announce her. In the Menaea it is thus sung:
Εὔτολμος Ἐπίχαρις ἦν πρὸς τὸ ξίφος, Συλλήπτορα πλουτοῦσα τὴν θείαν χάριν. Εἱκάδι ἑβδομάτη ἐπίχαρις φάσγανον ἔτλη.
Which thou wilt render into Latin thus.
Intrepid was Epicharis before the sword, Rich in the divine grace as her helper. On the twenty-seventh Epicharis endured the sword.
There follows then the elogium, which, rendered into Latin, I subjoin. Epicharis, martyr of Christ, at Rome, in the reign of Diocletian, being apprehended by the president Caesarius, when she freely professed the name of Christ, was hung up and scraped, then bruised with a leaden mallet by four lictors, who, at her prayer, were slain by angels. When at length she had been condemned to lose her head, a stone laid beneath her feet poured forth a great volume of waters. And being struck with the sword by the executioner, she rendered her blessed soul to God.
[2] The same things almost to the very words are read in the Basilian Menology, where likewise the Saint has an elogium at this day, nearly all things about the Saint are uncertain. and where the following are appended concerning her relics. And her precious relics, honorably buried by a certain Felix, a man of senatorial rank and a pious Christian, send forth cures for all who approach them with faith, and immediately drive away every disease, calamity, and sickness to this present day. Thus far there. Ferrarius in his Universal Catalogue, in his Animadversion upon the elogium abridged from the Menology, suspects that the holy Martyr was not a Roman, either by birth or by her palm, as he desires to prove from the reasons which he adduces. And those are: that Epicharis is a Greek name; that there is no mention of the Saint among Latin writers; that no memory of her relics exists anywhere among the Romans. As regards the name, the argument deduced thence is weak enough, since it is not so wonderful that families migrated from the East into the West, so that there are not wanting several Westerners whose names sufficiently disclose their Greek origin. Stronger is the reasoning drawn from the relics. Perhaps the Saint suffered at Byzantium, and some later writer, when that city had already begun to be called Rome, changed that name into this more illustrious one and more usual in his own time, and from him the variation and ambiguity passed into the sacred Greek Fasti, and thence afterward the error arose. So indeed it seems we must think, if the sacred Fasti err in the name of the place of contest. So Castellanus likewise thinks: If, he says, she is the same as Epachoris, who is venerated in the island of Chios. Of this Saint, whether she be the same as our Martyr or different, I do not find elsewhere any memory joined with mention of a particular veneration in the said island; and whence Castellanus received these things I am wholly ignorant, as also everything else that pertains to the holy Martyr. I have called her a matron, not because I have found this asserted by any certain arguments, but because the Greek monuments which we have seem to hint at it, so that Baronius plainly took it thence.