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E05680: Bede, in his Martyrology, records the feast on 29 November at Rome of Saturninus (martyr of Rome, buried on the via Salaria, S00422), 'Sennes' (a misreading of senex), and Sisinnius (deacon and martyr of Rome, S02058), who caused *Papias and Maurus (soldiers and martyrs of Rome, S02057) to believe. Written in Latin at Wearmouth-Jarrow (north-east Britain), 725/731.

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posted on 2018-06-08, 00:00 authored by bsavill

Bede, Martyrology

III Kl. Dec. Romae, sancti Saturnini martyris et Sennes et Sisinnii diaconi sub Maximiano, a quo primo inter alio damnati ad fodiendam arenam, ad faciendas thermas diocletianas, deinde in carcere diu sunt macerati, ubi multos gentiles docentes baptizabant: et denuo educti, vincti catenis et nudis pedibus ante praefectum Urbis Laodicium iussi sunt in equuleo levari et attrahi nervis, et fustibus ac scorpionibus caedi: quibus etiam postmodum flammas ad latera iussit apponi et depositos de equuleo capite truncari. Quorum corpora cum Iohanne presbtero colligens Thrason vir christianissimus, qui de facultatibus suis martyribus multa ministraverat, sepelivit in praedio suo, via Salaria. His in medio certamine positis, crediderunt duo milites Papias et Maurus, qui mox comprehensi a Laodicio, et non multo post martyrio coronati sunt. Scriptum in gestis Marcelli papae.

'29 November. At Rome, [the feast] of Saints Saturninus, martyr, and Sennes [should read: 'Saturninus, martyr and old man'], and Sisinnius, deacon, under Maximianus, by whom they, among others, were first condemned to dig sand, in order to build the Baths of Diocletian, then having wasted away for a long time in prison where, teaching, they kept baptising many Gentiles: and having been led back out again, bound with chains and barefooted, before Laodicius prefect of the city, they were ordered to be lifted up onto the rack and drawn tight with fetters, and beaten with clubs and 'scorpions': after this he also ordered flames to be applied to their sides and for their heads to be cut off once they had been removed from the rack. A most Christian man, Thraso, who has been ministering much to the martyrs out of his own resources, collecting the bodies along with Iohannes, a priest, buried them on his own estate on the via Salaria. While [the martyrs] were still in the midst of their struggle, two soldiers, Papias and Maurus, believed; they were soon apprehended by Laodicius, and not long afterward were crowned with martyrdom. It is written in the deeds of Pope Marcellus.'

Text: Quentin 1908, 82-3. Translation: Lifshitz 2000, 195-6, modified.

History

Evidence ID

E05680

Saint Name

Sisinnius, martyr of Rome : S02058 Saturninus, martyr of Rome, buried on the via Salaria : S00422 Papias and Maurus, soldiers and martyrs of Rome : S02057

Saint Name in Source

Sisinnius Saturninus Papias et Maurus

Related Saint Records

Type of Evidence

Liturgical texts - Calendars and martyrologies Literary - Hagiographical - Other saint-related texts

Language

Latin

Evidence not before

725

Evidence not after

731

Activity not before

308

Activity not after

731

Place of Evidence - Region

Britain and Ireland

Place of Evidence - City, village, etc

Wearmouth and Jarrow

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

Wearmouth and Jarrow St Albans St Albans Verulamium

Major author/Major anonymous work

Bede

Cult activities - Festivals

Saint’s feast

Cult activities - Non Liturgical Practices and Customs

Transmission, copying and reading saint-related texts

Cult Activities - Protagonists in Cult and Narratives

Ecclesiastics - lesser clergy

Source

The Northumbrian monk Bede (673/4-735) included among his many works listed in the final, autobiographical chapter (5.24) of his Ecclesiastical History of the English People (731) 'a martyrology of the festivals (martyrologium de nataliciis) of the holy martyrs, in which I have diligently tried to note down all that I could find about them, not only on what day, but also by what sort of combat and under what judge they overcame the world'. The widely-circulated Martyrology attributed to Bede, known only from continental manuscripts from the ninth century onwards, almost certainly represents that same text, albeit with a number of later additions (not included here). Although the work postdates the year 700, our database includes Bede’s Martyrology since it draws directly upon materials in use at his home monasteries of Wearmouth and Jarrow – and apparently more widely in Britain – since at least the late seventh century. Moreover, the sheer range of works which Bede evidently consulted, and even directly incorporated into his calendar, gives the Martyrology a special value for our database, since it provides a terminus ante quem of c. 700 for many cultic texts which are otherwise difficult to date. Its main underlying source, however, is a Northumbrian recension of the Martyrologium Hieronymianum. Possibly this had arrived in Britain as early as the mission of Augustine, first bishop of Canterbury (597-?609), but a separate remark by Bede earlier in his Ecclesiastical History (4.18) seems to implicate John, precentor (archicantor) of St Peter’s, Rome. Sent to Britain by Pope Agatho in 679, John not only taught chant at Wearmouth but ‘committed to writing all things necessary for the celebration of festal days throughout the whole year; these writings have been preserved to this day in the monastery and copies have now been made by many others elsewhere’ . Bede may have therefore already found himself immersed in the liturgical world of the Martyrologium Hieronymianum since his oblation to Wearmouth in c. 680: yet he can have only finished his own Martyrology in or after 725, since it incorporates elements of his On the Reckoning of Time, completed that year. Henri Quentin reconstructed the contents of Bede’s Martyrology as it existed before its diverse Carolingian recensions, in his Martyrologes historiques du moyen âge (1908): this posited a calendar of 115 notices across 99 days, running according to the Julian calendar from 1 January (Alamachius of Rome: E05405) to 31 December (Columba of Sens: E05691). One notable feature of the Martyrology is therefore its apparent incompleteness, something that had already attracted attention as early as the ninth century, when the Frankish scholars Ado and Usuard commented on the number of blank entries in Bede’s collection. Conversely, the Martyrology is atypical among other late antique or earlier medieval exempla of its genre in that many of its entries are considerably detailed, embellishing the conventional format of simply date and place of martyrdom with brief 'historic' narratives of the saints concerned derived from Bede's sources. Here we see Bede’s work moving beyond that of simply a copyist or editor, and utilising wider authorities such as the Liber pontificalis; the writings of such authors as Augustine, Jerome, and Eusebius; and, most substantially, diverse Martyrdom accounts from across the Roman world. Thus, while his Martyrology fell well short of covering the full liturgical year, Bede provided on a saint-by-saint basis a text considerably more substantial than those circulating in the Latin West before him. Bede’s selection of entries may appear peculiar to us, particularly in light of his own location. Only three entries relate to saints from Britain (Alban, E05561; Æthelthryth of Ely, E05562; and the two Hewalds, E05631), and none from Ireland or the wider Celtic world. Instead, we find (following Thacker, 2011) 62 notices for Italy, of which 47 are for Rome; 26 for the eastern Roman Empire; 11 for Gaul/Francia; 6 for North Africa; 3 for Persia and Babylon; and 1 for Spain. Possibly we might frame this in light of Bede’s conviction, expressed elsewhere, in the importance of the Roman church and 'orthodox' Roman tradition, especially as opposed to some of the practices of the Irish or Romano-British (c.f. Lifshitz, 2000; Gunn, 2009). Yet even from this perspective Bede’s choices seem peculiar, omitting such pivotal Roman figures as Peter and Paul (or indeed any apostles), Benedict of Nursia, or Gregory the Great. Thacker has proposed an interesting solution to this: the aim of Bede’s text was not to provide a comprehensive liturgical calendar, but rather a set of corrections concerning some of the more obscure feast days, whose dates and details were disputed or unknown among the author’s contemporary milieu. We should add to this, however, the possibility that Bede’s choices were also more straightforwardly dictated by the material he had available. We find certain Martyrdom accounts, such as the Polychronius cycle, repeatedly and disproportionately cited throughout his calendar, with full notices often granted to saints of very little importance: it seems fair to deduce in such cases that Bede simply attempted to draw as much as he could from certain available texts, perhaps compensating for lacunae elsewhere in the Wearmouth-Jarrow library. While the Martyrology may not, therefore, give us anywhere near a full picture of the cult of saints as it was understood in Bede’s Britain, it may hint at some of the debates and uncertainties surrounding the late antique martyrological tradition as it became absorbed into the Anglo-Saxon church at the turn of the eighth century – and, significantly, provides us with a key witness as to which texts lent themselves to this process.

Discussion

Bede's sources for this entry are the Martyrologium Hieronymianum and the Martyrdom of Marcellus and his Companions (E02501). All surviving MSS except one give the erroneous 'Sennes' for 'senis' (Quentin 1908, 82-3).

Bibliography

Editions: Quentin, H., Les martyrologes historiques du moyen age: étude sur la formation du martyrologe romain (Paris, 1908), chapter 2. Dubois, J., and G. Renaud, Edition pratique des martyrologes de Bède, de l'anonyme lyonnais et de Florus (Paris, 1976). Translation: Bede, Martyrology, trans. F. Lifshitz, in T. Head (ed.), Medieval Hagiography: An Anthology (New York and London, 2000). Further reading: Gunn, V., Bede’s Historiae: Genre, Rhetoric, and the Construction of Anglo-Saxon Church History (Woodbridge, 2009). Lapidge, M., "Acca of Hexham and the Origin of the Old English Martyrology," Analecta Bollandiana 123 (2005), 29-78. Ó Riain, P., "A Northumbrian Phase in the Formation of the Hieronymian Martyrology: the Evidence of the Martyrology of Tallaght," Analecta Bollandiana 120 (2002), 311-63. Thacker, A., "Bede and his Martyrology," in: E. Mullins and D. Scully (eds.), Listen, O Isles, Unto Me: Studies in Medieval Word and Image in Honour of Jennifer O’Reilly (Cork, 2010), 126-41.