ON ST. ZACHARIAS, MARTYR, BISHOP OF VIENNE IN GAUL. HISTORICAL SYLLOGE.
Summary of the Acts from the Breviary; church, cultus.
UNDER TRAJAN
CommentaryZacharias, Martyr Bishop of Vienne in Gaul (St.)
BY G. H.
We ourselves at Vienne in the year MDCLXII copied an ancient Catalogue of Holy Bishops of Vienne, in which it is said that Zacharias succeeded Crescens, crowned with martyrdom: whose feast in the ancient Calendar of the Missal and Breviary there described, According to the Breviary of Vienne, is assigned to this day May XXVII: and we have found the following Life of him in the Breviary of Vienne of the year MDXXII, then given to us, which is of this kind:
[2] ordained Bishop by St. Crescens, At that time when, after the bodily advent of the Saviour, the Sun of justice himself, having risen in the darkness, had begun to illuminate the Western region with the splendour of faith, and the sound of the Gospels went out into all the earth; in those regions the preaching of the Apostles manifested itself: that is, under Trajan, a most cruel Emperor, of Spanish race, the city of Vienne of the Gauls first deserved to have Crescens, a disciple of Paul, as its teacher: by whose faith and virtue many of the gentiles were converted to Christ. And when he had resided there for some years, he ordained in his stead a venerable man, a holy old man, Zacharias as Bishop: but he himself returned to Galatia, dreading the persecution of the gentiles, remembering the Saviour's saying, "If they have persecuted you in this city, flee to another." Therefore the holy Zacharias, converts many: as we have said, having been ordained Bishop, preached the word of God to the gentiles, dwelling outside the walls of the city in the house of a certain widow, the maidservant of the Prefect, named Fuscina, already a Christian. And there came to him many from the people, and he taught them secretly, saying: "Believe in Jesus, the Son of God our Lord: for he himself is the Creator and Saviour of all things." seized And those believing were baptized.
[3] Therefore when he was now instructing many in the faith of the holy Trinity; suddenly by the President of the city, Pompeius, he is seized; and bound he is led to the temple which lies above the city. And when he had entered; seeing there before the image of Mars golden ornaments, smiling, removes the idol of Mars by his prayers, he said: "These ornaments could better be distributed to the poor than be hung up before the sight of idols." And looking at the idol he said: "May our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ destroy you." At this voice suddenly the place in which the image stood was no longer to be seen. Therefore the President and all the priests of the temples, seeing these things, greatly disturbed, said to him: "Who has given you this power, that you should destroy our gods?" St. Zacharias replied: "The Son of the living God has renewed the lost world."
[4] cast outside the city, he is stoned: And when he refused to sacrifice to the god Mars, but with preachings and words confounded the Prefect and priests of the temples; greatly enraged, suddenly laying hands on him, and casting him outside the public temple, striking him with their heels they watched him. But at daybreak, while he was being dragged through the triumphal gate (which is now called Gratiana) toward the southern side, near the walls of the city, giving thanks and saying, "Lord, lay not this sin to their charge," all unanimously overwhelmed him with stones: and so the glorious man, following the example of the blessed Protomartyr Stephen, was not abandoned by the kindly Lord after the death of his contest: who gave him to crush the head of the ancient serpent, while he faithfully strove to fight in his commandments. is buried in a deep ditch: For thus, the holy body left to the wild beasts and birds, Pompeius departed. A few Christians of that time also, themselves fearing because of the fury of the Gentiles to bury the holy Martyr, but yet moved by divine piety and mercy, by night in a stone coffer they hid him, where he had shed his own blood, in a deep pit, and there he is preserved to this day.
[5] These things in the said Breviary, taken word for word from the ancient Acts, found in the MS. of Bodec in Westphalia, which we would here give, if they contained anything beyond what has been related and an empty dispute between the Martyr refusing and the President urging to sacrifice. Ado, Bishop of Vienne in his Chronicle asserts that under Trajan the most glorious old man Zacharias, is said to have brought the napkin of the Lord's Supper to Vienne. Bishop of Vienne, was crowned with martyrdom. The Crescens mentioned above is venerated on June XXVII, also inscribed in the Roman Martyrology. But the name of Fuscina remained familiar at Vienne: for by this name were called the sister of St. Avitus the Bishop, and his kinswoman, both nuns devoted to God, of whom we treated on April V at the Life of St. Avitus §1. In the MS. Martyrology of the Church of Vienne, which by the zeal and labour of John Lievré, Canon, was renewed; the feast of St. Zacharias is celebrated on this May XXVII with a sufficiently great eulogy, from which to the foregoing we add these things: He also brought to Vienne the sacred napkin (upon which the Lord Jesus, in the last supper held with the disciples, consecrated the sacred Eucharist, namely his Body and Blood) from the gifts of the most blessed Peter. Which napkin even to these times the Church of Vienne has preserved: and adorned with gold and silver, on Low Sunday, every year in the church of the Apostles, with the bestowal of Indulgences granted by the ancient Sovereign Pontiffs and especially by Innocent IV, is visited with the greatest frequency of the people.
[6] Church erected over the body The Bodec Acts thus explain to us the names of the successor Bishops, and the cultus of St. Zacharias gradually augmented: After the Passion of the blessed Martyr, Martin, by birth a Roman, taken into the supreme Priesthood, likewise comparable in merits of virtues, fittingly succeeds in his place: and so over St. Zacharias, Protomartyr of the Gauls, he caused a certain hut, in honour of the Lord and the holy Martyr, to be constructed at no great cost. But afterwards, with many years intervening, in the times of the Emperors Valerian and Gallienus, the number of the elect increasing, there was, not far from the walls of the city, a fortress, which had been founded of old by a wonderful work; which the citizens of Vienne, the greatest part Christians, demolishing, began to build a spacious and higher basilica above the holy Martyr Zacharias, in honour of the Lord and our Saviour Jesus Christ and of all the holy Apostles, situated on the southern side of the city. Lupicinus also, a Bishop most eloquent of men, to whom the blessed Pope Cornelius writes, at the same time was Head of that Church: who at great expense preparing the basilica, before the consummation of the begun work surveying the provinces, carrying the Gospel, suffered at the town of Tecanistrum. But his successor B. Simplida, completed most diligently the basilica which his predecessor had faithfully begun, when can it be believed? and lawfully dedicated it in public. These things there, rightly omitted by the collectors of the Breviary: for who does not know that the beginning of Basilicas publicly erected for holy Martyrs was first made under Constantine Augustus? Now St. Martin is venerated on July I, St. Lupicinus on December XIV, Simplida or Simplides or Simplidius on February XI, where we treated of him: but we wish Lievré to be corrected where he ascribes to the aforesaid Bishops the building of the Basilica of St. Peter. Unless we prefer to say that, in those places where afterwards Basilicas arose, churches were founded by them such as those times infested with persecutions allowed, exhibiting outwardly the appearance and use of private houses: which often being thrown down and changed, more august works afterwards succeeded under the title of the Saints.
[7] Saussay adorns Zacharias with a great eulogy, from which it will not be inappropriate to take something: Body brought into the city by 2 Cardinals. for after narrating the Saint's Martyrdom he proceeds thus: "A perpetual indication of his last sufferings is the flintstone, which is still seen at the church of the Carmelites, dyed with his most sacred blood. But the sacred corpse the ministers of Satan had cast among various filth: but secretly taken from there by pious men, near the walls of the city it was buried with what cult was permitted: where afterwards, with divine signs flashing forth, by the precept of the Apostolic See, that he might enjoy worthy honour, with the greatest celebrity and the distinguished apparatus of solemnity by Hugh of the title of St. Sabina and William of the title of the basilica of the Twelve Apostles, Cardinal Priests of the Holy Roman Church, hence raised up and brought into the city, with fitting veneration was placed in the cenobitic basilica of St. Peter. And that there might be a memorial of this matter among the people of Vienne, Indulgence granted Pope Innocent IV by an issued diploma bestowed sacred gifts on those who, every year on the very day of the deposition, with mind cleansed and the food of divine sustenance piously received, would venerate the precious pledges of so great a heavenly being." Thus Saussay. The aforesaid Lievré in his Gallic treatise on the Antiquity of Vienne adds that the Indulgence granted by Innocent IV was of one hundred days, in the year 1251 which John Chenu in his Archbishops of Vienne asserts was given at Lyon on the XIV Kalends of April, in the VII year of his Pontificate, therefore in the year of Christ MCCLI. But the said Cardinals, Hugh of St. Caro, of the Order of Preachers, and William, Abbot of St. Facundus of the diocese of León in Spain, were created in the year MCCLIV. Demochares, Claudius Robertus, and Sammarthani also mention St. Zacharias in their Archbishops of Vienne.
[8] In the Martyrology under the name of Bede he is referred to on the day before, that is May XXVI, and in this they were followed by Molanus, Galesinius, Canisius, with the present Roman Martyrology, cultus on May 26. in which these things are read: "At Vienne, of St. Zacharias, Bishop and Martyr, who suffered under Trajan."