ON THE HOLY MARTYRS OF AQUILEIA, EUPHEMIA AND DOROTHEA AND THECLA AND ERASMA, EUPHEMIA, DOROTHEA, THECLA, ERASMA,
Under Nero.
HISTORICAL COMMENTARY.
Euphemia, martyr of Aquileia (St.) Dorothea, martyr of Aquileia (St.) Thecla, martyr of Aquileia (St.) Erasma, martyr of Aquileia (St.)
BY J. P.
§ I. The cult; the finding of St. Euphemia, which took place at Ravenna — was it of this Saint or of another of the same name?
[1] Aquileia, the ancient city of the Carni, and once their most celebrated metropolis, The cult from the sacred Calendars: but having experienced various fortunes, has given a sad example of the vicissitude of human affairs, since now, reduced almost to a solitude, it constitutes a village set within the present Friulian countryside. But among the ancient ornaments of the city this is not the least, that, just as it was the wrestling-ground of the martyrdom of very many other Athletes, so also it is recorded to have been ennobled by the contest and death of the holy Virgins and Martyrs of this day. Besides Greven, Molanus, Galesinius, Maurolycus, and others who treat of them, the Roman Martyrology commemorates them thus: At Aquileia, the holy virgins and martyrs Euphemia, Dorothea, Thecla, and Erasma, who under Nero, after many torments, were slain by the sword, and were buried by St. Hermagoras. They are announced, however, both there and above by the Martyrologists named, on this day; although in the records of the church of Aquileia, says Baronius in his notes on the Roman Martyrology, which we received in manuscript, we find them treated of on the XIII Kalends of October. The same is observed by Ferrarius in his Catalogue of the Saints of Italy at the III of September, saying that by the church of Aquileia their birthday is celebrated on the XIX of this month: Nevertheless they are treated of at Venice, as he adds, and Euphemia at Ravenna, where her body is, on this day.
[2] In the year 1677 there was printed at Venice a proper Office of these four Saints, A proper Office: with this clause subjoined after it: Our most holy Lord Pope Clement X, at the prayers of the most Eminent Lord Cardinal Chigi, has graciously assented and granted that hereafter the same Office, revised and approved by the sacred Congregation of Rites, in the session held on the XXIII day of November MDCLXXV, to be recited by the Chapter and Clergy of the parochial and collegiate church of St. Euphemia of the city of Venice on the III of September on the feast of the holy titular virgins and martyrs Euphemia, Dorothea, Thecla, and Erasma, may also be recited in the other parochial and regular churches of both sexes of the same city. On this VI day of May MDCLXXVI. V. Cardinal Carpineus. In place ✠ of the seal. Bernardinus Casalius, secretary of the sacred Congregation of Rites.
[3] Concerning the most ancient cult of St. Euphemia among the people of Ravenna, Hieronymus Rubeus testifies as follows, in bk. 1 of his History of the Ravennates, from p. 30: St. Euphemia of this day, as is reported, her body Apollinaris, having tarried some days at Ravenna, and both by teaching and by acting making the Gospel of Christ more and more widely known day by day, dedicated to St. Euphemia the house of a tribune by the river Aries, which he had long since consecrated as a church. For returning from exile, and passing through Aquileia, when he had visited Hermachoras, bishop of that city, a disciple of St. Mark the Evangelist, and had found him keeping most solemnly the feast-day of Euphemia, who a little before had been called in that same place, with her sister and brothers, by martyrdom to the rewards of the heavenly life, and had dedicated to her name the paternal house of Euphemia, consecrated; Apollinaris, having obtained that holy body from Hermachoras, returned to Ravenna, and consecrated to the name of Euphemia the church already raised by him, as we have recounted, and there placed the holy body.
[4] But that place was said to be outside the city, because on that side the city was by no means surrounded with walls. brought to Ravenna, where her church also is; And so from this Euphemia, whose feast-day is kept on the third of the Nones of September, the church was named — not from her who in the time of Diocletian, many years later, was killed for Christ at Chalcedon; although, led by an error, the men set over this church celebrate this Chalcedonian one, as the better known, on the XVI Kalends of October, because after the council of Chalcedon, at the urging of the fathers of that synod with Leo the First, Supreme Pontiff, she was inscribed in the Roman Calendar. The dedication of this most ancient church is solemnly kept on the Kalends of May. Some, however, thought that, when St. Apollinaris determined to establish a place of baptism, lest he should any longer be compelled to baptize in an uncertain seat, he prayed God with his people that he would show a fit and suitable place, and that suddenly a ram was seen, which both designated the place and gave a name to the place, and also to the neighboring river.
[5] but it is not sufficiently established that she is the Saint of this day. There was also another little shrine of St. Euphemia by the sea, or rather a portico, far different from this church. Rubeus here relates matters belonging to the first century of Christ; which are less easily believed without a testimony suited to so great an antiquity. Further, of St. Apollinaris, bishop of Ravenna and martyr, I have treated on the XXIII of July; of St. Hermagoras, the prelate of the Aquileians, at the XII day of the same month. But when Rubeus writes that the feast-day of Euphemia the martyr was celebrated by St. Hermagoras together with her sister and brothers, he casts upon me a suspicion whether this Euphemia, of whom he treats, is the one of this day, or rather another of the same name: for to the Saint of this day three other Martyrs are joined; no brother.
[6] Even if we are also not sufficiently persuaded, Besides this, the things which are related in the finding of the relics of SS. Euphemia and Agatha, virgins and martyrs, which took place among the people of Ravenna in the church of St. Euphemia, are also of little strength for proving Rubeus's opinion. The finder of these Saints, Alexander Roccardinus, rector of the same church, described what was done, from whose Italian copy it will suffice to take a taste of the following. He writes therefore in it that the body of St. Euphemia, virgin and martyr of Aquileia, whose feast-day is celebrated on the III of September, rests under the high altar in the parish church of Ravenna dedicated under her name and consecrated, as is added, [d] by St. Apollinaris, and that a few months before it had been found there by himself, namely on the XXX day of January 1686, sacred to St. Martina, V. & M., occasion being offered by the building there of the tribuna, as they call it, which by reason of its age was becoming thereafter too dark, and less fit for ecclesiastical functions. It was of round shape, with a low vault, which, resting on the wall serving as the table of the altar, about two feet distant from the circular wall, seemed by lapse of time able to crush the altar itself. The rector therefore, moved by I know not what impulse, whether of forestalling that damage, or by the divine inspiration which he had, on that occasion of seeking the Saint's body, impatient of further delay, began at the onset of winter the work which he was contemplating, caring nothing that in winter it would go forward more slowly. And, behold, on the first day the Lord God willed to console him: for while before all else the altar was being broken up, there appeared a chest of Greek marble, about five palms long, which, because it was not marked on the outside with an inscription, mingled fear with his eagerness as to whether it were the sacred pledge so greatly desired.
[7] that she is the one of the same name who was found in the year 1686 But the most illustrious Lord archbishop Fabius Guinisi, being informed, betook himself in the evening to the church, in order to determine what should be done in this matter: and, after he had seen so remarkable a monument surviving from antiquity, brought to Ravenna, as it were, about one thousand six hundred and twenty-seven years before by St. Apollinaris, as it is said may be seen from Roscius and Fabrius, he ordered it to be secured with a seal, and to be placed in a remote place, which was the sacristy of a certain oratory of the laity in the same church, under the invocation of the Blessed Virgin, deliver us from the pains of hell: where it was kept by the parish priest until the XII day of the following February, which was a Tuesday, on which the transferred Office of St. Ignatius the martyr was being recited, at about the eighteenth hour, at his own command and in his presence the holy chest was opened, in which two chests were found: one small, of wood on one side, but reduced almost wholly to dust; the other, however, quite large, not of wood, but consisting of a certain mixture, figured on the upper part. In this there was besides a chest which, reduced to fragments, contained within a certain veil with some bones and ashes, and also an inscription on parchment, written in an ancient Roman character, and wrapped in a piece of silk cloth of a nearly white color, whose letters indicated that these were the relics of St. Euphemia, V. & M., and of St. Agatha: and these were held to be of the latter Saint, because they were of smaller quantity. But the relics of the little chest could not be distinguished, because they had been reduced to dust.
[8] Then, after a few things interposed, it is added that the relics were honored by the persons present there, & transferred with solemn rite and after being covered and secured with a seal, were exposed for veneration upon an altar in the same oratory, where many graces were done for those piously disposed toward them throughout the whole month of May, so that, when the new chapel was completed, and the other matters arranged in order, a solemn translation of them might take place. And because the marble chest could not be carried, another chest had to be made of cypress covered on the outside with lead, in which the sacred remains were enclosed on the first day of June, falling on a Saturday, at the twenty-third hour; and on the following Sunday, which was Pentecost, at the middle hour of the night they were carried to the cathedral church with a most solemn rite and retinue, and for the whole of Monday, the third of the said month, they remained exposed there: but at the twenty-third hour their honorable and solemn translation took place, in the presence of the regular and secular clergy, the magistrates and the nobles, who in alternate turns carried the baldachin under which the chest was borne by the parish priests and priests of the city, etc. But when the chest had been carried to the parish church, it was placed upon the altar, and there for eight continuous days was honored with solemn piety. And a crown was set upon this festivity on the Sunday of the Most Holy Trinity by a general communion, a panegyric, etc. This solemnity therefore being brought to its end on the twelfth day, which was likewise a Wednesday, at the twenty-second hour, the chest was replaced by the parish priest in the altar, where it is conveniently viewed through openings wrought for this purpose in a certain marble canopy; above which chest these words are read, set there by the parish priest at the command of the Lord archbishop, which also exist within the chest engraved on a copper plate: The relics of SS. Euphemia and Agatha, VV. & MM., found beneath the high altar, the most illustrious Fabius Guinisi, archbishop and prince, replaced in the same place in the year MDCLXXXVI, in the pontificate of Innocent XI, Supreme Pontiff, Alexander Roccardinus being rector.
[9] Further, he affirms that the graces done by this Saint are continual, at Ravenna, and that there are more which he does not know than those which have come to his notice. This, he says, I know, that a certain good woman at the beginning (and she was perhaps the first who received graces, as she herself confesses) had been deaf in one ear for three years past: who, when she had touched herself with a medal of her rosary which had touched the chest, suddenly recovered her hearing. I know, says the same rector, that two women sick of a malignant fever, after a little powder had been given them from the material which joined the lid of the chest, were restored to health, along with many others to whom it is given: likewise he affirms that he knows that none of them thus far, by God's favor, has died. To these things Roccardinus's account subjoins another woman who, afflicted by an apoplectic malady, and injured in the optic nerves, as the physician reported, had lost her sight, and recovered it so far that she could rise and see as much as sufficed for walking. And another, who had lost almost all her sight from a certain flux, received it back, as she herself said, when she brought her votive offering to the Saint. Finally, the very many other infirmities which have been cured are so numerous, the aforesaid rector of the church relates, that hereafter no account of them can be kept by the parish priest, nor of the votive offerings which are brought to the Saint: but that an authentic document could be drawn up concerning all those things which are here written.
[10] [that she is the same as the Aquileian; yet we leave the Ravennates in their possession.] And these indeed are the things which I have attempted to excerpt and put together from that account, written in characters so intricate and difficult to read that not seldom I had, as it were, to grope my way in them. Meanwhile, although neither from the narrative just set out, in which it is not determined, in the inscription reported, of which Euphemia that sacred pledge was, nor from the earlier history in Rubeus, does it seem certainly established that that Euphemia is the Aquileian; nevertheless let the possession of the Ravennates prevail for the holy Aquileian Martyr: even though in the Acts of St. Hermagoras with us at the XII day of July I find nothing by which the foregoing could be proved, no more than those things which were said before concerning the body of St. Euphemia obtained from Hermagoras through St. Apollinaris, and the sacred building consecrated at Ravenna under the name of the same Saint. On the XXIII day of July, however, where I treated of St. Apollinaris, in the shorter Life of him, composed by an author of the ninth century, p. 350, mention is made of a basilica of St. Euphemia existing in the time of that Saint, as is there reported: concerning which Hieronymus Fabri writes at greater length in his Sacred memorials of ancient Ravenna, part 1, p. 165.
§ II. The proper Lessons; the Acts.
[ ] The Collect Before the proper Office of St. Euphemia and her three companions, which I designated above, this COLLECT is placed: Grant to us, merciful God, at the intercession of thy holy virgins and martyrs Euphemia, Dorothea, Thecla, and Erasma, an abundance of heavenly grace, that the celebration of their passion may confer the support of the present life and of the eternal. Through our Lord. Then follow three proper lessons.
[12] & the proper Lesson IV. Euphemia, Dorothea, Thecla, and Erasma, virgins of Aquileia, nobly born, of whom the first two were daughters of Valentius, a man addicted to idolatry; but the latter two of Valentinian, his brother, who professed the name of Christ, by whose zeal they were all instructed in the Christian faith. But on a certain day, when they were suppliantly entreating that they might be washed in the lustral waters of the river Natiso, out of desire for Baptism, and it so stood for a long while, until, at that same hour, Valentinian coming, and the blessed bishop Hermachoras, they are straightway baptized, and as virgins are consecrated to God. When meanwhile Valentius had destined Euphemia and Dorothea to be married, they reject earthly nuptials, being dedicated to a heavenly Spouse. Their father, hearing this, in a frenzy seizes a sword and attacks them both; but they, slipping from the hands of their raging father, take refuge with their uncle Valentinian, who hid them with his own daughters in the recesses of his house. But being detected by the treachery of a slave, who at once, seized by a demon, cast himself headlong into the river Natiso, they were caught at prayer by Valentius himself in pursuit, and are handed over to Servastus, the governor, to be punished for the Christian name.*
[13] proper Lesson V. When the governor saw that the Virgins brought before him could not be drawn to apostasy by blandishments, he commands first that they be stripped and beaten with scourges, then hung with the body inverted, and their heads pounded with mallets until the blood should flow copiously from their nostrils; but, finding them stronger than all torments, he left them to be consigned to prison. The next morning, because they were seen to be unharmed by their wounds, Servastus exhorts them to sacrifice to the gods for the benefit received, to whose kindness he urged that they owed their safety: but they confess and preach Jesus alone, the Son of God, the heavenly physician. Meanwhile the governor orders them to be hung on the rack, their sides to be burned with torches, and at last their breasts to be cruelly cut off, which, thrown out to be devoured by dogs, are honored by them with a singular guardianship. Again therefore they are shut up in prison, and on the next day are led about naked through the city; but, at the prayer of holy Euphemia, an angel of the Lord clothed each of them over with a white robe, and restored them to their former soundness, and even conferred a new comeliness, since on their bodies not even traces of the blows appeared, and their faces shone like the sun.
[14] Lesson VI. The governor, in no way moved by such prodigies and by the Virgins' constancy, for the city of Venice. when he heard them mocking the empty images of the gods, ordered them to be beheaded; which impious sentence Valentius himself offered to carry out upon his daughters and nieces. He went therefore to a very high tower, where he had for some time in the past kept his daughters of surpassing beauty, and there with his own hands cut off the heads of them all, and cast them into the Natiso flowing by: yet he felt the divine vengeance avenging so monstrous a crime, the tower being straightway shaken by a huge earthquake, and fire falling from heaven, which burned up Valentius and his companions, and the tower itself from its foundations. But when by night Valentinian with St. Hermachoras went down near the river to search for the bodies and heads of the blessed Virgins, behold, a little boat appeared laden with the sacred pledges, which, brought by two youths of huge aspect and brightness who were guiding the boat, was offered to the holy prelate, and by him, with a religious retinue of clergy, they were laid in an honorable tomb in the church consecrated in the house of that same Valentinian.
[15] Although those lessons, revised and approved by the sacred Congregation of Rites, The Acts are more tolerable than certain more prolix Acts, they nevertheless record some things less suited to the reader's full assent, because the narrative of those same Acts does not everywhere appear to us sincere. Here are a few specimens for you. Our transcript, which is noted as having been copied from Peter Calo, p. 3, f. 182, of which author I have said more at the XII day of July, p. 251, reports this: And when according to custom Euphemia and Dorothea were sought in marriage from their father by the citizens, the father was unwilling to give them to husbands, because they were little girls, and he loved them greatly; but he ordered a lofty tower to be made beside the river Natissa on the side of his house, in which he directed that there should be no more than two windows: where he wished his daughters, on account of their exceeding beauty, to dwell in a more elevated place. But on a certain day, when the father had gone to the city of Trieste, his daughters Euphemia and Dorothea came to the master-builders who were building the tower, and said to them: We ask you, excellent masters, to tell us what this building is meant to be which our father is having constructed. And they said to them: It is to be your dwelling. And they said: If our dwelling-place is to be in that spot, make a third window, larger than the others. And they did as those had directed.
[16] of correction But the river Natissa flowed through the middle of the tower through curved arches: and there the Virgins were accustomed to wash themselves. And when on a certain day they had come there to wash themselves, they prostrated themselves together on the ground, to entreat the Lord. Then Bl. Euphemia, raising her hands on high, prayed, saying, etc. Another copy, which we have in Ms. from the Records of the church of Aquileia, from volume H fol. 315, touches these things more briefly, which the most illustrious Peter de Natalibus also did, bk. 8 ch. 29, and likewise Ferrarius in his Catalogue of the Saints of Italy on this day; but Fabri, most briefly of all these, p. 166. Those things also seem embellished which in the same copy that I assigned to Peter Calo are thus narrated: Then the governor in anger ordered their breasts to be cut off: and while they were being cut away, they sang psalms, saying: Cast us not away from thy face, and take not thy holy spirit from us. But when their breasts had been cut off, he ordered them to be thrown out before the dogs. Then, coming by night, Bl. Valencianus, in the place where their breasts had been thrown, found them lying on the ground and shining like roses: and he took them, and gave them to St. Hermachoras the bishop.*
[17] in need. Similar things are indicated in our Ms. from the Records of the church of Aquileia, and in Peter de Natalibus. More credible is that narrative above in the proper lessons, and in Ferrarius, who has it thus: Their breasts, monstrously cut off at the governor's command, are thrown to the dogs: which, however, they did not dare to touch. Fabri also added no episode to this fact. Other things of insufficiently approved credit occur in the history of the martyrdom of the Saints of this day, which, since it is of slight or rather of no authority, being composed by an author unknown to us and of uncertain date, are not believed with the same readiness with which they are narrated, especially at so great an antiquity as the first century of the common era, in which the martyrdom is narrated to have occurred. Nor does that Passion seem good of which we have a transcript from the monastery of Melk of the Order of St. Benedict in Austria, with this opening: In the reign of Nero in the city of Rome, and while Sebastus the governor resided in the city of Aquileia, there was a certain man in that same city, Valencius by name, exceedingly rich, but persevering in error, having two most beautiful daughters etc. But the things which are reported through the course of that same Passion I do not correct one by one. The Martyrs of this day, however, I have placed above under Nero with the Roman Martyrology.
Annotataread idololatriæ*.
perhaps aqua*.
otherwise Sebasto*.
Valentinianus*.