The Passion of the Holy Martyrs Saints John and Paul, as recounted in the pre-Tridentine Breviary according to the Use of the Roman Curia.
At Rome, (the passion) of John and Paul, brothers… when the Caesar Julian was taken by sacrilegious lust for money, he sought to color his greed by the witness of the Gospel. For as he took from the Christians their goods and properties, he would say, “Your Christ says in the Gospel, ‘Who renounceth not all that he possesseth cannot be my disciple.’ ” Now it came to his notice that Paul and John were helping the crowds of Christians by means of the riches which the virgin Constantia (the daughter of Constantine, whom John and Paul had formerly served) had left to them. And he sent a man to see them, and say that they must adhere to him. But they answered … “Because of your iniquity we have desisted from greeting you, and withdrawn ourselves entirely from all association with your rule. For we are not false, but true Christians. … We do not do you this injury, that we prefer any sort of human person before you. We prefer to you the Lord, who made the heaven and earth, the sea and all things that are in them.” (The saints also declare their refusal to return to the court, where they had formerly served Constantine, and greet the emperor.) Julian said to them, “I give you a pause of ten days. When they have passed, if you come to me willingly, I will hold you as my friends; if you do not come, I will punish you as public enemies.”
Despite the great antiquity of the cultus of Ss John and Paul, and the presence of their names in the Roman Canon, they are rarely represented in art. These paintings decorate the place within their house where they were originally buried; other martyrs whose connection to them is not altogether clear, Ss Crispus, Crispinian and Benedicta, are represented alongside them. The relics have long since been moved into the altar of the church dedicated to them, which was built on top of the house.
Then the holy men John and Paul, calling the Christians to themselves, gave orders concerning all the things which they could leave behind, and for the whole of the ten days busied themselves with almsgiving day and night. But on the eleventh day they were confined within their house. (A military officer named Terentian is then sent to their house and says to them) “Our lord Julian has sent a little golden statue of Jove to you, that you may adore it and burn incense. But if you do not do this, you will both be struck with my sword. … ” John and Paul said, “If Julian is your lord, have peace with him. We have no other Lord, but the One God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, whom he (i.e. Julian the Apostate) did not fear to deny. And because he was once cast away from the face of God, he wishes others to come down with him to destruction.” (Terentian has them decapitated and buried in their house.)
The exterior of the church of Ss John and Paul, which was completely rebuilt in the 12th century.
Julian was at once slain in the war with Persia, and when Jovinian had become the most Christian emperor, the churches were opened, and the Christian religion began to rejoice. (Following this, many possessed persons are healed in the house of Saints John and Paul, including the son of Terentian, who himself converts to Christianity, and writes the passion of the Holy Martyrs.)
A later and apocryphal tradition says that Julian the Apostate was killed by a Christian soldier in his army named Mercurius, (who is honored in the East as a Saint), as depicted here in a Coptic icon. (image from wikipedia.) The true historical date of Julian’s death is the same as the feast of Ss John and Paul, June 26th.
R. Hæc est vera fratérnitas, quæ numquam pótuit violári certámine: qui effúso sánguine secúti sunt Dóminum: * Contemnentes aulam regiam, pervenérunt ad regna caelestia. V. Ecce quam bonum et quam jucundum habitáre fratres in unum. Contemnentes. Gloria Patri. Contemnentes.
R. This is the true brotherhood, which could never be injured in the struggle; who by shedding their blood, followed the Lord. * Disdaining the palace of the king, they came to the heavenly kingdom. V. Behold how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell in unity. Disdaining. Glory be to the Father. Disdaining.
In the Breviary of St Pius V and its predecessors, this responsory is said on the feasts of Several Martyrs who are also brothers. The devotion to John and Paul is one of the oldest in the city of Rome, and the responsory was almost certainly originally written for their feast day.
Today is the feast day of Ss Primus and Felician, who were martyred around the year 297. The traditional account of their passion is not regarded as historically reliable, but there is no doubt of the fact of their martyrdom, or of the antiquity of devotion to them. They are said to have been brothers of the Roman patrician class who devoted themselves to works of charity; Primus was quite elderly when they were arrested for the practice of the Christian Faith. The judge who tried them separated them from each other, and tried to convince each one to sacrifice to the pagan gods by saying that the other had already done so. Neither of them was deceived, and so they were taken to a place about 12 miles from Rome near the town of Nomentum, and there beheaded. After the end of the persecutions, a church was built over the site of their burial, but this no longer exists.
The martyrdom of Ss Primus and Felician, depicted in a collection of Saints’ lives known as the Weissenau Passionary, 1170-1200. (Public domainimage from Wikimedia Commons.) Felician, looking much like Jesus, is the one in the middle being nailed to a tree trunk, while Primus is lying down with his hands tied, and having molten lead poured into his mouth.
What makes these two Saints particularly noteworthy for us today is that they were the very first whose relics were removed from the site of their original burial and brought into a Roman church. This took place around the year 645, in the reign of Pope Theodore I, and is important for two reasons. The first is that is shows that by the mid-7th century, Christianity had definitively broken many of the ancient Roman taboos about the treatment of the dead. The foremost of these would be the very ancient law which required that they be kept apart from the living in their own places, the “necropolises”, or cities of the dead, outside the walls of the cities of the living. Furthermore, the Romans had many prohibitions of both a legal and religious nature about moving bodies at all from their original burial places, which were now also evidently set aside.
Two Roman mausolea in the necropolis just outside the walls on the southeast side of Pompei. Image from Wikimedia Commons by Diego Delso, (delso.photo, CC BY-SA 4.0).
This in turn would make possible one of the most important shifts in the history of early Christian archeology, the gradual emptying of the catacombs. The Roman prohibition on burying the dead inside the city walls applied to the Christians as much as to anybody else, which is why they made their underground cemeteries, which we now call the catacombs, outside the city. For the first three centuries after the end of the persecution, these cemeteries continued to be used for burials, but also became pilgrimage sites for those who wanted to venerate the tombs of the martyrs buried within them. By the time of Pope Theodore, however, the political instability of Italy made such pilgrimages out into the countryside potentially very dangerous, and part of his motivation for moving the martyrs into Rome itself would certainly have been so that pilgrims could venerate their relics in the relative safety of the city.
Over the next few centuries, therefore, the catacombs would be completely emptied of Saints’ relics, such that by the 10th century, we have a graffito at the entrance of one of them which says, “Turn around, there’s nothing to see here”, meaning that all of the martyrs had been taken away to the churches. When the catacombs were excavated in modern times, only one grave which certainly belongs to a martyr was found still undisturbed, that of St Hyacinth (Sept. 11) in the catacomb of Bassilla on the via Salaria.
Pope Theodore built a chapel for Saints Primus and Felician at the church of St Stephen on the Caelian hill, generally known as “Santo Stefano Rotondo – round St Stephen’s”, the only round church built in Rome in ancient times. Although the entire building has been extensively rebuilt and redecorated since its original construction, a fair portion of the apsidal mosaic of this chapel remains in good condition. At the bottom is a poetic inscription in Latin: Aspicis auratum caelesti culmine tectum, / Astriferumque micans praeclaro lumine vultum. (You look upon a gilded roof with its height in heaven, and a star-bearing face that shines with brilliant light. Photo by Fr Lawrence Lew, O.P.)
Today is the feast of one of the most venerated martyrs of the last and greatest of the ancient Roman persecutions, the deacon St Vincent of Saragossa. Towards the end of the 3rd century, he was ordained and appointed as a preacher and instructor of the faithful by the bishop of that city, St Valerius, and together they were arrested by the governor Dacian when the edict of persecution was issued by the Emperors Diocletian and Maximian in the year 303. The poet Prudentius, who was also from Spain, and is one of the principal sources for his life, tells us that the local governor Dacian killed a group of eighteen martyrs at Saragossa, then soon after arrested Valerius and Vincent, who were transferred to Valencia, and left for a long time in prison, starved and tortured.
St Vincent, by the Spanish painter Tomás Giner, 1462-6; from the archdeacon’s chapel of the cathedral of Saragossa, now in the Prado Museum in Madrid. His millstone (explained below) is seen on the left, behind the kneeing donor, on the right, his rack; note that the Roman persecutor Dacian is represented as a Moor in this painting of late Reconquista Spain. (Public domain image from Wikimedia.)
The point of the persecutions was to get Christians to offer sacrifice to the statue of the emperor, and it was particularly important for the Romans that the clergy should be induced to do this, so as to break down the resistance of the ordinary faithful. Dacian therefore tried by various threats and promises to bend the prisoners to his will, but Valerius suffered from a speech impediment and simply made no answer. St Vincent therefore said to him, “Father, if you order me, I will speak,” to which Valerius replied, “Son, as I committed to you the dispensation of the word of God, so I now charge you to answer in vindication of the faith which we defend.”
Vincent then said to Dacian that they were ready to suffer everything for the true God, and that his threats and promises meant nothing to them. In the days of St Augustine, the acts of the martyrs were often read in church as part of the liturgy, and he says in one of his sermons that Vincent suffered in ways that no man could bear in a merely natural way, while remaining perfectly calm and patient. Completely defeated by the martyr’s constancy, the governor relented, and allowed the faithful to visit him in prison; they dressed his many wounds, and laid him on a bed at which he died. He is sometimes depicted with a raven, in reference to the story that Dacian ordered his body to be left in a field, but a raven defended it from other animals until the Christians could collect it. More commonly, he is seen with a millstone tied to his neck, since Dacian then tried to get rid of his body by throwing it into the sea thus weighed down, but it miraculously returned to the shore anyway.
Many of the details of both St Vincent’s passion and various translations of his relics are regarded as unreliable by hagiographical scholars, but there can be no doubt that devotion to him spread through the Church very early on. St Augustine preached six sermons on his feast day, he appears in some of the earliest liturgical books of the Roman Rite, and is named in the canon of the Ambrosian Mass.
In Rome, his feast day was long joined to that of another martyr, a Persian soldier who was converted to Christianity on seeing the relics of the True Cross when they were taken into his country by the Emperor Chosroes, after the sack of Jerusalem in 614 AD. At his baptism he changed his name from Magundat to Anastasius, in honor of the Resurrection. There were several ferocious persecutions against the Christians in Persia, and Anastasius died as a martyr in the midst of torments as horrible as those of St Vincent. His body was removed first to the Holy Land, then to Constantinople, and finally, in the iconoclast era, when many of the iconodules fled West, to Rome, and placed in a church dedicated to St Vincent. This is the reason for the joint feast of two otherwise unrelated martyrs, but St Anastasius is not found on non-Roman calendars in the Middle Ages. As noted in the Martyrology, one of the arguments adduced in favor of the veneration of sacred pictures at the Second Council of Nicea was that many miracles of healing and exorcism took place at this church in the presence of an image of him and the relic of his head.
The façade of Ss Vincent and Anastasius, added by Matteo Longhi (1644-50) at the behest of Julius Cardinal Mazarin, the successor of Cardinal Richelieu as Prime Minister of King Louis XIV of France. (Photo from Wikimedia by Mister No, CC BY 3.0)
The feast of St Agnes is one of the oldest and most universal among those of the ancient martyrs; it is kept on this day in the Roman, Byzantine and Ambrosian Rites, and several of the Fathers preached or wrote about her, including Ss Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustine. The importance of her cultus is also demonstrated by the presence of her name in the canon of the Roman Mass, and the fact that her church in Rome on the via Nomentana was one of the first six built by the Emperor Constantine in the earliest years of the peace of the Church. Earlier today, His Holiness Pope Leo blessed two lambs, as has customarily been done for centuries on the feast of St Agnes. The wool shorn from them is later used to make the pallia which the pope gives each year to those who have newly been made archbishops.
One of the works in which St Augustine mentions her is a sermon preached on her feast day in the year 396; however, it is titled “On the feast of Ss Fructuosus the bishop, and the deacons Augurius and Eulogius,” with whom it is principally concerned, who were martyred on the same day as Agnes, but roughly forty-five years earlier, at Tarragona in Spain, during the persecution of Valerian and Gallienus. Spanish liturgical books of the Roman Rite traditionally keep St Agnes on this day, and either transfer or commemorate the martyrs, but in the Mozarabic Rite, the native rite of Spain, they take precedence over Agnes, as a feast which is both older and more proper to the rite. The same is true in Tarragona, where they are honored the principal patron Saints.
The original account of their martyrdom survives, and is one of a fairly small number of such documents which are universally recognized to be authentic, even by the most skeptical among scholars of hagiography. These acts contain a record of the trial, such as it was, of Fructuosus and his companions before the Roman governor Emilian, who begins the interrogation.
“You have heard what the emperors have commanded?”
“I do not know what they have commanded, but I am a Christian.”
“They have commanded that the gods be worshipped.”
“I worship one God, who made heaven and earth, the sea and all the things therein.”
“Do you know that there are (other) gods?”
“I do not.”
“You shall know hereafter.”
This last statement was effectively a threat of torture, at which Fructuosus “looked to the Lord and began to pray.” Emilian declared, “Who will be heard, who will be feared, who will be adored, if the gods are not worshipped, and the images of the emperors are not adored?” He then turned to Augurius and said, “Do not listen to the words of Fructuosus”, at which the latter replied, “I worship the almighty God.” Emilian then asked Eulogius, “Do you also worship Fructuosus?”, five words which fully betray a mystified incomprehension of Christianity very typical of the Romans. The answer was, “I do not worship Fructuosus, but the same (God) whom he worships.”
Turning back to Fructuosus, Emilian asked him “Are you a bishop?”, and to the answer “I am”, replied with a single word in Latin, “Fuisti – you were”, a very curt way of saying “You shall soon be dead.” He then gave the order that they be burnt alive.
As the Saints were taken to the local amphitheater, the ruins of which still stand to this day, not only the Christians, but also the pagans expressed their grief, for they also loved Fructuosus. These acts contain an interesting witness to the antiquity of the Church’s discipline of fasting on Wednesdays and Fridays, which is also mentioned in one of the very oldest Christian documents outside the New Testament, the Didache. On his way to the amphitheater, Fructuosus was offered a cup of wine, but he would not drink it, saying that “it was not yet the hour to break the fast”, being only mid-morning. And thus, having kept the “statio” [1] of Wednesday in prison, “he hastened to complete that of Friday with the martyrs and prophets in the paradise which the Lord hath prepared for them that love Him.”
Another episode right before the execution, one of several such known to us, bears witness to the great veneration in which the martyrs were held by the early Christians. A man named Felix came forward, took the bishop’s right hand, and asked him to remember him, the clear implication being that the martyr would certainly stand in God’s presence very shortly, and thus be able to plead for him. To this Fructuosus replied, “I must keep in remembrance the Catholic Church, spread (through the world) from East to West.” He then addressed his flock as follows: “You will not now lack a shepherd, nor will the Lord’s charity and promise fail, either now or in the future; for what you see now (i.e. their execution) is but the weakness of an hour.”
Burning at the stake usually killed more by smoke inhalation than actual burning, and this seems to be the case with these martyrs, since the acts say that the fire loosened the bonds which held them, in such a way that they were able to kneel in prayer before they died, “certain of the resurrection.” The author then reports that “the customary miracles” took place, a standing rebuke to those skeptics who are wont to treat excessive reports of miracles as a sign that the written life of a Saint is not authentic. Two of Emilian’s servants, Babylas and Mygdonius, who were also Christians, as well as his own daughter, saw the heavens open and the Saints ascending with crowns on their heads. Many of the persecutors focused their energies entirely on the clergy, and ignored the laity, and Emilian seems to have been such a one, since the two Christian servants were able to invite him to “come and see those whom you have condemned today, how they are restored to heaven and their hope”, but Emilian “was not worthy to see them.” The faithful then collected the relics, in accordance with the custom also attested in many other ancient accounts of martyrdoms.
In St Augustine’s time, the acts of the Martyrs were often read at Mass on Saints’ days, if they were available, and the sermon mentioned above is one of several that refers to this custom. “When we hear how the martyrs suffered, we rejoice, and glorify God in them. … You heard the persecutors’ interrogation, you heard the answers of those who confessed (Christ), while the passion of the Saints was being read.” Further along, he introduces St Agnes by saying, “Blessed are they whose passion was read. Blessed is Saint Agnes, the day of whose passion is today.” This custom never obtained in the Roman Rite, which had only two readings at the Mass, the Epistle and Gospel; hence the passions of the Saints found their place in the Divine Office instead. In the Ambrosian Rite, on the other hand, which has three readings on Sundays and feasts, the custom is still preserved to this day, even in the post-Conciliar form, by which the life of a Saint (in a fairly succinct version, to be sure) may be read in place of the Old Testament reading on certain feast days.
The cause and manner of the death of these martyrs naturally suggested to the author of their acts a similarity with the three children in the fiery furnace in the book of Daniel; this was a Biblical story near to the heart of every Christian in antiquity, since the Romans’ principal reason for persecuting them was their refusal to worship the statue of the Emperor, just as the three children would not worship the statue of the Babylonian Emperor. He therefore wrote that “they were like Ananiah, Azariah and Misael, in such wise that the divine Trinity was also seen in them, once they were set in the fire of the world, so that the Father was not far from them, and the Son came to help them, and the Holy Spirit walked in the midst of the fire.”
The Mozarabic liturgy makes many references to this idea in its liturgical texts for their feast day, as in this prayer at Matins. (The great veneration in which these Saints were held is also indicated by the fact that Mozarabic Matins normally has three prayers, but on their feast day, twenty-one, of which this is the sixth.) “Ananiah, Azariah, Misael, the three children tested by the fire of Babylon, were a great sign, o Lord, to Thy holy martyrs, to whom their august victory offered an example. In the case of the former, the fire fled, lest they die; in the case of the latter, it was let in, that they might be crowned. With the former, since also the time of the passion was not yet ripe, the fire of punishment could not touch their holy bodies; with the latter, in the acceptable time, when the way to paradise was opened by the death of Christ, it destroyed the bodies that were touched to the fire, once the door of paradise was now opened to the blessed. Therefore, we bless Thee, o God, who delivered the former from the flames, and crowned the latter after the flames; Who also, to deliver the former, didst sprinkle (dew) upon the fires, but allow them to take the latter up (to heaven). Grant us therefore, by the examples and prayers of them all, that we may so be delivered from the fire of carnal vices, that enkindled by the fiery sweetness of Thy words, we may merit to come to Thee in peace.”
The adoration of the statue of Nebuchadnezzar, and the Three Children in the furnace. From a manuscript known as the Saint-Sever Beatus (mid-11th century), an illustrated commentary on the book of the Apocalypse by the Spanish monk St Beatus of Liébana (ca. 730-800). This copy also includes St Jerome’s Commentary on the book of Daniel and a treatise by St Ildephonse of Toledo on the perpetual virginity of Mary. (Bibliothèque nationale de France. Département des Manuscrits. Latin 8878)
In a similar vein, the preface of their Mass (which, like many Mozarabic prefaces, is exceedingly long) ends with the words “Full worthy was it, that a divine voice should mark them, like unto that which marked the Hebrew children, Azariah and his companions, who walked in the furnace of the king of Babylon safe and sound, singing Thy praises with a new song, and in the heavenly office of the Angels cried out and said: Holy, holy, holy…”
Each year since 1990, a cultural association based in Tarragon and named for St Fructuosus has performed a passion play by Andreu Muñoz Melgar in honor of the three martyrs, in conjunction with the schola cantorum of the city’s cathedral. The story sticks very closely to that of the ancient passion, and in 2018, it was staged in the very amphitheater where the actual martyrdom took place, and at the same time of day. Here are links to two videos (not embeddable, for some reason) of the performance of it, the first from 2014 in Catalan, and the second from 2015 in Castilian.
[1] “Statio” meant the keeping of a fast until the mid-afternoon, which would later become the time for the canonical hour of None. This reference from 259AD shows us as an early form of the custom, later developed more fully, by which the Mass on penitential days was celebrated after None, and followed by Vespers, and the breaking of the fast.
From the Breviary according to the use of the Roman Curia, 1529, the continuation of the sermon for the second day in the Octave of All Saints.
It is well-known that at first this day’s glorious solemnity honored the triumphal name of the holy martyrs, for the church whose dedication we recall was first called Saint Mary of the Martyrs, and the feasts of holy martyrs alone were celebrated therein. There are many Saints before those times who passed from this present life without shedding their blood; nevertheless they are honored with the title of martyrdom, because they suffered in some way, namely, by exile, by the loss of their goods, by long imprisonment, or harsh beatings, though at last they died in peace. Therefore, no outward savagery of the wicked was strong enough to disturb the spiritual tranquility of these and all the other holy martyrs, even though their members were tormented with every sort of torture, and to every degree. In these the Lord has given use both a defense and an example, so that we may be helped by the protection of their prayers, and be encouraged by the perseverance of their constant faith to overcome all temptations.
The chapel of St Eusebius in the cathedral of Vercelli, Italy, where he served as bishop from 340-71. Eusebius was one of the very first Western Saints to be venerated as a martyr because of the lengthy exile he suffered, although he did not die by shedding his blood. (Below, a closer view of the reliquary above the main altar.)
Since the earliest times, St Lawrence has been venerated as a patron Saint of the city of Rome, along with Ss Peter and Paul, and his feast day has always been one of the most important in the ecclesiastical year. A remarkable number of Roman churches are dedicated to him, several more, in fact, than are dedicated to either of the Apostolic founders of the Church in the Eternal City. Among them are the Patriarchal Basilica of St Lawrence outside-the-Walls, where he is buried, and three of the most ancient parishes in the historical center of the city: San Lorenzo in Panisperna, (the reputed site of his martyrdom), San Lorenzo in Lucina, and San Lorenzo in Damaso. These four churches are frequently found on the list of station churches from Septuagesima Sunday to Low Sunday, in proximity to stational observances in honor of Ss Peter and Paul. San Lorenzo in Miranda was one of the first major churches to be built in the heart of the ancient city’s political and religious life, the Roman Forum; it sits within the portico of the temple of the divinized Emperor Antoninus Pius and his wife Faustina, on the steps of which the great martyr was said to have been tried and condemned.
The Basilica of Saint Lawrence outside-the-Walls, in an eighteenth century engraving by Giuseppe Vasi.
Two private chapels of the popes are also dedicated to him, San Lorenzo ‘in Palatio’ at the Lateran, and the Niccoline Chapel at the Vatican. The former was built in the mid-8th century, and after various restorations and embellishments, became a papal chapel about three centuries later; rebuilt by Nicholas III (1277-80), it now survives only in part within a building known as the Scala Sancta, across the street from the pope’s cathedral. The chapel’s nickname ‘Sancta Sanctorum – the Holy of Holies’, does not come from its status as a papal chapel, but from the amazing collection of relics formerly kept therein: among them, a piece of the grill on which St Lawrence was roasted alive, and some parts of his body.
In the 330-year period from 1048 to 1378, the popes spent roughly 250 years outside of Rome; after so long a period of neglect and partial abandonment, and two massive fires in the 14th century, most of the vast complex of buildings around the Lateran was in no state to be lived in. The popes therefore took up residence at the Vatican, and have been there ever since. In 1447, Nicholas V built a new chapel within the Vatican, and commissioned the Dominican painter Fra Angelico to paint the walls with stories of the two deacon martyrs, St Stephen and St Lawrence, to whom the chapel is jointly dedicated.
The Martyrdom of Saint Stephen, on the left wall of the Chapel of Nicholas V, by Fra Angelico. The martyrdom of Saint Lawrence is directly beneath it, but the part that shows Lawrence on the grill in the lower right hand corner is ruined.
The association of Ss Stephen and Lawrence, naturally suggested by the parallels between their lives and deaths, figures prominently in art and liturgy in Rome. Both were deacons under the authority of the pope in their respective cities, Stephen in Jerusalem under St Peter, and Lawrence in Rome under St Sixtus II, the most venerated of the early popes martyred after Peter. Both were put in charge of the Church’s charitable activities by the popes whom they served, and both were eloquent preachers of the Christian faith. Both suffered terrible martyrdoms, Stephen by stoning, as recounted in the Acts of the Apostles, while Lawrence was roasted alive.
In the office of St Stephen, the third antiphon of Lauds (partially quoting Psalm 62, with which it is sung), reads “Adhaesit anima mea post te, quia caro mea lapidata est pro te, Deus meus. – My soul hath stuck close to Thee, because my flesh was stoned for Thy sake, my God.” In the office of St Lawrence, this same antiphon is changed to “Adhaesit anima mea post te, quia caro mea igne cremata est pro te, Deus meus. – My soul hath stuck close to Thee, because my flesh was burnt for Thy sake, my God.” The artistic pairing of the two done so beautifully by Fra Angelico is also found twice in the Sancta Sanctorum which the Niccoline Chapel replaced, in the mosaics over the altar and in the frescoes that adorn its walls.
The martyrdom of St Lawrence in the late 13th-century frescoes on the walls of the Sancta Sanctorum. The Emperor Decius appears on the left; the medieval accounts of St. Lawrence usually place his death in the persecution of Decius in 250-51, rather than that of Valerian in 257-58.
On August 3rd, a two-week long cycle of feasts associated with St Lawrence begins with the Finding of St Stephen, a feast of the universal calendar of the Roman Rite until 1960. The body of St Stephen was discovered in the year 415, along with those of Gamaliel, his son Abibas, and Nicodemus, when Gamaliel appeared to Lucian, a priest of Jerusalem, and revealed the place of their collective burial. Relics of Stephen were brought to many places throughout the world; in the final book of The City of God, St Augustine describes a number of miracles that took place when a part of them came to Africa, including the raising from the dead of six people. Another portion of them was brought to Rome in the reign of Pope Pelagius II (579-90), who placed them in the basilica of St Lawrence outside-the-Walls; the Golden Legend tells the story that when the pope went to lay them in Lawrence’s tomb, the Roman martyr moved to one side to make room for his fellow Levite. The early 13th-century porch still has extensive remains of original frescoes of that period, illustrating the history of the two great deacon martyrs; sadly, these were already in poor condition when the church was hit with a bomb during World War II, damaging them further.
The relics of St Stephen being laid to rest in the tomb of St Lawrence, by Lorenzo di Niccolò, ca. 1412.; from the Brooklyn Museum.
On August 6th occurs the feast of St Sixtus II, who was martyred at the catacomb of Callixtus, along with six of the seven deacons of the church of Rome, the seventh being Lawrence. When the edict of persecution was issued by the Emperor Valerian in the year 257, the holy Pope ordered Lawrence to distribute all of the wealth of the church to the poor of the city. Having done so, Lawrence then saw Sixtus being led to martyrdom and, as told by St Ambrose, addressed him thus: “Whither goest thou without thy son, father? Whither, holy priest, dost thou hasten without thy deacon? Never wast thou want to offer sacrifice without thy minister. What then hath displeased thee in me, father? Hast thou found me ignoble? Make proof surely whether thou didst choose a worthy minister. Dost thou deny a share in thy blood to one to whom thou didst entrust the consecration of the Lord’s blood, and a share in the celebration of the sacraments?... Abraham offered his son, Peter sent Stephen before him…” To this Sixtus replied, “I do not leave or abandon thee, son, but greater contests await thee. We, as elder men, receive the way of an easier combat; a more glorious triumph against the tyrant awaiteth thee as a younger man. Soon shalt thou come after, cease weeping; after three days shalt thou follow me, as levite followeth priest.” (These words from the 39th chapter of St. Ambrose’s De Officiis form the basis of several antiphons and responsories in the office of Saint Lawrence.) Sixtus and his deacons were then beheaded by Roman soldiers.
The martyrdom of St. Sixtus and his deacons, from a 14th century manuscript of the lives of the saints.
St Sixtus is named in the traditional canon of the Mass, immediately after the first three successors of St Peter, followed by two contemporary bishops also martyred under Valerian, Pope Cornelius and St Cyprian of Carthage; St Lawrence is then named first among the non-bishops. A Roman station church near the Lateran is named for Sixtus; it was entrusted to Dominican nuns within the lifetime of St Dominic, who died on his feast day. (The church attached to the Dominicans’ Roman University of St Thomas, also called the Angelicum, is dedicated to both Sixtus and Dominic.) After their founder was canonized in 1234, the Order of Preachers kept his feast on the 5th of August, rather than the day of his death, in deference to the much older feast; this remained their custom until the reforms of the later 16th century, when he was moved back a day to make way for Our Lady of the Snows. Likewise, when Pope Callixtus III instituted the feast of the Transfiguration in 1456, assigning it to the sixth of August, many churches simply ignored it because the day was already occupied by St Sixtus.
The Madonna and Child with Ss Sixtus II and Barbara, generally known as “the Sistine Madonna”, by Raphael Sanzio, 1513-14; commissioned for the monastery of San Sisto in Piacenza, which had relics of both Saints.
The ninth of August, the vigil of St Lawrence, was formerly also kept as the feast of St Romanus, which was reduced to a commemoration in the Tridentine reform. He was said to have been a soldier converted to Christ by the preaching of Lawrence, who baptized him while in jail awaiting execution; Romanus was beheaded at the orders of the Emperor the day before Lawrence was killed.
The tenth is the feast of Lawrence himself, the day of his martyrdom by being roasted alive on a grill; the Byzantine tradition, which devoted the sixth of August to the Transfiguration centuries before the Latin church, commemorates Sixtus, his deacons, and Romanus all together along with Lawrence himself on this day. The story of his martyrdom is told thus in the Roman Breviary of 1529. (Valerian appears as an official under the previous persecuting emperor, Decius.)
And Decius said to the blessed Lawrence: Sacrifice to the gods. And he answered, “I offer myself as a sacrifice to God, unto the odor of sweetness, for a contrite spirit is a sacrifice to God.” But the executioners pressed on in adding the coals, and placing them under the grill… . The blessed Lawrence said, “Learn, wretched Valerian, how great is the might of my Lord, for thy coals bring me refreshment, but to thee eternal torment; for he knows that I denied not his holy name when accused, I confessed Christ when asked, I gave thanks while being roasted.” … And all those present began to marvel, since Decius had commanded him to be roasted alive. But with a most comely countenance he said, “I give thee thanks, Lord Jesus Christ, who hast deigned to strengthen me.” And lifting up his eyes to Valerian, he said, “Behold wretched man, thou hast roasted one side; turn me over, and eat.” Then giving thanks to the Lord, he said, “I give thee thanks, Lord Jesus Christ, because I have merited to enter thy gates.” And saying this he gave up his spirit.
Saint Lawrence, in the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia at Ravenna, ca. 450. The armoire on the left contains four books labelled with the names of the four Evangelists, a reference to the custom of keeping liturgical books locked in the sacristy in an era when any book was an expensive rarity. The deacon would process to the sacristy when it was time for the Gospel, receive the book from a porter, and process it out, a custom still found in the traditional Ambrosian liturgy.
The thirteenth of August is the feast of St Hippolytus, an officer of the guards in the prison where St Lawrence was held, and also converted by him to Christianity. In the Breviary of 1529, he is said to have taken the body of Lawrence for burial; reproved for this by the Emperor, and threatened with torture and death, he answered “May I merit to be a likeness of the blessed martyr Lawrence, whom you have dared to name with your polluted mouth.” After torture, he was killed by being torn apart by wild horses. The story is normally dismissed as a fabrication by modern scholars on the grounds that this manner of death, reported by the poet Prudentius, is the same as that of the Greek mythological character Hippolytus, the son of Theseus who was dragged to death by the horses of his chariot. It seems not to have occurred to any of the modern skeptics that the persecutors might have been inspired by his name to choose this manner of killing him in imitation of the mythological story.
It is certainly true, however, that there is much confusion about Hippolytus’ history; when Pope St Damasus I (366-84) placed an epitaph upon his tomb recounting his martyrdom, he stated that he himself “relied on purely oral tradition, which he does not guarantee: ‘Damasus tells these things which he has heard; it is Christ who maketh proof of them.’ ” (Loeb Classical Library, The Poems of Prudentius, p. 304, footnote) Prudentius also attests that he personally was healed of various ailments more than once while praying at Hippolytus’ tomb. In the Communicantes of the traditional Ambrosian canon, Sixtus, Lawrence and Hippolytus are named (in that order) immediately after the twelve Apostles, indicating how great the devotion to them was in the see of Milan in antiquity.
The Saint Hippolytus triptych by Dietric Bouts the Elder, ca. 1470.
Like all of the most important feasts, that of St Lawrence was traditionally celebrated with an octave; the octave day has a proper Mass, like the octave of Ss Peter and Paul, sharing only the Epistle and Gospel with the feast day. The introit of this Mass is taken from Psalm 16, which is also said at Matins of St Lawrence: “Thou hast proved my heart, and visited it by night, thou hast tried me by fire: and iniquity hath not been found in me.” The words “visited (my heart) by night” refer to the Emperor’s threat to torture Lawrence for the length of the night, to which the great Levite answered, “My night hath no darkness, but in it all things shine brightly in the light.”
Saint Praxedes, by Johannes Vermeer, ca. 1655 (The attribution to Vermeer has often been disputed.)
According to her legend, Praxedes was a Roman maiden, the sister of St Pudentiana; when the Emperor Marcus Antoninus was hunting down Christians, she sought them out to relieve them with money, care, comfort and every charitable aid. Some she hid in her house, others she encouraged to keep firm in the faith, and of yet others she buried the bodies; and she allowed those who were in prison or toiling in slavery to lack nothing. At last, being unable any longer to bear the cruelties inflicted on Christians, she prayed to God that, if it were expedient for her to die, she might be released from beholding such sufferings. And so on July 21 she was called to the reward of her goodness in Heaven. Her body was laid by the priest Pastor in the tomb of her father, Pudens, and her sister Pudentiana, which was in the cemetery of Priscilla on the Salarian Way. (From Butler’s Lives of the Saints, revised by Herbert Thurston S.J. and Donald Attwater; 1956)
Saint Praxedes is depicted in art squeezing the blood of the martyrs which she has collected from a sponge into a vessel. In her basilica in Rome, a part of the floor in the central nave is marked as the place where their relics were laid to rest within the building that was once her house.
Especially on this day, let us remember and pray for all persecuted Christians in every part of the world!
The Roman Martyrology notes today as the feast of a group of Saints known as the Martyrs of Gorkum. Their feast has never been on the general calendar, but is celebrated in many places, and by the various religious orders to which they belonged, the Franciscans, who were the majority of the group, the Dominicans, Premonstratensians and Augustinian Canons. They were solemnly canonized in 1867 by Bl. Pius IX, as part of a year-long series of celebrations to commemorate the 18th centenary of the martyrdom of Ss Peter and Paul, then generally held to have taken place in 67 AD.
In 1572, Dutch Calvinists in rebellion against the Spanish Catholic rulers of the Hapsburg Netherlands, as they were then called, seized control of the town of Gorkum. Eleven members of the local Franciscan friary, three secular priests, including the local parish priest, and an Augustianian canon were taken by the soldiers; when a member of the local Dominican community came to administer the Sacraments to them, he was also taken and imprisoned with them. Shortly thereafter, two Premonstratensians and another secular priest were added to their number, a total of nineteen. Over the course of several days, beginning on June 26, the soldiers subjected them to terrible cruelties, partly out of hatred for the Catholic religion, partly in the hopes of getting hold of precious vessels from the church which they believed the religious had hidden. On the morning of July 7th, they were transferred to another town, called Briel, and in the presence of the Calvinist commander, the Baron de la Marck, and several Calvinist ministers, told they would be set free if they would abjure the Catholic doctrine on the Blessed Sacrament, which they refused to do.
The baron then received a letter from the leader of the rebellion, the Prince of Orange known as William the Silent, ordering that they all be released. He agreed to this on the new condition that they publically repudiate the primacy of the Pope, which they also refused to do. On the morning of July 9th, they were taken to an abandoned monastery in the countryside near Briel and hanged from the beams of one of the outbuildings, with the nooses placed in their mouths. Even this incredibly slow and painful death did not satisfy the barbarity of the Calvinists, who also mutilated the bodies, some of them while they were still alive. One of the Franciscans, a Dane named Willehad, was 90 years old; three others were in their seventies. When the bodies had been taken down, their remains were left in a ditch, and not recovered until 1616, during a truce in the Eighty Years’ War between Spain and the Netherlands; they are now kept in the Franciscan church of St Nicholas in Brussels. There is also a pilgrimage church dedicated to them at the place of their martyrdom in Briel.
The Martyrs of Gorkum, by Cesare Fracassini; this painting was made specifically for the canonization ceremony of 1867. One of the traditional customs of the canonization ritual was that images of the Saints were hung within decorative frames from the balconies in the central rotunda of St Peter’s Basilica, but covered with plain pieces of burlap, which were then allowed to drop to the floor, exposing the image for the first time, once the Pope had finished reading the bull of canonization. (Public domainimage from Wikimedia Commons.)
Perhaps the most appalling of Calvin’s many appalling doctrines was that of double predestination, the belief that we are all pre-destined to eternal salvation or damnation. (Calvin also taught that perhaps 100 souls would be saved from among the entire human race, although there was still enough human left in him at least to recognize that this was a “horrible conclusion.”) Inevitably, this drives people to search through their lives for signs that they are among the pre-saved; hence the idea that material prosperity in this life is a sign of pre-election in the next, a doctrine which has, with equal inevitability, now degenerated to truly parodic levels. But, as Catholic apologists immediately noted, this doctrine is pastorally disastrous, since it encourages not just the sinful, but also those who have repented of a sinful life, to see their past or present sins as a sign that they are among the pre-damned, and thus despair of their own correction and salvation. (A friend of mine who grew up in a Calvinist church and is now a Catholic priest once expressed the attitude that results as follows: “If I’m going to hell anyway, I might as well take the champagne flight.”)
Against this, we may adduce as particularly notable witnesses, the first meaning of the Greek word “martyr”, the lives and deaths of two among the company of Gorkum, which demonstrate that the door of conversion is not closed to anyone in this life, not even to the most obdurate sinner.
One of the two Premonstratensians, James Lacops, had formerly renounced both his vows and the Catholic Faith, after being reproved by his superiors for a very irregular life, and declared contumacious. Having been reconciled to the Church, he and St Adrian Jansen were captured in Gorkum when they opened the door of their presbytery to a man claiming that he wished to receive the Last Rites. Although the town was under occupation, and they knew that it might be a trick (as indeed it was), they would not risk letting someone die without the ministrations of a priest, and so they were taken to torture and death. It is, of course, especially appropriate that a son of St Norbert, who was himself rather a lax cleric in his youth (though nowhere near so egregiously) should die for the Catholic teaching on the Blessed Sacrament.
Even more interesting is the case of one of the secular priests, St Andrew Wouters, who was well-known as a womanizer and the father of more than one illegitimate child; despite being in disgrace, he joined the company of the others voluntarily. The Calvinist soldiers mocked him on account of the sins for which he was so notorious, and, in accordance with the logical conclusions of their creed, fully expected such a bad-living priest to apostatize and save his skin. This he did not do, and his last recorded words were, “Fornicator I always was, but heretic I never was; I will go to my death with the others.” As the article about them in the revised Butler’s Lives of the Saints wisely states, “it is a significant warning against judging the character of our neighbor, or pretending to read his heart, that, while a priest of blameless life recanted in a moment of weakness, the two who had been an occasion of scandal gave their lives without a tremor.”
Despite their disdain for religious vows and priestly celibacy, Calvinists did not of course believe that fornication was not sinful, and thus they would have seen in the sinful life of Andrew Wouters a clear sign of his eternal predestination to hell. To Catholics, his death as a martyr and canonization as a Saint are a reminder that we should never look on any sinful life, including our own, as anything other than a call to pray for conversion, which can happen even at the very last moments of life.
The reliquary of the Martyrs of Gorkum at the Franciscan church of St Nicholas in Brussels.
The full names of the martyrs are as follows.
The secular priests: Leonard van Veghel, pastor of Gorkum, Nicholas Poppel, Godfried van Duynen, and Andrew Wouters.
The eleven Franciscans: Fathers Nicholas Pieck, (who is listed first on the Franciscan liturgical calendar, since he was the guardian of the friary at Gorkum), Jerome of Weert (the vicar), Theodore van der Eem, Nicasius Jansen, Willehad of Denmark, Godfried of Mervel, Antony of Weert, Antony of Hoornaer, and Francis de Roye; the two lay brothers, Peter of Assche and Cornelius of Wyk near Duurstede.
The Premonstratensians: Adrian Jansen van Hilvarenbeek and James Lacops.
The Dominican: John of Cologne.
The Augustinian canon: Jan Lenartz of Oosterwyk, chaplain of the beguinage in Gorkum.
From the Roman Breviary of 1529, the conclusion of the sermon for the feast of All Saints.
We believe that this day’s festivity is also made renowned by the priests, doctors, and confessors of Christ, who spiritually nourish the hearts of the faithful, like heavenly waters, so that they may be able to bring forth in abundance the incorruptible fruit of good works. They have taken care not only to give back the talents entrusted to them, but also to increase them with interest, … ; for the good which they learned and understood through the grace of the Holy Spirit, they strove to impart not only to themselves, but to the minds of those subject to them. … Celebrating the sacred and holy mysteries of the Body and Blood of Christ upon the altar, in the depths of their heart they cease not to offer a living sacrifice, and pleasing to God, that is, themselves, without blemish or admixture of any evil deed. And although they did not feel the sword of the persecutors, yet through the merit of their lives, they are worthy of God and not deprived of martyrdom. For martyrdom is accomplished not only by the shedding of blood, but also by abstaining from sins, and the practice of God’s commandments. … Very many have shone forth with signs and wonders, restoring sight to the blind, strengthening the steps of the lame, giving hearing to the deaf, conquering demons, and raising the dead.
All Saints in Glory, by Giovanni da San Giovanni, 1630, in the apse of the church of the Four Crowned Martyrs in Rome.
Therefore, dearest brethren, with the full intention of our minds let us ask for the protection of the mighty intercessors of whom we have spoken, so that through the temporal feast which we keep, by their merits interceding, we may be able to come to eternal joy. All things pass away that are celebrated in time. Take care, all that take part in these solemnities, lest you be cut off from the eternal solemnity. For what profiteth it to take part in the feasts of men, if it befall you to miss the feasts of the Angels? (The words from “All things pass away...” to the end are added from a homily of Saint Gregory of Great for the Octave Day of Easter.)
From the Breviary of St. Pius V, 1568, the end of the treatise on mortality by St. Cyprian of Carthage, bishop and martyr, read on the Octave Day of All Saints.
We must consider, most beloved brethren, and continually reflect upon the fact that we have renounced the world, and in the meanwhile live here as guests and pilgrims. Let us embrace the day which assigns each of us to his own home, which restores us to paradise and the heavenly kingdom, delivered hence and freed from the snares of the world. What man that has been placed in foreign lands would not hasten to return to his own country? What man that is hastening to sail back to his friends desireth not the more eagerly a prosperous wind, that he might the sooner be able to embrace those dear to him?
We regard paradise as our country, already we begin to deem the patriarchs as our parents: why do we not hasten and run, that we may see our country, that we may greet our parents? There a great number of our dear ones awaits us, and a dense crowd of parents, brothers, children, longs for us, already assured of their own immortality, and still solicitous for our salvation. To attain to their sight and their embrace, what gladness both for them and for us in common! What delight there is in the heavenly kingdom, without fear of death; and how lofty and perpetual the happiness with eternity of living!
There the glorious choir of the apostles, there the host of the prophets rejoicing, there the innumerable multitude of the martyrs, crowned for the victory of their struggle and passion; there the triumphant virgins, who subdued the desire of the flesh and of the body by the strength of their continency. There are the merciful rewarded, who by feeding and helping the poor have done the works of justice, they who, in keeping precepts of the Lord, have transformed their earthly patrimonies into the heavenly treasures. To these, beloved brethren, let us hasten with eager desire; let us long quickly to be with them, that quickly we may come to Christ.
November 8th is also the feast of the Four Crowned Martyrs, the titular Saints of a very ancient but much-rebuilt church on the Caelian Hill in Rome. Every year on the feast, the altar is covered with a very beautiful frontal, and silver reliquary busts of the martyrs are displayed in the sanctuary.
Among the many inscriptions preserved in the church, this one records that Pope Leo IV (847-55) placed under the church’s altar the relics of the Four Crowned Martyrs, and a great many others; in addition to those listed by name here, he placed “many other bodies of Saints whose names are known to God.”
From the Roman Breviary of 1529, the continuation of the sermon for the feast of All Saints.
After the Apostles) is added the triumphal title of the Martyrs, who through diverse sorts of torments imitated the passion of Christ, offering no provocation in their minds or hearts. Some were killed with the sword, some burnt, some beaten, some pierced with bolts, some crucified, … it is they that celebrate the triumph, and are the friends of God, who, defying the orders of criminal rulers, are now crowned, and receive the reward of their labors, because they were founded upon the firm rock, that is, Christ. … The blessed Gregory says of the warriors of this sort, in his explanation of one of the Gospels, “Behold, the elect of God subdue the flesh, strengthen the spirit, gain mastery over the devils, shine brightly with virtues, despise the present world, and speak of the eternal fatherland in their words and in their manners. And even as they die, they love, and so they come there through their torments. They can be killed, but they cannot be bent, “and though in the sight of men they suffered torments, their hope is full of immortality. Afflicted in few things, in many they shall be well rewarded: because God hath tried them, and found them worthy of himself. As gold in the furnace he hath proved them, and as a victim of a holocaust he hath received them.” Now therefore, we have heard of the contests and victories of the martyrs of Christ. To them, certainly, we hold this day to be sanctified, insomuch as they did not cease to labor within themselves, that they might be sanctified through their sufferings.
The Ten Thousand Martyrs on Mt Ararat, by Vittore Carpaccio, 1515
October 9 has traditionally been kept as the feast of Ss Denis (“Dionysius” in Latin) and Companions, who were martyred at Paris in the 3rd century. St John Leonardi, the founder of a small congregation of clerks regular, died on this day in 1609; when he was added to the general calendar in 1940, his feast was placed on top of that of the martyrs, who were thus reduced to a commemoration. In the post-Conciliar reform, however, both feasts have been made optional memorials, which means that the martyrs may now be celebrated more freely in the Novus Ordo than in the Roman Rite. That they should be present at all in the modern liturgy is very surprising, since St Denis is the subject of one of the most famous hagiographical confusions, of exactly the sort that led to the suppression or downgrading of so many other feasts.
A statue of St Denis, from the treasury of the Basilica of Notre-Dame de Paris. One legend tells that St Denis was beheaded on the hill of Montmartre which overlooks Paris, after which he picked up his head and walked about 4 miles to the site where he is buried, the future location of the abbey which bears his name. (Photo courtesy of the Schola Sainte-Cécile.)
In his History of the Franks (I.30), St Gregory of Tours (538-94) lists Denis as one of seven men sent to Gaul as bishops to evangelize various cities during the reign of the Emperor Decius (249-51), and says that sometime after, he was “afflicted with various sufferings for the name of Christ, and ended the present life at the blow of a sword.” In the Martyrology incorrectly attributed to St Jerome, Denis is named on October 9th together with a priest and a deacon, Rusticus and Eleutherius, who are also mentioned in the prayer of their collective feast day. Their bodies were buried at a site a few miles to the north of Paris, and a church built over it, which Gregory of Tours mentions twice, once in connection with a miracle, and again when describing its profanation. Not long after his time, King Dagobert I (603-39) established a monastery under royal patronage at the site, and completely rebuilt the church; it was rebuilt again in the days of Pepin the Short and his son Charlemagne, the latter of whom attended its consecration in 775.
According to the revised Butler’s Lives of the Saints, even before the Carolingian period, St Denis of Paris had already been confused in some quarters with the Biblical figure of the same name (i.e. Dionysius), who was converted by the preaching of St Paul in Athens (Acts 17, 22-34). This preaching took place at the “Areopagus – the hill of Ares”, a large outcropping of the Athenian acropolis which was used as a place of judgment for serious crimes like murder; St Luke calls Dionysius “the Areopagite”, i.e., one of the judges who sat on the court held there. The Church historian Eusebius reports (3.4.11), on the witness of another Dionysius (a very common name in antiquity), bishop of Corinth in the later 2nd century, that the Areopagite was the first bishop of Athens; by the turn of the seventh century, he was believed to have died as a martyr, being burnt alive by the Emperor Domitian.
The Preaching of St Paul at Athens; a preparatory cartoon made by Raphael in the 1510s as part of a series of designs intended to be woven into tapestries; now at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.
Sometime in the later 5th or early 6th century, an unknown Greek-speaking theologian produced a series of four treatises and ten letters, purporting to be works of Dionysius the Areopagite. This is not a case like those of Ss John Chrysostom or Augustine, among many others, to whom writings were very often mistakenly ascribed in later generations; the author clearly and deliberately intended to pass himself off as the contemporary of St Paul. To this end, he claims to have been present, along with Ss Peter and James, for the Dormition of the Virgin Mary (Div. Nom. 3, 2), and addresses letters to Ss John the Evangelist, Timothy and Polycarp. Scholars generally suppose him to have been a Syrian; the dating of his works depends in part on the obvious influence upon them of the neo-Platonic philosopher Proclus, who died in 485. Further attempts to glean information about the author from his writings remain speculative.
By the first decades of the sixth century, these writings were cited by authors on both sides of the debate over the Monophysite heresy, which the Ecumenical Council of Chalcedon had condemned in 451. Most notably, at a council held in Constantinople in 533, the Monophysites cited them in support of their teaching, to which the leader of the Catholic party replied that they were forgeries. Nevertheless, as the controversy continued, and as the heresy evolved into Monotheletism in the 7th century, they came to be gradually accepted as both genuine and orthodox by several important figures, the most significant being St Maximus the Confessor, who cited them at a council held in the Lateran Basilica in Rome in 649, under Pope St Martin I. They were further defended and cited to the same effect at the next two ecumenical councils, Third Constantinople in 680, and Second Nicea in 787. To this day, the Byzantine Rite’s liturgical texts for St Dionysius, “the Holy Martyr and Areopagite”, bishop of Athens, are filled with references to the writings, as for example, this hymn at Vespers: “Having made thy mind equal in honor to that of the Angels through virtue, o all-wise father Dionysius, thou didst write an account in (thy) holy books of the heavenly order of their hierarchy, and according to it, didst organize the orders of the Church’s government, likening them to the ranks of heaven.” (He is also the titular Saint of the Roman Catholic cathedral of Athens.)
In the year 827, the Byzantine Emperor Michael II (820-29) sent a copy of the writings to Charlemagne’s son, King Louis the Pious, along with several other gifts. By coincidence, they happened to reach the king on the evening of October 8th, when he was at the royal abbey of St Denis for the vigil of the titular Saint’s feast day. The abbot, Hilduin, who was very close to the king, had them translated into Latin, although this translation was not very well done, and was replaced by another about 30 years later. At the king’s behest, he also wrote a life of St Denis, which definitively conflated the bishop of Paris with the Areopagite, ascribed his mission in Gaul to Pope St Clement I towards the end of the 1st century, and acknowledged the writings as his. This conflation was henceforth accepted, and remained the common legend of St Denis in western Europe for the next 700 years. The writings became extremely influential in the High Middle Ages; Hugh of St Victor, St Albert the Great, and yet another Denis, the great Carthusian theologian, wrote commentaries on them, and they are cited well over 2000 times in the works of St Thomas Aquinas.
In the Renaissance, when many of the certainties of the medieval tradition were being called into question, the authenticity of the writings, and the identification of the two Denises as the same person, were challenged by two of the most prominent among the great humanist scholars, Lorenzo Valla (1407-57), who also unmasked the forgery known as the Donation of Constantine, and later Erasmus. The question was the subject of much controversy and debate over the following centuries, with learned men, Catholic and Protestant, offering their opinions as both defenders and detractors of the tradition. The neo-Gallican revision of the Parisian liturgical books sided with the detractors by separating Denis into two persons, one of Athens, kept on his Byzantine date, October 3rd, and the other of Paris on the traditional date, without the title “Areopagite”, a change which was later harshly condemned by Dom Prosper Guéranger.
A leaf of a 15th century Missal according to the Use of Paris, with the Epistle of the Mass of St Denis, Acts 17, 22-34. (Bibliothèque nationale de France. Département des Manuscrits. Latin 859A)
However, this diffidence towards the traditional legend of St Denis was not a novelty of the neo-Gallicans. The pre-Tridentine Roman Breviary devotes only a single lesson of less than 70 words to St Denis and his companions, which makes no mention of the theological treatises. It also says that he was sent to Gaul “by the Roman Pontiff”, without specifying which one, a clear sign of doubt about the legend that it was St Clement.
Much more tellingly, the pre-Tridentine Parisian Breviary also pointedly does not refer to Denis as the author of the Areopagitic corpus, although it does accept him as the Athenian disciple of St Paul and the contemporary of St Clement. The Matins lessons for the feast day and the days of its octave are taken directly from Hilduin’s life of the Saint, but omit the chapters (9-17) which describe the theological writings, nor is there any reference to them in any of the proper antiphons or responsories of the Office, or in the Sequence of the Mass. (The Epistle of the latter is the passage from Acts 17 cited above.)
In point of fact, it was only with the Tridentine revision that the Roman Breviary accepted Hilduin’s conflation of the Athenian and Parisian Denis as the same person. Furthermore, a sentence is added to the effect that “He wrote wondrous and indeed heavenly books, on the divine names, on the celestial and ecclesiastical hierarchies, on mystical theology, and certain others.” This is perhaps the only case in the Breviary of St Pius V in which the legend of a Saint moves further away from the more skeptical view, almost certainly due to the influence of Cardinal Baronius, who defended the traditional legend in his notes on the revision of the Martyrology.
As late as 1857, when the Abbé Migne put together his great corpus of Patristic writings, the Patrologia Graeca, which is arranged in chronological order, he put the Areopagitic corpus and associated writings, including several defenses of its authenticity, between the works of St Clement I and those of St Ignatius of Antioch. However, in 1895, two Catholic scholars, Hugo Koch and Josef Stiglmayer, working quite separately from each other, demonstrated the dependence of the writings on the works of Proclus, and the question is now universally regarded as settled in the negative. This also explains what was, of course, the strongest objection to their authenticity all along, namely, the complete absence of any reference to them in the writings of earlier Church Fathers.
Part of the choir of the abbey of St Denys. Around the year 1135, the abbot Suger began the process of enlarging the Carolingian church, during which the choir was rebuilt from 1140-44. Inspired by the Areopagite’s theology of light as an expression and manifestation of God’s presence, Suger created the idea of having huge walls of windows which flood the church’s interior with light; this is the foundation of the architecture style which we now call Gothic, and this choir is the first example of it. (Image from Wikimedia Commons by Guilhem Vellut, CC BY 2.0)
As with the many controversies over the authorship of the books of the Bible, the assumption behind this debate was to a large degree that if a work is not genuinely by the author to whom it is attributed, it is therefore a forgery, and hence worthless. And likewise, as with the many controversies over the authorship of the books of the Bible, this assumption has more recently been to a large degree subsumed by an understanding that authenticity is principally an historical question, and one that need not always impinge on the value of a writing as a work of theology. In his series of Wednesday audiences on the Church Fathers, Pope Benedict XVI spoke about the author of these writings (May 14, 2008), and explicitly rejected the idea that he passed himself off as the Areopagite in order to vest his work with the authority of one close to the Apostles, but rather, did so “to make an act of humility; he did not want to glorify his own name, he did not want to build a monument to himself with his work but rather truly to serve the Gospel, to create an ecclesial theology, neither individual nor based on himself.”
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