ON ST. NEOPHYTUS, BISHOP AND CONFESSOR, AT LENTINI IN SICILY, AT LENTINI IN SICILY.
Toward the end of the third century, as is believed.
The cult from the proper Office; the Acts fabulous; was he consecrated bishop by St. Andrew the apostle? The time of his life and death.
Neophytus, bishop and confessor, at Lentini in Sicily. (S.)
Written by J. L.
The ancient writers, both Greek and Latin, call not only the inhabitants, but the very city of Sicily which today is called Lentini, Leontini; The cult of St. Neophytus, bishop of Leontini as may be seen in Cluverius, Ancient Sicily, book 1, chapter 10. It was once episcopal; but now it has only a college of Canons, and is subject to the church of Syracuse. As the prelate of that ancient see, either the first, or at least one before whom none can be named, St. Neophytus is set down by all Sicilian writers. Agatino Castiglione, apostolic protonotary and canon of Lentini, on the testimony of Antonino Mongitore in his Bibliotheca Sicula, published at Rome in the year 1612 the Acts of the Saints of Lentini and the Offices of each Saint of Lentini, approved by Pope Paul V. Although those Offices are lacking in our Museum, and I find no martyrologists older than Filippo Ferrari who announce our Saint, nevertheless concerning his lawful cult the testimonies of various later writers leave no doubt; by whom I am taught that, among many other Saints who are Patrons of Lentini, St. Neophytus, bishop and confessor, is venerated also with an ecclesiastical Office. Ferrari in his general Catalogue of the Saints who are not in the Roman Martyrology thus records him at 1 September: At Lentini in Sicily, of St. Neophytus, bishop. In his Notes he adds among other things: Of him in the Offices of the same church lately approved at Rome. In our Ottavio Gaetani, in the Idea of his Work on the Saints of Sicily, this announcement is read: At Lentini, the Festivity of St. Neophytus, bishop and confessor. In the margin, besides the records of Lentini, are noted the Lessons approved by Pope Paul V; which, as Carlo Antonio Conversano affirms in the Heavenly glory of the people of Lentini, are recited under a double rite. Those which are read at the second Nocturn, and which are proper to the Saint, are extant in Rocco Pirri, in the Notices of the churches of Sicily, book 2, Notice three, where he says he reports them in those words in which the sacred Congregation of Rites under Paul V approved them as conceived. And they run thus.
[2] Neophytus of Lentini, son of St. Neophyta the martyr (whom we gave at 17 April), from the proper Office, formerly called Alexander, was a counsellor of Tertyllus, governor of Sicily. He, moved by the miracles of SS. Alphius, Philadelphus and Cyrinus (whose Acts we examined at 10 May), by the pious converse of his wife Epiphania (inscribed in the Roman Martyrology at 12 July), and by the sight of Andrew the apostle, patron of the city of Lentini, embraced Christian piety. Wherefore, having distributed his wealth as alms for the poor, he withdrew into solitude, where he thought of martyrdom: but God disposing otherwise, he was baptized by St. Agatho, bishop of Lipari (whom at 17 June we placed among the passed-over, not being sufficiently informed of his cult), was instructed in sacred Scripture, and was initiated into the priesthood. For the space of four years, during which he lay hidden, serving the bishop in reciting prayers and performing the sacred rites, having wholly renounced the use of flesh and wine, he afflicted his body by daily practice; which manner of life he kept to his last breath.
[3] approved by the sacred Congregation of Rites under Paul V On a certain night, which is believed to have been 28 December of the year 258, under the emperors Valerian and Gallienus, when the divine praises had been recited [at] the tombs of the holy Brothers, the apostle Andrew was seen, who took Neophytus and consecrated him bishop of Lentini, and bade him set out to Rome to receive the blessing of the supreme Pontiff, asserting that a bishop could not be consecrated without the authority of the Bishop of Rome. Hastening, therefore, he went to the city, where, when the Pontiff had determined to consecrate him, he learned from the holy apostles Peter and Paul in a dream that he had been consecrated at Lentini by blessed Andrew by a special grace of God. Reporting this in the morning to the bishops who had come for the consecration, he saw a golden plate, held by an apostolic hand and fallen down from heaven, on which the privilege of the episcopate was written out and read thus: The divine grace of Jesus Christ deigns to promote this Man from the priesthood to the episcopate: that he may sit upon the apostolic throne in Mesopolis of the people of Lentini. At last the Pontiff granted to Neophytus the Apostolica, a kind of chasuble, and the pallium, the sacred vestment of bishops, found by divine means in the Holy of holies.
[4] approved: After three years, returning from Rome, Neophytus with the bodies of SS. Erasmus, Cleonicus and Stratonicus, martyrs, shown to him beforehand by divine revelation (of the first we treated at 31 July, of the two others at 24 of the same month), when in a public address he disclosed that he was Alexander, struck no small fear into the citizens, so that scarcely at last, by a long discourse, did he quiet the tumultuous people. Thereafter, when almost the whole people had been baptized, he devoted himself wholly to instructing and governing the church; over which, when he had presided thirty-seven years and five months, being now more than eighty years old, most illustrious in virtue and sanctity, he was called away to heavenly beatitude on 17 April in the year of human salvation 296, under the emperors Diocletian and Maximian. To the proper Lessons Pirri subjoins: The church of Lentini celebrates the feast of holy Neophytus transferred to the Kalends of September; to which day therefore we too have deferred him from 17 April. Of that wondrous consecration performed by St. Andrew the apostle, of which at number 3, the church of Lentini also keeps an annual memory on 28 December, as its Records testify, and from these, besides Ferrari and others, Gaetani in the Idea of his Work; where at the said day of the month of December he has this: At Lentini, the Ordination of St. Neophytus, first bishop of Lentini, who was divinely consecrated by St. Andrew the apostle, under the emperors Valerian and Gallienus.
[5] We have abundantly proved the Saint's cult. It remains the fabulous Acts published and examined at the day 10 May: that we advise the reader briefly concerning his Life. That is described at length in the Acts of the holy martyrs Alphius, Philadelphus and Cyrinus, inserted into our Work at the day 10 May by Papebroch. Neither the proper lessons which we have given, nor Ottavio Gaetani in the Life of St. Neophytus, which is extant on page 98 of volume 1 on the Saints of Sicily, nor any other writers produce anything which is not taken or deduced from the aforesaid Acts; save some things which they themselves wished to correct in them, that they might appear more credible. But all those things which are related in the same concerning our Saint, to excerpt and insert in this place I plainly judge superfluous; and that especially for this reason, that the whole of that history of the said three holy Martyrs, which treats also of very many other Saints of Lentini, is so full of anachronisms, fables and other absurdities that one does not know what in it is to be believed as true, since it cannot be distinguished from the false. Let it suffice therefore to refer the reader to 10 May, where in the preliminary Commentary and in the Notes subjoined to the several chapters of the said history it is sufficiently shown what is to be held concerning those things which are read of St. Neophytus in the proper Office and elsewhere, all drawn from the same corrupted source.
[6] Since nevertheless upon that marvellous rather than credible ordination of the holy Bishop, that the Saint was consecrated bishop of Lentini by St. Andrew the apostle which Castiglione, the author of the Lessons given, transcribed from those fabulous Acts, no particular annotation is read in our Work, I have thought it should be inserted here, that which stands in Papebroch's Responses to the Exhibition of errors, article 11, number 167, elsewhere 207: It is indeed agreed among theologians that, as God can by his own will and by himself, in whatever manner he shall have willed, confer every effect of any sacrament whatsoever, so he can appoint anyone as its minister, even an angel, even a saint departed this life; although the ordinary minister instituted by Christ is a man living in a mortal body: but that he ever used an extraordinary ministry of that kind for ordaining a bishop we ought not to believe without an authority morally certain. Such is not the example of St. Amphilochius, bishop of Iconium in Lycaonia, at 23 November, adduced by our Father Giles de Coninck in his Work on the Sacraments, question 64, article 7. For although the Life of that Saint in Surius says that he was thus ordained in a vision by angels, and it is reported that upon his simple testimony alone the bishops of the province, gathered for his ordination, held it ratified, yet he who published this Life, together with the Saint's Works, in Greek and Latin, namely Combefis, states in a preface to his Notes that the Life was DELIBERATELY REJECTED by him and placed after the Works, as less approved, and perhaps more worthy of Metaphrastes' talent and facility, not so far historical as very many learned men complain.
[7] does not deserve ready credence: The same ordination is transcribed from Metaphrastes, almost four centuries later than it, by Nicephorus, book 12, chapter 20; but only as a thing narrated by simple tradition, not as resting upon certain authority: and both would have taken care not to give it the slightest credence, if they had searched the passages of the holy Basil and of Nazianzen, most intimate with Amphilochius, written to him and about him, together with the Acts of the First Council of Constantinople: for thence they would have received very different and most certain notices about the aforesaid St. Amphilochius, and his age and deeds, both as an advocate in the courts and as a bishop in the church. Combefis in his Notes recalls that in the Lives of the Fathers in Rosweyde it is read that a monk who seemed to himself to have been thus miraculously ordained a presbyter was reduced to the ranks by the Fathers; and, he says, THERE IS CERTAINLY NEED OF GREAT
CAUTION IN MATTERS OF SUCH MOMENT, because NO MONUMENT OF SO
SINGULAR AN ORDINATION OCCURS IN ANY WRITER OLDER THAN Metaphrastes. The same without doubt Combefis would have noted upon the aforesaid Acts of the Saints of Lentini, if he had had to judge of them, and would have done it the more confidently the more fables he had found in them. So learnedly Papebroch; who to the words reported prefixes and subjoins not a few things pertaining to St. Neophytus, vindicating from the accusations of the very Reverend Father Sebastian of St. Paul the censures to which, in pronouncing them in our Work, the love of truth had compelled him.
[8] [he is believed to have died in the 38th year of his episcopate, as the third century was drawing to its close.] Concerning the time at which the Saint passed to a happier life, take this. The praised Papebroch and Ottavio Gaetani, in volume 1 on the Saints of Sicily, in the Animadversions, page 51, show that SS. Alphius, Philadelphus and Cyrinus more probably suffered in the persecution of Decius, which in the years 250 and 251 raged against the Christians. But that holy Neophytus, after their martyrdom, lived four years in solitude, and presided over the church of Lentini for 37 years and 5 months, Castiglione asserts in the Lessons given above. If these things be true, the Saint must have died as the third century was drawing to its close. Certainly he did not prolong his life to the beginning of the following one; for if we believe the often-mentioned history of the Saints of Lentini, the interval of time which lay between St. Neophytus's return from solitude and the beginning of his episcopate did not exceed a year or two. If you wish to set the year of Christ 293 or 294 as the Saint's year of death, you will come nearer to the truth than Gaetani, just now cited, page 75, where he fixes his death in the year 295. This writer wrongly connected the martyrdom of St. Alphius and his Brothers with the second year of the persecution of Decius, of Christ the Lord 253; for that emperor was slain in battle against the Goths at the end of the year 251, as Pagi proves against Baronius: whose chronological error, if Gaetani had detected it, he would have drawn back the Saint's death to the year 293. Castiglione in the Lessons connects it with the year 296: but he, as I think, followed the erring calculations of Baronius, according to which the year 253 was the first of the emperor Decius. By another anachronism he vitiates the Lessons, when he determines not only the year, but even the day, of the prodigious consecration and of the death of St. Neophytus. He writes that on a certain night, which is believed to have been 28 December of the year 258, he was consecrated bishop by the apostle Andrew, but that he died on 17 April in the year of human salvation 296; and at the same time he affirms that he held the episcopate thirty-seven years and five months: whereas between the prodigious ordination of the Saint and his death there are, beyond 37 years, only three months and twenty days in between. Where the error lies hidden, I leave to the men of Lentini to trace out.