April XII
St. Sabas the Goth, M.
From his authentic acts contained in a letter, written by the church of Gothla to that of Cappadocia, of which St. Basil was then the chief light; and penned, in all appearance, by St. Ascholius, bishop of Thessalonica, at that time subject to the Goths.
A. D. 372.
The faith of Christ erected its trophies not only over the pride and sophistry of the heathen philosophers, and the united power of the Roman empire, but also over the kings of barbarous infidel nations; who, though it every other thing the contrast of the Romans, and enemies to their name, yet vied with them in the rage with which they sought, by every human stratagem, and every invention of cruelty, to depress the cross of Christ: by which the finger of God was more visible in the propagation of his faith. Even among the Goths, his name was glorified by the blood of martyrs. Athanaric, king of the Goths,* in the year 370, according to St. Jerom, raised a violent persecution against the Christians among them. The Greeks commemorate fifty-one martyrs who suffered in that nation. The two most illustrious are SS. Nicetas and Sabas. This latter was by birth a Goth, converted to the faith in his youth, and a faithful imitator of the obedience, mildness, humility, and other virtues of the apostles. He was affable to all men, yet with dignity; a lover of truth, an enemy to all dissimulation or disguise, intrepid, modest, of few words, and a lover of peace; yet zealous and active. To sing the divine praises in the church, and to adorn the altars was his great delight. He was so scrupulously chaste, that he shunned all conversation with women, except what was indispensable. He often spent whole days and nights in prayer, and devoted his whole life to the exercises of penance: flying vain-glory, and by words and example inducing others to a love of virtue, he burned with an ardent desire in all things to glorify Jesus Christ. The princes and magistrates of Gothia began, in 370, to persecute the Christians, by compelling them to eat meats which had been sacrificed to idols, out of a superstitious motive, as if they were sanctified. Some heathens who had Christian relations, desiring to save them, prevailed upon the king’s officers to present them common meats which had not been offered to the idols. Sabas condemned this impious collusion, and not only refused to eat such meats, but protested aloud that whoever should eat them would be no longer a Christian, having by that scandalous compliance renounced his faith. Thus he hindered many from falling into that snare of the devil, but displeased others, who banished him from his town, though they some time after recalled him home. The next year the persecution was renewed, and a commissary of the king arrived at St. Sabas’s town in search of Christians. Some of the inhabitants offered to swear on the victims that there were no Christians in the place. Sabas appeared, and step ping up to those who were going to take that oath, said: “Let no man swear for me: for I am a Christian.” Notwithstanding this, the commissary ordered the oath to be tendered. Therefore the principal men of the city hid the other Christians, and then swore there was but one Christian in their town. The commissary commanded that he should appear. Sabas boldly presented himself. The commissary asked the bystanders what wealth he had: and being told he had nothing besides the clothes on his back, the commissary despised him, saying: “Such a fellow can do us neither good nor harm.”
The persecution was renewed with much greater fury in 372, before Easter. Sabas considered how he could celebrate that solemnity, and for this purpose set out to go to a priest named Gouttica, in another city. Being on the road, he was admonished by God to return, and keep the festival with the priest Sansala. He did so, and on the third night after, Atharidus, son of one that enjoyed a petty sovereignty in that country, entered the town, and with an armed troop suddenly broke into the lodgings of Sansala, surprised him asleep, bound him, and threw him on a cart. They pulled Sabas out of bed without suffering him to put on his clothes, and dragged him, naked as he was, over thorns and briers, forcing him along with whips and staves. When it was day, Sabas said to his persecutors: “Have not you dragged me, quite naked, over rough and thorny grounds? Observe whether my feet are wounded, or whether the blows you gave me have made any impression on my body:” and indeed they could not perceive any the least marks. The persecutors being enraged, for want of a rack, took the axletree of a cart, laid it upon his neck, and stretching out his hands, fastened them to each end. They fastened another in like manner to his feet, and in this situation they tormented him a considerable part of the following night. When they were gone to rest, the woman of the house in which they lodged untied him: but he would not make his escape, and spent the remainder of that night in helping the woman to dress victuals for the family. The next day Atharidus commanded his hands to be tied, and caused him to be hung upon a beam of the house, and soon after ordered his servants to carry him and the priest certain meats that had been offered to idols, which they refused to eat, and Sabas said: “This pernicious meat is impure and profane, as is Atharidus himself who sent it.” One of the slaves of Atharidus, incensed at these words, struck the point of his javelin against the saint’s breast with such violence, that all present believed he had been killed. But St. Sabas said: “Do you think you have slain me? Know, that I felt no more pain than if the javelin had been a lock of wool.” Atharidus, being informed of these particulars, gave orders that he should be put to death Wherefore, having dismissed the priest Sansala, his companion, they carried away St. Sabas in order to throw him into the Musæus.* The martyr, filled with joy in the Holy Ghost, blessed and praised God without ceasing for thinking him worthy to suffer for his sake. Being come to the river side, the officers said one to another: “Why don’t we let this man go” He is innocent, and Atharidus will never know any thing of the matter.” St. Sabas, overhearing them, asked them why they trifled, and were so dilatory in obeying their orders? “I see,” said he, “what you cannot: I see persons on the other side of the river ready to receive my soul, and conduct it to the seat of glory: they only wait the moment in which it will leave my body.” Hereupon they threw him into the river, praising God to the last; and by the means of the axletree they had fastened about his neck, they strangled him in the water. He therefore suffered martyrdom, say the acts, by water and wood, the symbols of baptism and the cross; which happened on the 12th of April, Valentinian and Valens being emperors, in 372. After this the executioners drew his body out of the water, and left it unburied: but the Christians of the place guarded it from birds and beasts of prey. Junius Soranus, duke of Scythia, a man who feared God, carried off the body, which he sent into his own country, Cappadocia. With these relics was sent a letter from the church of Gothia to that of Cappadocia, which contains an account of the martyrdom of St. Sabas, and concludes thus: “Wherefore offering up the holy sacrifice on the day whereon the martyr was crowned, impart this to our brethren, that the Lord may be praised throughout the Catholic and Apostolic Church for thus glorifying his servants.” Thus the acts, which were sent to the church of Cappadocia, together with the relics of St. Sabas.† Both the Greek and Latin Martyrologies mention this martyr.
The martyrs despised torments and death, because the immense joys of heaven were always before their eyes. If they made a due impression upon our souls, we should never be slothful in the practice of virtue. When an ancient monk complained of being weary of living in close solitude, his abbot said to him: “This weariness clearly proves, that you have neither the joys of heaven nor the eternal torments of the damned before your eyes: otherwise, no sloth or discouragement could ever seize your soul.” St. Austin gives the following advice: “Not only think of the road through which thou art travelling, but take care never to lose sight of the blessed country in which thou art shortly to arrive. Thou meetest here with passing sufferings, but wilt soon enjoy everlasting rest. In order to labor with constancy and cheerfulness, consider the reward. The laborer would faint in the vineyard, if he was not cheered by the thought of what he is to receive. When thou lookest up at the recompense, every thing thou doest or sufferest will appear light, and no more than a shadow: it bears no manner of proportion with what thou art to receive for it. Thou wilt wonder that so much is given for such trifling pains.”1
St. Zeno, Bishop of Verona, Confessor
From his life, compiled from his writings and other monuments, by Peter and Jerom Ballerini, two learned priests of Verona, and brothers, in their third dissertation in the excellent edition they gave of this father’s works, p. 109. Sec also the marquis Scipio Maffei, Historiæ Diplomaticæ Monumenta, at the end. p. 329. Also the same author, Veronæ Illustratæ, par. II. The history of the translation of his relics by an anonymous monk; and Serie Chronologica dei Vescov di Verona, par Biancolinl, a Verona 1761, 4to.
A. D. 380.
This holy prelate is styled a martyr by St. Gregory the Great,1 and in several martyrologies. But was honored only with the title of confessor, in the ancient missal of Verona, before the time of Lewis Lippoman, bishop of that city, in 1548:* and it appears, from the manner in which St. Ambrose, who was his contemporary, writing to Syagrius, our saint’s successor, speaks of his happy death, and extols his eminent sanctity, that he did not die by the sword.2 Living in the days of Constantius, Julian, and Valens, he might deserve the title of martyr, by sharing in the persecutions carried on by those princes. Hence, in some calendars he is styled martyr, in others confessor.
The marquis Scipio Maffei, and some others, pretend from his name that he was a Grecian: but the Ballerini show, from the natural easiness, and the sharpness and conciseness of his style, that he was by birth, or at least by education, a Latin, and an African; which is confirmed from his panegyric on St. Arcadius, a martyr of Mauritania. From the African martyr called Zeno, it is clear this name was there in use. Our saint seems to have been made bishop of Verona in the year 362, in the reign of Julian the Apostate. We learn, from several of his sermons, that he baptized every year a great number of idolaters, and that he exerted himself with great zeal and success against the Arians, whose party had been exceedingly strengthened in those parts by the favor of the emperor Constantius, and the artifices of the ringleaders of that sect, Ursacius and Valens, and particularly of Auxentius, who held the see of Milan, into which the heretics had intruded him, for twenty years, till 374. He also opposed himself, as a strong bulwark, against the errors of the Pelagians. The church of Verona was purged by his zealous labors and holy prayers, in a great measure, both of heresy and of idols. His flock being grown exceeding numerous, he found it necessary to build a great church, in which he was liberally assisted by the voluntary contributions of the rich citizens.3 In this church he mentions a cross of wood erected, as it were, to defend the doors.4 By the precepts and example of this good pastor, the people were so liberal in their alms, that their houses were always open to poor strangers, and none of their own country had occasion even to ask for relief, so plentiful were the necessities of all prevented.5 And he congratulates them upon the interest which they accumulate in heaven by money bestowed on the poor, by which they not only subdue avarice, but convert its treasures to the highest advantage, and without exciting envy. “For what can be richer than a man to whom God is pleased to acknowledge himself debtor?” After the battle of Adrianople, in 378, in which the Goths defeated Valens, with a greater slaughter of the Romans than had ever been known since the battle of Cannæ, the barbarians made in the neighboring provinces of Illyricum and Thrace an incredible number of captives.6 It seems to have been on this occasion, that the charities of the inhabitants of Verona were dispersed like fruitful seeds through the remotest provinces, and by them many were ransomed from slavery, many rescued from cruel deaths, many freed from hard labor.7 St. Zeno himself lived in great poverty.8 He makes frequent mention of the clergy which he trained up to the service of the altar, and the priests his fellow-laborers, to whom a retribution was allotted at Easter, according to every one’s necessities and functions.9 He speaks of the ordinations10 which he performed at Easter:* also the solemn reconciliation of penitents, which was another function of that holy time.11 St. Ambrose mentions,12 at Verona, virgins consecrated to God by St. Zeno, who wore the sacred veil, and lived in their own houses in the city; and others who lived in a monastery, of which he seems to have been both the founder and director, before any were established by St. Ambrose at Milan. Love-feasts, or agapes, were originally established on the festivals of martyrs in their cemeteries, which, by the degeneracy of manners, were at length converted into occasions of intemperance and vanity. St. Zeno inveighed warmly against this abuse.13 Nor can we doubt but he was one of the principal amongst the bishops of Italy, who, by their zeal and eloquence, entirely banished out of their dioceses a custom which gave occasion to such an abuse, for which St. Austin gave them due praise.14 St. Zeno extended his charity to the faithful departed, and condemned severely the intemperate grief of those who interrupted by their lamentations the divine sacrifices and public office of the church for their deceased friends,† which the priests performed by apostolic tradition at the death and funerals of those who slept in Christ. St. Zeno received the crown of his labors by a happy death, in 380, on the 12th of April, on which day he is commemorated in the Roman Martyrology. He is honored at Verona with two other festivals, that of the translation of his relics on the 21st of May, and that of his episcopal consecration, and also of the dedication of his new church in the reign of Pepin, king of Italy, on the 6th of December. The first church which bore his name was built over his tomb, on the banks of the river Adige, without the walls of the city. St. Gregory the Great relates the following miracle, which happened two centuries after the death of the saint, and which he learned from John the Patrician, who was an eye-witness, with king Autharis and count Pronulphus.15 In the year 589, at the same time that the Tiber overflowed a considerable quarter of Rome, and the flood overtopped the walls, the waters of the Adige, which falls from the mountains with excessive rapidity, threatened to drown great part of the city of Verona. The people flocked in crowds to the church of their holy patron Zeno: the waters seemed to respect its doors, they gradually swelled as high as the windows, yet the flood never broke into the church, but stood like a firm wall, as when the Israelites passed the Jordan; and the people remained there twenty-four hours in prayer, till the water subsided within the banks of the channel This prodigy had as many witnesses as there were inhabitants of Verona. The devotion of the people to St. Zeno was much increased by this and other miracles; and, in the reign of Pepin, king of Italy, son of Charlemagne, and brother of Louis Débonnaire, Rotaldus, bishop of Verona, translated his relics into a new spacious church, built under his invocation in 865, where they are kept with singular veneration in a subterraneous chapel.*
St. Zeno is chiefly known to us by his sufferings for the faith. Persecutions and humiliations for Christ are not a chastisement, but a recompense, and the portion of his most faithful servants. Happy are they who know their value, and bear them at least with patience and resignation; but more happy they who, with the martyrs and all the saints, suffer them with a holy joy and exultation. From his own feeling sentiments, and perfect practice of patience, St. Zeno composed his excellent sermon on that virtue, which he closes with this pathetic prayer and eulogium: “How earnestly do I desire, if I were able, to celebrate thee, O Patience, queen of all things! but by my life and manners more than by my words. For thou restest in thy own action and council more than in discourses, and in perfecting rather than in multiplying virtues. Thou art the support of virginity, the secure harbor of widowhood, the guide and directress of the married state, the unanimity of friendship, the comfort and joy of slavery, to which thou art often liberty. By thee, poverty enjoys all, because, content with itself, it bears all. By thee, the prophets were advanced in virtue, and the apostles united to Christ. Thou art the daily crown and mother of the martyrs. Thou art the bulwark of faith, the fruit of hope, and the friend of charity. Thou conductest all the people and all divine virtues, and dishevelled hairs bound up into one knot, for ornament and honor. Happy, eternally happy, is he who shall always possess thee in his soul.”16 In the following discourse, he speaks no less pathetically on humility: but surpasses himself in his sermon or charity, or divine love. “O Charity! how tender, how rich, how powerful art thou! He who possesseth not thee, hath nothing. Thou couldst change God into man. Thou hast overcome death, by teaching a God to die,”17 &c.
St. Julius, Pope
He was a Roman, and chosen pope on the 6th of February, in 337. The Arian bishops in the East sent to him three deputies to accuse St Athanasius, the zealous patriarch of Alexandria. These informations, as the order of justice required, Julius imparted to Athanasius, who thereupon sent his deputies to Rome; when, upon an impartial hearing, the advocates of the heretics were confounded, and silenced, upon every article of their accusation. The Arians then demanded a council, and the pope assembled one in Rome, in 341, at which appeared St. Athanasius, Marcellus of Ancyra, and other orthodox prelates, who entreated the pope that he would cite their adversaries to appear. Julius accordingly sent them an order to repair to Rome within a limited time. They, instead of obeying, held a pretended council at Antioch, in 341, in which they presumed to appoint one Gregory, an impious Arian, bishop of Alexandria, detained the pope’s legates beyond the time mentioned for their appearance; and then wrote to his holiness, alleging a pretended impossibility of their appearing, on account of the Persian war and other impediments. The pope easily saw through these pretences, and, in a council at Rome, examined the cause of St. Athanasius, declared him innocent of the things laid to his charge by the Arians, and confirmed him in his see. He also acquitted Marcellus of Ancyra, upon his orthodox profession of faith. “Julius, by virtue of the prerogative of his see, sent the bishops into the East, with letters full of vigor, restoring to each of them his see,” says Socrates.1 “For, because the care of all belonged to him, by the dignity of his see, he restored to every one his church,” as Sozomen writes.2 He drew up and sent by count Gabian, to the Oriental Eusebian bishops, who had first demanded a council, and then refused to appear in it, an excellent letter, which Tillemont calls one of the finest monuments of ecclesiastical antiquity. In it we admire an extraordinary genius, and solid judgment, but far more an apostolic vigor and resolution, tempered with charity and meekness. “If,” says he, “they (Athanasius and Marcellus) had been guilty, ye should have written to us all, that judgment might have been given by all: for they were bishops and churches that suffered, and these not common churches, but the same that the apostles themselves had governed. Why did they not write to us especially concerning the church of Alexandria? Are you ignorant, that it is the custom to write to us immediately, and that the decision ought to come from hence? In case therefore that the bishop of that see lay under any suspicions, ye ought to have written to our church. But now, without having sent us any information on the subject, and having acted just as ye thought proper, ye require of us to approve your measures, without sending us any account of the reasons of your proceedings. These are not the ordinances of Paul, this is not the tradition of our fathers; this is an unprecedented sort of conduct. I declare to you what we have learned from the blessed apostle Peter, and I believe it so well known to everybody, that I should not have mentioned it, had not this happened.”3 Finding the Eusebians still obstinate, he moved Constans, emperor of the West, to demand the concurrence of his brother Constantius in the assembling of a general council at Sardica, in Illyricum. This was opened in May, 347,* and was a general synod, as Baronius and Natalis Alexander demonstrate; but is joined as an appendix to the council of Nice, because it only confirmed its decrees of faith. This council declared St. Athanasius and Marcellus of Ancyra orthodox and innocent, deposed certain Arian bishops, and framed twenty-one canons of discipline. The first of these forbids the translation of bishops; for, if frequently made, it opens a door to let ambition and covetousness into the sanctuary, of which Eusebius of Nicomedia was a scandalous instance. The third, fourth, and seventh agree, that any bishop deposed by a synod in his province, has a right to appeal to the bishop of Rome. St. Julius saw fifteen years, two months, and six days, dying on the 12th of April, 352. See St. Athanasius, Hist. Arianorum ad Monachos, t. 1, p. 349, et Apolog. contra Arianos, pp. 142, 199; Tillemont, t. 7, p. 278; Fleury, t. 3; Ceillier, t. 4, p. 484. See also the letter of Julius to Prosdocius, with remarks; and his letter to the church of Alexandria, with the notes of Muratori, &c., in the second tome of the new complete edition of the Councils, printed at Venice in 1759.
St. Victor, of Braga, M.
This city was a populous resort of the Romans; on which account it was watered with the blood of many martyrs in the persecution of Dioclesian. The names only of SS. Victor, Sylvester, Cucufas, Susana, and Torquatus, have reached us. Their triumphs are honored in that church, and recorded by Vasæus in his chronicle, and other Spanish historians. St. Victor, who is mentioned in the Roman Martyrology on the 12th of April, was a catechumen, who, refusing to sacrifice to idols, was condemned to lose his head, and baptized in his own blood. See F. Thomas ab Incarnatione. Hist Portug. Sæc. 4, c. 6, p. 218.
* That barbarous people, which swarmed originally from Gothland in Sweden, passed first into Pomerania, where Tacitus places them; thence to the borders of the Palus Mæotis, where Caracalla checked their inroads by a victory over them in 215. Yet they extended themselves along the Danube, and into Thrace and Greece, and by their furious incursions were to the Roman empire the most troublesome swarm of the whole northern hive, till they overthrew the empire of the West, erecting on its ruins the kingdoms of the Ostrogoths, or eastern Goths, in Italy, and of the Visigoths, or western Goths, in the southern parts of France and in Spain. The Goths began to receive the light of the faith about the reign of Valerian, from certain priests and other captives whom in their inroads they had carried away out of Galatia and Cappadocia, and who, by healing their sick and preaching the gospel, converted several among them, as Sozomen (b. 2, c. 6) and Philostorgius (b. 2, c. 5) relate. Hence St. Basil (ep. 338, p. 330) says, that the seeds of the gospel among the Goths were brought from Cappadocia by the blessed Eutyehius, a man of eminent virtue, who, by the power of the Holy Ghost and his gifts, had softened the hearts of those barbarians. St. Cyril of Jerusalem, (Cat. 16, n. 22,) in 343, mentions the Goths and Sarmatians among the Christians, who had bishops, priests, monks, holy virgins, and martyrs. In the council of Nice, among the subscriptions, we find that of Theophilus, bishop of Gothia. Ulphilas succeeded Theophilus, and after his example, adhered to the council of Nice and the Catholic faith, us Socrates (b. 2, c. 42) and Sozomen (b. 6, c. 37) expressly affirm; “which was the faith of his ancestors,” says Theodoret, (b. 4, c. 33.) He taught the Goths to write, invented their alphabet, and translated the Bible into their language. In the year 374, St. Basil (ep. 164, p. 254) still commended the faith of the Goths. But Ulphilas being sent to Constantinople, in 376, to beg of the emperor Valeus certain lands in Thrace, was gained over by Eudoxins and other crafty Arians, to embrace their heresy, and pervert the faith of his countrymen, as Sozomen (b. 6, c. 37) and Theodoret (b. 4, c. 33) testify. Athanaric, king of the Thervingian Goths, who bordered on the empire, raised a bloody persecution against the Christians in 370. Fritigernes, king of the western Goths, was at war with Athanaric, and being the weaker, in order to engage the emperor Valens to succour him, embraced the Christian religion and the Arian heresy at the same time, by the means of Ulphilas But the church, under the persecutor Athanaric, remained yet untainted; and both the Latin and Greek church has always venerated the martyrs that suffered under him. Moreover, the acts of St. Sahas were addressed to the churches of Cappadocia. of which St. Basil was the metropolitan: and seem drawn up by St. Ascholius, bishop of Thessalonica, a prelate closely linked with St. Athanasius, as St. Basil assures us, (ep. 154, p. 243.) who also praised St. Ascholius (cp. 164, p. 254,) for propagating the faith among barbarous nations, while Christian princes sought by Arianism to destroy it. He also says, that one coming from those parts preached up against the Arians the purity of the faith professed there, (ep. 161, p. 254.) St. Ambrose extols their faith and zeal against Arianism, together with their martyrdom, (in c. 2, Lucæ. p. 1294.) So does Theodoret, (Hist. b. 4, c. 28, 30, 33.) St. Austin says, that the king of the Goths persecuted the Christians with wonderful cruelty, when there were none but Catholics in Gothia, (de civ Dei, l. 18, c. 52.) This remark seemed necessary to correct the mistake of certain modern English writers, who pretend that the Goths embraced Christianity and Arianism at the same time.
* A river in Wallaehia, now called Mussovo, which falls into the Danube a little below Rebnik.
† It is supposed that this letter was penned by St. Ascholius, bishop of Thessalonica, the capital of Macedonia: for St. Basil, (ep. 164, p. 284.) writing to St. Aschollus, thanks him for his account of the persecution, and of the martyr’s triumph by water and wood. And again, (ep. 165, p. 256,) thanks him for the body of the martyr he had sent him, probably by the commission of duke Soranus, a relation of St. Basil, who had written to him (ep. 155, p. 244, ed. Ben.) begging him to enrich his country with the relics of some martyrs in that persecution.
1 S. Aug. Conc. 2, in Ps. 36.
1 Dial. l. 3, c. 19.
* Hence some have distinguished two Saint Zenos, bishops of Verona, the first a martyr, about the reign of Gallien: the other an illustrious father of the fourth century. But Onuphrius, in his exact history of the bishops of Verona, mentions but one of that name, the predecessor of Syagrius, in the fourth century: in which the Ballerini, and all judicious critics, now agree.
2 St. Ambros. ep. 5, ad Syagrium.
3 St. Zeno, l. l, Tr. 14, p. 103.
4 Ib. p. 106.
5 L. I, Tr. 10, p. 83.
6 Ammian. Marcellin; Zozimus, l. 4, c. 31; St. Ambros. de Offic. l. 2, c. 15 and 28
7 Ib. p. 82.
8 L. 2, Tr. 14, p. 251.
9 L. 2, Tr. 50, de Pascha. 6, p. 261.
10 Ib.
* From the omission of Easter, in the enumeration of the times for conferring holy Orders, by Gelasius, ep. 9, ad Episc. per Bruttios et Lucanium, c. 11, by pope Zachary, in the Roman council, in 743, &c., some have pretended, with Quesnel (in Op. S. Leonis, diss. 3, n. 5, et not. in ep. 11) and Mabillon, (Musæ Ital. t. 2. p. 104,) that anciently Easter was not one of the times for conferring holy Orders. But that it was so at Verona, and doubtless in many other churches, is clear from St. Zeno, l. 2, Tr. 49, Pascha 5. p. 261. The reconciliation of penitents was performed on Maundy Thursday, according to the Sacramentaries of Gelasius. &c., but on Good-Friday at Milan, as appears from S. Ambrose, ep. 20, ad Marcellin. n. 56, imitated afterwards in Spain, and in some churches in France. See Martenne, t. 2, de Antiquis. Eccles. Ritibus, l. 1. c. 6, art. 5.
11 Ib. p. 162.
12 S. Ambros. ep. 5, ad Syagrium.
13 S. Zeno, l. 1, Tr. 15, p. 115. Vide Annot. 18, ib. and S. Ambr. 1, de Elia et Jejunio. c. 17, n. 62.
14 S. Aug. ep. 22, Item ep. 29 and Conf. l. 6, c. 2.
† Solemnia ipsa divina quibus a Sacerdotibus Dei quiescentes commendari consueverunt, profanis alique ties ululatibus rumpit. S. Zeno, l. 1, Tr. 16, p. 126.
15 S. Greg. M. Dial. l. 3, c 19.
* The fire and spirit of the good African writers are so remarkable in the sermons of St. Zeno, that Gaspar Barthius calls him the Christian Apuleius. One hundred and twenty-seven sermons were printed under his name at Venice, in 1508. at Verona in 1586, and in the Libraries of the Fathers. In the MS, copies, as in that which Hincmar gave to the monastery of St. Remigius at Rheims, the title of St. Zeno’s works belonged only to the first part, and others of different authors were added without their names or a different title. Hence Dupin, Tillemont, Ceillier. t. 8, p. 362, and others, have been led into several mistakes about the writings of St. Zeno, which are corrected, and all the difficulties cleared up, by the two learned editors of the new excellent edition, published at Verona, in folio, in 1739, and dedicated to cardinal Passionel. Here, according to the ancient MSS, these sermons are called Tractatus, which title was given in that age to familiar short discourses made to the people. They are divided into two books; the first of which contains sixteen Tractatus, or sermons, the second seventy-seven, much shorter. Many points of morality and discipline, as well as articles of our faith, are illustrated in these discourses. It appears, from 1. 2, tr. 35, p. 234, that it was the custom at that time to plunge the whole body in the water in baptism, and that the water was warmed; for which purpose, the editors observe that the popes Innocent I. and Sextus III. had adorned the great baptistery at Rome with two silver stags with cocks. St. Zeno is the only author who mentions the custom of giving a medal to every one that was baptized. See the Ballerini, Annot. ib. p. 233. et in l. 1, Tractat. 14, p. 108. The spurious discourses are thrown into an appendix and consist of two sermons of Potamius, a Greek bishop, mentioned in a letter written to St. Athanasius, published by Luke D’Acheri in his Spicilegium, t. 3, p. 299. Five others are St. Hilary’s, who was contemporary with St. Zeno, and four are a free translation from St. Basil s, probably made by Rufin of Aquileia.
16 St. Zeno. l. 1, Tract. 6, de Patientiâ. p. 63.
17 L. l, tr. 2. de Charltate.
1 Socr. b. 2, c. 15
2 Soz. b. 3. c. 7; Fleury, t. 12. Hist. n. 20, t. 3, p. 310.
3 See this letter inserted entire by St. Athanasius in his Apology, p. 141.
* See Mansi in Suppl. Concil. t. 1, where he shows, in a particular Dissertation, that the council of Sardica was not held in 347, as most modern historians imagine, but in 344, and testifies the history of it from three letters which he first published.
Butler, A., The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs and Other Principal Saints (New York 1903) II, 74-81.
April XII St. Sabas the Goth, M. 
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