Calendar of the Church of Carthage (central North Africa) lists saints whose liturgical commemorations were celebrated in August. Written in Latin in Carthage, probably between 505 and 535.
Evidence ID
E02199
Type of Evidence
Liturgical texts - Calendars and martyrologies
Calendar of Carthage
August
kal. Ag. sanctorum Macchabaeorum.
viij Idus Ag, sancti Systi Episcopi & martyris Romae.
iiij Idus Ag, sancti Laurenti.
ij Idus Ag. de sanctos Marinus.
Idus Ag. sancti Hippoliti.
... kal. Sept. sanctorum Massae Candidae
... kal. Sept. sancti Quadrati.
... kal. Sept. sancti Timothei.
... kal. Sept. sancti Genesi mimi.
iiij kal. Sept. depositio Restituti & Agustini Episcopi.
iij kal. Sept. sancti Felicis, Evae & Regiolae mart.
'1 August. (Feast) of the holy Maccabees.
6 August. (Feast) of saint Xystus, bishop and martyr of Rome.
10 August. (Feast) of saint Laurence.
12 August. on saints Marinus (?).
13 August. (Feast) of saint Hippolytus
[18] August. (Feast) of the saints of Massa Candida.
[?22] August. (Feast) of saint Quadratus.
.. August. (Feast) of saint Timotheus.
[25] August. (Feast) of saint Genesius the mime.
29 August. Burial of Restitutus and Augustine, bishop.
30 August. (Feast) of saint Felix, Eva, and Regiola, martyrs.'
[*Maccabean martyrs, pre-Christian martyrs of Antioch, S00303; *Xystus II, bishop and martyr of Rome, S00201: *Laurence, deacon and martyr of Rome, S00037; Marinus: obscure; *Hippolytus, martyr of Rome, S00509; *Martyrs of Massa Candida, S00904; *Quadratus, bishop and martyr of Utica, S01324; Timotheus, possibly an otherwise unknown martyr, or *Timothy, disciple of the Apostle Paul, S00466; *Genesius, mime artist and martyr of Arles or Rome, S00508; Felix, Eva and Regiola: perhaps three of the *Martyrs of Abitina (S02529), or three otherwise unknown martyrs.]
Text: Mabillon 1682, 399.
Translation and identifications: Bryan Ward-Perkins.
Festivals
Saint’s feast
Source
The calendar of Carthage was discovered by Jean Mabillon in the library of Cluny abbey, on sheets of parchment attached to the wooden boards binding a codex of Jerome's commentary on Isaiah, and a full transcription and commentary was published by him in 1682 in volume 3 of his Analecta Vetera. Mabillon recorded that the text was affected by wormholes and other damage (as is also clear from the gaps in his transcription). For photographs of Mabillon's text, see the Images attached to E02196.A brief description of the manuscript, written in 1722, stated that it consisted to two sheets of parchment and a third half sheet, all used in the later binding (Oursel 1906). These were last recorded in the library at the very beginning of the nineteenth century, and were subsequently lost. Mabillon's transcription is the only record of the text.
Mabillon wrote that '[t]he script is Roman, written in majuscule letters, no later than the seventh century' (Scriptura Romana est, litteris majusculis exarata, saeculo septimo non inferior); in the absence of the original, this dating of the manuscript is impossible to verify.
The approximate date of the written text in the form that we have it can be established with some confidence, as the days of the burials of all bishops of Carthage subsequent to Cyprian are recorded, and the last bishop named is Eugenius, who died in exile in around 505 (Victor of Tunnuna, Chronicle, 86). After Eugenius, the see remained vacant until the election of Bonifatius who held the bishopric from 523 to c. 535. The Calendar, in the form we have it, can therefore be dated to between c. 505 and c. 535. It has, however, sometimes been argued that the core of the text has to pre-date Vandal rule, which started in 439, since there is no reference in the Calendar to martyrs of the Arian persecution under these new masters. The argument, however, is not a strong one, as there is almost no evidence anywhere of cult for the men and women who suffered in the persecutions of the fifth century.
Mabillon rightly termed this document a 'Calendar' (Kallendarium), a record of the feasts celebrated by a specific church, in this case that of Carthage, as opposed to a 'Martyrology', which is a much more wide-ranging list of feast days. In its preface/title and in the wording of its entries, the Calendar of Carthage draws a distinction between the burials (depositiones) of Carthage's bishops, which were probably marked with comparatively little ceremony, and the natalicia (literally 'birthdays', into heaven) of the martyrs, which were proper feast days. In its combination of episcopal commemorations and major feasts, the Calendar of Carthage is similar to the early calendars of the church of Rome contained in the Chronography of 354, except that the calendars of Rome list the depositiones of its martyrs (E01052) and those of its bishops (E01051) separately.
The Calendar of Carthage also reflects the progressive spread of the cult of saints. In it there are seventy-two feast days for martyrs, compared to the twenty-three noted in Rome in the mid-fourth century, and there are also many more non-local martyrs than in the Roman calendar. In the Calendar of Carthage, martyrs from Rome are particularly well represented, reflecting the close ties between the 'Catholic' church in Africa and the church of Rome: nine unquestionably Roman martyrs are commemorated (with two more whose location is uncertain, but who could well have been Roman).
The Calendar opens the year on 19 April, after Easter, and closes it on 16 February, before Lent (during which, and during the Easter festivities, martyrs' feasts were not celebrated in Carthage). Hence, for instance, the feast of Perpetua and her companions, on 7 March, is absent from the Calendar.
Many of the martyrs recorded in the Calendar of Carthage are otherwise unknown, and because the Calendar records them simply as 'martyrs', without ever specifying their role or rank in life, for these we know no more than their names and their dates of commemoration. In very many cases, we also do not know precisely where they came from and where they were martyred, though, on the basis of those we can locate, we can be confident that all were from central North Africa, not too far distant from Carthage.
There is reason to believe that the precise dates of some commemorations were moved, so that they could to sit on the same days as others (Achelis 1900, 28). It is, for instance, implausible that bishops Deogratias and Eugenius of Carthage, and bishop Restitutus of Carthage and Augustine of Hippo were buried, as the Calendar states, on precisely the same two days, in January and August respectively (see E02199 and (E02204). It is therefore possible that martyrs who appear in the text as companions - for instance, as Flavianus and Septimia do on 25 May (E02196) - were actually separate.
Discussion
The feast of the Maccabean Martyrs (S00303) on 1 August was widely celebrated in the late antique Christian world, including by Augustine in Africa.The feasts of the Roman martyrs, Xystus II (S00201) and Laurence (S00037), on 6 and 10 August respectively, are widely documented in our evidence, first in the mid-4th century Depositio Martyrum of Rome (E01052). With Hippolytus (below), the inclusion of their feasts is testimony to the close links between the churches of Carthage and Rome.
The entry for 12 August, that reads 'de sanctos Marinus', is anomalous in its wording and makes no obvious sense. 'De' is a preposition that can mean 'about'; but it takes the ablative, while here it is followed by 'sanctos' ('saints') in the accusative plural, and by 'Marinus' in the nominative singular. Nor is there a saint Marinus with a recorded feast around this date. Probably at some point in its transmission, the text of this entry was scrambled.
The feast of Hippolytus, martyr of Rome (S00509), like those of Xystus II and Laurence, is first recorded in the mid-4th century Depositio Martyrum (E01052).
The precise day of the feast of the Martyrs of Massa Candida was no longer legible when Mabillon transcribed the Calendar, but is known from other sources (e.g. E05169) to have been 18 August. Their cult in Africa is well documented, particularly through the writings of Augustine.
The day of the feast of Quadratus (S01324), bishop of Utica and leader of the Martyrs of Massa Candida, is also lost. But Augustine in a sermon tells us that his death followed four days after the martyrdom of his flock (E02793).
It is not known who the 'Timotheus' commemorated next is. There is no obvious African martyr of this name, though an otherwise unknown African martyr is always a possibility. Although there is no record of him having a feast in August, it is possible that this is the best-known saint of this name: Timothy, the disciple of Paul the Apostle (S00466). In favour of this identification is the fact that the Calendar also records the feasts of Andrew the Apostle and Luke the Evangelist, and Andrew, Luke and Timothy were the three saints whose bodies were taken to Constantinople in the fourth century, and housed in the church of the Holy Apostles. Just as the church of Carthage in its calendar paid extensive respect to the saints of Rome, so too it may have wished to honour saints closely associated with Constantinople.
The next entry is perhaps the most surprising in the whole Calendar. It is unequivocally for Genesius 'mimus', Genesius 'the mime' (S00508). This is in fact the first known reference to this saint, who by the early ninth century (at the latest) had acquired a Martyrdom (E02497), set either in Arles or in Rome, which tells how he acted out a scene of Christian baptism in front of the emperor Diocletian in order to mock it; but was then miraculously convinced of the Christian truth, and duly suffered martyrdom on 25 August. (The story, in its essentials, also appears in the Greek tradition; but there attributed to a Gelasinos and set in the city of HelioupolisWhy this curious saint features in the Calendar of Carthage is a mystery. (For Genesius the Mime, who shares a name, a feast day and a place of martyrdom with *Genesius of Arles, and for the relationship between the two, see the Discussion by Matthieu Pignot at E02497)
The two men listed on 29 August were both bishops, whose 'burial' (depositio), rather than feast, is here being commemorated. Resitutus (S02914) was bishop of Carthage around the mid-fourth century (he was present at the Council of Rimini in 359). 'Agustinus' is, exceptionally, not a bishop of Carthage, but Augustine of Hippo (S00077). His inclusion in the Calendar of Carthage is testimony to the high esteem in which he rapidly came to be held. It is not, however, evidence of active cult in Africa (though Augustine was attracting such cult in southern and central Gaul by the mid-sixth century: see E05608 and E06283).
Felix, Eva and Regiola, whose feast is noted on 30 August, are perhaps three of the *Martyrs of Abitina (S02529), a city of inland Proconsularis, who were taken to Carthage to be judged and martyred there. Three people with these names feature in the surviving Martyrdom of the Martyrs of Abitina (E07672). However, they are not the principal protagonists of the Martyrdom (the presbyter Saturninus, the senator Dativus, and the four children of Saturninus), but just three in a long list of forty companion martyrs. It is more likely that Felix, Eva and Regiola are three otherwise unrecorded martyrs.
Bibliography
Edition:[All editions depend on Mabillon's printed text, as he is the only scholar known to have transcribed the Calendar.]
Achelis, H., Die Martyrologien, ihre Geschichte und ihr Wert (Abhandlungen der königlichen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen, philosophische-historische Klasse, neue Folge, Band III, nro 3; Berlin, 1900), at 18-29 (with commentary).
de Rossi, J. B., and L. Duchesne (ed.), Acta Sanctorum 65: Novembris II.1 (Brussels, 1894), pp. lxix-lxxii.
Lietzmann, H., Die drei ältesten Martyrologien (Bonn 1903), 5-8.
Mabillon, J., Vetera Analecta, Vol. 3 (Paris 1682), 398-401 (with commentary, 402-422).
Preuschen, Analecta. Kürzere Texte zur Geschichte der alten Kirche und des Kanons (Freiburg im Breisgau and Leipzig, 1899), 123-6.
Ruinart, T., Acta primorum martyrum sincera et selecta (Paris 1689), 693-5. [in the table of contents, Ruinart states that his text derives from Mabillon's ('Ex tomo 3 Analectorum').]
Further reading:
Oursel, M., “Note sur le calendrier de l’église de Cartage à la bibliotheque de Cluny,” Bulletin historique et philologique du comité des travaux historiques et scientifiques, Année 1906, nos. 1 and 2, 66.
Record Created By
Bryan Ward-Perkins
Date of Entry
19/08/2023
| ID | Name | Name in Source | Identity | S00037 | Laurence/Laurentius, deacon and martyr of Rome | Laurentius | Certain | S00077 | Augustine, bishop of Hippo, ob. 430 | Augustinus | Certain | S00201 | Xystus/Sixtus II, bishop and martyr of Rome | Systus | Certain | S00303 | Maccabean Martyrs, pre-Christian Jewish martyrs of Antioch | Macchabei | Certain | S00466 | Timothy, the disciple of Paul the Apostle | Timotheus | Uncertain | S00508 | Genesius, martyr of Rome, also 'the mime' | Genesius | Certain | S00509 | Hippolytus, martyr of Rome | Hippolitus | Certain | S00904 | Martyrs of Massa Candida (Utica) | sancti Massae Candidae | Certain | S01324 | Quadratus, bishop and martyr of Utica | Quadratus | Certain | S02529 | Martyrs of Abitina, killed in Carthage | Felix; Aeva; Regiola | Uncertain | S02875 | Timotheus, bishop supposedly martyred at Carthage | Timotheus | Uncertain | S02914 | Restitutus, bishop of Carthage, 4th c. | Restitutus | Certain |
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