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E00542: Gregory of Tours, in his Glory of the Martyrs (44), describes *Victor (Victor 'Maurus'/the Moor, soldier and martyr of Milan, S00312) as effective in freeing captives; an imprisoned Gallic aristocrat, Apollinaris, prayed at his tomb during his feast in Milan (northern Italy) and was able to flee undisturbed to Clermont (central Gaul), in c. AD 500. Written in Latin in Tours (north-west Gaul), 580/594.

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posted on 2015-05-25, 00:00 authored by pnowakowski
Gregory of Tours, Glory of the Martyrs 44

Magnificatur etiam apud Mediolanensium urbem Victor inclytus martyr, quod saepius vinctos ab ergastulis dissolvat captivosque liberos abire permittat. Igitur quodam tempore Apollinaris cum Victorio duce Italiam petiit, quod agunt apud urbem Romam interfectum; Apollinarem incolae loci quasi captivum retenebant, dicentes: "Non videbis patriam tuam, sed dignas ut satelles tuus poenas exsolves". Haec autem comminati, miserunt eum in exilio apud urbem Mediolanensim. Factum est autem, ut adveniente festivitate sancti Victoris, convenientibus populis, et hic vigiliis interesset - sub libera enim custodia absolutus adtendebatur -, prostratusque coram sacro sepulchro sancti, cum semper tum inpensius orare coepit, ut eum virtus martyris ab hoc exilio liberaret.

Circa medium vero noctis egressus ab aede, audivit unum de aegenis loquentem ad alium atque dicentem: "Quid putas, o conpauper, quae virtus sit huius martyris? Verum dico nec fallor, quia in hac nocte quisquis captivus domino per fugam dilabitur, absolutus in patriam accedit, nec prorsus ultra repperitur". Haec Apollinaris verba quasi auspicium ex Dei nutu missum accipiens, iterum atque iterum provolutus ad tumulum martyris, orat, ut virtute eius adiutus absque inpedimento possit abscedere. Moxque vocato puero, equum sterni praecepit, dicens: "Hodie absolvendi sumus a vinculo isto custodiae". Et ascendentes ita Alpium iuga, congeriorum oppleta multitudine, pertransierunt atque Arvernum perlati sunt, virtute beati martyris praeeunte, ut a nullo interrogarentur, quo tenderent vel unde venirent. Manifestumque est, eos praesidio beati martyris ab hac aerumna fuisse salvatos.

'At Milan the illustrious martyr Victor is honoured, because often he releases bound men from prisons and allows captives to depart as free men. At one time Apollinaris was travelling to Italy with duke Victorius, who some say was killed in Rome. The inhabitants of one region seized Apollinaris as a captive, and said: "You will not see your fatherland, but like your companion you will suffer an appropriate penalty." After making these threats they sent him into exile at Milan. But it happened that it was the time for the festival of St Victor and people were assembling. Since he was constrained without restriction by an open custody, Apollinaris attended the vigils. He knelt before the holy tomb of the saint and began to pray more fervently than always that the power of the martyr free him from this exile.

As he left the church about midnight, he heard one of the beggars talking with another. The beggar said: "O fellow beggar, what do you think of the power of this martyr? I tell the truth and I am not mistaken that tonight whatever captive flees and is liberated from his master will return to his fatherland as a free man and will be pursued no further." Apollinaris took these words as a sign sent by the will of God. Again and again he knelt at the tomb of the martyr and prayed that he be helped by the martyr's power and that he be able to leave without any opposition. Next he called his servant and ordered his horse to be saddled; he said: "Today we must be freed from the chain of this captivity." After mounting their horses they crossed the peaks of the Alps that were covered with drifts of snow and reached Clermont. The power of the blessed martyr preceded them, so that no one asked where they were going or whence they had come. It is obvious that they were saved from this tribulation by the assistance of the blessed martyr.'

Text: Krusch 1969, 68. Translation: Van Dam 2004, 43-44, lightly modified.

History

Evidence ID

E00542

Saint Name

Victor (the Moor), martyr of Milan, ob. 303/312 : S00312

Saint Name in Source

Victor

Type of Evidence

Literary - Hagiographical - Collections of miracles Literary - Hagiographical - Other saint-related texts

Language

  • Latin

Evidence not before

583

Evidence not after

593

Activity not before

479

Activity not after

480

Place of Evidence - Region

Gaul and Frankish kingdoms

Place of Evidence - City, village, etc

Tours

Place of evidence - City name in other Language(s)

Tours Tours Tours Toronica urbs Prisciniacensim vicus Pressigny Turonorum civitas Ceratensis vicus Céré

Major author/Major anonymous work

Gregory of Tours

Cult activities - Festivals

  • Saint’s feast

Cult activities - Places

Cult building - independent (church)

Cult activities - Non Liturgical Practices and Customs

Vigils

Cult Activities - Miracles

Miracle after death Specialised miracle-working Freeing prisoners, exiles, captives, slaves

Cult Activities - Protagonists in Cult and Narratives

Aristocrats Slaves/ servants The socially marginal (beggars, prostitutes, thieves)

Source

Gregory, bishop of Tours from 573 until his death (probably in 594), was the most prolific hagiographer of all Late Antiquity. He wrote four books on the miracles of Martin of Tours, one on those of Julian of Brioude, and two on the miracles of other saints (the Glory of the Martyrs and Glory of the Confessors), as well as a collection of twenty short Lives of sixth-century Gallic saints (the Life of the Fathers). He also included a mass of material on saints in his long and detailed Histories, and produced two independent short works: a Latin version of the Acts of Andrew and a Latin translation of the story of The Seven Sleepers of Ephesus. Internal references to datable events and to other work by Gregory, suggest that he wrote the greater part of his Glory of the Martyrs between 585 and 588, though there is one chapter (ch. 82), long before the end of the book, that describes an event that is most readily dated to 590. It is in fact likely that Gregory was collecting and recording these stories throughout his life, and, fortunately for our purposes, precise dating is not of great importance, since his views on the role of saints and the correct ways to venerate them do not seem to have changed during his writing life. The work was probably never fully completed and polished: the version we have closes with four very disparate chapters, including one (105) about the divine punishment of an avaricious woman that bears no obvious connection to the overall theme of the book. (For discussions of the dating, see Van Dam 2004, xi-xii; Shaw 2015, 104-105, 111.) In his preface, Gregory states that his aim in the work is 'to publicise some of the miracles of the saints that have until now been hidden' (aliqua de sanctorum miraculis, quae actenus latuerunt, pandere), so, as in his Glory of the Confessors, his focus is not on the lives of the saints, nor on the details of their martyrdoms, but on miracles they have effected, particularly through their relics. Miracles are recorded from many places; but unsurprisingly the largest number is from Gaul. The book opens, rather curiously, with a sizeable number of miracles and relics of Jesus and his mother Mary, neither of them conventional 'martyrs'. The explanation for this must be that Gregory's interest was really much more in relics and miracles in general than in martyrs specifically. Many of the Gallic saints he included are somewhat obscure, but outside Gaul he concentrates for the most part on major saints; towards the end of the book, however, he slips in a couple of lesser Syrian saints, probably because they had interesting specialisms: Phokas and Domitios, with, respectively, particular skills at curing snake bites and sciatica. In the case of the non-Gallic saints, it is not always clear whether they were attracting active cult in Gaul – Phokas and Domitios, for instance, almost certainly didn't. It is only when Gregory tells us of a church dedication or relic that we can be certain that the saint concerned had serious cult in Gaul: in the case of the martyrs of Rome, for instance, this is true of Clement and Laurence, but not of Chrysanthus and Daria, Pancratius, and John I. Although each section contains extraneous material, the work can be broken down very roughly into the following sections:    *Chapters 1-7: Miracles and relics of Jesus (with some of Mary), including three chapters (5-7) on relics of the Passion. (For the most part, these chapters are not covered in our database.)    *Chapters 8-19: Miracles and relics of Mary and John the Baptist.    *Chapters 20-25: Miraculous images of Jesus, and a spring associated with Easter.    *Chapters 23-34: Miracles and relics of the Apostles and Stephen (i.e. New Testament saints).    *Chapters 35-41: Miracles and relics of the post-apostolic martyrs of Rome.    *Chapters 42-46: And of northern Italy.    *Chapters 47-77: And of Gaul (in no obvious order, except that the first three chapters are occupied by early martyrs). This is the longest section of the book.    *Chapters 78-87: Very miscellaneous, with only marginal references to saints: three anti-Arian stories (79-81); two stories regarding relics of Gregory's (82-83); four stories of the punishment of impure people (84-87).    *Chapters 88-102: Miracles and relics of martyrs of Spain, Africa (just one, Cyprian of Carthage), and the East, in that order.    *Chapters 103-106: Miscellaneous. But tight structuring was never a great concern of Gregory's, so within this broad framework, he often wanders off his main theme. For instance, a clutch of miracle stories relating to John the Baptist (chs. 11-13) lead Gregory into a general discussion of the River Jordan (ch. 16), which then leads him to discuss some springs near Jericho (ch. 17), linked to the preceding chapter by the common theme of 'miraculous waters in the Holy Land', but with no connection to any martyr. Similarly, a miracle story involving relics of St Andrew and the punishment of an Arian count (ch. 78) leads Gregory into three stories against Arians with no relation to saints. These digressions did not bother Gregory and are part of the charm of his work. Gregory very seldom tells us about his sources, which for the most part were certainly oral; he had a wide circle of acquaintances within the Gallic church, and also met and collected stories from travellers from abroad, including (if the source is to be believed) a man who had travelled to India (ch. 31). But Gregory also used a range of written texts, including Eusebius' Ecclesiastical History (chs. 20 and 48), the poems of Prudentius, Paulinus of Nola, and Venantius Fortunatus, and a substantial number of Martyrdoms (Van Dam 2004, xiv-xvi). Because many of his stories are set abroad, Glory of the Martyrs is less informative about cult practices than Glory of the Confessors, with its very local and very Gallic focus, but it is still a gold-mine of information. To take just two examples: the story of Benignus of Dijon is a remarkably rich and detailed account of the discovery and enhancement of a previously unknown martyr (ch. 50), while that of Patroclus of Troyes shows the importance of a written Martyrdom, and the degree of scepticism that might greet a new one (ch. 63). There is a good general discussion of Glory of the Martyrs in Van Dam 2004, ix-xxiii, and of Gregory's hagiography more widely in Shaw 2015. (Bryan Ward-Perkins)

Discussion

For the overview of the Glory of the Martyrs see E00367. The man who was freed by Victor's power, Apollinaris (PLRE II, 'Apollinaris 3), was the son of Sidonius Apollinaris. He was involved in this misadventure as a follower of Victorius (PLRE II, 'Victorius 4'), a powerful military and political figure in the Visigothic kingdom, who fell from power in about 479 and fled to Italy (for the date, see PLRE). Victorius had close links to Apollinaris' father, Sidonius, the bishop of Clermont at the time, and was deeply involved with ecclesiastical as well as civil affairs in the Clermont region (see e.g. E02027, E06751).

Bibliography

Edition: Krusch, B., Liber in gloria martyrum, in: Gregorii Turonensis Opera. 2: Miracula et opera minora (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores rerum Merovingicarum 1.2; 2nd ed.; Hannover, 1969). Translation: Van Dam, R., Gregory of Tours, Glory of the Martyrs (Translated Texts for Historians 4; 2nd ed., Liverpool, 2004). Further reading: Shaw, R., "Chronology, Composition, and Authorial Conception in the Miracula", in: A.C. Murray (ed.), A Companion to Gregory of Tours (Leiden-Boston 2015), 102-140.

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