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Gladiators of Expiation: the Cult of the Martyrs in the Catholic Revival of the Nineteenth Century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Vincent Viaene
Vincent Viaene*
Affiliation:
F.W.O. Vlaanderen, Catholic University of Leuven
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Extract

In the spring of 1802, the Roman catacombs of Priscilla were the scene of excavations in search of Christian antiquities and martyrs’ bodies. Excavations of this kind had been going on in Rome since the late sixteenth century, though they had been temporarily interrupted during the occupation by French revolutionary troops in the last years of the eighteenth century. On 25 May, the fossores, or diggers, who worked under the authority of a religious dignitary, the Custodian of the Relics, hit on an elaborate tomb. The profuse symbols on the slab were (erroneously) believed to indicate martyrdom: arrows, an anchor and a lash for the instruments of torture, a luxuriant palm for the martyr’s eventual triumph and reward in heaven. From the garbled inscription ‘LUMENA PAX TECUM FI’, the name of Filumena, or Philomena, could be deduced.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 40: Retribution, Repentance, and Reconciliation , 2004 , pp. 301 - 316
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2004

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References

1 In reality, the garbled nature of the inscription was proof of re-use, implying that the remains the tomb contained were not those of a martyr, nor even those of Philomena (cf. Leclercq, H., ‘Filumena’, Dictionnaire d’Archéologie chrétienne V. 2 (Paris, 1923), 1600–06 Google Scholar). Although the false identification was ascertained in the first decade of the twentieth century, Philomena was not removed from the saints’ calendar until 1961. Cf. Balboni, D., ‘Filomena’, Bibliotlieca Sanctorum 5 (Rome, 1964), 796–800 Google Scholar. On the rise of the cult of Philomena, see Salvia, S. La, ‘L’invenzione di un culto: S. Filomena da taumaturga a guerriera della fede’, in Gajano, S. Boesch and Sebastiani, L., eds, Culto dei santi, istituzioni e classi sociali in età preindustriale (Rome and L’Aquila, 1984), 873–956 Google Scholar.

2 Lucia, F. di, Relazione istorica della traslazione del sacro corpo di S. Filomena vergine e martire da Roma a Mugnano del Cardinale, 2 vols (5th edn, Naples, 1833), 1: 80–1 Google Scholar. Don Francesco di Lucia, the great advocate of devotion to Philomena in Italy, compared the liquified blood to the gem-stones of the Heaveidy Jerusalem, and explained how it symbolized the virtues of the martyr; it was just that God glorified the martyr in her (or his) blood, because martyrdom had been a victory over ‘the passion of the blood’. Liquefaction was of course not uncommon in Southern Italy. On the famous model of San Gennaro, the patron saint of Naples, see Paliotti, V., San Gennaro: Storia di un culto, di un mito, dell’anima di un popolo (Milano, 1983)Google Scholar.

3 The respective roles of Don Francesco and Suor Maria Luisa in ‘uncovering’ Philomena’s life remain somewhat unclear and would warrant further research.

4 On the reality of female martyrdom in ancient Rome, see Stuart Hall, G., ‘Women among the Early Martyrs’, in Wood, Diana, ed., Martyrs and Martyrologies, SCH 30 (Oxford, 1993). 1–22 Google Scholar; Jones, C., “Women, Death and the Law during the Christian Persecutions’, in ibid., 23–34 Google Scholar.

5 Don Francesco commented that it was only proper that the martyr concerned herself with the splendour of her body and her outward appearance, because it were the bodies of the martyrs which were ‘the occasion and the most rich wellspring of merits, triumphs and luminous crowns’: di Lucia, Relezione, 1: 163ff.

6 Di Lucia, Relazione, 1: 72–4, 144; 2:3ff.

7 See di Lucia’s most interesting ‘Apologia della Verginità’, appended to vol. 1 of his Relazione, esp. 97ff.

8 The most important translation/adaptation was by the Barrelle, French Jesuit J. F., Vie et Miracles de Sainte Philomène, vierge et martyre, surnommée la thaumaturge du XIXe siècle (Brussels, 1835)Google Scholar.

9 See, next to La Salvia, ‘Invenzione’, above all Philippe Boutry, ‘Les Saints des Catacombes. Itinéraires français d’une piété ultramontainc (1800–1881)’, in Mélanges de l’Ecole Française de Rome, Moyen Age-Temps Modernes 91 (1979), 875–930, 895–6. The spreading of the devotion in Belgium is illustrated by Anon., Leven van de Heilige Philomena (Gent, 1845).

10 Philippe Boutry was the first to offer a reassessment, in the article mentioned in the previous note.

11 The Roman martyrs had fulfilled a similar function in the Counter-Reformation: see the important article by Simon Ditchfield, ‘An Early Christian School of Sanctity in Tridentine Rome’, in idem, ed., Christianity and Community in the West. Essays for John Bossy (Aldershot, 2001), 183–205. A more general framework is provided by Barone, Giulia, Caffiero, Marina and Barcellona, Francesco Scorza, eds, Modelli di santità e modelli di comportamento, Sacro/Santo 10 (Turin, 1994)Google Scholar.

12 See Chateaubriand, F. R. de (1768–1848), Les Martyrs ou le Triomphe de la religion chrétienne, ed. Regard, Maurice, Oeuvres romanesques et voyages, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade 209–10 (Paris, 1969), 2: 62–3 Google Scholar. The text has also been made available electronically by the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris: http://gallica.bnf.fr/scripto. There is an English transl, by O. W. Wight, The Martyrs (New York, 1976). Another key work is P. Gerbet, Esquisse de Rome chrétienne, 3 vols (Louvain, 1844), 1: iv.

13 See in general Viaene, V., Belgium and the Holy See from Gregory XVI to Pius IX (1831-1859). Catholic Revival, Society and Politics in t 9th-Century Europe (Leuven, Brussels and Rome, 2001), 236–79 Google Scholar.

14 Labrot, G., Roma caput mundi. L’immagine barocca della città santa 1534–1677 (Naples, 1997)Google Scholar, passim; Ditchfìeld, ‘An Early Christian School of Sanctity’.

15 On the apologetical and archaeological literature about the catacombs since the Counter-Reformation, see Frend, W. H. C., The Archaeology of Ancient Christianity: a History (London, 1996)Google Scholar; Ditchfìeld, Simon, ‘Text before Trowel: Antonio Bosio’s Roma Sotterranea Revisited’, in Swanson, R. N., ed., The Church Retrospective, SCH 33 (Woodbridge, 1997), 343–60 Google Scholar; G. B. de Rossi’s introduction to the first volume of Roma sotterranea, 1–82, remains useful as well.

16 Gerbet, Esquisse, vol. 2 (Paris, 1851) is the best example, based for the most part on Marchi (the anecdote on Gregory XVI is on p. 209).

17 Gerbet, Esquisse, 1: 50–60; ‘Christian Pompeii’, ibid., 183.

18 Mgr Gaume, Les Trois Rome. Journal d’un voyage en Italie, 4 vols (Paris, 1847–8). I used the second edition of 1857.

19 Other travelogues referred to in this essay are: [C. de Lagranville], Souvenirs de voyage, ou lettres d’une voyageuse malade, 2 vols (Paris and Lille, 1836); Beauffort, E. de, Souvenirs d’Italie, par un Catholique (Paris, 1838)Google Scholar; and the unpublished ‘Journal d’un voyage en Italie, 1847’ by Victor Dechamps (Redemptorist archives, KADOC, Leuven). On the authors, see Viaene, Belgium and the Holy See, passim.

20 Dechamps, ‘Journal’; Lagranville, Souvenirs, 1: 254–5.

21 Gaume, Trois Rome, 1: 369–88; 4: 88; Lagranville, Souvenirs, 2: 43–4.

22 Gerbet, Esquisse, 1: 7ff.; Gaume, Trois Rome, 4: 165; Lagranville, Souvenirs, 2: 189–91. The association between melancholy and the campagna was first made by Chateaubriand in his Lettre à M. de Fontanes (1804).

23 Dalmières, Curé du Pont Saint-Esprit, Itinéraire du voyageur catholique à Rome, en passant par Gênes, Pise, Florence, Assise et Lorette, suivi d’un pèlerinage au tombeau de saint Janvier, à Naples (Avignon, 1846), 177, 167; D. Raoul-Rochette, Tableau des Catacombes de Rome (Brussels, 1837), 85.

24 Gerbet, Esquisse, 1: 112–14, 184ff. and Chateaubriand, Martyrs, 440; similar emotions in Lagranville, Souvenirs, 1: 321–2; Dechamps, ‘Journal’; Dalmières, Itinéraire, 176.

25 Chateaubriand, Martyrs, 494; see also ibid., 105ff., 130ff., 444, 467.

26 The most extensive version of this topos is in Gaume, Trois Rome, 1: 364–8; other examples in Chateaubriand, Lettre à Fontanes, in Oeuvres romanesques et voyages, 2; 1483 (but without the anti-semitic odour, rather the contrary, see Martyrs, 172); Dechamps, ‘Journal’; Wiseman, Fabiola, 42.

27 Gerbet, Esquisse, 2: 366–7.

28 See the last two pages of Les Martyrs, 498–9.

29 Gerbet, Esquisse, 1:21, 115.

30 Gaume, Trois Rome, 4: 470; Beauffort, Souvenirs, 184. See already Chateaubriand, Martyrs, 489; Maistre, J. de, Les Soirées de Saint-Pétersbourg (Antwerp, 1821), 2: 332ff Google Scholar The idea goes back to Origen.

31 Beauffort, Souvenirs, 185; Lagranville, Souvenirs, 1: 68–9.

32 Chateaubriand, Martyrs, 443; Gerbet, Esquisse, 260.

33 Chateaubriand, Martyrs, 167.

34 Barrelle, Vie et Miracles, 46–7; the martyr St Alenia, whose relics were brought to Liège by the Redemptorists in 1843, was also to be invoked against bad books, see [ Dechamps, V.], Translation de Sainte Alénie martyre (Liège, 1843), 32 Google Scholar.

35 Gueranger, P., Histoire de Sainte Cécile vierge Romaine et martyre (Paris, 1853), iv–vii Google Scholar.

36 Dechamps, Journal’; see also Wiseman, Fabiola, 145; Le Livre de Sainte Theudosie, recueil complet des documents publiés sur cette sainte, cérémonies et processions qui ont eu lieu pour la translation de ses reliques de Rome à Amiens, ed. P. Gerbet (Amiens, 18 5 3), 13 8.

37 Chateaubriand, Martyrs, 5 2; Dechamps, ‘Journal’; Livre de Sainte Theudosie, 145.

38 Gaume, Trois Rome, 4: 506. In his article ‘Ampoules (de sang)’, in Dictionnaire d’Archéologie chrétienne 1. 2 (Paris, 1907), 1747–78,1765, H. Leclercq suggested a maximum of 15,000 for Rome.

39 Maistre, De, Considérations sur la France (London, 1797)Google Scholar.

40 For an overview of this controversy (which seems never to have been formally closed), see the introduction by A. Ferrua in his edition of G. B. de Rossi (1822–1894), Sulla questione del vaso di sangue: memoria inedita con introduzione storica e appendici di documenti inediti, Studi di Antichità Cristiana 18 (Vatican City, 1944), vii-xcix; and the essay by Leclercq on ‘Ampoules (de sang)’.

41 For di Lucia, the martyrs’ blood is a ‘small theatre’ of the martyrs’ virtues, inviting the faithful to follow their example: Relazione, 1: 74,144. Likewise, his virgin followers were not expiating the sins of society in their prayers and penitential exercises, but rather their own sins: ‘Apologia’, passim.

42 See above, n. 30.

43 Viaene, Belgium and the Holy See, 185ff., 89.

44 Gerbet, Esquisse, 1: 184.

45 Chateaubriand, Martyrs, 446; Gerbet, Esquisse, 1: 186–7; Barrelle, Vie et Miracles, 253ff; Neuvaineen l’honneur de Sainte Philomène (Lille, 1840), 25–6.

46 Chateaubriand, Martyrs, 494; Livre de Sainte Theudosie, 146 (a poem by Gerbet); Wiseman, Fabiola, 111.

47 Barrelle, Vie et Miracles, 56; Livre de Sainte Theudosie, 131; other examples in Boutry, ‘Saints des Catacombes’, 902–3.

48 Gerbet, Esquisse, 1: 74.

49 Ibid., 2: 188–90.

50 Livre de Sainte Theudosie, 178 (oration by Mgr Pie), 202ff. (article from Veuillot’s Univers); and, more moderate, Gerbet, Esquisse, 2: 226.

51 Gerbet, Esquisse, 1: 134–5, 149ff.; Raoul-Rochette, Tableau, 24.

52 For the recusant echo, see notably Wiseman, Fabiola, 67.

53 Beauffort, Souvenirs, 271.

54 Boutry, ‘Saints des Catacombes’; idem, ‘La Restauration de Rome’, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Paris-IV, 1994, 2: 153–97.

55 Livre de Sainte Theudosie, 39–78.

56 Ibid., 120–1, 130–1.

57 Ibid., 34,83.

58 Ibid., 111.

59 Ibid., 15–16.

60 Ibid., 130.

61 Ibid., 184–5.

62 Ibid., 171ff. (oration by Mgr Pie).

63 Ibid., 52–3; see also 49. The oration by Cardinal Wiseman, 166ff., developed the same theme.

64 Ibid., 84.

65 Ibid., 42,122, 78, 93–6, 118–19, 139, 180.

66 The critics – an international band of courageous, mostly liberal-Catholic scholars – demonstrated that the vessels (whatever they may have contained) were no certain sign of a martyr’s tomb. The Roman retreat, effective from the second half of the 1850s onwards, became official in 1881. Cf. Ferrua, Sulla questione del vaso di sangue, xli ff.

67 This, at least, is where the author found the ‘relics’ brought to the Archdiocese of Mechelen in the nineteenth century.