On the Life of Saints Cyrus and John

PREFACE OF ANGELO MAI ON THE LIFE OF SS. CYRUS AND JOHN.

It is of the greatest importance for religion to put into print the writings of the Ecclesiastical Fathers, especially those who are thoroughly orthodox: for these are treasures that must be placed in the sacred treasury, so that they may afterwards be drawn upon for the various uses or needs of the Church. In these, I think, Sophronius, Patriarch of Jerusalem, who piously closed a life distinguished by holy works and religious writings around the year of Christ 640, occupies no small place. Many have said much about the books left by him as the occasion required, and yet only a few have seen the light here and there, as I myself have said above in the Preface; in which place I disclosed my plan of collecting all the lucubrations of the holy man, and in the first place of publishing the history of the blessed Martyrs Cyrus and John, and of the miracles performed by them; which trust I am finally discharging now.

That the thaumaturgic history of SS. Cyrus and John was written by our Sophronius, the author himself says primarily in the protheoria, and in the praises, and in the final miracle, and finally in the epigram which he wrote concerning his life on page 95, to which the ^A latrosophist Seneca soon agrees in a tetrastich. Furthermore, the Greek Menaion for the eleventh day of March says thus: *Sophronius, suffering from a clouding of the eyes, is healed by the saints Cyrus and John, and as the price of this healing he is required to commit to writing the miracles performed by them each day.* Likewise the Fathers of the Second Council of Nicaea, and Saint John Damascene, have brought forward testimonies for the honor of the sacred icons from this work of Sophronius, as we have noted below, pp. 18, 380, 403. Boniface the counselor already rendered into Latin the first twelve miracles written by Sophronius; Anastasius the Librarian, however, rendered all the rest, along with the protheoria and the praises, as well as both histories of the saints, as we demonstrate below. Finally, Peter of Naples, besides having summarized the History of the holy martyrs on his own account, also interpreted the first and last miracle from Sophronius by name, as we shall say; and these writings are contained in the Vatican Latin codex 6075, from which we would have extracted them, had not the size of the second volume already grown sufficiently, and had they not seemed almost superfluous after the lucubrations of Anastasius.

Now we must speak of the Greek exemplar, which provided us with this famous, copious, and genuine offspring of Sophronius. It is Vatican codex 1607, a parchment of the 12th century, which was once in the monastery of Crypta-Ferrata, as its inscription still testifies, and was observed by me during the autumn holidays in the year 1838; it is truly a precious ^B *keimelion* [treasure], in which I believe this Sophronian monument alone to have survived; and this very Roman codex I believe to have been designated by the Bollandists for the 11th of March in these words: *An illustrious volume on SS. Cyrus and John written by Sophronius at Alexandria; which, though desired in vain for the 31st of January, the day on which these saints are celebrated, and believed to have perished, we happily found during our Roman journey, and in both languages, and we are keeping it in place of a huge treasure, to be produced in its own time*; which, however, did not happen because the Society was later extinguished and the edition of the *Acta SS.* was interrupted. And whether that Bollandian apograph survives anywhere, I truly do not know; but that it was derived from both the Greek and Latin Vatican codices, of which I am likewise about to speak momentarily, I have no doubt.

After finding the Greek exemplar, I also began to track down the ancient Latin interpretation, which the Bollandists not only mention, but also printed a specimen of, albeit without realizing it was [from the same source].

NOTES

ON THE ENCOMIUM OF THE HOLY CYRUS AND JOHN

^A ...ascribed to Anastasius. But behold, this text also presented itself to me among the Latin Vatican codices under number 5410. It is truly an apograph, or copy, of an older codex, of which I shall speak shortly, as the preceding inscription by Father Penia declares: *Saint Sophronius, Archbishop of Jerusalem, on the praises and miracles of the holy martyrs Cyrus and John.* The manuscript is held in the archive of the church of S. Maria in Via Lata of the City; from which, in the jubilee year 1600, Francis Penia, an auditor of the Rota, had this codex transcribed. Indeed, there was also another apograph, but fashioned somewhat more negligently and confused with the work of the same title by Petrus Parthenopensis, which I observed in the Vallicellian library.

Now that the apographs of so great a work had been seen, it was consistent that I should be seized with the desire for the autograph itself; for not only did Penia state that it existed in the archive of S. Maria in Via Lata, but also Aringius, who in *Roma subterranea*, book 2, chapter 21, published the translation of the relics of the holy martyrs from Alexandria to Rome, transcribed from that same codex of S. Maria in Via Lata; and finally, the great Baronius, whose words in his notes to the Martyrology for the 31st of January are these: "They say that the history of the translation exists in a very ancient codex of the diaconia of S. Maria in Via Lata." Baronius, therefore, did not see the codex, but trusted only in the report of fame. ^B But I, having learned these things, and trusting especially in the affirmation of Penia, went straight to the archive of S. Maria, within whose urban parish I reside; and the canons there kindly unlocked everything for me; but as far as the codex was concerned, I was frustrated; for it does not appear there at all; and they affirmed to me that there is no canon among the living who has seen it anywhere with his own eyes: wherefore they themselves think it was removed long ago, or suffered damage by some accident. A literary loss of no small account, by Hercules! For it concerns a codex which was being transcribed under Pope Innocent III, in the year 1204, and which is said to have been bound and repaired by order of the canons in the year 1298, under Pope Boniface VIII, as the aforementioned apograph of Penia again testifies, in which we must now needs acquiesce.

It follows that something be said concerning the narrative of the translation of the relics of the holy martyrs Cyrus and John from Alexandria to Rome; which narrative is not in the Greek codex, nor could it be, but exists written in Latin at the end of the codex of S. Maria in Via Lata, from which Aringius, as I said, published it, whereas I, having noted it as known and foreign to the pen of Sophronius, have passed it over. From the same source, the lessons of the ecclesiastical office were derived exactly, according to the ancient usage of that clergy, which Martinellus recites (b). The narrative of the translation, however, begins as follows: "In the times of Honorius and Arcadius, who were most religious emperors, under Pope Innocent, the bodies of the most blessed martyrs Cyrus and John were translated by two Catholic monks, namely Grimaldus and Arnulphus, from the city of Alexandria to the city of Rome." There was, however, at that time a great dissension between the Saracens and the inhabitants of the city of Alexandria, to such an extent that those Barbarians ^C rode with great perfidy upon the city of Alexandria. Afterward, indeed, they inflicted such a great war on all sides that at last it was, without doubt, overcome. The narrator continues to say that the holy martyrs, appearing in a dream to the aforementioned monks, commanded that they should transfer their relics to Rome, lest the Barbarians, having soon captured Alexandria, should consume them with flames. Complying with this warning, the monks translated the bodies of the blessed men to Rome, and with Pope Innocent and the cardinals and prelates leading the procession, they deposited the same in that sacred shrine of S. Praxedis, which is situated in the Transtiberine region, on the Via Portuensis. But come, who does not immediately recognize the gross error of the narrator, bereft of all knowledge of the times, writing in fact "emperors Honorius and Arcadius" instead of Heraclius, and "Pope Innocent" instead of Honorius? For under the brother Caesars and Innocent, there was no occupation of Egypt by the Saracens; but that did not occur until the 25th year of Heraclius, the 9th of Pope Honorius, in the year of Christ 634, as Baronius and others show. Furthermore, at the time when Sophronius was writing his history (namely between the years 610 and 620, as I shall demonstrate by the miracle), the bodies of Cyrus and John were without doubt resting in their temple at Menuthis in the vicinity of Alexandria and were worshipped by the concourse of the whole world, as Sophronius says a hundred times. It remains, therefore, that having corrected the grave error of the Latin narrator, we should believe that translation to have been made in the seventh century of Christ ^D near the very capture of Alexandria, in approximately the 25th year of Heraclius, by the monks Grimaldus (or Grimoaldus) and Arnulphus. For the name Grimoaldus is read more than once around that time as belonging to military leaders and princes. Certainly, there is no reason to doubt the translation of the holy bodies from Egypt to Rome. For John the Deacon, in his *Life of St. Gregory the Great*, book 4, 91, mentions the Tiberine basilica of SS. Cyrus and John under Pope Benedict II in the seventh century; and that sacred little shrine of S. Praxedis, which I mentioned above, truly survives across the Tiber, which I myself visited lately, overgrown with vines and equipped with poor furnishings; in whose hypogeum, behind a door long since obstructed by a wall, it is not now possible to view the paintings described by Martinellus *loc. cit.*, nay, I suspect they have been destroyed by dampness and neglect: nevertheless, through a window, I was still able to peer at an inscription cut into the marble in ancient letters, and not unknown to antiquaries, which reads as follows:

*The holy bodies of Cyrus and John shine here,* *Which glorious Alexandria once gave to Rome.*

Beyond the complete history of the holy martyrs mentioned thus far, which is preserved in Greek in the codex of Grottaferrata and in Latin in the copy of S. Maria in Via Lata, there exist other things in addition.

NOTES. (b) *Primo trofeo della Santa Croce, eretto in Roma nella via Lata*, p. 3.

as it were summaries or excerpts of the work, such as the one, not so brief, which was rendered into Latin with fifteen miracles by Otho Zylius and edited in the Bollandists' *Acta Sanctorum*, tom. II of January. Likewise, as I have already said, there is the writing of Peter of Parthenope, which we have arranged to be printed in the following volume: yet this author, although he wrote at the end of the twelfth century or the beginning of the next, was still ignorant of the translation of the sacred bodies. There is, furthermore, a different passion of the holy martyrs in an ancient codex of S. Maria ad Martyres, now in the Vatican. Finally, I also recall reading other Acts of these martyrs in Greek and Latin in Vatican codices, all of which seem to be derived from Sophronian sources.

Readers perhaps expected our judgment on either the Greek text or the Latin, which, however, it is by no means appropriate for the editor to offer once the matter itself has been brought into the public light. I wish indeed that a better or more polished translator had fallen to the lot of Sophronius! For both Boniface and Anastasius himself flow in a discourse that is quite entangled, rather obscure, and sometimes semi-barbarous. Neither, indeed, is ignorant of the Greek language; rather, each insists upon the words strictly, although he not infrequently either ignores or perverts the very genuine force of the meanings, and is always lacking in every charm. But what was I to do? Should I have laid medicinal or violent hands upon such ancient interpreters, so that I might correct, vary, or interpolate them? Not at all. Or should I have omitted or cast them aside entirely, and adorned a new text for the taste of our own century? I have not allowed myself to be persuaded even to do that, so as to prefer a modern translation, however lucid and polished it might be, to these which are commended by the authority or color of antiquity. For behold, with the ancient texts thus preserved by me, we have three authors as if for one: Sophronius, Boniface, and Anastasius.

Although the writing of Sophronius is of a historical nature, still it is not lacking in dogmatic utility and gravity. For in miracles xxxvi, xxxvii, and xxxix, it constantly affirms the presence of the Body of the Lord in the Eucharist: in his liturgical Commentary he also declares by express words the commutation or transubstantiation of the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of the Lord: "Let no one think that the holy things of the Body and Blood of Christ are antitypes, but let him believe that the bread and wine which are offered are changed into the Body and Blood of Christ." I would wish that those heretics would consider this, who have not feared to decree even public punishments by their edicts and laws against Catholics who are assertors of transubstantiation. Furthermore, in many miracles Sophronius opposes the various heretics of his own times, namely the Severians, Julianists, Theodosians, observers of fate, pagans, blasphemers, and atheists, as in miracle xii, and from miracle xxviii almost up to xxxix. Nor are the signs of erudition lacking, which he recites from Porphyry at the beginning of miracle xxxi; likewise what he says in miracle liv concerning Damascus and its learned citizens, and most especially concerning the Nicolaits. Finally, readers will understand that Sophronius is also a very charming poet from his rather long epigram after the "Praises of the SS. Cyrus and John," and much more from his honeyed Anacreontics below.