Felix

ON SAINT FELIX, PRESBYTER AND MARTYR BURIED NEAR SUTRI IN TUSCANY.

Acts from the Manuscript Acts of St. Mustiola: the time of the Martyrdom, the name in the Calendars.

IN THE YEAR 257

Felix the Presbyter, Martyr at Sutri in Italy (St.)

BHL Number: 4455

AUTHOR. D. P.

The Acts of St. Mustiola, a Matron of Chiusi and a celebrated Martyr, to be treated on the 3rd of July, take their beginning from the Martyrdom of the aforementioned St. Felix, in these words. In the times of Aurelian * Augustus a savage persecution arose against the Christians. And when it had been reported, Turcius, Prefect of Tuscany, sent for the extermination of the Christians, that in a certain Tuscan city, which was noble after the manner of the heathen, many who had been converted to the holy Christian religion were flourishing, so great a desire of [exterminating them seized Aurelian Augustus, that he dispatched a certain Turcius as Vicar, with prefectorial dignity conferred, to the investigation of the Christians. Now Turcius, coming into the city of Falerii, sitting down said: Examine everything diligently, seeking that wherever a Christian has been made known, he be without difficulty presented to our sight to bear capital perils. Meanwhile, when an inquisition had been made in that same city, St. Felix exhorting them, it happened that a Christian was found, by the name of Felix. He, hearing that the power of the persecutors had arrived, began to gather to himself the Christians and to strengthen all, saying to them: Parents and brothers and children, let not this darkness disturb you, for it is brief; but the everlasting shadows are to be feared: stand manfully and fight; for one day in the courts of the Lord is better than thousands of gold and silver.

[2] Blessed Felix the Presbyter was denounced by a certain Curial, he orders him to be arrested; who said: In the territory of Falerii there is a certain Presbyter, filled with the faculty of speaking, who seduces the people to forsake the temples of the gods, that they may be baptized and become Christians. Hearing these things, Turcius sent soldiers, and seized Felix the Presbyter, whom he consigned to public custody. And so, rising the next day, he ordered a tribunal to be prepared for himself in the city of Falerii, and Felix the Presbyter to be brought before him. Whom he thus interrogates, saying: and brought before him at Falerii, What is your name? He answered: I am called Felix. Turcius says to him: What military service do you follow, or what office? Felix answered: Though a sinner, yet I am a Presbyter of Christ. Turcius said: Why do you hold assemblies throughout various places, and seduce the people that they should not believe in the gods, nor sacrifice according to the ancient ordinance and the command of the Princes? and persevering in his confession, Felix answered: What is our life but that we may preach our Lord Jesus Christ, and rescue the people from the uncleanness of idols, that each one may enjoy eternal life? Turcius says to him: What is eternal life? Felix the Presbyter answered: That God the Father be worshiped and feared, and the Lord Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit. Turcius said: Lay aside the wretchedness of your God, and obey the precepts of our Lords the Augusti. Felix the Presbyter answered: As far as it pertains to us, may we be worthy to obey Christ, and to call upon his name.

[3] Angered, Turcius ordered his mouth to be crushed with a stone by his soldiers, saying to them: he orders him to be beaten with a stone unto death. Crush this man, who seduces the people. And when he had long been beaten, he gave up his spirit; whose body he commanded to be cast into the street; which body a certain Irenaeus the Deacon gathered up, and buried it beside the walls of the city of Sutri on the ninth day before the Kalends of July. Thus far those Acts, from the Trier Manuscript of St. Maximin, collated with the Utrecht Manuscript of St. Salvator and the Surius edition, where they are had as taken from excellent Manuscript books, with the style changed for the reader's benefit (which does not please us), and instead of Turcius it is written Turgius. But the older inscriptions in Baronius's Notes on the Martyrology prove the truer reading; one at the church of the Holy Apostles in these words, He seems to have been the son of Turcius, Prefect of the City, By the authority of Turcius Apronianus, a most illustrious man, Prefect of the City; the other in the Capranica house, To Lucius Turcius Apronianus, a most distinguished man, son of Lucius Turcius Apronianus.

[4] We have in Bucherius, on Victorius's Paschal Canon, page 286, a Manuscript drawn from the times of Gallienus, from the year 254 down to 359, by which we are taught who administered the Prefecture of the City and for how long a time during that period; but nowhere there is Turcius found, much less under the reign of Aurelian, who held it from the year 271 for three years: not under Aurelian moreover he always held it alone, and so it is also foreign to his very time that in the Acts, which otherwise seem to be wholly sincere and judicial, there is urged the command of the Princes and the precepts of the Lords the Augusti. Wherefore I think there is an error in the name of Aurelian, by a mere transposition of letters, and that one should write and read Valerian, who with his son Gallienus held the Empire toward the end of the year 253, according to Pagi's more accurate chronology, but under Valerian, & Gallienus, having been hailed Emperor, and under whom Saints Mustiola and Felix suffered. For although none of the earlier Princes, not even those very ones who are said to have openly been Christians, namely the Philips, embraced our people with such humanity and benevolence as he Valerian displayed at the beginning of his reign: yet the Master and Archisynagogue of the Magi of Egypt, that is, the chief patron and favorer of those very men, Macrianus, at length persuaded him to depart from this purpose, ordering that he persecute and slay the chaste and holy men; as Eusebius in book 7, chapter 10, writes that St. Dionysius of Alexandria, then living and an exile for the cause of the faith, recorded.

[5] But when did the persecution begin? In that very year in which St. Stephen the Pope Martyr fell, the year 257, who revived the persecution in the year 257. says Pagi, among the Augusti's quinquennial festivals, not earlier. And this we now more willingly hold, having weighed more accurately than at other times the sense of the words of St. Dionysius. In this year, therefore, Lucius Turcius Apronianus, son of Turcius Apronianus, formerly Prefect of the City, The name of the Martyr inscribed in the Calendars by Usuard. perhaps under Decius, certainly before the Register of Prefects was begun, may have been Vicar, then of the Prefect Junius Donatus: who, hostile to the Christians by his father's example, was sent by Valerian with the dignity of Prefect of Tuscany to their persecution; and St. Felix was crowned at Falerii; which, the capital of the Faliscans, today is called the city of Civita Castellana, situated on the Tiber 18 miles from the city of Rome: but he was buried near Sutri, removed from the city by almost an equal distance, but distant from Falerii by only 11 miles. Usuard, with the Acts shining before him, first inserted him into the Martyrology in these words: In Tuscany, in the city of Ultrina (read Sutrina) the feast of St. Felix the Presbyter, whose mouth Turcius the Prefect ordered to be crushed with a stone so long until he gave up his spirit. Others followed Usuard, and with them at last the Roman Martyrology, At Sutri in Tuscany the feast of St. Felix. And in the meantime there today in the Cathedral nothing else remains than a small fragment of bone in a larger reliquary common to many; yet his feast, as that of a secondary Patron, is solemnly celebrated.

Note * indeed, of Valerian.