Today, the northern Italian city of Brescia (about 55 miles east of Milan) celebrates the feast of one of its early bishops, St Gaudentius, who died ca. 410 AD after holding the see for about 23 years. In that era of the Church, it was not unusual for devout and holy men to be drafted into the clergy more or less by force, as happened to three of his famous contemporaries, Ss John Chrysostom, Ambrose and Augustine. Gaudentius was held in such high regard that he went on a long trip to the Holy Land, partly for the sake of pilgrimage, but also hoping to be forgotten in his native city. But while he was abroad, the bishop of Brescia, Philastrius (also a Saint), died, and the clergy and people not only elected Gaudentius to replace him in absentia, but bound themselves by an oath to accept none other as their new bishop. He still had to be forced to accept the office under threat of excommunication by a council of bishops in the East; on returning home, he was consecrated by St Ambrose in person, ca. 387.
During his travels, Gaudentius acquired several relics of Saints; soon after his election as bishop, built a church in their collective honor, naming it “Concilium Sanctorum – the Assembly of the Saints.” Among them were some of the Forty Martyrs, a group of soldiers who were killed at Sebaste in Armenia in 320, whose relics he received from the nieces of St Basil the Great while passing through Cappadocia. The sermon which he preached for the church’s dedication is one of his twenty-one which survive, and is an important witness not only to the early Church’s veneration of relics, but also to the emergence of devotion to Saints who were not martyrs, since he refers to St Basil once as “the blessed confessor”, and again as “the confessor of blessed memory.”
Most of this sermon is taken up with his account of the careers of the Saints who relics were to be laid in the church, so here we will simply highlight the beginning and end.
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| The relic altar of the church of St John the Evangelist in Brescia, which now occupies the site of the original Concilium Sanctorum built by St Gaudentius. |
“Dearest brothers, our weakness is not equal to the task of worthily giving thanks for the gifts of God and the blessings of heaven. For our God has granted that we should have the venerable relics of the Saints, and it is by His own generosity that we were able to found this basilica unto their honor, and today he has accorded that, in the presence of the bishops, we are made worthy to celebrate its dedication. For the holy bishops and Apostolic men have come together to show their service of due devotion to the most blessed fathers and to their teachers, so that we might be enriched by the greatest fullness of spiritual blessings…
Therefore, we have gathered these Saints from various parts of the world and for this reason, we decree that this basilica dedicated to their merits should be called ‘the Assembly of the Saints.’ For it is worthy, since we about to come forth to venerate the relics of such great martyrs, we should confess that we go forth to the assembly of the Saints. And thus, since we shall be helped by the patronage of so many just men, let us hasten forth with all faith and all desire in their footsteps, beseeching their intercession, that we may be able to obtain all things that we ask for, while magnifying Christ the Lord, the giver of so great a gift, to whom be all honor, virtue, and glory, with the Father and with the Holy Spirit, before all things, both now and forever, and unto all the ages of ages. Amen.”
