Tractates 5

St. Ambrose, Epistle I, to Syagrius, Bishop of Verona, no. 1. But you have thought that this judgment was to be claimed by yourself alone, without the counsel of any brother; in which, however, you have made a prejudgment before judgment, in supposing that a maiden, proven by the judgment of Zeno of holy memory and sanctified by his blessing, should after so many years, with no author of the accusation, no accuser, no one professing the charge, be brought into peril of guilt. St. Gregory the Great, Book III of the Dialogues, chapter 19. Recently John the Tribune by his own account informed me that Count Pronulphus, when he was present with him, bore witness that at the same time and in the same place, where the wondrous thing occurred, he had been present with King Authari, and had come to know that matter.

For the aforesaid Tribune related, saying: About five years ago, when at this city of Rome the Tiber overran its bed, swelling so greatly that its waters flowed over the walls of the city and from there already covered very large districts: at the city of Verona the river Adige, rising in flood, came to the church of the blessed Zeno, martyr and bishop; and though the doors of that church stood open, the water did not enter into it at all, but, swelling little by little, it reached up to the windows of the church which were nearest to the roof, and thus the standing water closed off the door of the church, as if that liquid element had been turned into the solidity of a wall:

and when many people were found inside, but the whole church was surrounded by the mass of waters so that they had no way by which they might go out, and there they feared to perish from thirst and hunger, they came to the door of the church and drew water to drink—the water which, as I said before, had risen up to the windows, and yet in no way flowed into the church. Thus it could be drawn as water, but as water it could not flow in. Standing before the door, to show to all the merit of the Martyr, it was both water for their help, and yet as it were not water for invading the place. [CXCVIII] An anonymous writer of Pippin's time, in a Rhythm on the praises of Verona.

Zeno, the eighth Shepherd and Confessor, a renowned Martyr, who by his preaching brought Verona back to baptism; he healed Gallienus' daughter from an evil spirit, and brought back from the deep oxen that were sinking together with their driver. Indeed he freed many from the pestilent enemy, raised up a dead man rescued from the river, and destroyed many idols by frequent fasts. I am not able to recount the many works of this Saint, which Almighty God, through him, displayed as wonders, from his coming out of Syria all the way into Italy. Ratherius, Bishop of Verona, On the Contempt of the Canons, part I, page 352, vol. I of the newest edition of the Spicilegium of d'Achery.

Let me here use the authority of blessed Zeno, namely in the sermon which, in his own manner, he most splendidly composed about the patriarch Judah and Tamar, saying: 'The Devil is the father of all who live corruptly.' The same Ratherius, in the Synodical letter to the Presbyters, page 377, column 2. And since our special teacher and provider, blessed Zeno indeed, says, in the sermon namely which he most elegantly composed about Judah son of Jacob and Tamar his daughter-in-law, etc. John the Presbyter, sacristan of the Church of Verona, who was writing in the year 1320, in book I of his Imperial Histories, manuscript. There flourished in the Church of God illustrious teachers, among whom the blessed...

Zeno, Bishop of Verona, an outstanding teacher, the eighth bishop of that city.... [CXCIX] Now this outstanding teacher Zeno wrote three treatises on Modesty, Patience, Faith, Hope and Charity; one treatise on Justice; one on Fear; one on the Spirit and the Body; on that which is written, 'When He shall have delivered up the kingdom to God and the Father,' one discourse; on the Building of the House of God by Solomon, a most beautiful exposition; one treatise on Continence; three treatises on Baptism; one on the Nativity of the Lord and His majesty; on Daniel at Easter, two; on Psalms 40, 41, 126, 147, 128, 129, 130, seven treatises; one treatise on Spite and Envy; on this word:

'Take heed to thyself, lest perchance there arise in thee a hidden word in thy heart, an iniquity,' one very lengthy treatise; on the Fast of the four seasons, on Psalm 80, one treatise; on the Miser and the Rich Man, one; on Avarice, three; on Circumcision, one; on Genesis, nine treatises; on Exodus, nine; on Isaiah, seven; on Daniel, three; on Job, one; on the Feast of Easter, eight; on the Invitation to the fonts, five treatises; on the Dream of Jacob, one discourse; on the twelve signs of heaven, to the Neophytes, one treatise; likewise to the Neophytes, two; on Faith, two; on Jonah, one; on the History of Susanna, a short treatise; on the Lord's Day, two treatises; on Abraham, two;

on the Nativity of the Lord, two treatises; an Epistle on the passion of the martyr Arcadius, who suffered at the same time, on the second day before the Ides of January, in Mauritania.... These writings of his, and the treatises themselves, I have read and seen. Peter Calo, of the Order of Preachers, in his Miscellanea, manuscript, in Henschen, page 76, vol. II of April. Now St. Zeno wrote eighty treatises on the Psalms and the prophets, and on the Nativity of the Lord, and on various other subjects, and letters, and several expositions, and the life of St. Arcadius the martyr, who suffered at the same time, which I have placed on the day before the Ides of January; which treatises, and letters, and expositions, [CC] published in a beautiful and subtle style, I myself saw in two volumes at St. Zeno of Verona.

William of Pastrengo, Judge of Verona, in his book On Illustrious Men, page 77. Zeno, Bishop of Verona, is held to be distinguished in the time of the emperor Gallienus, and suffered martyrdom. Now this venerable Bishop wrote books on Patience, Modesty, Faith, Hope, Charity, three, etc. For he copies out the praised John of Verona; then he adds: All these little works the memorable man John, presbyter and sacristan of the greater Church of Verona, testifies that he saw and read. Peter de Natalibus, Bishop of Equilio, in his Catalogue of Saints, book I, chapter 43. Zeno, Bishop and teacher of Verona, was renowned in the time of the emperor Gallienus....

Now this venerable Bishop wrote books on Patience, and the rest in exactly the same words as in William of Pastrengo. James the Presbyter, in his poem on the Miracles of St. Zeno, in Henschen, no. 4, page 76, vol. II of April—concerning the age of which writer see the admonition prefixed to the documents. But when, undaunted, he had first given the holy words of God to the people, he is held a worthy Patron of Verona, though he himself was the eighth Bishop in that city; for he taught our hearts the sacred laws, O Father, and he flourished in polished speech; and by the admonitions of the Fathers he ever urged that all should be joined to the one and triune God Himself. He redeemed countless peoples from the living fountain of Jesus, this Father, and consecrated great things to the honour of God.

And in number 17, page 77. O Verona, exceedingly glorious are the deeds of thy Bishop, how many and how great they shine forth, to whom thou owest very much! For who is held to be the first founder of thy faith? What first light drives away the darkness from thy hearts? In preaching, what father is more pleasing to his children than he, in whom the splendour of eloquence and fluency shone the more? [CC] Flavio Biondo, Italia Illustrata, region 9, page 376, Basel edition. Zeno, as befits the Christian religion and his own sanctity, will be the first who, a celebrated prelate of Verona of holy life, wrote many works that survive, expounding the sacred letters of both Testaments, and redolent of the Ambrosian eloquence which he imitated.

Michele Fossato of Verona, in his Poem on the Praises of Verona, written in the year 1482 and published by Battista Peretto in his Latin Scholia on the Life of St. Zeno, page 60. Holy Zeno, Father of thy native land, thy muse, the volume of thy sermons, teaches how great thou wast. Onofrio Panvinio, Antiquities of Verona, book IV, chapter 6. He was a man very vigorous also in conducting affairs, and eloquent in expounding the divine Scriptures; and as long as he lived as bishop, he applied himself assiduously to this care, that he might turn and inflame the souls of the citizens to embrace the true piety of Christ, the worship of idols being cast aside........ He published sermons that were splendid and filled with great learning. The same, book VI, page 152.

He was reckoned most renowned both for his piety, faith and religion, and most illustrious for manifold learning. For he wrote many things worthy of a Christian bishop, of which these have come to our knowledge: three books on Patience, Modesty, Faith, Hope and Charity, and the rest, almost as in John of Verona, whose manuscript History he used. Isaac Casaubon, on Spartianus, page 34. Zeno of Verona, in my judgment the most elegant of the Latin Fathers. The same, Exercitation 16, no. 43. Zeno of Verona, a most ancient and most elegant writer. Caspar Barth, Adversaria, book XLII, chapter 15. Zeno, a writer admirable for erudition and piety. The same, book XLIII, chapter 10.

When I read the sermons of Zeno, once bishop of the Veronese, I seem to myself to be reading a kind of Christian Apuleius: so erudite is this most noble writer, and so dense in signifying many things by few words. He is called by the same Barth a most learned Prelate, book XLII, chapter 5; a most elegant Bishop, book XLII, chapter 18; a most learned Writer, book XLII, chapter 15; and book XLVI, chapter 7; most acute, on book II of the Thebaid of Papinius (Statius), verse 231. [CCII] August Buchner, in Dissertation 389, page 528. Indeed the diction of Zeno is learned, florid, elegant;

for it is redolent of the reading of the most excellent authors, and of Virgil among the first, and is painted and adorned, not without care, with various colours; moreover it consists of proper and very significant words, and has many things ingeniously and acutely said, so that nothing more pointed could seem possible to be said. And on page 529: No one will have wasted his effort who sets his mind to read his sermons, equally most erudite and most holy. For besides that throughout they instruct souls with splendid and most excellent thoughts toward religion, and invite and lead them to true piety, one may there observe many things said most elegantly and most gracefully, which can wondrously increase and heap up the riches of eloquence.

Claude Saumaise, on Lampridius, page 193. Zeno of Verona, an elegant and pious author. Emmanuel Schelstrate, On the Discipline of the Secret, chapter 4, sole article, § 5. Zeno of Verona, a most ancient and most learned author and bishop. The Marquis Scipione Maffei, book II, On the Writers of Verona, in part II of Verona Illustrated. SAINT ZENO. Of this our Bishop we have many Sermons, by which he deservedly holds a place among the Holy Fathers. Not a few learned foreigners cite and approve these Sermons;

Paolo, Bishop of Fossombrone, Boulenger, Saumaise, Valois, Buchner, Daum, Barth—to whom our Author seemed a Christian Apuleius—the great Casaubon, who judged him the most elegant of all among the Latins, and many others. Father Bolland adduces his Sermon on Saint Arcadius as an authentic life of that Martyr; so too does Father Ruinart in his Select Acts. But just as concerning this Saint the period, the rank, the actions, and even his very existence are in dispute, so even more in dispute, beyond all else, are the Sermons, which are harshly rejected by a long line of able Critics.

Sixtus of Siena was the first, inasmuch as he frankly wrote that Guarino had put forth as Zeno's Sermons taken for the greater part from various authors: some being of Saint Hilary and of St. Basil, the others either being sermons or fragments which, by the diversity of style, clearly reveal themselves to be of different authors. All this was punctually transcribed first by Possevino, Bellarmine, Baronius, Molanus and Miraeus; then by Rivet, Coccius, Vossius, Cave, Labbe, Oudin, Placcius, Dupin—who doubts whether this Zeno ever existed in the world—and by several others;

although ordinarily as their own opinions, and without even naming Sixtus of Siena, those last writers in particular insist on the point that these Sermons were put together, forged and published by our Guarino, and that no notice or mention whatever of them had been had before. How erroneous and false this is, despite the agreement of so many, we shall make known in a few words. It is false, first, that the edition of these Sermons came from Guarino, since they were not brought to light before 1508—that is to say, about fifty years after his death. Yet, in order to publish them, they are said to have been transcribed from a very ancient volume found at Verona by Guarino in the Library of the Bishop's Palace (page

1). But to see how far from the truth it is that no one made mention of Zeno's Sermons before Guarino, it suffices to read the little work of William of Pastrengo, a contemporary of Petrarch; for he not only numbers him among the Writers, but cites the catalogue of his Sermons, and cites as witness of them one older than himself, namely John the Presbyter, sacristan of the Cathedral Church, who attested (page 77) that he had read them all. Contemporary with this man was Pietro de' Natali, who, speaking of our Zeno, likewise enumerated the Sermons; and somewhat earlier was Pietro Calo, who collected and compiled in two great volumes the lives of the Saints.

From his writings the Bollandist Fathers drew a legend of the translation and miracles, at the foot of which he thus noted (April 12): 'Now St. Zeno wrote more than eighty treatises, etc.'; and then: 'Which treatises and letters and expositions, published in a beautiful and subtle style, I myself saw in two volumes at St. Zeno of Verona.' Therefore Guarino was not the only one, nor the first, nor was the codex found by him in the Chapter Library the only one, but there was another in that of the Monastery of St. Zeno. James the Presbyter too, whose verses drawn from a Zenonian manuscript have been published by the Bollandists, praised the Saint in those times especially for his eloquence.

Now we have once again brought forth a Life of his at the foot of the History of the Diplomas, the author of which may be conjectured to have lived in the twelfth century, or thereabouts. In it the holy Bishop is introduced speaking to the people, and is made to utter certain passages of his very own Sermons. But this is not enough. In the tenth century flourished Ratherius, our Bishop, celebrated both for his writings and for his life. In three of his little works he cites a passage from the Sermon on the Patriarch Judah, and in the Synodical Epistle he cites it, prefacing these words:

'And since our special Teacher and provider, blessed Zeno indeed, says in the Sermon which he most elegantly composed about Judah son of Jacob, and Tamar his daughter-in-law, etc.' There is something better still. Hincmar, made Bishop of Reims in 845, made a gift to the library of St. Remigius of a codex containing these Sermons, with the title 'Treatises of St. Zeno, Bishop of Verona'; and that this precious codex is still preserved to this day is attested by the Benedictine editors of St. Remigius, and likewise by Father Ruinart.

Therefore not only were the Sermons of Zeno of Verona known, as far back as the ninth century, even in distant lands, but they are not to be supposed to have been suspected in the least as apocryphal, gathered here and there and falsely named, since a Prelate of such great letters as Hincmar judged them worthy to be given by him to a distinguished Library. Behold then how many testimonies, and how much earlier than Guarino. Nor do I doubt at all that we should have had yet another, more ancient and more manifest, had the book found by him in the Chapter Library not been miserably lost; for Father Castellani, first editor of the Sermons, affirms how very ancient it was;

and it came from a library in which almost all the codices were in majuscule script, and even many centuries ago reputed ancient. I believe, then, that the authenticity in general of the Sermons of our Bishop is sufficiently established. That among them there are some which are not his, is the common fate of collections of Sermons; that some are formless fragments, may have come from the confusion and the arbitrariness of the copyists, and from the fact that sometimes even a few sentences uttered in some function were gathered from his living voice. The diversity of style that is so trumpeted is not generally borne out, because in the great part of these monuments the same genius appears, and the same manner.

The difficulties over certain passages are resolved by abandoning the error of those who believed him to be of the third century and of the times of Gallienus—on which subject see the Epistle by us to the Bishops of Verona in the new edition of Ughelli. That he lived toward the end of the fourth century becomes plain to whoever well considers, in the first place, the condition of those times in these parts, and the uniformity of the facts in the neighbouring countries. It is then rendered indubitable by the fact that Saint Zeno succeeded Cricinus, and the latter Lucillus, who in 347 subscribed to the Council of Sardica.

No less strong is the argument drawn from the Epistle of St. Ambrose to our Bishop Syagrius, because in it he reproaches him for not having held to be innocent a sacred virgin already consecrated and sanctified by the blessing of Zeno of holy memory: whereby it is made most clear that Zeno had been his predecessor. But what need is there of other proofs, when he himself says, in the Sermon on Continence, that the Apostolic teachings had been running for almost four hundred years already? So read the manuscripts, and so the first sincere edition. Nor, however, must one take this number too strictly, as Vossius took it (On the Latin Historians, book III, chapter

2), it being well known that round numbers are used, of which there are countless examples. Furthermore, Felix III, in an Epistle now newly published by us and inserted in the fifth volume of the Councils, said outright 'five hundred years,' although, as we have there shown, it was written before the year 489. Nor does St. Zeno there reckon the time from the Epistle to the Corinthians of which he makes mention, but from the Christian era in general, and from the birth of Christ. To rebut the objection drawn from the silence of the Ancients, and to enter into the

particular examination of each Sermon, and into the question whether he was a Martyr or not, and into other such matters, is not part of the present undertaking, and will be the task of whoever shall at last undertake a sound edition of this Father. No other has greater need of one, both to reunite, and to distinguish, and to indicate the sources, and to elucidate, and even to emend. Whether this Saint was native of our country or not, one could neither assert nor deny: the name indeed indicates him rather as Greek, and the Anonymous writer, of whom we shall speak shortly, seems to hint that he came hither from the parts of Syria.