ON ST. EUSTORGIUS THE SECOND, BISHOP OF MILAN.
A collection concerning his cult, acts, and age.
IN THE YEAR 518.
CommentaryEustorgius II, Bishop of Milan (St.)
BY THE AUTHOR G. H.
Milan, most noble city of Italy and capital of Insubria, has had from the times of the Apostles its Bishops, afterward called Archbishops, to whom even now fifteen Bishops are subject; but, what is most glorious, among these it has had thirty-six enrolled in the catalogue of the Saints. Such were the two Eustorgii, the first of whom lived in the fourth century of Christ, and on the 18th day of September is venerated with solemn veneration, buried in the church dedicated to him. Sacred cult. The second is on this 6th of June ascribed to the Roman Martyrology in these words: At Milan, the deposition of St. Eustorgius the second, Bishop and Confessor. This his Deposition is celebrated in the Missal according to the rite of St. Ambrose printed about the year 1522, and in the Breviaries according to the institution of St. Ambrose, printed in the years 1538 and 1556, and in the Ambrosian Breviary, edited by order of St. Charles the Cardinal Archbishop about the year 1582, and revised and reprinted under the date of the year 1625; in which this proper Lesson concerning his deeds is recited.
[2] Eulogy from the Breviary. Eustorgius the second, a man of great talent, wholly given over to the study of divine matters, succeeding Laurentius in the Archbishopric of Milan, brought to the excellent governing of the Church entrusted to him those virtues which, joined with the duties of religion, produced salutary fruits. For he was an outstanding cultivator of piety, equity, and the pastoral virtues. Florianus, born of an impious father, who had set out from far-off Pannonia to Milan, he received into his house, instructed in the faith, baptized, trained in letters, and made a Deacon; who afterward, as Bishop of the Church of Seville, flourished in the praise of sanctity. He defended and increased the patrimony of the Church. He built a Baptistery of marvelous workmanship. He did many other things, in which, his sanctity having been observed, he was enrolled in the number of the Confessors. He rested in the Lord, on the day before the Nones of June. He was buried in the basilica of St. Laurence. These things there, but on the sixth day of June, which is the day after the Nones, or the eighth before the Ides of June. Nowhere have we found ancient Acts of Eustorgius the second; accordingly, the things which we have now taken from the Milanese Breviary, we give as some sort of foundation. For Ferdinand Ughelli, treating of this Saint, asserts that the records of those who wrote about the Milanese Prelates teem with many errors: indeed the deeds of both Eustorgii are quite often found confused. Thus Eustorgius the first, in the Lessons of the aforesaid Breviary, on the 18th day of September, is said to have been born of a noble family in Greece. Of the second Eustorgius' homeland the Lesson already produced is indeed silent; but others everywhere write that he too, like the first, was Greek by nation, and came from Greece into Italy, and lived at Rome, celebrated for sanctity, under Gelasius the first, Created Bishop about the year 514 Symmachus, and Hormisdas as Pontiffs; the last of whom put him in the place of Laurentius Litta, in the See of Milan, about the year of Salvation 514. So says Ughelli. But Florianus, who, converted by St. Eustorgius, instructed in letters, and said to have been consecrated Deacon, and afterward created Bishop of Seville, is by the people of Seville and other Spaniards called St. Laureanus, and had a celebrated cult, even inscribed in the Roman Martyrology, on the 4th day of July, crowned with martyrdom under Totila, King of the Goths, in Italy in the year 544.
[3] There had been in the same century Theodoric, King of Italy, from the year 493 to the year 526; he receives a letter from Theodoric, King of Italy: who in Cassiodorus, book 1 of the Variae, wrote letter IX to this Eustorgius, in which he indicates that the Bishop of Augusta Praetoria had been falsely accused before him and acquitted. It is of this kind. To Eustorgius, a venerable man, Bishop of Milan, Theodoric the King. Safe is the condition of subjects where life is lived under the equity of those who reign; nor is it fitting to be drawn by rumor, by whom things not to be changed ought to be established. For we gather the truth of matters from reason, which is never hidden from those who desire it, if it is sought out by its own footprints. And therefore, what we trust will be most pleasing to your Beatitude, by the present tenor we declare; that the Bishop of the city of Augusta, accused by false charges of betrayal of the homeland, because he has by us been restored to his former honor, may have every right of his Episcopate which he had. For nothing in such an honor is to be presumed by rash thought; where, if credit is given to one's purpose, even one silent is excused from excesses. Accordingly, manifest crimes in such persons scarcely gain credence. But whatever is said out of envy, the truth does not reckon. We wish also to strike his assailants with a lawful penalty; but since they themselves also bore the name of Clergy, to the judgment of your Sanctity we transmit all things to be ordered; whose part it is both to impose equity upon such characters, as we know how to guard the Ecclesiastical tradition. These things King Theodoric, who cherished the Milanese Church kindly; for to St. Eustorgius, claiming certain estates in the island of Sicily for his Church, lest favor against injury be lacking to him, he wrote to the Governor; and this is found in Cassiodorus, book 1, letter XXIX.
[4] Although we wish none to sustain any grievance, he is protected by the same man. whom our piety seems to protect (because the glory of the reigning is the untroubled tranquility of subjects), yet we especially desire the Churches to be rendered free from all injury, to whom, while just things are furnished, the mercy of the Divinity is acquired. And therefore, moved by the petition of the most blessed man Eustorgius, Bishop of the holy Milanese Church, by the present words we admonish you that to the estates or honors of this Church established within Sicily, you take care to furnish protection, with civil order preserved; nor allow them to be oppressed by anyone, a man of whatever nation, against right, whom it is fitting, with regard to the Divinity, to be relieved; yet so that to public and private cases, which against them are reasonably brought forward, they not delay to respond. For just as we do not wish them to be burdened by anyone, so we do not allow them to be found exempt from the path of justice.
[5] These things there. From which it is established that St. Eustorgius the second lived in the sixth century of Christ, The errors of others are corrected. and that they greatly err who made him a disciple of St. John Damascene; for thus he would have had to flourish in the eighth century of Christ, and to have presided over the See of Milan. Galesinius adorns him with a grand eulogy, in which he says that he equipped and adorned the Milanese Church with great monuments, by his care the bodies of the holy Magi having been translated to the city of Milan from Constantinople, and for that cause a most religious temple having been built. But this everywhere other Milanese Writers ascribe to St. Eustorgius the first. Moreover in the Notes the same Galesinius asserts that in the diocese of Milan five sacred buildings were erected in his name, and that this is known from an ancient codex. I do not think it could easily be discerned whether those churches belong to this one or the first, until it is more distinctly proved. Finally Ughelli asserts that St. Eustorgius the second, under the Pontificate of Hormisdas, flew away to the heavens in the year 522. By what reckoning he establishes this, let him see for himself.
D. P.
[6] I gave, before the last Volume of May, the series of the Bishops and Archbishops of Milan, deduced chronologically, according to the old parchments of the Ambrosian Library; from which, and from the name of St. Laurentius, I demonstrated He sat 7 years that this man could not by living have reached beyond the year 512. After Laurentius, according to those parchments, St. Eustorgius sat for 7 years; deposited on the 8th before the Ides of June, at St. Sixtus. And from the year 512, advancing through 7 years, you will arrive at the year 518, in which this Saint died; which could be proved more certainly, if the time of St. Magnus, substituted for Eustorgius, were found noted without error. But as manifest as is the error in the 30 years attributed to him, so uncertain is, nor except by conjecture is held, the correction, leaving 13 years to Magnus; died in the year 518. so that through the 23 years attributed to St. Datius following, one comes to the year 552, which Bollandus shows was the last for him, on the 14th of January. But you will note, if you please, that the aforenoted years proceed thus, that the last and first are divided between predecessors and successors, common to both; for it could not be done otherwise, by one reckoning only the years, the more scrupulous definition of months and days neglected.
[7] In the same Chronological Tract, after the mentioned St. Simplicianus, successor of St. Ambrose, He did nothing concerning the three Magi. I showed how wrongly there is fashioned as his successor a brother of St. Eustorgius, Arsacius, of which kind there was none among the Milanese; nor does any other occasion seem to have been taken for ascribing to those two wrongly supposed brothers the translation of the three Magi, than because the Magi were deposited in the church of St. Eustorgius, and that in the 7th century of the Christian era; so that neither Eustorgius had a part in that Translation, but the whole credit is due to St. Arsacius; the Bishop not of a Milanese, but of some Eastern Church; who in Bavaria, after the body of St. Ambrose was brought there, is venerated on the 12th of November: when it will be permitted to give for examination the Life fabricated for him, and in the fictions to seek a foundation for a more probable opinion, concerning the said bodies of the three holy Magi, translated from the East to Constantinople, and to Milan; whence finally they passed to Cologne Agrippina on the Rhine, in the time of Frederick Barbarossa in the 12th century.
[8] Finally I taught in the already-mentioned Tract that the church of St. Sixtus, which is now called the Laurentian, is the same Deposition in the Laurentian Basilica. which, first dedicated to St. Cassianus, the aforepraised St. Laurentius restored under the invocation of St. Sixtus; and I cited a slip found beneath the altar, inscribed thus: Of the holy Confessors Eustorgius, Laurentius, and Theodorus, 1494, on the 10th day of September; which I judged to be understood of the repositioning of these same beneath that altar then renewed. Now besides I observe that the Author of that slip, if in naming those Saints he regarded the order of age, took the first for the second Eustorgius: so often do the things waver which without an old witness more recent writers suggest.