Latin funerary inscription (no longer extant, but recorded) of Bishop Justinianus of Valencia (southern Hispania), who died after 546, stating that the bishop made *Vincentius/Vincent (deacon of Zaragoza and martyr of Valencia, S00290) his heir.
E08555
Inscriptions - Funerary inscriptions
Funerary inscription of Bishop Justinianus of Valencia
1 Pius preclarus doctor alacer facundus,
Iustinianus caelebs pontifex sacer[dos?]
noba templa construens vetustaque rest[aurans],
ornabit festa dictis predicans in populis.
5 Virgines instituens monacosque guvernans,
scripsit plura posteris profutura [---].
Hic miro maris insola[m] munimine sepsi[t]
in qua maris circumfluentibus undis
silice disrupto predulcem repperit limfam.
10 Hic Vincentium gloriosum martirem Christi
sat pio quem coluit moderamine vivens,
hunc devotus moriens reliquid eredem.
Undecim presentis quinquennia vite,
quattuor lustris visque quaternis mensibus
15 connumerandus s(an)c(t)is ministrab(it) antestis.
'Justinianus - pious, splendid, learned, lively, eloquent, celibate pontiff and priest, building new temples and renovating old ones, he adorned festivals with his sermons to the people. (5) He taught virgins and led monks, he wrote many useful things for posterity. He surrounded the island in the sea with a marvellous wall; on this island, although it was washed by the waves of the sea, he found fresh water after striking the rock. (10) Dying, he devotedly named Vincent, the glorious martyr of Christ, as his heir, whom in life he had cherished with pious governance. He lived for eleven quinquennia (= 55 years), of which he served four lustra and twice four months (= 20 years and 8 months) as bishop, and he is to be counted among the saints.'
[in line14, CIL II2/14, 89 proposes 'uixque quaternis mensibus', which should then be translated: 'and almost four months'.]
Text: Carande Herrero et al. 2005, 11-13 (following AETHAM 3298).
Translation: M. Szada
Cult building - monastic
Cult building - unspecified
Places Named after SaintMonastery
Non Liturgical ActivitySaint as patron - of an individual
Saint as patron - of a community
Bequests, donations, gifts and offerings
Construction of cult buildings
Protagonists in Cult and NarrativesEcclesiastics - bishops
Ecclesiastics - monks/nuns/hermits
Source
This inscription is not extant. Its text is attested in one manuscript, Bibliothèque nationale de France, lat. 8093 from the 9th century (fol. 15v-16r; https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b85856004/f37.item#). It seems that the copyist might have had a problem with properly understanding the final lines, which suggests that he worked from an already damaged stone, or from an already corrupted copy. The inscription is metric, in a metre can be described as an adaptation of hexameters (for more details see Gómez Pallarès in CLEO).The inscription commemorates Bishop Justinianus of Valencia who is known from an entry in Isidore of Seville's, On illustrious men 33. He also presided over a council in Valencia that gathered in 546.
Discussion
The inscription presents two interpretative difficulties: the first concerns the meaning of 'insula' and the character of Justinianus' building activity there; the second, the meaning of the martyr Vincent being Justianianus' heir. Understanding 'insula' as a real island is difficult because of the lack of such a place in the neighbourhood of Valencia. It has been proposed that the word may refer here to a peninsula (and there are precedents for such use in Latin, Thesaurus Linguae Latinae VII, s.v. insula, p. 2034). Corell 1997 suggested that insula could refer here to a monastery located on a peninsula and proposed Illa de Cullera as a potential locality. The understanding of the 'island surrounded with waters' as a metaphor, not referring to an exact geographical reality, has also been proposed (Gómez Pallarés 1999).Corell 1997 also argued that the monastery newly fortified by Justinianus was a community under his leadership (monacos gubernans), with the emphasis on the bishop's celibacy as an allusion to his monastic status. He also suggested that pio moderamine qualifies the verb coluit, which in this context would mean 'he protected' or 'he defended'. This monastery therefore, was dedicated to Vincent and the words about Justinianus making Vincent his heir, should be, according to Corell, understood as referring to a material bequest left by Justinianus to this monastery.
See also Saxer 2002, 141-149.
Bibliography
Databases:Archivo Epigráfico de Hispania tardoantigua y medieval, AETHAM, no. 3298, http://hesperia.ucm.es/consulta_aehtam/Generalidades.php?filtrar=&valor=&id=3338
Hispania Epigraphica online, no. 12691, https://eda-bea.es/pub/record_card_1.php?refpage=%2Fpub%2Fsearch_select.php&quicksearch=munimine&rec=12691
J. Gómez Pallarès, "V6 Epitafio de Justiniano", CLEO Carmina Latina Epigraphica Online, last update 31-03-2023, https://institucional.us.es/cleo/index.php/inscripcion/v6-ii2-14-89-ihc-409/?lang=en
Editions:
L'Année Epigraphique 1995, 965; and 2001, 1252
Corell, J., Inscripcions romanes de Valentia i el seu territori, Valencia, 1997, no. 117
Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum II"/14, 89 I don't understand II"/14
Diehl, Ernst, Inscriptiones Latinae Christianae Veteres, Berlin, no. 1902
Vives, José, Inscripciones cristianas de la España romana y visigoda, 2nd ed. (Biblioteca històrica de la Biblioteca Balmes. Sèrie II 18), Barcelona: AGPonsa, 1969, no. 279
Further reading:
Carande Herrero, Rocío, J. Gómez Gómez Pallarès, Josep María Escolà Tuset, Concepción Fernández Martínez, and J. Martín Martín Camacho. ‘Poesía epigráfica latina de transmisión manuscrita: ¿ficción o realidad?’ In Mittellateinische Biographie und Epigraphik. Biografía latina medieval y epigrafía, edited by Walter Berschin, Joan Gómez Pallarès, and José Martínez Gázquez, Mattes., Heidelberg, 2005, 1-45. What does 'Mattes.' mean?
Corell, Josep, and Ferran Grau, ‘L’epitafi de Justinià, bisbe de València (ca. 493-548)’, Analecta Sacra Tarraconensia 68 (1995), 5–19.
Gómez Pallarés, Joan. ‘Poésie épigraphique en Hispania: propositions et lectures’. Revue des études latines, no. 77 (1999), 118–48.
Saxer, Victor, Saint Vincent diacre et martyr. Culte et légendes avant l’an mil (Subsidia hagiographica 83), Bruxelles: Société des Bollandistes, 2002.
Marta Szada
19/08/2024
| ID | Name | Name in Source | Identity | S00290 | Vincentius/Vincent, deacon of Zaragoza and martyr of Valencia | Vincentius | Certain |
|---|
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