Octavian

ON ST. OCTAVIAN, HERMIT AND CONFESSOR NEAR VOLTERRA IN TUSCANY,

NEAR VOLTERRA IN TUSCANY,

More probably before the sixth century.

PRELIMINARY COMMENTARY.

Octavian, hermit and confessor, near Volterra in Tuscany. (S.)

BHL Number: 6257, 6258

BY J. L.

§ I. His memory in the more recent Calendars; the antiquity of his cult; his proper Office. [ ] Between the principality of Piombino to the South and Florence to the North, between Siena to the East and Pisa and Livorno to the West, [St. Octavian, patron of Volterra according to more recent writers, whose announcements] not far from the right bank of the Cecina and the left bank of the Era, lies a most ancient city of Etruria, which the ancients called Volaterræ, and not a few writers of the middle and lower age called in Latin also Volterræ and Vulterræ, following the native idiom of the common people, who contracted the name Volaterræ into Volterra. This city reckoned St. Octavian among its Patrons, whom on the 2nd of September the clergy invokes with an ecclesiastical Office. I find no older memory of this Saint in the sacred Calendars than in the Florentine augmented Martyrology of Usuard, which on this day reports him thus: At the city of Volterra, of saint Octavian, hermit and confessor, an African by nation, a man of wonderful holiness and glorious for miracles. He came with saint Regulus the bishop to the aforesaid city; who at last ended his life in a single elm tree, whose body rests there in the cathedral church. From nn. 28, 31, and 33 of the Commentary which I gave concerning St. Regulus at the 1st of September, it is manifest enough that he, with his disciples Cerbonius and Felix, with whom he had come as an exile from Africa into Italy, stopped near Populonia, a city once maritime in Tuscany, and there spent the rest of his life in solitude in the desert, in which he was crowned with martyrdom under Totila in the year 542. Whence I do not believe what the said Martyrology, no older than the fifteenth century, asserts; namely that he went further and came together with St. Octavian to Volterra.

Nay, I should not even dare to affirm that he was of the companions of St. Regulus going from Africa into voluntary exile: for it is more likely, as will be seen below, that they came as exiles into Etruria in different centuries.

[2] The Ms. Additions of the Carthusians of Brussels to Greven's Usuard briefly record the Saint: On the same day, of blessed Octavian the confessor; as also Ferrari in the General Catalogue of the Saints: are received with observations, and he is reported only by martyrologists: At Volterra in Tuscany, of St. Octavian the confessor. He adds in his Notes: From the Records of the church of Volterra, by which he is chiefly venerated as protector of the city on this day. He was the companion of SS. Justus the bishop and Clement the priest, with whom he came from Africa into Etruria, and led a solitary life near this city. Justus and Clement the men of Volterra also venerate as their patrons on the V day of June, at which day Papebroch treated of them. That our Saint accompanied both from Africa into Etruria as far as Volterra is beyond controversy. But whether Justus, as is here asserted, was a bishop, namely of Volterra, and Clement a priest? That is indeed commonly believed, yet the said Papebroch in his preliminary Commentary judges that they were probably initiated into no sacred Order. Castellanus in the universal Martyrology announces St. Octavian on the III of September, but wrongly: for his feast is kept in the diocese of Volterra on the day before. And he uses these words, which from French I have rendered into Latin: At Volterra in Tuscany, of St. Octavian, priest and hermit, whose name a church bears in the place where he died; and whose body is honored in the cathedral of Volterra. I have given the Saint no other titles than those of hermit and confessor, which certainly suit him. Castellanus also styles him priest; which dignity, though asserted by many others, I do not dare to ascribe to him for reasons to be brought forward at the end of §4. The elogia with which Ferrari in the Catalogue of the Saints of Italy and other more recent writers adorn him I do not transcribe hither, because what they contain is for the greater part very uncertain, and must be subjected below to examination.

[3] One mile beyond the stream Era, which flows past the fields of Volterra lying toward the North and, bending westward, empties itself into the Arno, yet his cult is ancient in the place where he died, and at Volterra. and three miles from the city itself, is situated the place where the holy Hermit wondrously led an austere life in a hollow elm and passed to a happier one — whether in the fifth or the sixth century will be discussed in §4. In the seventh century, or perhaps even earlier, as may be gathered from what is to be said at n. 59, the neighbors built there a modest church over his tomb: which afterwards being destroyed by the incursions of wars, Andrew, bishop of Volterra, about the middle of the ninth century, as will be shown below at n. 63, honorably laid the sacred body, translated thence, in his own cathedral church, and to the ancient chapter of the most holy Virgin Mary added a new college of canons, and named it by the name of St. Octavian. He also erected for him a new church, larger than the former, in the place where he had before rested. The translation is reported to have been made on the Friday before Palm Sunday, on which day his memory is commemorated. Moreover, concerning the notable cult which on the said day and on the 2nd of September, his birthday, as is believed, he has obtained for so many centuries both at Volterra and in the place of his death, and which to these very times flourishes in both places; concerning the history of the body translated into the city and deposited in its chief church, concerning the miracles and other things pertaining to the Saint's posthumous glory, various documents are to hand, which will be produced below more opportunely. Of these it has seemed good briefly to taste beforehand in this place those which indicate the antiquity of the cult paid to the Saint.

[4] Of the public veneration with which he was honored in later centuries I shall even now bring forward nothing except the Office which in the year 1520 in the church of Volterra, His proper Office approved by Leo X; a hymn, whose beginning is expounded, the old one being abrogated, began to be recited of him. Not only its nine lessons and the hymns at Vespers, Matins, and Lauds, but also the antiphons, responsories, and versicles which are said in them, are proper to the Saint. At the end of the booklet in which that Office stands among others, there is added in red characters: These Offices, that they may be said in the universal Church by apostolic authority, were granted by a Brief of Leo X on the V day of November MCCCCCXIX; but in the church of Volterra they were commanded. Their author, in the title of the Preface occupying the front of the booklet, calls himself Raphael, whom Augustine the Florentine, to be cited at n. 25, and others do not distinguish from that Raphael who received from his family the surname Maffei, and from his native place the added name of Volterranus. The hymn which is prescribed to be recited at Vespers and Lauds by the clergy of Volterra is bound in the meter of Sapphic verse, with an Adonic interposed after the usual manner. Its beginning needs some explanation, which therefore I premise here. Volterra, which the author of the hymn, Raphael, addresses — he, namely, as is believed, who bears his surname from the city — is said first to have had its walls laid by the Tyrrhenian Lydian … He writes the same in bk. 5 of the Urban Commentaries of the Basel edition, fol. 51: for after he had asserted that Volterra was among the twelve chief cities of Etruria, he presently adds: The Greeks also call the Etruscans Tyrrhenians from Tyrrhenus, leader of the Lydians, who put in here and established the XII cities in the years before the war of Troy by about a hundred, and before the founding of the city by three hundred. That Tyrrhenus led colonists from Lydia, a province of Asia, into Etruria, and that from him the region was called Tyrrhenia and its inhabitants Tyrrhenians, very many ancient writers have handed down, in Cluver, bk. 2 of Ancient Italy, ch. 1. That twelve cities in Etruria were founded by him Strabo expressly affirms in bk. 5 of his Geography. That Volterra was of their number, besides Raphael, the said Cluver judges in ch. 3, and many others. Now hear the sacred poem.

[5] at Vespers and Lauds with the collect: Now clap your hands for so great a Settler, Who dwelt within your borders, taking his stand Upon a lofty hill, and left his fatherland, O hospitable land. By him you are far more adorned than when The Tyrrhenian Lydian is said of old To have laid your first walls, and to have held These dwelling-places. Here, companion only of wild beasts, he had spread His bed beneath the hard elm of the wood, Covering with a leafy garment the naked Limbs of his body. Hardening his eager heart, he bore all the toils Of rains, of sun, of hunger, and of sleep, Whereby he now holds The lofty heaven. Thence, the sacred body having long since been translated Amid a thronging people, Volterra now Keeps its monuments in her church and at the same time Adores them.

Therefore now let every sex and every order, While it is permitted, call upon our Father with tears, That he may lead to the stars the clients Who trust in his merits. Everlasting glory to the Lord most high, Who, sitting in the lofty hall of heaven, Governs the mass of the whole world, Three and one.

The canticle Magnificat having been recited, and the antiphon proper to the Saint repeated, this collect is to be read: Suppliantly we implore your clemency, almighty God, that the intercession of blessed Octavian your confessor may both ever fortify us against every assault of enemies, and be continually our helper to attain the joys of everlasting life. Through our Lord.

[6] The hymn at Matins consists of Asclepiadean verses, another hymn at Matins: of which the third is followed by a Glyconic. Now our sacred solemnities return to us, A happy light arises: sing psalms, every one, Let our choir with the people redouble songs With lofty voices. We keep the birthday of a noble Guest, Who, leaving the sweet estates of his fatherland And fleeing the impious teachings of the foe, Put in at this our sea. Now wreathe his altar with flowers, And to his sacred head add besides The relics of the elm trunk

With which he covered his cold and damp limbs. Hail, hope of the fatherland, which under your leading We believe stands unharmed; and hail, [you] by whom we too Are sent to heaven free from every crime, And enjoy the divine goods. Empire and glory to the eternal Prince, Who, reconciling to the Father all who are guilty By his own blood, makes them fit To climb the shining heaven.

[7] The lessons of the first Nocturn are also recited on the feast of SS. Justus and Clement, [the lessons of the 1st Nocturn assert that Octavian was in exile with St. Regulus: errors about the time,] with whom St. Octavian fled from Africa and stayed for some time at Volterra. The first thus begins: In the reign, that is, in the East, of the most Christian prince Justinian, and while the Goths under the leadership of Totila held Rome, in the five hundred and twentieth year of salvation, when the perfidious nation of the Vandals had occupied Africa for nearly ninety years; at last their king Gelimer, etc. In the second and third lesson it is said that St. Regulus took counsel to flee the persecution stirred up by Gelimer, and, the storm being calmed by prayers, landed in Etruria: His companions, says the author of those lessons, were two bishops, Felix and Cerbonius, as many priests and likewise brothers, Justus and Clement, and a fifth, Octavian. Most shamefully against chronology does the author of the lessons err, when he says that in the five hundred and twentieth year of salvation Justinian reigned in the East, that the Goths held Rome under Totila, and that Gelimer reigned in Africa and persecuted the Catholics: for the last did not seize Hilderic's kingdom before the year 530; the second did not storm Rome under Totila before the year 546; the first did not reign before the year 527.

[8] Concerning the relics of the Saints of Volterra, examined toward the end of the year 1647 and the beginning of the next, [which the men of Volterra judged should be corrected; but do they rightly connect the Saint's exile with the year 520?] among the manuscripts of our museum an instrument is preserved marked ✠ Ms. 164, from which after this Commentary not a few things concerning St. Octavian will be excerpted. From what is written on folio 10 verso I understand that the clergy of Volterra in the year 1647 still read the first lesson defiled by the said chronological errors. But since the same instrument at the same time warns that they must be corrected, I do not believe that they are even now recited in the diocese of Volterra. And the correction which is judged fit to be brought in is this, that for the emperor Justinian there be substituted his predecessor Justin, for Totila Theodoric, and for Gelimer Thrasamund, the year 520 being retained, in which those princes lived. By this emendation the confusion of times is indeed removed; but is the year rightly defined in which SS. Justus, Clement, and Octavian avoided the persecution of the Vandals? So far is it from being able to be determined, that it is not even certain whether it was in the sixth century that they departed into exile with SS. Regulus, Cerbonius, and Felix: that in the fifth century, while Genseric was harassing the Catholics in Africa, they were compelled to flee, no light arguments persuade, which will be brought forward in §4. Concerning the lessons of the second and third Nocturn consult §5, where they will be published entire. § II. There is shown the lack of the requisite antiquity and the confusion of times with which labor those things which an anonymous writer and Blasius the monk have handed down concerning the Saint. [ ] Genuine Acts of St. Octavian are wanting. With manifest contradictions, anachronisms, and other defects against the laws of history most of what I find committed to writing concerning St. Octavian is vitiated and entangled. If I dared to hope that the reader would believe me asserting this in general, I should here touch only in passing on those things concerning the Saint's life about which there can be no doubt or controversy: which indeed are very few, as will be understood from what follows. But since I measure others by my own disposition, who disapprove of censures that detract from others' writings, unless it be proved or otherwise established that they are deservedly passed, I could not but take this counsel, that in this and the following paragraph I should at least commit to the eyes and judgment of readers those things which have been handed down to the memory of posterity concerning the holy Confessor by those authors who, either for their own antiquity or for that of the documents on which they rest, might seem less suspect.

[10] What an anonymous author committed to writing concerning him There is in my hands the lucubration of an anonymous writer, which should rather be called a certain inept homily in praise of St. Octavian than a description of his Life. In our transcript this title is prefixed to it: The birthday of saint Octavian the confessor. In the margin is noted: From the library of Const. Cajet. The beginning is: Justly and fittingly, most beloved brethren, has it been appointed, conveniently and prudently is it established, that today the venerable feast of our most holy confessor and patron Octavian should be celebrated by us. Those things which are brought forward about the Saint's deeds toward the middle I shall here only transcribe. For all things which he had he distributed suppliantly and graciously to the poor, and following the footsteps of Christ, he left his parents and the fatherland in which he had been born… For when in Africa the celibate Man worshiped Christ with his whole mind, the savagery of the pagans against the Christians began so to grow hot that it hastened to remove all from the present life by the utmost torture and even by tearing them apart in the manner of beasts. While such a rage was blazing in the minds of the heathen, the Man of God, not thereby terrified, nor fearing any torment (since he was ready to be beaten, to be atrociously afflicted, to be hanged, even to die for Christ), withdrew, that he might fulfill the Lord's precept which says: "When they shall persecute you in one city, flee into another." And therefore Octavian, the confessor of God, attached himself to holy men, namely to blessed archbishop Regulus and to two bishops,

Cerbonius and Felix, and also to Justus and Clement, his fellow-priests, and carried across the seas with them came to the parts of Italy.

[11] But after this, following Justus and Clement only, he came to the city of Antonia, at which time the rage of the Vandals, besieging it, was cruelly laying it waste, an anonymous author, to whom the most impious emperor Totila slackened tyrannical reins. But the city, relying on the counsel of these three, was freed from the enemies' oppression: and so by the presence and protection of their most sacred bodies it has been fortified to this day. Of the Saint's solitary life, lived near Volterra, he thus writes: About a space of a thousand paces on this side of the river Era, which runs down on the Eastern side of the aforesaid city, he sought a deserted, uncultivated place, where by dwelling in the desert he might imitate Christ… And in that place where the holy Man remained *, he made neither seat nor bed nor pleasant shade; but he found a hollow elm, in whose belly, not able fittingly to sit or lie or stand, he lay hidden; and there, crucifying himself to vices and lusts, he pressed on untiringly and longingly with fasts and prayers and vigils. On the site of the place where the holy Hermit lived, see n. 58.

[12] The anonymous author calls Volterra, freed from a siege by SS. Justus, Clement, and Octavian, [younger than the tenth century, as is gathered from the name Antonia, by which he calls Volterra,] Antonia. Raphael Volaterranus assigns the origin of the name in bk. 5 of the Urban Commentaries, folio 51 verso: At which time indeed, that is, when the Hungarians in the tenth century were laying Italy waste, I find that Volterra was made desolate and burned by them, and a few years after was restored by Otto the First … to that shorter circuit of walls which is now seen, Germans being sent thither together with the ancient families of that place to dwell in it; and that from his name it was called Othonia, which later men by a corrupted word called Anthonia. Although among writers older than Raphael I have not been able to find that Volterra was rebuilt under or by Otto I, yet it is not without likelihood that from him it drew the appellation of Antonia. Various authors have used it; but there is none of them who surpasses in antiquity the said emperor, who died in the year 973. The writer of the Life of St. Romulus the bishop, vol. 2 of July, pp. 255 and 260, Bliderannus in the Acts of SS. Justus and Clement, vol. 1 of June, p. 438, the anonymous writer who composed their miracles in the same place, p. 443, seem to be among the older ones who called Volterra by the name of Antonia; but all are judged to be younger than the tenth century: whence it is drawn out that the use of the new word did not prevail before the year one thousand, and consequently that the things which I transcribed in the preceding number were committed to writing many centuries after St. Octavian, who flourished while the Vandals were dominant in Africa, which Justinian wrested from them in the year 534 and restored to the Roman empire.

[13] But from another source also it is known that the credit of the instrument of which I have given a part by anachronisms wavers very much. In it St. Octavian is said to have come with Justus and Clement to the city of Antonia, at which time the rage of the Vandals, besieging it, was cruelly laying it waste, to whom the most impious emperor Totila slackened tyrannical reins. As by the word Antonia he betrays the lack of the requisite antiquity, so does the anonymous writer betray his own ignorance, when Totila, king of the Goths, he calls emperor of the Vandals who were besieging Volterra. If this city was attacked not by the Goths but really by the Vandals, when St. Octavian, with Justus and Clement accompanying him, came to it, it seems that this must be said to have happened in the fifth century in the reign of Genseric, under whom the Vandals are read to have frequently invaded Italy in Procopius, bk. 1 of the Vandal war, ch. 5, and in other ancient writers, none of whom mentions any irruption made by those barbarians in the following century. But if our Saint went to Volterra when it was besieged by the Vandals in the fifth century, how can it be true, as the anonymous writer had before asserted, namely that he joined himself as companion to SS. Regulus, Cerbonius, and Felix the bishops, whom it is certainly established to have gone into exile only in the sixth century? But Volterra was encircled with a siege by Totila's soldiers, that is, the Goths, whom the unlearned writer wrongly calls Vandals. If you enter upon this path, you run into other difficulties. Totila began to reign in the year 541, seven years after the Vandal kingdom in Africa was extinguished, and eighteen after the death of Thrasamund, under whom the persecution of the Arians more probably compelled SS. Regulus, Cerbonius, and Felix to go into exile, as was shown in this volume, p. 233. But if St. Octavian was their companion, and after landing on the shores of Tuscany separated himself from them with Justus and Clement, and went on to Volterra, and then first withdrew into solitude, is it likely that he did not come to that city earlier than when it was pressed with a siege by the Goths under Totila?

[14] are involved. Besides, under what king of the Vandals in the sixth century did the savagery of the pagans, or rather of the Arians, against the Christians so begin to grow hot that it hastened to remove all from the present life by the utmost torture and even by tearing them apart in the manner of beasts? A persecution so savage, which St. Octavian is said to have avoided, you will again far more fitly refer to the times of Genseric, who shed very much Christian blood down to the year 477, in which he died. The African Catholics did not suffer so cruel a persecution for the faith's sake in the sixth century. There were then no other kings of the Vandals in Africa than Gelimer, Hilderic, and Thrasamund. Under this king indeed the prelates of the African churches were harassed and very many driven into exile; but neither against these nor against other Orthodox was there ever such barbarous raging under Thrasamund as the anonymous writer describes. Hilderic, a most gentle prince, favored the Catholics. Gelimer was indeed cruel, but toward those whom he knew or suspected to stand with the party of Hilderic, whose kingdom he had seized. Certainly in the sacred Calendars I could find no one who is marked as having suffered martyrdom under him for the faith of Christ.

[15] [The Saint's Life written by Blasius the monk, who cannot be much older than the fourteenth century; in the beginning of which] It is clear from what has been said how confused and how little coherent are the things which the anonymous writer wrote about St. Octavian. No less confused and mutually conflicting are the things which are reported concerning the time of his exile and his companions in another Ms. instrument, before which in our transcript is prefixed: The Life of St. Octavian the confessor, from the compilation of an anonymous author, whose prologue see after the Legend of St. Zenobius, from the Medicean library at Florence, shelf XX. Papebroch in vol. VI of May, p. 51, published the prologue here mentioned together with a list of the Saints whose Acts are described in a parchment codex which is kept at Florence in the Medicean Laurentian library on the twentieth shelf. Among those Saints St. Octavian occurs thirteenth in order, and twentieth St. Lucensis, whose death is fixed at the XXVIII day of April, at which his Life was illustrated, in the year 1260. Whence it is known that our Saint's Life was written by an author whose antiquity cannot much exceed the fourteenth century. At the end of the codex, on the testimony of the said Papebroch, there is subjoined: Written by the hand of a certain sinner named Blasius, a most unworthy priest and monk. It may be believed that this is the writer of the whole Work, and consequently also of the Acts of St. Octavian, which constitute part of it, and which are narrated in this manner: Octavian drew his origin from an honorable and wealthy stock in the African province. He from the first flower of his youth, drawn by God, cleaving to the footsteps of the Apostles, resolved to serve God, and, as long as he lived, faithfully fulfilled it. For all things which he possessed by paternal inheritance he sold, and, thinking nothing of the morrow, clothed only in one tunic and a cloak, without delay he distributed them to the poor. And when this had come to the notice of the governor there on behalf of the Roman emperor, he purposed to exercise his severity upon him; but divine providence does not suffer these things to be done: for with the holy bishops Regulus, Cerbonius, Felix, and with Justus and Clement, his fellow-soldiers, he abandoned his fatherland, and hastened to the city of Antonia, which is now called the city of Volterra: where, on account of the siege of the Vandal nation which was there, he alone remained with SS. Justus and Clement.

[16] Blasius the monk is indeed enormously deceived. A certain governor in Africa on behalf of the Roman emperor decrees to rage against St. Octavian for a cause not likely, a shameful disturbance of times is detected: namely because he had bestowed his goods upon the poor. Hence it follows that the persecution from which he withdrew happened outside the time which ran from about the year 457 until 534: for within that time the Roman emperors had no governors or prefects of provinces or cities in Africa, because the whole was under the power of the Vandals. Nevertheless the same Blasius says that the Saint's exile happened within the said space of time, when he writes that he attached himself to SS. Regulus, Cerbonius, and Felix the bishops, who, it is most certain, left their sees in the sixth century, before Africa was restored to the Roman empire, the Vandals being destroyed; which was done in the year 534. But he presently contradicts this contradiction again, when he asserts that St. Octavian with Justus and Clement after their coming into Tuscany stopped at Volterra on account of the siege of the Vandal nation which was there: for among the ancient writers nothing anywhere occurs which would make it credible that the Vandals made a hostile incursion into Tuscany in the sixth century. Nay, from their testimonies at n. 38 and following we shall deduce that those barbarians then infested no coast of Italy. If therefore the Vandals were besieging Volterra when St. Octavian was there in exile, his flight must be drawn back to the reign of Genseric, who shortly after the death of the emperor Valentinian, which befell in the year 455, not only subjected all Africa to himself, but also began every year to cross over into Italy, whose various regions he laid waste and whose cities he plundered: some of these he also attacked in vain, of which number Volterra may have been. These things will be confirmed by the testimonies of the ancients at n. 41. The intricate question about the time of the exile of the holy Justus, Clement, and Octavian I shall begin to discuss more fully at n. 35.

[17] Almost all the rest who treat of our Saint say the rest of Blasius's narrative, that Volterra was freed from siege by him and his companions and converted from the Arian heresy with which it had been infected: of which our biographer is silent. Yet he writes that St. Octavian labored for the salvation of the inhabitants both by the preaching of the divine word and by the example of holy works and manners, by which he shone before them: For he was, he says, comely in aspect, kindly in conversation, adorned in manners, great in abstinence, supreme in poverty, abject in dress, assiduous in prayer, pleasing to the faithful, and to the pagans (or, what is more credible, to the Arians), through their own demerits, inestimably hateful. Which the holy Man observing, near the river Era, not two full miles from the city of Antonia or Volterra, he sought out a horrible desert; where he found a hollow elm, in which, though he could by any chance stand only with bent knees, yet, supported by the perpetual grace of Christ, he appointed it to be his house. In which for a long time he lived with incredible abstinence on raw herbs and water after the manner of beasts, and in nakedness of clothing according to the teachings of the Apostles.

[18] [in which he contradicts others, when he says the Saint was found dead by a fowler.] After a short time there, with knees bent and hands folded and eyes lifted to heaven, his heaven-bound soul passed through. On a certain day the hawk of a certain young fowler flew upon the aforesaid elm. He came after it as was his custom, and, despising the bait shown to it, by no chance did it take care to return to him: but with its eyes fixed upon the Saint, as far as in it lay, it did not cease to point out the Saint. And when he could not recall it from that gaze either by food or by stones, in anger he climbed the tree, and found the body of the Saint standing in prayer with knees bent, hands folded, and eyes lifted upward — dead as if he lived. At his cry his companions run; they find as he had said; taking up the hawk, they run into the city; they set forth the deed; the fellow-citizens bury the body there. The brief history which Blasius subjoins concerning the Saint's body translated into the cathedral of Volterra from the church erected to him in the place of his solitude will be given below, after the things which concern his life have been dispatched. In the following paragraph the narrative of Augustine the Florentine will be exhibited, which he, gathered as he says from most ancient documents, published in Latin, and others afterwards in Italian. In it the young fowler is said to have found St. Octavian not dead, as Blasius asserts, but living and intent upon prayer.

*. he stood fast

§ III. The Acts of St. Octavian, mingled with the Life of SS. Justus and Clement, which Augustine the Florentine published in Latin and others in Italian, are proved to have been gathered from documents of almost no credit.

[ ] Of the Life of SS. Justus and Clement, which various men published in print, Augustine the Florentine, whom elsewhere I find to have surnamed himself Fortunius, by profession a Camaldolese monk, in the year 1568 published from the Florentine press a booklet of fair size on the Life and miracles of SS. Justus and Clement, in which also many things are narrated concerning St. Octavian their companion which are read neither in that anonymous writer whose words I gave from n. XI, nor in Blasius the monk. From the account of the Volterran instrument to be given after this Commentary, n. 7, I understand that Eufrosino Lapini in the same year 1568 published at Florence Augustine's booklet translated into the Italian idiom. The Acts of SS. Justus, Clement, and Octavian, received from the same Augustine, Silvano Razzi also published in Italian in the Lives of the Saints and Blessed of Etruria, printed at Florence in the year 1627, from p. 116. The Life of those Saints, drawn from the same source, Emilio Fei also inserted into his Work on the city of Volterra and its Saints, of which we keep a manuscript copy, marked ✠ Ms. 164 a. These writers doubtless judged Augustine's history not unworthy of the light and of credit because at p. 16 he says that he took it from various Ms. instruments which he there alleges and calls most ancient. Papebroch at the V day of June, where he treated of SS. Justus and Clement, altogether neglected that biographer. He does indeed make mention of him in the preliminary Commentary at n. 12; but he adds that from him he can transfer nothing into our Work which pertains to the Saints' life. But the men of Volterra, out of their zeal for their holy Patrons, may demand reasons why Augustine's narrative is so far to be despised, in confirmation of which most ancient Ms. instruments are produced, and are not proved by Papebroch to be of no value: for he brings forward nothing from which it may be clear that these are no better than those which he disapproves from n. 2. Opportunely now, while we treat of St. Octavian, we shall more fully satisfy the men of Volterra. The documents which Augustine used will be brought forward at n. 25; then it will be proved that they are not of fit authority: yet first will be exhibited the deeds and miracles of St. Octavian, drawn for the most part from the same biographer into a synopsis.

[20] The holy brothers Justus and Clement, and their companion Octavian, and in which a marvelous history all priests and by nation Africans, flee from the persecution of Gelimer, last king of the Vandals, into voluntary exile together with the holy bishops Regulus, Cerbonius, and Felix. After a grave storm calmed by prayers, they are carried in the same ship to Populonia, a maritime city of Etruria. The three holy prelates resolve to settle in its neighborhood to live in solitude; Justus, Clement, and Octavian resolve to go on to Volterra, whose inhabitants were now for two years pressed by a siege of the Vandals. Having passed by the town of Ripomarancio about half a mile, in a place from which there is an easy prospect toward the city, they halt and pray to God that the townsmen may be converted from the Arian sect to the true faith and be freed from their enemies. Their prayer finished, the holy Newcomers enter the city of Volterra through the midst of the Vandals' lines, inculcate upon the inhabitants with fruit the Orthodox doctrine, which they also confirm with miracles: for at their prayers the blind receive sight, the deaf hearing, the lame their step, and lepers are cleansed: demons too, without a command, merely at the approach of the holy Men, go out from bodies. Meanwhile the grain supply fails: they must die of hunger, or the city must be surrendered to the enemy: no hope of defending it further shines forth, except from SS. Justus, Clement, and Octavian. From these therefore the citizens beg counsel and help in that extreme calamity: to whom the holy Men persuade that it can easily be driven away, provided they promise the abjuration of heresy, the embracing of the true religion, and the observance of the divine precepts. And when the greater part of the citizens had done this, the Saints give thanks to God for their good will to embrace a better life and faith, and pray to him to succor the afflicted city.

[21] of the city of Volterra freed from siege by those Saints and Octavian While praying they hear this angelic voice from heaven: I have chosen you that you should bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain. Therefore persist in prayer, for God will do marvels for the salvation of this people. Then the Blessed Men Justus, Clement, and Octavian, inspired by God's power, nourishing the whole people with greater hope, uttered these words with prophetic mouth: Let neither want of bread trouble you, little sons, nor the sword of strangers terrify you: wait for the Lord, doing penance. Act manfully in the confession of the Orthodox faith… Tomorrow (they say), the Lord granting it, your granaries shall be full to satiety, and the mighty want of the opposing enemies shall be heard of. This oracle being heard, the minds of the men of Volterra are raised in hope, they await the prodigy to be wrought by God's servants, and perform the public prayers which they had ordained to be made throughout the whole city. And while the holy Men prayed more fervently by night, as if motionless, drawn into ecstasy, they obtained from the Lord that through the silence of the still night God should cause so great an abundance of grain to grow up in the city of Volterra, and should exhibit so great a plenty of provision to the starving peoples, that all plainly, wonderful to say, seemed to superabound.

[22] and the rest, On the next day the Vandals, with the greatest astonishment and consternation of mind, perceiving that all their provisions had been stolen from their camp by night, and that on account of its lack they could not long protract the siege, judge it best that on the following day at early dawn they should attack the city with all their forces and try to storm it. But God revealed their counsel to the Saints. These persuade the people not to use against the starving enemies who were about to attack the city arms by which they may be repelled, but to cast before them loaves by which they may be fed. The citizens, therefore, as they had been bidden, bake a vast quantity of bread and bring it to the Saints; who bless it with the sign of the Cross, and order part to be thrown outside the walls by night, and part to be reserved for the time when the barbarians had resolved to make an assault upon the city. The townsmen carry out their orders. In the morning the enemy runs up to storm Volterra; but when, approaching the walls, he sees the loaves, he halts astounded; he is the more amazed when he sees other loaves flung at him in rivalry by the townsmen: Then a certain one of the barbarian soldiers thrust a loaf on his dagger, and, holding it up, rejoicing tried to display it to the rest, desiring to strengthen the spirits of the weak. At which spectacle the Vandal folk, by no means capable of the holy blessing, putting on a curse instead of a blessing (according to the prophet's word), immediately, almost to a man, being confounded by the novelty of the thing and by incredible dread, bereft of their senses, and their arms * abandoned, wounding one another, could scarcely find their way back to the camp. Some fled to subterranean crypts … who indeed perished miserably one after another by collapses and by the bites of beasts. Some said: Why have we kept unremitting watch here, since the enemies hold out to us loaves instead of stones, and we who have tasted them perish? The rest, who had not eaten, roused the others, saying: Let us go hence; without a sword we perish, without poison we are consumed; because God fights for them against us. In short, so great a trembling and roar of thunder and voice of fire and brimstone terrified them that, the enemies also rushing out from the city, not only did the Vandals without delay desist from the siege, but also on the next day, save those who had met death, no one else was found in the camp.

[23] and other deeds of the same men For a siege raised in so wondrous a manner the men of Volterra give public signs of gladness; they solemnly give thanks to God; and their holy Deliverers they follow with greater reverence, benevolence, and love, to whose prayers they ascribe so great a benefit received: for to obtain from the Lord the safety of the city they had persevered in prayer for three days; during which time their travelers' staves stood wondrously upright upon a stone; and their knees also were impressed upon the rock on which they had bent them to pray. And although by the apostolic labors of the holy Newcomers, and by the miracles which God had wrought through them, most of the citizens had now been brought over from the Arian heresy to the Catholic faith, yet not a few clung with pertinacity to its errors, who persecuted the converted and tried to pervert them. The holy Men bravely oppose these, refuting their false doctrine and confirming the faithful people in the true. Further, for these and other services to the city of Volterra they are presented with citizenship by a public decree of the senate. Justus too the citizens by common consent elect bishop. After he had been consecrated by the supreme Pontiff at Rome, and had thoroughly purged Volterra of every stain of heresy, and had in many other matters taken thought for the divine glory and the salvation of the townsmen, he himself and Clement and Octavian resolve to leave the city and in solitude to serve God more freely and ardently. The first two choose for a dwelling a wooded valley situated not far from the city walls: they cast out, conquered by heavenly arms, the demons, wolves, and serpents of vast size which lurked there in great number, and set a boundary by which the expelled monsters are forbidden to approach nearer.

[24] Of those matters which Augustine the Florentine narrates diffusely concerning the three holy Confessors in the first 23 chapters, are recounted; I have comprised the substance and chief circumstances in the four preceding numbers. In ch. 24 he reports that St. Octavian withdrew from his companions into a place surrounded by a dense wood; which he places about a thousand paces on this side of the river Era: where, he says, giving himself to vigils and fasts, he made himself a cell in the hollow of an elm, in which he was scarcely wholly covered. And there, bending his knees a hundred times by day and likewise a hundred times by night, he fed on heavenly food rather than on human. What he then writes of the occasion on which the young fowler found the Saint in the desert scarcely differs from the narrative of Blasius the monk, which I gave at n. 18: but they openly contradict one another in a matter which pertains solely to the Saint. Blasius says that St. Octavian was found dead by that youth: but, if we believe Augustine, he found him alive and giving himself to prayer, heard him giving him salutary admonitions, and made known to the people of Volterra the place of his abode; which they began to frequent, seized with the desire of seeing and hearing the holy Hermit. In chs. 25 and 47 the Saint's death, cult, translation, and miracles done after his death are recounted. See below, n. 55.

[25] In Augustine's history, exhibited by me in summary, the documents which Augustine the Florentine produces win no credit. the exile of SS. Justus, Clement, and Octavian is wrongly deferred to the times of Gelimer, the last king of the Vandals in Africa: for hence it follows that the siege with which those barbarians encircled the city of Volterra, and from which the three holy Exiles freed it, befell in the reign of the same Gelimer: which is in no way likely, as will be shown at n. 39 of the following paragraph; in which it will also be examined whether the Saints fled into Tuscany with Regulus, Cerbonius, and Felix, whether they were priests, and whether Justus was afterwards made bishop of Volterra. Augustine's narrative is rendered most suspect by those prodigies which he asserts to have preceded, accompanied, and followed the liberation of the besieged city. They are so marvelous that they cannot prudently be believed without the weightiest authority. This certainly is not to be attributed to the documents which Augustine produces at p. 16, that he may win credit for his history. He weaves their catalogue thus: The authors from whom this very history was taken: from the Annals and monuments of the city of Volterra; from most ancient manuscript books which are had there in the monastery of those same Saints (Justus and Clement), and from most ancient paintings of the same; from manuscript books, as above, which are had at the sacred hermitage of Camaldoli, and also in the monastery of the Angels at Florence, and here and there elsewhere in various places; from monuments and manuscript books, as above, which are had at Fiesole; from the books of the historiography and the compendium of Offices of that excellent and most learned man Raphael Maffei, patrician of Volterra, approved by apostolic authority in the year MDXIX, Leo X being supreme Pontiff.

[26] [Volaterranus in bk. 5 of the Urban Commentaries dissents from him in many things;] The books of historiography, that is, of the Urban Commentaries of Raphael Volaterranus, which Augustine praises, saw the light under Pope Julius II, to whom the author dedicated them: but concerning our Saint and his companions he has this in bk. 5 of that same Work of his, printed at Basel, fol. 51: Then, barbarians of divers * nations rushing into Italy, I find that it (the city of Volterra) suffered no injury, together with Florence, down to the Pannonians, of whom I shall speak later; except a very brief incursion of the Vandals, when they landed at Populonia, in the reign of Leo III: at which time Justus the priest, driven from Africa where he was born, in that Vandal persecution, together with Clement his brother and Octavian, likewise priests, and with Regulus the prelate, his companions, carried in the same ship, landed on the nearest shore of Etruria, and settled at Volterra, and restored by his doctrine that people, infected, as many places of Italy were, with the Arian sect. Moreover he freed the city from the siege of the Vandals by loaves thrown from the walls and medicated, which both afflicted the enemies and, by the impression of plenty, frightened them from the hope of taking the city. Augustine dissents in various points from Volaterranus, whom he adduces to confirm his narrative. The latter connects the Saints' exile with the times of Gelimer, writes that Volterra was besieged for two years by the Vandals, and freed by SS. Justus, Clement, and Octavian by loaves thrown at the enemy, which they had fortified with the sign of the Cross. But Volaterranus asserts that those loaves were medicated, which word may cast the suspicion that they were infected with poison: which is in no way credible. The same man openly denies that the siege lasted two years, when he says that the incursion of the Vandals against Volterra was very brief; nor does he say that it happened under Gelimer, but in the reign of Leo III, that is, in the eighth century, in which the kingdom of the Vandals in Africa had long been extinguished. Papebroch in vol. 1 of June, p. 438, n. 4, attributes to a compositor's fault that the numeral III crept in for the letter M, signifying the Great. That indeed I should readily believe: but if in the reign of Leo the Great, that is, between the years 457 and 474, SS. Justus, Clement, and Octavian came as exiles into Italy, they are wrongly said to have been companions of St. Regulus, whom it is certain to have been in exile in the sixth century.

[27] The Offices approved by Leo X in the year 1519 deserve little credit in what they record concerning SS. Justus, Clement, and Octavian. Besides the gross errors against chronology shown at the end of §1, I have detected another in the sixth lesson of the proper Office of St. Octavian. [The proper Offices need no small correction, and report the matter in a different order;] It is there said that Andrew, bishop of Volterra, erected an altar over the Saint's body, translated into the cathedral of Volterra, namely in the year eight hundred and twenty-two, … in the reign of Louis, son of Charlemagne; which will be shown not to be true from what is to be said at n. 63. Also to be reproved are these words of the fifth lesson in the Office of SS. Justus and Clement: At almost the same time it befell that the Vandals, who, as we have found written in their history, made incursions every year from Africa upon the shores nearest to Etruria, came to storm the walls of Volterra. The author of the Office in the first lesson had deferred the Saints' exile to the year 520: but here, that he might win credit that after their coming into Etruria Volterra was besieged by the Vandals, he says that he found in their history that, while the Saints were in exile in Tuscany, they made hostile incursions into Italy every year. But that this is foreign to the truth will be proved from contemporary writers from n. 38. I do read indeed in Procopius and Priscus the Rhetor, whose words will be given at n. 41, that the Vandal nation invaded Italy every year; but they expressly affirm that it did this not in the sixth century, but in the fifth under Genseric. For the rest, in the fourth lesson and the following of the same Office of SS. Justus and Clement, the substance of those matters which I have transferred into this paragraph from Augustine's history is indeed recounted; but not clothed in the same circumstances, and arranged in another order. St. Octavian does not there appear: all the benefits bestowed on the city of Volterra are ascribed to Justus and Clement alone. The first with which they blessed its inhabitants is said to have been the expulsion of a hostile serpent from the neighboring wood, in which the Saints, staying for some time, gradually drew the men of Volterra to the Catholic faith. There follows the wondrous liberation of the city from the siege of the Vandals, which Augustine reports in the first place.

[28] Augustine confirms his narrative also from the most ancient paintings of the monastery of SS. Justus and Clement near Volterra. [from paintings and from the error of the common people misunderstanding them was perhaps received the Saints' victory over serpents, etc.:] From these or others like them I suspect were first received the things which he writes about demons, wolves, and serpents put to flight by Justus and Clement from the place which they wished to inhabit. Their elogium in Ferrari in the Catalogue of the Saints of Italy at the V day of June openly suggests that St. Octavian was present with them when they expelled thence a serpent of wondrous size. Whether with Ferrari and others you believe one, or with Augustine several serpents, and besides wolves and demons, to have been cast out by the Saints, I shall raise no objection, if you say that in their images the demons were added in bodily form as a sign of the victory which they won over them, and that by the painted serpents and wolves are represented the monsters of vices and the Arian heresy expelled by the Saints from the city of Volterra, which, like every other heresy, is wont to be likened to a serpent or hydra. That Justus and Clement expelled one or more serpents from the place which they had chosen to inhabit, a sufficiently ancient and widespread tradition indeed reports: but this could most easily have arisen from the error of the simple common people, who take crudely what images exhibit, and what must be considered symbolically they conceive in mind and believe in the same way in which they see it with their eyes. Papebroch in vol. III of April, p. 106, brings forward so frequent examples of a victory over a bodily serpent or dragon fastened upon Saints on occasion of images, that I judge every such must be held suspect except what is affirmed in wholly genuine Acts: such as concerning Justus and Clement or Octavian do not exist in the most ancient manuscript books of which Augustine makes mention in his specious Catalogue of instruments, from which he says he wove his history. Nay, from his very words I shall presently prove that all the Ms. monuments which he used are destitute of fit authority.

[29] [finally, from Augustine's own words it is shown that all the Ms. instruments which he praises,] In the Preface, from p. 10, he briefly recounts very many miracles of SS. Justus and Clement, and among these also those which those two holy men wrought together with St. Octavian at Volterra. The enumeration of the miracles being made, he thus pronounces of them: These things are indeed certainly true, of which there should be no doubt whatever. These were at first written out by religious and learned men of former memory in a clearer and fuller style. These, presently lost after the devastation of Volterra, were by Bliderantius, a venerable man, the Holy Spirit inspiring him, especially entrusted to the monuments of letters. These thereafter, by the various agitation of Etruscan affairs, both by the injury of the times and by the too gross carelessness of men, were again for a long time scattered here and there and neglected. These we have now, for the spiritual comfort of those who … are held by a desire of seeing and reading them in the same series of connected structure (that we may lay open the hidden treasure to all who seek it), striven to restore to their former arrangement, as far as God has deigned to grant. Behold, Augustine himself here sufficiently betrays that the Ms. documents from which at p. 16 he writes that he pieced together his history are of almost no moment. He openly confesses that the old Acts of the Saints perished, and that new ones were first written by Bliderantius, or rather Bliderannus, after the devastation of Volterra, which, namely, he affirms in ch. 29 that the Hungarians inflicted upon the city in the tenth century; where he adds that it was restored by Otto I the emperor, who died in the year 973, and was called Otthonia, and then Antonia: by which name, since Bliderannus in the Acts of SS. Justus and Clement, which, transcribed from an old codex of the Lateran basilica, I have in hand, repeatedly uses it, Augustine cannot deny that he cannot be much older than the eleventh century.

[30] were written by Bliderannus, an author not sufficiently ancient and very inept, But whence did Bliderannus, an author so young, draw what he committed to writing concerning SS. Justus and Clement, who with St. Octavian more probably flourished in the fifth century? Not from their older Acts, for these no longer existed, as Augustine again expressly declares. Therefore he received all from popular tradition: which accordingly everyone will hold suspect except him who shall have believed to be true what Bliderannus foolishly presumed to assert of himself, namely that by divine revelation he had known the truth of those things which, taken from men's talk, he wrote down: Wherefore, he says, it must not be kept silent, what at that time we heard from Christian men, that these saints Justus and Clement wrought: and I, Bliderannus, indeed, the Holy Spirit revealing it, have known what the Lord wrought through his Saints. To those words he had premised that they began to contend against the Arian perfidy and to put forth their zeal in the time of the emperor Constans, son of the great Constantine, that is, before the middle of the fourth century. To the same he subjoins that the Saints came from Africa to Volterra in the time of the wickedness and persecution, when the pagan nation of the Vandals, which passed over from Spain into Africa only in the fifth century already grown, had besieged the city of Antonia. Did Bliderannus learn so to define times from a revelation of the Holy Spirit? What prudent man will give secure credit to an author so inept, and so many centuries removed from the age of the Saints whose Acts he describes, and who handed down to posterity nothing but the talk of the common people?

[31] Almost all which Bliderannus narrates that SS. Justus and Clement did at Volterra [and by other more recent writers, and contain nothing but the talk of the common people.] has been transferred into Augustine's history; and also attributed to their companion St. Octavian. With these the same Augustine, in a style wordy to the point of disgust, mingled not a few things compiled from other instruments, by which he rendered his narrative much more prolix and more marvelous. But if, as has now been sufficiently shown, Bliderannus's Acts cannot safely be believed, much less can the other instruments, because all are more recent than his: for older ones neither Papebroch in the preliminary Commentary on SS. Justus and Clement, n. 2, nor Augustine himself acknowledges. But if they are more recent, whence have their authors what they report of the Saints of Volterra and what is not read in Bliderannus? Not from biographers older than he, for they could not have seen the writings of these, since, on the testimony again of Augustine himself, they had perished before Bliderannus, who first wrote new ones from popular tradition alone. It remains, therefore, that whatever Augustine added to Bliderannus's narrative from less ancient monuments was either devised by their authors, or was received also from the mouth of the people, who are wont to circulate the deeds of their Saints wrapped in the more fables the further they are from their age. What I promised at n. 19 I think I have now sufficiently discharged, and have sufficiently taught the reader that the history which the often-mentioned Augustine wrote in Latin, and Eufrosino Lapini, Silvano Razzi, and Emilio Fei in Italian, and which others have judged not unworthy of credit, was not without reasons neglected by Papebroch. Those reasons I have now thought should be brought forward, lest perhaps the men of Volterra might complain that we deny credit to the Acts of their holy Patrons, and yet do not prove why it should be denied them. Further, I would have the reader observe that the censure we have passed affects only those things which Augustine narrates that SS. Justus, Clement, and Octavian did while living; nor is it to be taken so universally as to be extended without any exception to all that he gathered from others: for some things, though few, are as to their substance prudently credible; which will be assigned in the following paragraph.

*. perhaps and of mice

*. read diversarum

§ IV. Those things concerning the Saint which are more credible than the rest are selected: more probably he came as an exile with SS. Justus and Clement in the fifth century from [ ] Africa into Tuscany, and freed the men of Volterra besieged by the Vandals: was he a priest?

By confusion of times, by frequency of contradictions, by admixture of events almost exceeding belief and received only from the mouth of the people, I have shown that the Acts of St. Octavian which I exhibited in §§2 and 3 are so adulterated that few things remain which deserve secure assent. [The more credible heads of the matters handed down concerning St. Octavian are set forth;] Modern writers, who have tried to render what was handed down by the older ones more correct, have by their slight conjectures entangled it the more; some also have added new errors to errors, as will be clear from what is to be said below. That St. Octavian was an African by nation, that he fled into exile at the time when the Vandals were persecuting the Catholics in Africa, that the companions of his flight were SS. Justus and Clement, that with them he was carried into Tuscany and went to Volterra, then withdrew into a solitude neighboring the city, and there in a hollow elm passed the remaining days of his life in holiness — these are the most credible heads of those matters which we read committed to writing from tradition concerning the Saint's life.

[33] [to which may be added, that he freed Volterra from the Arian sect and from the siege of the Vandals] I judge it can also be safely believed that our Saint at Volterra with Justus and Clement gave his help toward converting the citizens addicted to the Arian sect to the true faith, and that to him also the liberation of the city besieged by enemies is to be ascribed; although the proper Offices of the church of Volterra, approved by Leo X, and Bliderannus and many more recent writers attribute the preservation of the city and the conversion of the inhabitants to Justus and Clement alone. To these I oppose Blasius the monk, who reports the first; the anonymous writer, who the second; Augustine the Florentine, who writes that the men of Volterra received both benefits from St. Octavian too. The fear lest perhaps, as in many other things, so in this matter also they go astray, ought to be removed, or at least greatly lessened, by the authority of St. Hugh, bishop of Volterra, asserting the same. He, before his episcopate, to which he was promoted in the year 1174, composed Rites of the church of Volterra, by which he reduced to a better form the divine Office throughout the whole diocese. The instrument, part of which will be published after this paragraph, at folio 7 verso testifies that those Ms. Rites are still kept in the episcopal archive, and from them alleges these words to our purpose: It is to be noted that for the Reverence of so great a Confessor (Octavian), from the first day to the octave, the church of Volterra makes nine lessons for him … and this because HE WAS AS IT WERE AN APOSTLE and AS IT WERE A DEFENDER in the city of Volterra. This testimony of the holy Prelate, of whom we shall treat on the VIII of this month, not obscurely suggests that St. Octavian while living on earth not only labored at Volterra for the salvation of souls, but also defended the city against its enemies, that is, brought it about by his counsel or help that it was not stormed.

[34] [by loaves thrown at the enemy, as a constant and not so hard-to-believe tradition reports.] It can further be believed that Volterra was freed by loaves thrown at the enemies, both because commonly all constantly hand this down, and because it can easily enough be understood how the throwing of loaves was the occasion by which the besiegers ceased to attack the city, whom it will be said below were more probably Vandals. Let them have been destitute of necessary provisions; let the besieged have known this, not yet laboring under lack of grain, but distrusting their ability to resist the barbarians who were about to assail the city at once with all their force. The citizens, in order to break the fierceness of the enemies, by the counsel of SS. Justus, Clement, and Octavian may have thrown loaves to them in their hunger with a liberal hand. This ingenious charity may so have softened the barbarians' minds and bent them to mercy that they resolved to spare the city and raise the siege. But in another way also the loaves thrown may have induced the Vandals to abandon the city. They may have resolved to force it to surrender by hunger: but the citizens, at the persuasion of the holy Newcomers, may have displayed loaves outside the walls, and even thrown them at the enemy, that they might feign an abundance of them. This stratagem may have taken from the Vandals the hope of obtaining the city, so that they judged it better to leave it. That in the first case the barbarians were so moved to mercy toward the citizens, and in the second that so great a despair of capturing the city seized them, you will not unfittingly ascribe to the prayers of the holy Men. I think that loaves thrown outside the walls in one way or the other gave occasion for raising the siege. But that they were made from grain carried into the city of Volterra from the enemy's camp by the help of angels, that the barbarians who had tasted them perished, that the rest at the mere sight of them were bereft of their senses and cut one another down with mutual wounds — these things, I say, and the rest which are narrated to have been done in the very liberation of the city and before it by Bliderannus, Augustine the Florentine, and others, are so marvelous that the talk of the people is by no means sufficient for a prudent belief in them; for they are not supported by weightier testimonies, as was proved at n. 30 and following. Perhaps too Bliderannus, older than the rest, first invented them: which I the more suspect of that vain writer because he boasts that he learned all things by divine revelation which the Lord wrought through the Saints.

[35] Already above at nn. 13 and 16 we have indicated that the Vandals did not invade Italy in the sixth century, [Papebroch asserted that the Saint's companions Justus and Clement flourished in the fifth century;] which will be more firmly established at n. 38 and following. That those barbarians under Genseric, after the death of the emperor Valentinian III, which falls in the year 455, miserably harassed various regions of Italy with frequent irruptions, is certain from the testimonies of the ancients to be produced at n. 41. It is also sufficiently known to the learned that the same Genseric until his death, that is, the year 477, persecuted the Catholic faith, and that very many African confessors under him were thrust into exile, or so harassed that they were compelled to flee into it of their own accord. Since therefore, says Papebroch at the V of June in the preliminary Commentary on SS. Justus and Clement, n. 5, ancient tradition, expressed by the authors of the Acts, holds that the Saints came from Africa after various contests with the Arians; and that they freed Volterra, besieged by the Vandals, by their counsel or help; even though afterwards the Vandal persecution more than once grew hot again, and drove very many Catholics, especially bishops, into exile whether voluntary or compelled, yet you would scarcely find another time more fitting in which the Saints flourished than the times of Genseric persecuting the church in Africa and laying waste the cities in Italy, in which times the aforesaid things befell. For that they came with St. Regulus, who afterwards suffered under Totila, as the lessons of the often-mentioned Office approved by Leo X say, is confirmed neither from the Life of that saint, which we shall illustrate on the 1st of September, nor from the Acts of our Saints which we have. That therefore is a new invention, and not older than two centuries. Papebroch delivers his judgment in these words concerning Justus and Clement alone: for in the Commentary on these Saints he does not even name our Octavian, which I wonder at; who nevertheless together with them freed Volterra when it was attacked by the Vandals, as was said at n. 33. Whence, if Justus and Clement flourished in the fifth century under Genseric, our Saint must be said to have flourished under the same, and no otherwise than they to be separated from the company of St. Regulus fleeing into exile in the sixth century.

[36] That the Saints Regulus, Cerbonius, Felix, Justus, Clement, and Octavian came together as exiles into Tuscany [it is not so new an invention as he had thought, that they came into exile with St. Regulus:] is by far the more common opinion of those who have written since the fifteenth century. Papebroch is mistaken when he supposes this to be a new invention, and not older than two centuries. It is not indeed confirmed from the Acts of SS. Justus and Clement, which he himself mentions at n. 2, nor from the Life of St. Regulus, which was illustrated at the 1st of September, that the first two or St. Octavian were of his companions: but it was not therefore at once to be reckoned an invention so new. The anonymous writer whose words I brought forward from n. 10 wrote two centuries before Papebroch composed the Commentary on SS. Justus and Clement, inserted in vol. 1 of June, which saw the light in the year 1695. By two centuries also older than he is Blasius the monk, whose narrative I exhibited from n. 15. Papebroch himself confesses this in vol. VI of May, p. 51, where he makes him an author of the fourteenth century. Each writer expressly affirms that SS. Justus, Clement, and Octavian fled with SS. Regulus, Cerbonius, and Felix from Africa into Etruria. The Florentine augmented Martyrology of Usuard is also older by two hundred and more years than Papebroch writing the said Commentary. In the announcement which I reported from it at n. 1, our Saint is asserted to have been renowned in Tuscany at the same time as St. Regulus; and he in his Life is said to have had as companions of his flight, besides the bishops Cerbonius and Felix, three priests and two deacons. The Acts of St. Cerbonius, whose beginning was published in this volume at p. 231, add other companions to them. That of their number, whose names are kept silent, were SS. Justus, Clement, and Octavian, modern writers, as I said, commonly assert; whose opinion it is not lawful to reject as improbable, since documents older than Papebroch had thought support it. His opinion these greatly weaken, yet not so as that the opposite ought not still to be preferred, as will appear from what follows.

[37] [both those err who say it happened in the fifth century and those who say in the sixth, and at the same time believe,] Those who say that the Saints about whom the controversy is came into Tuscany together with St. Regulus do not agree among themselves about the century in which this happened. Ughelli in vol. 1 of the Italia sacra, col. * 332, places St. Justus in the series of the bishops of Volterra before Elpidius, whom he writes to have been present at the Roman synod held under Pope Symmachus in the year 502. Then, in the elogium of the holy prelate, he says that he flourished in Etruria together with SS. Regulus, Clement, and Octavian; their coming into that region, therefore, must be set before the sixth century, if we believe Ughelli, must necessarily have befallen. Raphael Volaterranus, praised at n. 26, connected their exile with the times of Leo I, who reigned from the year 457 to 474 — provided, however, that you correct the typographical fault of which I warned the reader in that place. Raphael is followed by Leander Alberti in the Description of all Italy, Cologne edition, p. 79. These authors depart from manifest truth; for it is most certain, as I have shown in this volume, p. 232, that St. Regulus, who suffered under Totila, departed from Africa only in the sixth century. Theodoric Ruinart in the History of the Vandal persecution, ch. XI, n. 13, and very many others, whom I forbear to recount here by name, affirm that the often-mentioned holy Confessors attached themselves to St. Regulus going into exile in the sixth century. None of them calls into doubt that the city of Volterra was freed by them from a siege: but they are not agreed about the nation which attacked it. Some would have it the Gothic, but most the Vandal. These we shall first meet.

[38] If the Vandals encircled Volterra with the siege from which SS. Justus, [that Justus, Clement, and Octavian then freed Volterra from a siege of the Vandals,] Clement, and Octavian freed it, it is not credible that they accompanied St. Regulus, a fugitive from Africa in the sixth century: for the ancients not only mention no irruption made by those barbarians into Italy at that time, but even supply arguments in their writings from which it may be concluded that it is destitute of all likelihood. In the year 496 Thrasamund succeeded Gunthamund as king of the Vandals in Africa, who, that he might, says Procopius, bk. 1 of the Vandal War, ch. 8, best establish his kingdom, sending an embassy to Theodoric, king of the Goths, asked for himself as wife his sister Amalafrida, a widow by the recent death of her husband. He sent his sister, etc. The Vandals under Genseric were wont to infest all the shores of Italy, and under his successors those of Sicily, down to the marriage of Amalafrida with Thrasamund and the concord entered into between him and her brother Theodoric, under whose power all Italy then was. That the barbarians were no longer troublesome to him after the affinity and friendship contracted between the two kings, Ennodius of Pavia testifies in his Panegyric of Theodoric: Why should I speak of the plunderings of the Vandals, chastised while the winds obeyed, for whom in place of a yearly payment your friendship suffices? They do not know how to roam beyond their power, wisdom being their guide. They have deserved to be your kinsmen, because they do not refuse to obey. Jacques Sirmond in his Notes on the Panegyric thinks it was recited by Ennodius in the year 507 or 508, when St. Regulus was not yet in exile. This I have set beyond all doubt at p. 233 of this volume. It is not permitted to suspect that Thrasamund afterwards, friendship with Theodoric being renounced, again harassed his lands with hostile incursions: for Procopius in bk. 1 of the Gothic War, ch. 1, among other praises of Theodoric proclaims this also: He kept his provinces untouched by the neighboring barbarians. Hence it is further understood that Italy was immune from invasions of the Vandals not only in the times of King Thrasamund, who reigned in Africa from the year 496 to 523, but also in the times of Hilderic down to the death of Theodoric, which happened in the year 526.

[39] After Theodoric the king of Italy was Athalaric, who indeed in Cassiodorus, bk. 9 of the Variæ, letter 1, threatens Hilderic [whom it is not likely, as is clear from contemporary writers, brought war upon Etruria in the sixth century:] that he will shortly avenge with arms the death of queen Amalafrida, which he believed violent, unless satisfaction be made him: but we do not read that he attempted anything against Hilderic, doubtless for the same cause for which Theodoric toward the end of his life did not go to avenge his sister Amalafrida, then held in chains, because, namely, says Procopius, bk. 1 of the Vandal War, ch. 9, he saw that his resources were not sufficient to prepare a vast fleet by which he might carry war into Africa. Nor is it likely that Hilderic provoked the Goths by invading their lands in Italy; for on the testimony of Procopius, just cited: He was a man wholly born to gentleness … but the same was very unwarlike, and would not even admit military affairs to his ears. Gelimer was the last who reigned in Africa of the Vandal nation. His deeds the same Procopius described copiously from ch. 9 of bk. 1 to ch. 10 of bk. 2. From this contemporary writer's narrative it is manifestly drawn out that Gelimer needed the service of his own soldiers in his own provinces, and did not use them elsewhere. In the summer of the year 530 he cast Hilderic, thrust from the throne, into chains, and seized his kingdom; from whom a little after Pudentius separated the province of Tripoli, and then Godas Sardinia, by defection: Meanwhile Gelimer (the words are Procopius's, bk. 1, ch. XI), since Pudentius had withdrawn Tripoli and Godas Sardinia from his dominion, scarcely hoped to recover Tripoli, seeing that it lay further off, and the Romans had already come to the aid of the rebels. Wherefore he thought he would do best if he deferred leading an army thither and hastened to invade the island before the emperor's auxiliaries should be at hand. Sardinia being scarcely recovered through Tzazon, Belisarius, general of the emperor Justinian, landed with an army in Africa in the year 533, all of which he shortly subjected to the Roman empire together with Sardinia and other islands. Gelimer himself he captured at the end of the winter of the year 534, and led him to Constantinople for the triumph. From these things it is easy to understand that Gelimer, who did not reign four whole years, was so occupied in the provinces of his own dominion that it is not credible that he wished to undertake any expedition into Tuscany and to make enemies of the Goths, under whose dominion it then was.

[40] [The Saints therefore either were not companions of Regulus, or saved the city besieged by another nation: the Goths in the year 542,] I have now sufficiently shown how little likely it is that the Vandals attacked Volterra in the sixth century. Therefore we must not assent to most of the moderns, who affirm this, and at the same time admit that the holy Liberators of the city in the same century joined themselves as companions to St. Regulus fleeing into Etruria. Either they must be separated from his company, or it must be denied that the besiegers of the city were Vandals. The first Papebroch chose, referring the exile of SS. Justus and Clement, with whom St. Octavian is to be joined, to the times of Genseric; the second Philip Ferrari in the elogium of SS. Justus and Clement and in the annotation subjoined to it, inserted in the Catalogue of the Saints of Italy at the V day of June, and also Francesco Orlendi in the Orbis sacer et profanus, part 2, bk. 3, ch. 31, where from page 1043 to 1054 he laboriously discusses the question which we are just now examining, and others connected with it. He does not deny that Papebroch's opinion is probable: yet at p. 1051 he judges that to it and to every other is to be preferred the one which holds that the glorious exiles Regulus, Cerbonius, Felix, Justus, Clement, and Octavian were carried together into Tuscany, and that the assailants of the city of Volterra were not Vandals but Goths, who served under King Totila. This is not foreign to the narrative of Procopius, bk. 3 of the Gothic War, ch. 6: Then Totila took the forts of Cesena and Petra. Somewhat later he betook himself into Tuscany, and having attempted the towns of that region, when no one would surrender to him, having crossed the river Tiber, he kept away from the territory of Rome, etc. These things were done in the spring and summer of the 8th year of the Gothic war, of Christ 542. Consult paragraph 5 of the Commentary on St. Regulus. From what I there discussed concerning the time in which that saint was crowned with martyrdom it is understood that Totila in the said year led an army into those parts of Etruria in which the city of Volterra lies, from which Populonia, now destroyed, was not so very far off: whence it may be conjectured that Volterra was of the number of those cities which the Goths then attempted in vain.

[41] [but that the Vandals in the fifth century attempted Volterra in vain is equally consonant with the testimonies of the ancients:] Now I set before the reader for weighing the testimonies of the ancients which favor Papebroch, asserting that by the Saints of whom he treats Volterra was freed, which was besieged by the Vandals under Genseric, and not by the Goths under Totila. Priscus the Rhetor, p. 42, writes this of Genseric in Pagi at the year 465, n. 8: From the Easterns he had obtained part of Valentinian's goods in the name of Honoria, who had married his son Honoric, and this he used every year as an occasion of renewing the war. And so, as soon as spring came on, he invaded Sicily and Italy with a hostile army, and the cities of the Italians strengthened with garrisons he did not easily attack; but the towns destitute of soldiers who might resist he surrounded, overthrew, and plundered. Procopius, bk. 1 of the Vandal War, ch. 5, says: Genseric, having obtained the obedience of the Moors, from the death of Valentinian used to carry himself into Sicily and Italy every year at the return of spring. There, the cities being partly sent into slavery, partly leveled with the ground, when he had also seized everything, and had drained the regions not only of money but even of inhabitants, he burst into the dominion of the emperor of the East. Having laid waste Illyricum, and likewise the greater part of the Peloponnese and Greece, and also the adjacent islands, making a landing again in Sicily and Italy, ranging over all the coasts round about, he drove and carried off everything. Here and above I have everywhere followed the translation of our Claude Maltret, who published Procopius's Works at Paris in the year 1662 in Greek and Latin.

[42] From the words of Priscus the Rhetor and of Procopius it is drawn out that the siege of the city of Volterra suits the times of Genseric as well as those of Totila, [nor does any reason persuade why you should assert the city was freed by these barbarians rather than by those,] and that it could as probably have happened in the fifth century by the Vandals as in the sixth by the Goths. If the first is true, false is the tradition received commonly by all the more recent writers, which makes SS. Justus, Clement, and Octavian companions of St. Regulus, whose coming into Tuscany cannot be referred to the fifth century: if the second, false is the other tradition, which says that the besiegers of the city of Volterra were Vandals. It could indeed have happened that Bliderannus first confounded the names of the barbarians and wrongly called Vandals the Goths, which error afterwards passed into the writings of younger authors: but it could no less easily have happened that Justus, Clement, and Octavian were reported among the companions of St. Regulus by mere conjecture. These Saints were Africans by nation; they departed from their fatherland into voluntary exile while the Vandals reigned in Africa; in Tuscany they passed the remaining years of their life. Since these things also suit St. Regulus, and since he had various companions of his flight whose names are expressed neither in his own Acts nor in those of his disciple Cerbonius, as was said at n. 36, hence the said conjecture could easily be taken up, which, once committed to writing, more recent writers believed, and also published abroad in their own writings. Nothing have I hitherto alleged on account of which you should judge that SS. Justus, Clement, and Octavian more probably flourished under Genseric than under Totila. Now I subjoin some things which incline me rather to agree with Papebroch, who held the former.

[43] Ferrari and Orlendi, whom we have praised, confess that the three holy Men, [except that an older tradition holds that its assailants were Vandals; with which we ought rather to stand,] after they had been carried to Populonia with SS. Regulus, Cerbonius, and Felix, did not stay long with them, but at once went on to Volterra. The same is commonly admitted by those who believe that they followed St. Regulus as leader into exile. Ferrari writes that all fled together from the Vandal persecution. We in this volume, p. 233, have proved that St. Regulus more probably came into Tuscany toward the end of the life of Thrasamund, who persecuted the Catholics in Africa until his death, which he met in the year 523. Orlendi does not dissent from us, connecting his exile with the year 520. But if Justus, Clement, and Octavian, having landed at Populonia, at once went on thence to Volterra, and did not raise its siege earlier than in the times of Totila, it follows that it was attacked by the Goths about 20 years after the Saints' coming into that city: for in the 7th year of the Gothic war, of Christ 541, Totila began to reign, who in the next following year is narrated by Procopius to have attempted in vain the towns of Tuscany. Now I ask of the opposing side: if ever traditions, of which one surpasses the other in antiquity, cannot be reconciled with one another, which is to be said to have drawn its origin from error? Certainly we must stand by the older, if all else is equal, as in fact it is in this case. But that the besiegers of Volterra were Vandals, and that the Saints kept the city unharmed from them not long after their own entry into it, is an older tradition than that which says that the city's Deliverers fled with St. Regulus from Africa: from this therefore we must rather depart, if it cannot be defended except by contradicting the other; as those do who say that Volterra was besieged by the Goths and freed by the Saints, after their coming into the city was already past by many years. The former tradition was committed to writing by Bliderannus in the Life of SS. Justus and Clement: the other by the anonymous author and Blasius the monk, of whom it may be doubted whether they wrote before the year 1300. However little credit Bliderannus deserves, yet because he is older, greater credit must be given him than to the two other writers, of whose age and hallucinations we treated in §2. But neither from them can the contrary opinion be strengthened, since they report an even older tradition which overturns the other.

[44] [We hold that Octavian and his companions were in exile in Tuscany in the fifth century, before St. Regulus.] Now at last it is permitted thus to conclude: if SS. Justus, Clement, and Octavian came into exile in the sixth century with St. Regulus, they freed Volterra when attacked either by the Vandals or by the Goths: but it is in no way likely that this was done by the Vandals in the sixth century, as we have shown at n. 38 and following; and it is repugnant to the older tradition that the Saints snatched the city, besieged by the Goths, from the danger of storming, as has just been said: Papebroch therefore is rather to be agreed with, who denies that SS. Justus and Clement, Octavian's companions, came into Etruria with St. Regulus, and judges that they flourished in the times of Genseric persecuting the Church in Africa and laying waste the cities in Italy. The siege of Volterra you will fitly refer to the time which lay between the year 455, in which the emperor Valentinian III, and the year 477, in which Genseric, first king of the Vandals in Africa, departed this life: for indeed from the testimonies of Procopius and Priscus the Rhetor, produced at n. 41, it is established that the Vandals under the said king from the death of Valentinian III afflicted various regions of Italy with yearly irruptions. Our Saint's passing to a happier life we have above noted as before the sixth century, yet doubtfully, both because it may have touched its beginning, and because the tradition is not certain which led me to embrace Papebroch's opinion before the rest. Nothing concerning the Saint has come to our knowledge about which there is less reason for doubt than that he ended a solitary life in peace: nevertheless Giulio Ambrogio Lucenti, vol. 1 of the Italia sacra, col. 1642, makes not only our Confessor, but also his companions, martyrs without hesitation: Justus, he says, Clement, and Octavian, Africans, by a wonderful confession established with their blood at Volterra the faith of the name of Jesus.

[45] Ughelli in vol. 1 of the Italia sacra, col. * 332, and from him Theodoric Ruinart in the History of the Vandal persecution, ch. XI, n. 13, and others write [Bliderannus, with whom Papebroch agrees, hands down that Justus and Clement were laymen,] that St. Justus, bishop of Volterra, was helped in discharging the pastoral office not only by St. Clement, but also by St. Octavian, whom, however, many would have hidden himself in the desert before Justus, after Volterra was freed from the siege, was elected bishop. So far is it from being able to be asserted that Justus used our Saint's help in the government of the church of Volterra, that it is not even certain whether he was its bishop. Certainly with the eremitic life which by Augustine the Florentine and many others he is said to have led after he had already at the request of the men of Volterra been consecrated bishop, that sacred office does not well agree, in which he ought rather to have fed the people committed to him than to have lived to himself. Nay, the often-praised Papebroch judges that he and his brother Clement were probably never initiated into any sacred Order, because they are expressly said to have been laymen by Bliderannus, who thus begins their Life: To the honor of the holy and undivided Trinity, we must speak of two Men who, LIVING AS LAYMEN, full of the grace of the Holy Spirit, like perfect masters, wonderfully following the footsteps of the holy Apostles, imitating in honorable manners the priests of the Lord, etc. Bliderannus's Acts, than which no older document concerning Justus and Clement exists, are contradicted by almost all who in later centuries celebrated both confessors in their writings. Besides Papebroch, I have found no one who agreed with Bliderannus. The men of Volterra, whom I have found to have believed for three centuries past St. Justus's episcopate as an undoubted matter, cannot with justice disapprove Papebroch's opinion; because an older tradition stands for it than they can bring forward for their own.

[46] Neither must we acquiesce in Raphael Volaterranus, Augustine the Florentine, and other moderns nothing hinders us from believing the same of both and of St. Octavian. who make St. Octavian a priest: because of the instruments concerning the Saint which I have obtained, older than the sixteenth century, there is none which openly ascribes that sacred Order to him: openly, I say; for the words of the anonymous writer at n. 10 at the end are ambiguous. But neither in the proper Office is he called a priest, although Justus and Clement are given that title: for in the III lesson at Matins it is said: The companions of St. Regulus were two bishops, Felix and Cerbonius, as many priests and likewise brothers, Justus and Clement, and a fifth, Octavian. But, you will say, this Saint before his withdrawal into solitude labored at Volterra together with Justus and Clement for the conversion of the inhabitants from the Arian heresy: that is sufficiently confirmed by the testimony of St. Hugh, bishop of that city, who in the Rites of his church written before the year 1174 notes at the feast of St. Octavian that it is to be celebrated with an Octave, because he was as it were an apostle … in the city of Volterra. But hence it is not necessarily inferred that he was a priest: for from apostolic works, exercised in a manner and place suited to his own state, even a layman is not unfitly styled as it were an apostle. It can be said that St. Hugh did not wish to assert more of Octavian than Bliderannus did of Justus and Clement; who writes that they, living as laymen … wonderfully following the footsteps of the holy Apostles, imitating in honorable manners the priests of the Lord, promoted with great zeal the honor of God and the salvation of their neighbor, and attacked the Arian sect. The Church had in the fifth century not a few laymen as brave in confessing as they were learned in defending the true religion against various heresies. Our Garnier recounts them in ch. 1 of the general Preface to the complete Works of Marius Mercator; who, contemporary with our Saint and his companions, and though a layman, was a most valiant defender of the Catholic faith against the Cœlestian and Nestorian heresy. From what I have brought forward on both sides let the reader deduce whatever he pleases. Meanwhile I may believe that St. Octavian was no more a priest than SS. Justus and Clement; whom Papebroch judged to have lived as laymen, since Bliderannus so testifies; who, though of small authority, yet because he surpasses the rest in antiquity, deserves greater credit than they.

§ V. The beginning and progress of his veneration, the translation of his body to Volterra and his miracles, from various sources: observations on their narrative, against which the translation is proved to have been made about the middle of the ninth century; his feast.

[ ] [The public veneration of St. Octavian in the place of his death, and the history of his body carried thence to Volterra by the prelate Andrew] More certain and more distinct are most of the things which have been handed down to memory concerning the beginning and progress of the veneration shown to St. Octavian, concerning the translation of his body from the place of his burial to the cathedral church of Volterra, and concerning his miracles. After Blasius the monk had recounted, in the words adduced above at n. 18, the burial of the holy Hermit which the citizens of Volterra had given him, who, having learned of his death, had run to the solitude, he thus continues his history: But in process of time, the body itself being clearly found again, the men of Volterra erected a church, and with the greatest devotion began to visit it every year on the day on which they had found him. To whose body the sick go and are led, and at once, all sickness being put to flight, they return to their own homes. When on account of the perils of wars that church had been burned, Andrew, bishop of that city, considering that that holy body was kept less fittingly, resolved with the people upon its removal to the city, and at last, as he had ordained, carried it out. For in the year of the Lord DCCCXX, in the time of the emperors Lothair and Louis, having called the neighboring bishops, with all the clergy and people he came to the place, and took care to find the body, a mattock having first been taken.

[48] carried thence to Volterra, from Blasius the monk, And when, others helping him, it had been found, so great a fragrance of odor flowed from it that they could not bear it. For which cause, praising the Lord, they took it up, and took care to carry it to the city with the greatest honor. And when they had begun to do this, and it had been carried to the place which is called Podium, though the weather stood most fair, there was such a diversity of darkness, thunder, and rain that, the body being set down, no one believed he would escape, and each took care to think only of his own safety by himself. Then the bishop came to himself, and with the assent of the clergy and people vowed that he would make up the number of clerics serving him in the church to which they wished to carry him: and at once the weather returned to a most fair state. Which being done, with great joy they took up the body, and placed it where it now is, and fully kept what they had vowed. Observations on the things which I have now brought forward from Blasius the monk, and shall presently transcribe from the proper Office, will be given below from n. 58.

[49] The Office of St. Octavian, approved by Leo X in the year 1519, and from the lessons has at Matins nine lessons proper to the Saint. Of the first three see what was said at the end of §1. The remaining six, which treat of the Saint's solitary life, the translation of his body to Volterra, his cult and miracles, I shall insert into the Commentary here, because they are worthy of credit both as to the substance of the matters and as to the circumstances; if, however, you except a few things from them, of which the reader will be warned below. Lesson IV. But Octavian chose for himself a place a thousand paces on this side of the river Era, surrounded by a dense wood, and accustomed to be approached only by camp-servants or woodcutters *. Here for very many years, to the last end of his life, he endured in abstinence from all things, giving himself only to prayers, vigils, and fasts. He made himself a cell in the hollow of an elm, in which he was scarcely wholly covered. Here at last he died on the fourth of the Nones of September, and was entombed; where a little after, the neighbors, moved by the fame of his holiness, built him a modest church. Whence after nearly three hundred years he was translated into the basilica of Volterra.

[50] Lesson V. And we have received that the cause of the translation was Andrew, of the proper Office: prelate of Volterra, a useful vessel in the Lord. He, when he beheld the most holy Man's body neglected, and the church destroyed by unbelieving and wicked men, lying in the solitude and without honor, dealt with the clergy and people about translating it into the city. And so all, of every sex and age, with the priestly order went forth to the place where it was laid; and with great reverence they strive to bring it away when dug up. Almost in the middle of the journey, with abundant rain and winds arising with a great storm, and moreover a clouded sky taking the road from their eyes, they were prevented from carrying it further: but neither with oxen brought up nor by any force could they move it from the place for some time. This prodigy, seen by all, indeed terrified them all.

[51] Lesson VI. The prelate himself too, destitute of other remedies, [the sacred monuments which in honor of the Saint, deposited in the cathedral church, by vow] groaning, fled to divine help, and vowed to God that, if the Saint's body should follow and they should be worthy of his coming, he would build a college joined to the basilica with a certain number of canons, to be named in honor of that Saint and by his name: which, having obtained his vow, he afterwards fulfilled; and to his body he dedicated an altar in the same basilica with an inscription indicating the time, namely in the year eight hundred and twenty-two: which indeed is plain to have been in the reign * of Louis, son of Charlemagne.

[52] Lesson VII. A distich too is set in the lower part of the monument, of this sort: [or from liberal piety the same Andrew erected; who also built him a new church beyond the Era;]

Here is Octavian, blessed champion of Volterra, Whom the prelate, joined with his clergy, bore from the elm.

Which, although it shows the rude style of those times and alien syllables, I have cited for the sake of confirming this history. After these things his church, destroyed as I mentioned above, he restored in that form in which we now behold it. The relics also of his skull and of the elm branch with which he was once covered, enclosed in silver, he laid up in the sanctuary of that same basilica. Which, being made public, afford today to the suppliant people the greatest security of life, and a singular protection in all adversities.

[53] [the custom introduced of visiting it every year on the day of the translation: the Saint's benefits:] Lesson VIII. Moreover, that worthy thanks might be given to God for so great a benefit received, and that the day of this translation might become known to succeeding ages, it was ordained — whether by the same prelate or by posterity is uncertain — that, as far as they could and were permitted, the members of each household should go as suppliants to his church on the sixth Feria which precedes holy week. Some memorable prodigies too are written in his Acts: above all this, which has often been seen and observed, that in droughts his relics carried round through the city do much to draw down rain. Then to those who are in anguish of mind or in some calamity, relying on faith and suppliant, they afford the greatest help, and restore the desired peace of mind.

[54] he compels thieves to restore things taken from a place sacred to him. Lesson IX. It is reported too that once a certain man not at all fearing God wished to steal material heaped up in the forecourt of that church for building, and that, having secretly loaded beasts of burden with it, he could never move them from the place even when great force was applied; but after a long struggle, having tried all things in vain, he at last restored what he had taken to its former place. But again something like this happened. Someone had once taken stakes from the hedges enclosing the church; and, going forward a little further, checked as though by God, he was in no way able to complete his journey, so that he had to return and give back what he had taken. And these things indeed we have found written concerning blessed Octavian, whose birthday the church of Volterra today celebrates: whom it once received as patron and defender of its affairs with God, that, safe from threatening evils, we may be able to live joyful in the Lord, and, by the example of his faith, earthly happiness being despised, may deserve to attain to the same glory as he, chiefly by the grace and kindness of our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom be honor and empire for ever and ever.

[55] [The concourse to his body before its translation: a man irreverent toward the Saint is punished with death:] The lessons just given Augustine the Florentine inserted in chapter 25 of the history gathered from various instruments, which I examined in §3. Concerning the Saint's burial, however, and the public veneration with which the faithful attended him, while he still rested in the place where he had lived solitary, he records some things not foreign to truth which are not reported in the lessons: Blessed Octavian's falling asleep in the Lord being known, he says, faithful peoples flowed together from every side to bury him honorably (as was fitting). Therefore, the sacred body being laid out and wrapped, they piously and religiously buried it beside that very elm which had been his dwelling; and there they erected a church to God in his honor: where the Lord wrought many and illustrious miracles by the merits of the blessed Father. For indeed all who were seized by any kind of disease, receiving health, did not cease to proclaim his merits through every place of the region. Wherefore so numerous a concourse of peoples from every side was seen to come most zealously to his tomb, some to pay contributions and gifts, others to fulfill vows made to God, that the wood which a little before had been altogether pathless and inaccessible was now made passable and like a beaten path. After no small interval of time having passed, when the blessed Man's body lay neglected, and the church destroyed by unbelievers, in the solitude and without honor, Andrew, prelate of Volterra, dealt with the clergy and people about translating it into the city, etc. What follows is taken from the lessons, except what he narrates at the end of that chapter concerning an irreverence toward the Saint punished with death: In the latest time of war a certain soldier was carrying off from the sanctuary of the basilica of Volterra a silver image which contained the relics of the sacred head, to be melted in the fire. And while he was irreverently laying no small insult with foolish words upon the Man of God whom it represented, at once by the just judgment of God he was seized with a grievous ulcer, and on the following day, at the same hour at which he had perpetrated the unworthy deed, the most unhappy man lost his life with great torments. This miracle, which happened in the year 1530, is more fully described at n. 5 in the Volterran Ms., part of which will be published after this Commentary.

[56] With death also, and that a sudden one, was punished a certain workman, a workman despising the keeping of the feast of the translation, because he had despised to keep the feast of the translation of St. Octavian, on which see n. 64. The same Augustine narrates the matter thus in chapter 47: A most notable case happened in the city of Volterra about the year MDVIII. When Silvestro Feo, held among his fellow-citizens as a man of no middling fortune and dignity, had let out his house in the quarter of the Borgo to a certain Battista of Como to be built; he, although Silvestro was absent from the city, nevertheless so pressed on the building that he had already come in building to the height of the first windows of the front part. And when the solemnities of the divine Octavian, which every year are wont to fall on the Friday before Palm Sunday, were now at hand, and he was admonished by Pietro Covaccio, a citizen of Volterra, most zealous of the Christian religion, who by chance had passed that way, to cease from building, when he said: Alas, master Battista, what are you about this morning? Why should you not rather be zealous to keep with us the feast of the divine Octavian, our protector and patron, than to violate it by building? To whom Battista, as that rustic kind of men is irreligious and most greedy of gain: What have I to do with the divine Octavian? Rather will I serve Silvestro, from whom I receive my wage.

[57] Scarcely had he uttered these words when one of the boards falling to the ground from the house which he was building, is at once killed. of which he had built the scaffold slips; and thus set headlong upon the ground, broken, torn, he at once breathed out his soul. Which case, as it was very grievous to the whole city, so it struck such terror into Silvestro himself, when he returned to the city, that he by no means allowed the building to be raised higher, which very thing anyone may even now see. And of this matter most abundant witnesses still survive, chief citizens, and nearly all octogenarians, such as Gabriele Ricobaldo, such as Michele Vinta, such as Mariotto Leonardo, and very many others, who repeatedly say that they were present when that Battista's funeral was carried out. These things, published by Augustine in the year 1568, are also reported in Italian by Emilio Fei in the Ms. Work of which I made mention at n. 19, and from whose fol. 38 verso I understand that he wrote in the following century under the pontificate of Paul V. To Augustine's narrative Emilio adds at fol. 40 that not before his own times was the house brought to its top by the knight Michelangelo Lottini which that impious Battista had begun to build, punished by God because by working he had profaned the feast day of St. Octavian. And that the memory of the matter might be renewed and preserved, at that height of the building at which it had been left unfinished, he says that an image of the Saint was set by the said knight, with an inscription added expressing that memorable event. Emilio brings forward other miracles wrought by the Saint; but such as either have already been given from the proper Office, or will be given after this Commentary from the Volterran instrument. Now I subjoin some remarks upon those things which I have transcribed from various sources.

[58] [The site of the place where Octavian lived solitary, and first began to be venerated:] The holy Hermit was buried in the same place which had fallen to him while living as an arena of virtues; where afterwards the pious neighbors built a church over his tomb. Some, with the proper Office, lesson V, place that place one mile on this side, some one mile beyond the Era; Blasius the monk near that same stream in the solitude, about two miles distant from Volterra: Ferrari finally and others remove the place three miles from the city. But it can easily be understood that none goes astray in determining its site, if the desert which St. Octavian inhabited touched the right bank of the Era, which was one mile from his dwelling, but two miles from Volterra, which lies on the left bank of the river. And therefore some are to be thought to have set on this side, others beyond the Era, the place in which the Saint lived solitary, because the latter wrote, or wished to seem to have written, from the left, the former from the right side of the stream.

[59] [the church over his tomb there, if we believe Volaterranus, was founded about the middle of the seventh century:] In the IV lesson of the proper Office and elsewhere I read that a modest church was founded by the neighbors in the Saint's honor a little after his death: which does not sufficiently agree with the words of Blasius the monk, who writes that the church was built in process of time, the body itself having been clearly found again; nor with what Raphael Volaterranus has in bk. 5 of the Urban Commentaries, folio 51 verso: As time went on, Alcus, a powerful man in that city of Volterra, … founded twin churches: and Maurus, prelate of Siena, dedicated one to Justus, the other to Clement … But Octavian their companion lived far from all care in a desert near the city; where his church is now seen, built at almost the same time. Ughelli in vol. 3 of the Italia sacra, col. 621, writes that that Maurus presided over the church of Siena in the year 565: but he is mistaken; for Alcus, or as Bliderannus and others have it, Alchis, is a Lombard name. And so the churches built by him could not have been consecrated in the year 565, in which the Lombards had not yet burst into Italy. Nor is it likely that their dedication was made before the conversion of that nation to the Catholic faith, and the restoration of churches which followed thence; and therefore Papebroch in vol. 1 of June, p. 440, judges that Maurus's episcopate must be deferred until the times of Gregory the Great, or even until the seventh century. I do not doubt that Maurus, who dedicated churches to SS. Justus and Clement at Volterra, was that very bishop of Siena whose name in Labbe, vol. 6 of the Councils, col. 366, is subscribed to the Lateran Council which was celebrated by Martin I against the Monothelites in the year 649. If a church was built for St. Octavian in the desert at almost the same time, as Volaterranus asserts, at which Alcus erected two at Volterra for his companions, that must have been done not very long before or after the said year 649. The same Volaterranus does not distinguish the church which was seen there in his own time from the most ancient one erected in the times of Alcus. But this had already been destroyed when the Saint's body about the middle of the ninth century, as will be shown at n. 63, was translated thence to Volterra by Andrew, bishop of that city; who, the translation having been made, built another church beyond the Era in the place where the Saint had first rested.

[60] In various ancient instruments which Lodovico Antonio Muratori published in the Italian Antiquities and Ughelli in vol. 1 of the Italia sacra, [some notices concerning the Saint from the diplomas of the emperors Louis II and St. Henry.] where he treats of the bishops of Volterra, our Saint is commemorated. Only two of them shall I produce here, because they contain things worthy of observation; namely the diplomas of the emperors Louis II and St. Henry. That which Louis gave in the year 851 is extant in the said Ughelli, col. 333. The sum of the matters contained in it is this: The emperor Lothair, father of Louis, had granted to Peter the bishop, whom Andrew immediately succeeded, that for the profit of the church of Volterra two markets, that is, fairs, should be instituted, namely in the places called of saint Sylvester and of saint Octavian. At Andrew's petition Louis not only confirms the grant made by his father Lothair, but also institutes two other markets, … one namely in that same city of Volterra in the house at the feast of the blessed Mother of God Mary, where the blessed Octavian rests in body, which falls in mid-August, and another in the castle of that same see, which is called Camporita. The diploma of St. Henry, by which all the rights and privileges of the church of Volterra are confirmed, was given in the year 1015, and published by Muratori in vol. 5 of the Antiquities, col. 237. In it it is asserted that there were at that time forty canons in the cathedral, who in ancient times were established in honor of the holy Mother of God Mary, ever Virgin, and of saint Octabian, with the commemoration of other Saints. A few things being interposed, the chief church of the city of Volterra is named the church of saint Mary and of saint Octabian. A little after is mentioned the church of saint Octabian in Collina. The place called of St. Octavian, of which mention is made in Louis's diploma, I suspect is the same as that which lies for the inhabitants of Volterra beyond the Era, three miles from the city itself; where bishop Andrew, his bones having been translated thence, built a new church for the holy Patron. Whether the church of saint Octabian in Collina, which St. Henry mentions, is different from it, is unascertained by me. In the diocese of Volterra I have sought in vain for a town or village called Collina. The rest which I have plucked from the holy emperor's monument confirms what the author of the Office in lesson VI, Emilio Fei at fol. 34, and others report concerning the new college of canons which in St. Octavian's honor bishop Andrew erected, marked with that same Saint's name, and joined to the older college of canons of St. Mary, so that both should constitute only one chapter. Moreover the words which I have brought forward above from Louis's diploma teach me that the Saint's bones had already been deposited in the chief church, sacred to the Virgin Mother of God taken up into heaven, when Andrew obtained it in the year 851.

[61] In lesson IV the Saint's body is said to have been translated into the basilica of Volterra nearly three hundred years, [Blasius, the author of the Office, and others connect the translation of the body, and what the prelate Andrew accomplished after it] as I gather from what precedes, after his death. Ferrari's Catalogue of the Saints of Italy in the annotation subjoined at the 2nd of September to the elogium of St. Octavian asserts the same: but we have set a space of more years between his death and the translation: for the Saint more probably flourished in the fifth century under Genseric, as was proved in the preceding paragraph; nor was his body carried to Volterra earlier than a few years before the middle of the ninth century, as will presently be shown. Blasius the monk says that the translation was made by bishop Andrew in the year of the Lord DCCCXX, in the time of the emperors Lothair and Louis the Pious. This can be reconciled with what lesson VI has: And to his body Andrew dedicated an altar in that same basilica of Volterra with an inscription indicating the time, namely in the year eight hundred and twenty-two: which indeed is plain to have been in the reign * of Louis, son of Charlemagne: for the erection and dedication of the altar could have happened two years after the Saint's translation.

[62] in honor of St. Octavian, with wrong times throughout: The men of Volterra in the often-mentioned instrument, part of which we shall presently publish, at fol. 4 say that his body was brought into their city in the year 822: but at the verso of the same folio they say: A new college of canons, instituted in honor of the divine Octavian, was added to the ancient chapter of saint Mary by bishop Andrew in the year DCCCXXIII on the VIII day of November by the emperor Louis the Pious. At folio 5 this is read: That same aforesaid bishop took care that in the greater church of saint Mary a noble sarcophagus should be carved, in which the bones of the divine Octavian might be hidden. Moreover the church of the said Saint, already destroyed beyond the river Era, he restored in a larger form… In the year DCCCXXIX his head is enclosed in a silver face, overlaid with gold. Ughelli in vol. 1 of the Italia sacra, col. 333, writes thus of bishop Andrew: He flourished in the year DCCCXXXVIII. He translated the body of saint Octavian into the basilica of Volterra, where he also instituted the canons of St. Octavian. Many others could I here recount who are deceived concerning the time at which Andrew either began to hold the bishopric, or translated the body of St. Octavian to Volterra. The following number will teach how their chronological errors are to be corrected.

[63] [against them it is shown that Andrew carried the sacred bones to Volterra about the middle of the ninth century] In the year 826 the bishop of Volterra was Peter: for he subscribed to the Roman synod then celebrated under Eugenius II. His memory also is extant in an instrument of the year 833, which Muratori produces in vol. 5 of the Antiquities, col. 923. He was still living in the year 844, in which Louis, son of Lothair, was crowned king of the Lombards by Sergius II: for among the prelates who were present at that solemnity at Rome, Anastasius the Librarian names Peter, bishop of the church of Volterra. But neither from the catalogues of the prelates of that church, nor from elsewhere, is it known that before Peter a bishop named Andrew sat at Volterra: it must therefore be said that Andrew, who translated the bones of St. Octavian, was Peter's successor. He died a little after King Louis was crowned in the year 844: for Scipione Ammirato the younger in the Additions to the Series of the bishops of Volterra, collected by the elder of the same name, brings forward a certain diploma of the emperor Lothair in favor of Andrew, bishop of Volterra, and of his church, granted in the year 845. Now since it is established from the above-mentioned privilege of Louis that the Saint's body had already been deposited in the basilica of Volterra in the year 851, it remains that his translation befell neither earlier than the year 844 nor later than 851.

[64] [on the Friday, as is believed, before Palm Sunday, which in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had to be celebrated with festal observance.] Ferrari, cited above, says that the translation was celebrated on the XVII of July: whence he took this I do not know. From the author of the Office, lesson VIII, with whom all others agree, we learn that Andrew translated the Saint's remains to his cathedral on the sixth feria which precedes holy week, and that under the same prelate or his successors a custom was introduced that from every house of the city someone who conveniently could should every year visit the church of the holy Patron situated beyond the Era on that same sixth feria on which the men of Volterra were enriched with the sacred treasure. Emilio Fei, a writer of the preceding century, testifies at fol. 34 that that pious custom still flourished in his own times. Above at nn. 56 and 57 I reported the history of that unhappy workman who in the year 1508, for not interrupting the building of a house on the Friday before Palm Sunday, was killed by a sudden death at Volterra. Among the things which at n. 15 will presently be transcribed from the Volterran instrument, mention is made of another workman who in the year 1640, not abstaining from labor on the same day, paid like penalties. Whence it is understood that the memory of the translation of St. Octavian in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was celebrated with such a festival as would oblige the faithful to cease from servile works. The second of September is consecrated to the Saint's cult, because this is believed to have been his birthday.

*. i.e. of wars

*. i.e. with a mattock

*. here it is taken for those who cut the trunks or stumps of trees:

*. add "done"

*. another

*. honor

*. and

*. add "done"

*. noble

AN ACCOUNT OF THE RECOGNITION

of the Relics of St. Octavian, preserved in the cathedral of Volterra, notices concerning the Saint's cult and miracles;

EXCERPTED

From an authentic instrument, sent from Volterra to Fr. Bolland, which is preserved among the manuscripts of our museum, marked ✠ Ms. 164.

Octavian, hermit and confessor, near Volterra in Tuscany. (S.) ^a

from a Volterran ms.

[The head of St. Octavian, honorably kept in the cathedral, is surveyed on the 12th of December 1647:] On the XII day ^b of December MDCXLVII, in the presence of the above-written lord provicar, and of D. Ludovico de Minucci, D. Orazio de Maffei, and of me the undersigned notary and others in the sacristy of the greater church, when they were together present, coming together, they entreated D. Bonamico de Bonamici, archpriest of that same church of Volterra, and D. Bartolomeo Bibonio, canon, and also D. Alessandro de Fei, leader of the soldiery, and D. Giulio de Maffei, all patricians of Volterra, and at present elected conservators of the sacristy, that they would show, to be recognized and described, the more notable relics which were kept under their custody. Therefore the aforesaid most pious conservators, assenting to so religious a petition, ordered the priest Paolo de Cortinovi, one of the sacristans, to open the tabernacle of the relics. Now the tabernacle is set in the middle of the sacristy like an altar, made of walnut boards, skillfully carved with gilded figures, barred with two locks, which are opened by two different keys; of which the one is kept by D. Bartolomeo as ecclesiastical conservator, the other by D. Alessandro as lay conservator. When it had been opened with all those conservators present, and the sacristan had let down a silken curtain of scarlet color, he displayed the head of St. Victor the martyr enclosed in silver ^c… Afterwards the priest Michele Leonio, another of the sacristans, brought out from the sacred shelf one silver image of St. Octavian ^d…

[2] With all present, therefore, the sacred bones were drawn out from the silver head, his bones are found displaced from their joints. wrapped in white silk, all of which we most clearly perceived to be the bones of the whole head of the holy Patron; although the head was not, as of old, entire, since the joinings of the bones did not cleave to one another, being displaced and dislodged on account of the insolence of the soldiers in the last wars. For in the year MCDLXXII, in which the men of Volterra, laboring under civil discord arising from the ill-omened alum mines then first discovered, stirred up against themselves the arms of the Florentine republic, which under the auspices and leadership of count Federico da Montefeltro, lord of Urbino, came to besiege and storm our city. But that so precious a treasure of the divine Octavian might be preserved unharmed and safe, the venerable head of the Old Man, together with the mitres given by Calixtus II and much notable furniture, was laid up in the tomb of the canons, set in the cathedral.

[3] [A sacrilegious man, who had snatched the sacred vessel with the Body of Christ, being punished with blindness,] But when many of the chief men of the city had gone over from the city to the Florentine camp, and the citizens of the opposing party, themselves also disagreeing, had stood fast in the city, bargaining for their forces, their honor, and their life, they handed themselves and the city into the victor's power: but the soldiers, both those summoned for pay by the men of Volterra and those let within the walls by the Florentine victor, the covenant being broken, plunder and lay waste the houses and their churches. Some of whom, bursting into the greater church, and the doors, which had been closed to check their assault, being broken open, when they had found nothing precious in the sacristy, one of them with monstrous daring, and driven by blind greed, made for the tabernacle in which the Body of Christ is kept; which with sacrilegious hand he broke open, meaning to carry off the pyx. But God, the avenger of his own godhead, lest the soldier should depart unpunished from so great a crime, immediately caused the doors of that church, thrown down by the violence of the plunderers, by a wondrous prodigy to be shut again as of themselves: and the wicked man was deprived of the sight of both eyes, who, like one thunderstruck and stupefied, was borne running hither and thither.

[4] [his companions restore the Saint's head which they had taken: while he flings the sacred Host against the wall, the earth is shaken:] Seeing which, his companions, who at that same moment had drawn out the head of the divine Octavian from the opened tomb, struck with fear, cast back the silver face into the same vault, admonishing him to carry back the sacred vessel, in which was the angelic Bread, into the tabernacle. But the sacrilegious man, made none the better, mad with fury and carried on by unbridled rage, with a bold effort flung the vessel against the walls of the church, which, being shattered , fell in pieces: but the Host, although dashed out, remained whole and untouched; when suddenly the whole city is shaken by a vast earthquake: whereby it came about that the soldiers' fury the more quickly subsided: of which mention is made by Aldo Aldi, a writer of Florentine histories of that time, bk. IV, and by Pietro Francesco Rofia, then chancellor of the commune of Volterra, in his description of that same war ^e.

[5] The sacred image suffered a greater loss in the year MDXXX, [mocking St. Octavian with blasphemous words, he is smitten with a foul ulcer, of which a little after he miserably dies.] when until the said time the venerable skull, on the authority of Giovio, bk. XXVIII of the Histories, was offered to the people to be kissed. But when Francesco Ferruccio had brought Volterra ^f again into the power of the Florentines, and when he had taken care that not only the silver frontals of the altars, the shelves, chalices, and candlesticks of the sacristy in the cathedral should be melted down, but had also exposed for sale in the public marketplace to the greed of bidders the very * head and image of the divine Octavian: which was done in so great contempt of the Saint that it is manifestly clear from the said Histories of Paolo Giovio ^g that the sacred head and skull were at that time broken. But so great a crime, God being the avenger, was punished according to the severity of the heavenly Godhead. For indeed Leonardo Tebaldo, nephew of Bartolo ^h, commissary for the Florentine army, who a little before, running riot in overthrowing the houses of Volterra, had poured out his hatred and anger in rapine and slaughter, seized the long and hoary beard of the holy Old Man, mocking joyfully: How much money, O bearded old man, shall I make for myself out of your image! But suddenly on his body a carbuncle ⁱ, like a pestilent ulcer, swelled up, so that, when with atrocious pain and intolerable stench it had infected his right side, within the space of one day and night he miserably ended his life. All this appears clearly in the Diaries of those times, and also in the Life of SS. Justus and Clement written by D. Agostino Fortunio ^k, ch. XXV, and translated by Frosino Lapini, and published at Florence in the year MDLXVIII, p. LXX.

[6] The solemn feast of this Saint is celebrated with the utmost devotion by the men of Volterra on the fourth of the Nones of September, [his birthday is commemorated on the 2nd of September, formerly with an Octave; his translation on the 6th feria before Palm Sunday.] when, dying on earth, he is born in heaven. His head is carried in votive procession through the city, with the clergy, magistrates, and the whole people following: nay, in more ancient centuries the feast day of this Saint was kept with an Octave by the clerics, as saint Hugh in the Rites of the church of Volterra ^l written by him in the year of our salvation MCLXI testifies, saying: "It is to be noted that for the reverence of so great a Confessor, from the first day to the octave, the church of Volterra, in which he rests with his body, makes nine Lessons for him; and it makes at Mass the Glory to God in the highest and the Creed; and this because he was as it were an apostle and a defender in the city of Volterra." The translation of this same Saint too is celebrated on the Friday before Palm Sunday: on which day a vast multitude of people flows together to visit this Saint's church beyond the river Era ^m.

[7] It has been observed by a most ancient usage, and found by experience itself, Volterra has experienced the help of its Patron in various needs. that the people of Volterra, while the sacred head was carried round through the public streets, obtained from God at a seasonable time by Octavian's prayers fruitful rain or clear weather: nay, if anyone was pressed by anguish of mind, fleeing to the Saint's help he calmly shook off the sorrow of his heart. A teacher of this truth is the church of Volterra in the ninth lesson of this Saint's Office, and in his Life, translated from Latin into the vernacular tongue, Frosino, ch. XXV, in the book printed at Florence in the year MDLXVIII, p. LXIX: and Razzi in the Life of the Etruscan Saints adds at p. XXVII * that these benefits come to us from God through Octavian's merits. Whose image, being closed and, with molten tin poured outside through the little cracks, sealed with seals, the sacristan reverently carried back to its own place.

[8] Thence we behold a part of the elm in which until his death he lay hidden, Part of the elm in which he lived is inspected, and of the staff he used. and where, on the testimony of Lipomano, bk. III on the Life of the Saints, he was deemed worthy of the sight of three angels and of the King of heaven himself ⁿ. In a gilded ivory chest we noted a fragment of the staff on which the divine Old Man used to lean, with a bone handle in the manner of a prop, with leaden rings. Concerning all the bones the church of Volterra in the VII lesson of his Office, Razzi as above at p. CXXVI, and D. Agostino in ch. XXV on the Life of SS. Justus and Clement make the plainest mention. And all this I have diligently and faithfully taken and noted by the command of the aforesaid Lords. Which little chest was afterwards restored to the sacred storeroom ^o…

[9] [SS. Justus, Clement, and Octavian are seen defending Volterra when it was on the point of being taken by the enemy.] Afterwards the heads down to the breast of SS. Justus and Clement, skillfully carved in silver, are set forth to be seen [p]… In the year MDXXX, as Giovio and Ammirato [q] have left written, when the marquis del Vasto, assailing Volterra with fierce effort, had striven to burst into the city through the gate of Saint Angel, and Maramaldo had made an assault upon it at the monastery of the divine Linus, and there had thrown down the walls with engines of war, so that, the defenders retreating, the place was laid bare; and Francesco Ferruccio, commander of horse and foot, wounded and terrified, had withdrawn into the citadel: then the nuns of the divine Linus, soon to be the prey of the raging victor, fled to the help of their holy patrons Justus and Clement and Octavian: who suddenly with a cohort of angels were present to the praying virgins: and, victory being taken from the enemies and the boldness of the soldiers checked, the virgins, fearing for themselves, began to hope for certain safety. The enemies, beaten back from the walls, are compelled to retire; the ruin of the walls is defended by the Saints' power, until Giovanni Broccardo, a patrician of Volterra, coming up with many chief citizens, repaired the ruined walls. Whence not only did the nuns assert that they had seen the holy Patrons fighting with a vast army of the heavenly court and standing for them; but the soldiers themselves also, driven from the wall and seized with fear, bore witness. But especially Amico Arsula, leader of the soldiers, when he had returned into the city with Ferruccio to defend the walls from the enemies, greatly marveling, confirmed that with his own eyes he had beheld an infinite number of unknown warriors fighting for the safety of the city, among whom three especially, Captains formidable in valor, venerable in the hoariness of their age; and that these were the aforesaid Saints, who had suddenly flowed down from heaven to take away the wretched fall of the city, was doubted by no one [r]…

[10] [The city, freed from the plague by the Saint's merits, adorned his chapel and altar in the year 1522 with a notable chest,] Thence we came to the chapel of the divine Octavian. This is set to the left of the high altar in the cathedral, in which upon a marble altar there rises a noble and vast urn of white marble, carved by an illustrious sculptor of wondrous art, erected at public expense in the year MDXXII. On it this inscription is seen, cut in magnificent letters:

TO THE DIVINE OCTAVIAN.

The people of Volterra, freed by his merits

FROM PESTILENCE, IN FULFILLMENT OF A VOW RESTORED IT.

and on the base:

In the year of salvation MDXXII, on the sixth of the Calends of March.

[11] in which the sacred body enclosed is not visited in the year 1647, But since in it rests the body of D. Octavian, who is called by the church of Volterra as it were an apostle and defender, out of reverence the aforesaid lord provicar and the deputies judged that that tomb should not be opened; and the more because in the year MDCXXXI, when the whole city was harassed by a grave pestilence, it had been unclosed, and there were many present there who were eyewitnesses, when those same relics were drawn out of that sarcophagus and laid up again in it. Which witnesses made the undersigned attestation and testimony in writing; which was seen by me the notary and by the undersigned witnesses to be subscribed and confirmed by the same persons named below with their own hands.

[12] On the XXIX day of December MDCXLVII. We all the undersigned bear witness and attest [because, as four witnesses who had been present testify in writing, it had been recognized in the year 1631;] how in the year of the Lord MDCXXXI, on the XVI day of August, between the first and second hour of the night, when the city of Volterra was laboring under a pestilent plague, it was provided by public decree of the clergy and the community that recourse should be had to the prayers of the divine Octavian the confessor, protector of this city; and, with the assent and in the presence of the most illustrious and most reverend Bernardo Inghirami the prelate, and the most reverend lords Lepido de Gabrielli of Massa, then vicar general, Francesco Broccardi, canon, Francesco Incontri, canon, deputed by the most reverend chapter, and the most illustrious lords Benedetto Falconcini the provost, the knight Carlo Bava, Inghiramo Inghirami, Giovanni Tani, four of the most illustrious lords Priors, D. the knight Paolo Incontri, the lord knight Francesco Falconcini, the knight Lino de Lisci, the knight Camillo de Leoneri, and very many others, approach was made to the sarcophagus where the body of the said divine Octavian is kept; and pious prayers being poured out to God, by the command of the aforesaid most illustrious prelate the stone being lifted off by the masons, in a walnut casket * appeared the most holy bones of the greater part of the said Saint's body (for the head is kept in a silver case): and within was a parchment, and also on leaden plates the record of the recognition of the aforesaid body, made by the most reverend D. Luca Giovannini, formerly bishop of Anagni, a patrician of Volterra, in the year MDXXII, on occasion of a like pestilence, and afterwards laid up again in the said tomb.

[13] Which body, carried in solemn pomp on the second day of September MDCXXXI in procession through the city, [when, being carried about through the city harassed by a grave pestilence, it was laid back in the chest:] and on that same day at the first hour of the night was most diligently closed up in the same sarcophagus, and the record of this act was set beside it, in the presence of the said most illustrious and most reverend lord prelate and of very many others. In faith whereof this, written by another's hand, we have subscribed with our own hand.

I, Francesco Broccardi, canon of the cathedral church, in the word of truth attest that I was present at the said function, in the name as above.

I, Francesco Falconcini, was present, and attest all that is above, and in faith with my own hand

I, Camillo Leoneri, was present, and attest all that is above, and in faith with my own hand

I, Inghiramo Inghirami, was present, and attest all that is above; and in faith with my own hand have subscribed [s].

Which attestation of the truth, in the presence of the witnesses and of me the undersigned notary, called upon in due form, was acknowledged by the aforesaid on oath, by the priests with hand on breast, by the knights with hand on the cross, by the others by touching the Scriptures.

[14] But afterwards by the aforesaid D. the knight Francesco Falconcini, which they testify was not opened until the year 1647, having seen it closed. the lord knight Camillo Leoneri, and D. Inghiramo Inghirami the joinings of that same deposit were recognized and diligently inspected; and they confirmed to me the undersigned notary on oath that they endure and remain in the same manner in which on the 11th day of September MDCXXXI, toward evening, they were cemented and fitted together, and that that vault had never afterwards been opened; which they in agreement can confirm, since they themselves were present on that same day, when the relics of the divine Octavian were again arranged in that same tomb, and were laid up in a chest * made of walnut, with crystals letting through the light, secured with a single key, which is kept in that same urn, a covering of marble being laid over it: which, as they were done, they affirmed to appear most clearly and to be established from an instrument of Michele de Tani drawn up on the same day; on which day also that same urn of the deposit was by Simeone and Giovanni Battista Fortini, stonecutters, cemented together in the manner in which it is now seen, and inserted into its former joinings.

[15] The Saint's miracles described by others. Very many are the miracles which God has wrought by this Saint's intercession; of which many are read in the Life of the saints Justus and Clement described by lord Agostino Fortunio, ch. XXV; especially against sacrilegious men and plunderers of his church; and in ch. XLVII the miracle of the mason who despised to keep the feast of his translation [t]: just as master Pietro, a mason, experienced the same event of a miracle in the year MDCXL on the feast day of the same Saint in the villa of Fugnano. Very many captives too are read to have been divinely freed from the hands of the Turks by Octavian's intercession, whose chains were seen at the Saint's tomb.

ANNOTATA.

p. What is here inserted concerning the life of SS. Justus and Clement is almost common to St. Octavian their companion; nor does it differ as to the matter itself from what I reported from Augustine the Florentine in §3; where I also showed of how suspect credit are the documents from which those things were drawn. Then we are warned that the first lesson, which at Matins concerning the three holy Patrons the clergy of Volterra had been accustomed to read, must be purged of chronological errors. What these are, and how the men of Volterra judged that they should be corrected, was said at the end of §1. Some notices concerning the cult of SS. Justus and Clement being produced, the miracles wrought by both Saints are summarily recounted from Augustine the Florentine and published by Papebroch in vol. 1 of June from p. 441; to which is subjoined another which I have here transcribed, because it is also attributed to St. Octavian.

q. Giovio, praised above, bk. 29, and Scipione Ammirato in bk. 30 of the Florentine Histories ascribe to the constancy and warlike valor of the garrison of Volterra that Vasto and Maramaldo attacked the city in vain: but here it is narrated that its patrons SS. Justus, Clement, and Octavian came to the aid of the besieged with a heavenly army of angels. It will seem strange to some that Ferruccio, by whose order a little before the sacred furniture of the churches was plundered, and the silver image of St. Octavian, in which his head was enclosed, was set up for sale in the marketplace, should have had this same Saint with Justus and Clement and the angels as a helper in defending the city. But if Ferruccio was unworthy of so great a benefit, the prayers of the pious nuns of St. Linus could obtain it, who were the first exposed to the fury of the enemies bursting into the city and to the unbridled license which at that time victorious soldiers commonly used with impunity in cities taken by storm.

r. On the same 12th day of December on which the relics of the Saints hitherto mentioned were visited in the sacristy of the cathedral, those also were recognized which are kept there of St. Marius M. On the 13th, 14th, 16th, 17th, and 19th of December various churches in the city and suburbs were surveyed, and the bones and remains of Saints with which these are adorned were inspected. On the 29th of the same month the lord deputies returned to the sacristy of the cathedral church from which they had begun; and the visitation of the other relics with which it is enriched being finished, they passed to the chapel of St. Octavian, which is in that same cathedral. Concerning our Saint's body honorably laid up there they have taught us what has been taken from the instrument from n. 10.

s. The three last subscriptions are ended with words which I myself added to complete their sense and enclosed in brackets. Leoneri and Inghirami had subscribed in Italian, whose words I have rendered into Latin.

t. Read again the annotation at letter k.

*. which, being shattered

*. of the community

*. that very

*. set forth

*. CXXVII

*. that is, poured in from outside through the little cracks

*. small casket

*. chest