ON SS. FIDENTIUS AND TERENTIUS, MARTYRS AT TODI IN UMBRIA,
VENERATED AT TODI IN UMBRIA.
A Collection concerning their cult and Acts.
Fidentius, martyr, at Todi in Umbria. (S.)
Terentius, martyr, at Todi in Umbria. (S.)
BY C. S.
Among the enlarged Usuardine codices which our Sollier reviewed in his edition of the Martyrology of Usuard, Almost unknown to the more ancient writers, in the Roman Martyrology there occurs one of the church of the Blessed Mary at Utrecht, which for brevity's sake he called the Rosweydian, and judged to have been written before the middle of the twelfth century. In this, after the entire Usuardine text, I find those two Martyrs, passed over by the more ancient martyrologists whom I have seen, thus announced at this day, the twenty-seventh of September, without place and time: Likewise of Fidentius and Terentius, martyrs. The Register of the Utrecht Charterhouse and the edition of Greven in the aforesaid Sollier agree, in which likewise on the same day is read: Of Fidentius and Terentius, martyrs. Cardinal Baronius inserted them into the Roman Martyrology on this day also, adding the place either of their contest or of their cult, and the emperor under whom they are said to have suffered; saying: At Todi, of the holy martyrs Fidentius and Terentius, under the same Diocletian. But whence he learned these things he indicated thus in his Notes: We have read their Acts, received from the church of Todi. They begin: In the days of the emperors Diocletian and Maximian, etc.
[2] Now Tudertum, anciently Tuder, now called by the Italians Todi, [today they are announced at Todi, throughout whose diocese they are venerated with an Office] is an ancient episcopal city of Umbria in the dominion of the Church, situated not far from the Tiber, about midway between Perugia and Narni. That in that city and in its whole diocese they are venerated on this day of September with an Office of double rite, approved by the sacred Congregation of Rites, Ludovico Jacobilli testifies in his Saints of Umbria, tom. 2, in their acts. He had also premised that in the same diocese, not far from the village of Massa, there exists a church dedicated to God under their invocation, with a noble monastery, once of the Order of St. Benedict, afterward converted into an abbey of secular clerks, and that there in the subterranean church, beside the altar, their bodies are kept and venerated. He adds that that church is by the common people called, with a corrupted word, that of SS. Florentius and Terentius, whereas it should be styled that of SS. Fidentius and Terentius, as he affirms is read in the Calendar and in the proper Lessons.
[3] and their bodies are said to be preserved there. Similar things has Giovanni Battista Possevino in his Saints and Blesseds of Todi, where he says that they suffered, according to the Acts, near the city of Martana, now destroyed, where today there is the abbey of St. Mary in Pantano, of the territory and diocese of Todi, and that they were buried in the church founded there under their invocation and title; as even today, he says, is seen in an ancient inscription, cut in stone, there in the subterranean church near the altar. To these I add Philip Ferrarius, who in his Catalogue of the Saints of Italy says these things from the Office of the church of Todi: Whose bodies were laid by a woman, whose son they had freed from a demon, in a noble sepulcher which she had prepared for herself; in which place a church stands built under their name. Besides these, in a certain notice, written in the year 1753 and laid aside for this day, their sacred bodies are said to have been found there a few years ago; but I have obtained no other monument on that matter. The same notice makes mention of the Office of the same Martyrs
of double rite, usually read in the church of Todi every year on this day, so that of their ecclesiastical cult there can be no doubt.
[4] The Acts, of which we have manuscript copies, Concerning the Acts, of which we have three copies, we are compelled to think far otherwise. One of these, which is noted as received from Father Gallonio's volume among the Fathers of the Oratory at Rome, begins in the same manner as the Baronian one above at num. 1: In the days of the emperors Diocletian and Maximian there was a grievous persecution of the Christians, etc. The other, drawn from a manuscript of St. Maximin of Trier and compared with a manuscript of Metz, thus begins: In those days there was a persecution of the Christians in the times of the emperors Diocletian and Maximian; and as to the facts, and even generally as to the very words, both so agree with Gallonio's transcript that it manifestly appears that they proceeded from the same source. Yet the Trier and Metz manuscripts are the more faulty in this, that in them SS. Fidentius and Terentius, being about to cleanse lepers, are said to have prayed to God in these words: Lord Jesus Christ, we invoke thee, who didst deign to cure Constantine of leprosy through Silvester. As though either St. Silvester held the Pontificate, or Constantine the empire, before Diocletian and Maximian.
[5] In Gallonio's transcript the holy Martyrs are indeed said to have prayed at that time, and which Ferrarius reviewed from the Office of Todi, but what they said is better passed over in silence; whether because the writer of this, having detected the anachronism, cautiously omitted that prayer, or because the same was wrongly added by some unskilled person in the Trier and Metz transcripts, or finally in another from which these were copied. Our third transcript we have from a manuscript of St. Saviour's at Utrecht; which is indeed briefer than the rest, and lacks the aforesaid anachronism, but nevertheless has the same facts and very often the same phrases too, so that it may be laid down that this also flowed from the same or a similar source as the rest. A summary of all these is that which Philip Ferrarius sets forth from the ecclesiastical Office of Todi in his Catalogue of the Saints of Italy, whence I here transcribe it. Fidentius and Terentius, having set out from Cappadocia of Syria for Rome, in the reign of the emperors Diocletian and Maximian, and being accused before them of the Christian faith, when they could be bent neither by threats nor by promises, are first cast into chains, afterward thrown into the fire, whence coming forth without injury, they are handed over to the commander of the first cohort to be put to death.
[6] Who led them into a hidden place, that their bodies might not be buried by the Christians, but devoured by wild beasts. are fabulous, But the contrary happened; for bears, coming out of their lairs, killed the commander with his men and tore them in pieces; but the Martyrs, with an angel for guide, came down into a cave, where by the ministry of angels they are refreshed with food. Thence they come into the city of Martana, next to Todi, and there, being received into hospitality by a pious woman, they free her son who was oppressed by a demon; and thereupon two lepers being healed, they convert very many to the faith and work great miracles. Which being reported to the emperors, lictors are sent from Rome, who behead Fidentius and Terentius, now taken, at the aforesaid city on the fifth Kalends of October. Whose bodies were laid by a woman, whose son they had freed from a demon, in a noble sepulcher which she had prepared for herself: in which place a church stands built under their name. Thus Ferrarius from the Office of the church of Todi, which things are so consonant with the Acts mentioned above that yet from the manner of writing they appear less fabulous; for in those, circumstances of such a kind are everywhere read as by no means obscurely betray a fabulist. It will be well to have made some observations on all these things, lest we should seem to have thought thus without cause.
[7] The native country of these Saints is in Ferrarius Cappadocia of Syria, and written by an unskilled hand. and in our three manuscripts is twice called Chalcedonia of Syria; and so too read Giovanni Battista Possevino in his Saints of Todi, and Ludovico Jacobilli in his Saints of Umbria, the latter of whom adds that Chalcedonia was in Cappadocia, a famous province of Syria. But in vain would anyone seek among the cosmographers either a Chalcedonia in Syria or in Cappadocia, or a Cappadocia in Syria. All the Acts which we have in manuscript, and which lighted the way for Possevino and Jacobilli, say that they suffered in the general persecution of Diocletian and Maximian, and that they came from Syria to Rome because they had heard that many were being crowned there with martyrdom. But since it is established that that persecution began in the year of Christ 303 at Nicomedia in Bithynia by an edict publicly set forth, which was first transmitted and published throughout the East and thence into the other provinces of the Roman empire, there was surely no reason why these two Martyrs, if they were living at Chalcedon in Bithynia or in Syria, should seek Rome for the sake of obtaining martyrdom, which they could have obtained in their own country.
[8] The city of Martana, near which they are said to have suffered, Equally unknown to the ancients is the city of Martana, in which the Saints are read, in all the Acts, to have freed a demoniac and cleansed lepers, and to have been taken and beheaded and buried, with Ferrarius, Possevino, and Jacobilli agreeing, whom we have praised above. Nicolò Coleti, in tom. 10 of Ughelli's Italia Sacra, or rather in the Appendix to it, col. 129 and the following, lays down that the city of Martana was the same as Mortula or Martula, and thus reckons it among the obsolete episcopal sees: The bishopric of Martanum. Between Todi and Carsulae in Umbria there was a famous village, which the ancients called, from a temple of Mars existing either in the village itself or near the village, Martis Vicunt (read Vicum). Of it the Itineraries make mention, and the following ancient inscription in Cluverius: Vicani. Vici. Martis. Tudertium. This village writers of a later age, by a corrupted word, called Marta, Martana, and Mortula; but now the place is styled St. Mary of Pantano, the village having been long since utterly destroyed, where ancient inscriptions, coins, and other monuments of venerable antiquity repeatedly meet the hoes of the diggers.
[9] is so obscure, It deserved to be numbered among the cities of Umbria, from the time when St. Britius … there exercised episcopal functions. Then, after he has reckoned St. Felix as the second bishop, so to speak, of that place, he adds: Besides this no memory of the see of Mortula survives, and the place is reckoned in the dominion of the bishop of Spoleto. Taddeo Donnola in his little book on the place of St. Felix's martyrdom affirms that the city of Martana is found to be imaginary rather than real, unknown to all ancient writers: yet the contrary is urged from what has been said above, and chiefly from the Acts of St. Britius. Thus far Coleti. Of St. Brictius our Pinius treated at the ninth of July, but only briefly, because Janninck had written more at length of the same in the preliminary Treatise to tom. 1 of June, on the first apostles of Umbria, among whom St. Brictius is numbered. There Janninck shows how fictitious are the Acts of that Saint, both those which treat of him together with his companions and those which treat of him separately. Yet Martula, which in the Little Roman Martyrology of Rosweyde at the eighth of July is called the city Maralana, but in the Adonian at the ninth of the same month the city Martulana, and in the Usuardine at the same place the city Martula, he lays down is to be sought nowhere but in Umbria, against Bivar, who from the pseudo-Flavius Dexter had transferred it into Spain.
[10] that it is not even established where it was. That it was destroyed, all agree; but concerning its true ancient site there is dispute. Giovanni Battista Possevino and Ludovico Jacobilli say that it stood in the territory and diocese of Todi, but Coleti, as we have seen, in the dominion of the bishop of Spoleto. Perhaps more rightly Campelli, praised by Janninck in the aforesaid preliminary Treatise, p. 13, among the Annotations at letter aa, preferred to lay down nothing. It will be well to have reported his words. The place Martula, he says, where Brictius ended his life, was so obscure that, if he himself by a sojourn of some years … had not brought it renown, it would be quite unknown that it had existed; since, as I at least judge, no other memory of it is at hand than that which is read in the Acts, and that is so obscure that now it is not certainly known where it was, some placing its site on the borders of the Todi country, others near Spoleto at the foot of the mountain which even today is called Martanus, in that very place where now is seen a small castle which is called by the name of the aforesaid bishop St. Brictius, and is believed still to preserve his sacred remains. Let these things suffice concerning the place, which, if in a later age it was changed from Fanum Martis into Martana, as Coleti will have it, sufficiently proves that the Acts of SS. Fidentius and Terentius are by no means ancient. Let us pass on to other matters.
[11] In the same Acts these two holy Martyrs are said to have entered Rome Little probable also are while the emperors Diocletian and Maximian were staying there, and by their command to have been beheaded, and that on the fifth Kalends of October, as is added in all, except in that of Gallonio, in which the day and month of the martyrdom are passed over in silence. But now Diocletian does not seem to have been at Rome in the month of September of the year 303, and in that same year indeed, but later, to have come thither from the East, in order to celebrate there the twentieth anniversary of his reign on the seventeenth or twentieth day of November, and to triumph with Maximian Herculius, as may be seen in Tillemont, Pagi, and others. Nor did Diocletian then remain long at Rome, but, taking ill the scurrility of the Roman people, having departed thence in the month of December of the same year as it drew to a close, he never returned thither again. Still less probable are the circumstances of the events. For indeed, if anyone would believe the Acts, SS. Fidentius and Terentius, having entered Rome and being strengthened by an angel, began publicly to sing psalms and hymns to God. For that cause, being accused before the Augusti and brought before them, after the profession of the faith they were shut up in prison.
[12] On the next day Diocletian, sitting on the tribunal, tried by his promises to induce them to sacrifice to the idols; certain circumstances and facts, but in vain: and therefore they were sent back to prison. On the following day they appeared again before the same emperors in the forum and in a public assembly of the people, which in Gallonio's manuscript had been ordered by a herald's voice to be present. Then Diocletian, having declared that these two were magicians, newcomers from Syria, in order to seduce the Romans, but that he wished to try what their arts availed against his gods, ordered them to be burnt with fire. But they remained unharmed by an aromatic dew flowing down from heaven. Maximian therefore commanded the Roman vicar that, attended by four soldiers, he should kill them in a desert place of the wilderness, and hide their bodies, lest they should be taken away by the Christians. He obeyed; but when he had come to the appointed place, nine bears, springing out, killed him and his soldiers. But the Saints are bidden by an angel to withdraw into a certain cave where a dragon lay dead *; for there, says the angel, an angel of the Lord will come, and will bring to you a vessel full of gomor and abundant, which shall satisfy you; which he says was afterward done. Refreshed in this manner, the angel bids them make for the city of Martana. The rest we have given in summary from Ferrarius at num. 6.
[13] Who would not see that all these things smack of fables? For indeed such was not Diocletian's disposition in that atrocious persecution that he is to be believed to have coaxed with promised gifts two unknown newcomers openly resisting his edict, and to have condemned them only after a third hearing. Nor was there then at Rome such a scarcity of confessors and martyrs related in the same Acts, which therefore are not to be published; that for the beheading of those two the people should seem to have had to be summoned, as to a singular spectacle, in the presence of the emperors themselves. Then how futile is that invention about the nine bears, who in a wilderness, and that forsooth near Rome, tore in pieces the Roman vicar with his soldiers? How ridiculous that vessel full of gomor promised and given by an angel to the Martyrs — whether by gomor the writer of the Acts unskillfully meant the Hebrew measure of which frequent mention is made in the book of Exodus, or, as his words rather show, some food or drink? To all these let the reader add Chalcedonia and Cappadocia of Syria, and the other things noted above, and he will not wonder that I deny these Acts a place in our Work, nor set greater store by the summary given by Ferrarius, which was doubtless drawn from the same.
[14] wherefore, since we have no other monuments concerning them, From what has been said hitherto gather how uncertain are all the things which are read of these two Martyrs in Acts of so slight credit. Uncertain in the first place is their native country, which the anonymous writer faultily named Chalcedonia of Syria, Ferrarius Cappadocia of Syria. To this is added that Syria is perhaps assigned as their country for no other reason than that the Umbrians think that their first apostles came from Syria. On these matters consult, if you please, the preliminary Treatise of our Janninck, praised above, before tom. 1 of July, in whose §1 three such classes of newcomers are reviewed, of which they will have the first to have come in the first century of the Christian era, the second toward the end of the third century, and the third at last, which some make to be of three hundred men, in the sixth century; but among those named no Fidentius or Terentius occurs. Jacobilli lays down that the second class, which he says was of twelve companions whom he names, came from Syria into Italy in the reign of the emperors Diocletian and Maximian, in order to obtain the palm of martyrdom which their edict offered.
[15] uncertain are their native country, their place of contest But they came, in his view, in the year of Christ 290, that is, thirteen years before that famous edict went forth, upon whose promulgation they could have been crowned sooner in Syria than in Italy. It is therefore permitted to suspect that our anonymous writer ascribed a Syrian country to these two holy Martyrs, whose deeds had not become known, after the example of others, adding also the same cause of their coming, namely the desire of martyrdom, which both these and those, the Diocletianic persecution raging, could have fulfilled as well and sooner in Syria as in Italy. For the rest, upon how frail a foundation rest the things which are told of those three classes of Syrians coming into Italy, see the aforesaid preliminary Treatise, num. 12 and elsewhere. Uncertain also are the place of contest and the time of martyrdom of SS. Fidentius and Terentius, until it be proved by a better argument than that which is drawn from the oft-mentioned Acts.
[16] and the time of their martyrdom. Cardinal Baronius, who announced them at Todi in the Roman Martyrology, and in tom. 2 of the Annals says that they suffered there in the year of Christ 303, cited nothing but those Acts in the Annotations on the said Martyrology. The Martyrologies more ancient than he, which I at least have seen, and of which the older is the Usuardine of Rosweyde, written before the middle of the twelfth century, mention their bare names with the title of martyrs, the place and time in which they suffered being omitted. Only their cult, therefore, and perhaps the finding of their bodies, claim them for the people of Todi.
Annotata* another reading: tarried