ST. BARBATUS was born in the territory of Benevento, in Italy, towards
the end of the pontificate of St. Gregory the Great, in the beginning of
the seventh century. His parents gave him a Christian education, and
Barbatus in his youth laid the foundation of that eminent sanctity which
recommends him to our veneration. Devout meditation on the holy
scriptures was his chief entertainment; and the innocence, simplicity,
and purity of his manners, and extraordinary progress in all virtues,
qualified him for the service of the altar, to which he was assumed by
taking holy orders as soon as the canons of the church would allow it.
He was immediately employed by his bishop in preaching, for which he had
an extraordinary talent; and, after some time, made curate of St.
Basil's, in Morcona, a town near Benevento. His parishioners were
steeled in their irregularities, and averse from whatever looked like
establishing order and discipline among them. As they desired only to
slumber on in their sins, they could not bear the remonstrances of their
pastor, who endeavored to awake them to a sense of their miseries, and
to sincere repentance: they treated him as a disturber of their peace,
and persecuted him with the utmost violence. Finding their malice
conquered by his patience and humility, and his character shining still
more bright, they had recourse to slanders, in which, such was their
virulence and success, that he was obliged to withdraw his charitable
endeavors among them. By these fiery trials, God purified his heart from
all earthly attachments, and perfectly crucified it to the world.
Barbatus returned to Benevento, where he was received with joy by those
who were acquainted with his innocence and sanctity. The seed of
Christianity had been first sown at Benevento by St. Potin, who is said
to have been sent thither by St. Peter, and is looked upon as the first
bishop of this see. We have no names of his successors till St.
Januarius, by whom this church was exceedingly increased, and who was
honored with the crown of martyrdom in 305. Totila, the Goth, laid the
city of Benevento in ruins, in 545. The Lombards having possessed
themselves of that country, repaired it, and king Autharis gave it to
Zotion, a general among those invaders, with the title of a duchy, about
the year 598, and his successors governed it, as sovereign dukes, for
several ages. These Lombards were at that time chiefly Arians; but among
them there remained many idolaters, and several at Benevento had
embraced the Catholic faith, even before the death of St. Gregory the
Great, with their duke Arichis, a warm friend of that holy pope. But
when St. Barbatus entered upon his ministry in that city, the Christians
themselves retained many idolatrous superstitions, which even their
duke, or prince Romuald, authorized by his example, though son of
Grimoald, king of the Lombards, who had edified all Italy by his
conversion. They expressed a religious veneration to a golden viper, and
prostrated themselves before it: they paid also a superstitious honor to
a tree, on which they hung {432} the skin of a wild beast, and these
ceremonies were closed by public games, in which the skin served for a
mark at which bowmen shot arrows over their shoulder. St. Barbatus
preached zealously against these abuses, and labored long to no purpose:
yet desisted not, but joined his exhortations with fervent prayer and
rigorous fasting, for the conversion of this unhappy people. At length
he roused their attention by foretelling the distress of their city, and
the calamities which it was to suffer from the army of the emperor
Constans, who, landing soon after in Italy, laid siege to Benevento. In
their extreme distress, and still more grievous alarms and fears, they
listened to the holy preacher, and, entering into themselves, renounced
their errors and idolatrous practices. Hereupon St. Barbatus gave them
the comfortable assurance that the siege should be raised, and the
emperor worsted: which happened as he had foretold. Upon their
repentance, the saint with his own hand cut down the tree which was the
object of their superstition, and afterwards melted down the golden
viper which they adored, of which he made a chalice for the use of the
altar. Ildebrand, bishop of Benevento, dying during the siege, after the
public tranquillity was restored, St. Barbatus was consecrated bishop on
the 10th of March, 653; for this see was only raised to the
archiepiscopal dignity by pope John XIII., about the year 965. Barbatus,
being invested with the episcopal character, pursued and completed the
good work which he had so happily begun, and destroyed every trace or
the least remain of superstition in the prince's closet, and in the
whole state. In the year 680 he assisted in a council held by pope
Agatho at Rome, and the year following in the sixth general council held
at Constantinople against the Monothelites. He did not long survive this
great assembly, for he died on the 29th of February, 682, being about
seventy years old, almost nineteen of which he had spent in the
episcopal chair. He is named in the Roman Martyrology, and honored at
Benevento among the chief patrons of that city.
* * * * *
Many sinners are moved by alarming sensible dangers or calamities to
enter into themselves, on whom the terrors of the divine judgment make
very little impression. The reason can only be a supine neglect of
serious reflection, and a habit of considering them only transiently,
and as at a distance; for it is impossible for any one who believes
these great truths, if he takes a serious review of them, and has them
present to his mind, to remain insensible: transient glances effect not
a change of heart. Among the pretended conversions which sickness daily
produces, very few bear the characters of sincerity, as appears by those
who, after their recovery, live on in their former lukewarmness and
disorders.[1] St. Austin, in a sermon which he made upon the news that
Rome had been sacked by the barbarians, relates,[2] that not long
before, at Constantinople, upon the appearance of an unusual meteor, and
a rumor of a pretended prediction that the city would be destroyed by
fire from heaven, the inhabitants were seized with a panic fear, all
began to do penance like Ninive, and fled, with the emperor at their
head, to a great distance from the city. After the term appointed for
its pretended destruction was elapsed, they sent scouts to the city,
which they had left quite empty, and, hearing that it was still
standing, returned to it, and with their fears forgot their repentance
and all their good resolutions. To prevent the danger of penitents
imposing upon themselves by superficial conversions, St. Barbatus took
all necessary precautions to improve their {433} first dispositions to a
sincere and perfect change of heart, and to cut off and remove all
dangerous occasions of temptations.
Footnotes:
1. The devil was sick, the devil a monk would be;
The devil was well, the devil no monk was he.
2. S. Aug. Serm. de Excidio Urbis, c. 6, t. 6, p. 627, ed. Ben.