Saint Gaudentius of Brescia

Brescia's bishop, Philastrius, known for a book on the heresies, died while Gaudentius was on pilgrimage to Jerusalem. ¹ The Diocese of Brescia counts Gaudentius as the seventh bishop of the see, and says he called himself Philastrius's son, filius, and had perhaps been his disciple. ⁶ The people of Brescia would have no one else. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, they bound themselves by an oath to accept no other bishop, and Saint Ambrose and the neighboring bishops obliged him to come back, though he did not want to. ¹ The bishops of the East also threatened to refuse him Communion if he did not obey. ¹

He was consecrated by Ambrose, as both the Roman Martyrology and the Diocese of Brescia record. ⁵⁶ The sermon he preached that day, before Ambrose and the other bishops, survives. In it he excuses his youth, and his presumption in speaking at all, on the plea that he was only obeying. ¹

He came home from the East with relics: of Saint John the Baptist, of the apostles, and above all of the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste, which he had received at Caesarea in Cappadocia from nieces of Saint Basil. ¹ With other relics from Milan and elsewhere, he placed them in a basilica at Brescia that he named Concilium Sanctorum, the Council of Saints. ¹ The Roman Martyrology still remembers him as the founder of the basilica he called the Council of Saints. ⁵ His sermon for its dedication also survives. ¹

Twenty-one genuine tractates by Gaudentius survive. ¹ The first ten are Easter sermons, which he wrote down after preaching them at the request of Benivolus, the chief of the Brescian nobility, who had been too ill to come and hear them. ¹ In the preface he disowned the copies of his sermons that shorthand writers had been circulating without his authority. ¹ The Catholic Encyclopedia calls his style simple and his matter good. ¹ The Martyrology says he taught his people by word and by writing, and shone among the bishops of his time for learning and virtue. ⁵

One reader who seems to have known those copies was Rufinus of Aquileia, the translator. ¹ He dedicated his Latin version of the Recognitions attributed to Clement to Gaudentius, and opened it by calling him the "choice glory of our doctors", whose daily preaching deserved to be "preserved in books, and handed down to posterity for their instruction". ⁴ He also says that Gaudentius had read the work in Greek, and that he had asked for the translation as an inheritance from the virgin Sylvia, who first commissioned it. ⁴

The Diocese of Brescia credits him with a panegyric in which Philastrius is already called the founder of the Brescian church, and with a body of sermons whose fame, together with his ties to other churches, made him one of the eminent figures of the Church of his day. ⁶

The Catholic Encyclopedia gathers from a letter of Chrysostom to Gaudentius that the two had met at Antioch. ¹ When Chrysostom, condemned to exile from Constantinople, appealed to Pope Innocent and the Western Church, Gaudentius took his part warmly. ¹ The encyclopedia dates the appeal to 405; the Diocese of Brescia says Gaudentius was sent east in 406 in an attempt, which failed, to prevent Chrysostom's second condemnation. ¹⁶

Palladius, in his Dialogue on the life of Chrysostom, preserves the letter that the Western emperor Honorius sent with the delegation to his brother Arcadius, the emperor in the East. ¹² It asks for a synod of the Eastern bishops at Thessalonica, and announces that the bishops of the West had chosen as messengers "five bishops, two priests, and a deacon". ² Palladius then names the bishops Aemilius of Beneventum, Cythegius and Gaudentius, with the priests Valentianus and Bonifacius "and others", carrying letters from Innocent and from the Italian bishops. ² The Catholic Encyclopedia speaks of Gaudentius and two other bishops; Sozomen, the historian, of five bishops and two presbyters of the Roman church. ¹³

The envoys' own account, as Palladius records it, is a story of being shut out. ¹² They sailed along the coast of Greece to Athens, where an officer put them under guard and forbade them to go on to Thessalonica. ² He sent them off in two ships into a storm, and they were three days without food before they anchored outside Constantinople. ² Harbor officials arrested them and took them to a fortress in Thrace called Athyra, near the sea, where the Roman envoys were kept together in one small building. ²

They refused to hand over their letters to anyone but the emperor himself. ² A captain named Valerianus broke the thumb of one of the bishops, Marianus, and carried off the sealed letter of the Western emperor with the rest. ² The next day messengers offered them three thousand pieces of money if they would enter communion with Atticus, who had been put in Chrysostom's place, and say no more about him. ¹² They refused and kept praying, as they put it, that if they could do nothing for peace they might at least get home safely to their churches. ² On the voyage a deacon among them, Paul, saw the apostle Paul in a vision, saying, "Take heed how ye walk, not as fools, but as wise, knowing that the days are evil." ¹²

At last they were put on board a very poor vessel under a guard of twenty soldiers, and it was rumored that the captain had been bribed to be rid of them. ¹² They came close to losing their lives, but reached Lampsacus, changed ships, and on the twentieth day landed at Otranto, which Palladius calls Hydrun in Calabria. ¹² They had been gone four months, and they could not say where Chrysostom was. ² Sozomen says only that the delegation was dismissed in disgrace, on the charge that it insulted the Eastern emperor. ³ The Catholic Encyclopedia adds that Chrysostom wrote the envoys several grateful letters. ¹

He governed the church of Brescia until about 410, according to the Catholic Encyclopedia. ¹ The Diocese of Brescia, reasoning from his own words, says he held the see for at least fourteen years, since he recalled having kept his predecessor's commemoration fourteen times. ⁶

The two disagree about where he lies. The Catholic Encyclopedia puts his body in the Church of St. John the Baptist, on the site of the Council of Saints. ¹ The Diocese of Brescia says his relics are venerated in the parish church of San Giovanni Evangelista, Saint John the Evangelist, in Brescia, and in the parish church of Mompiano. ⁶ The encyclopedia also notes that he appears often in the altarpieces of the great Brescian painters, Moretto, Savoldo and Romanino. ¹

None of the sources consulted for this page names a patronage for Saint Gaudentius, so none is given here. ¹⁵⁶ The Diocese of Brescia's prayer for his feast asks that, as he and Philastrius enlightened the church of Brescia by their words and formed it by the witness of their lives, the faithful may keep the faith they taught. ⁶

The feast of Saint Gaudentius is October 25. ⁵⁶ The Roman Martyrology enters him at Brescia on that day, and the 1897 English edition already did, calling him "distinguished by his learning and holiness". ⁵⁷ In the Diocese of Brescia October 25 is the feast of Saints Philastrius and Gaudentius, bishops, kept together. ⁶

He was made a bishop by a city that would not take no for an answer, and by bishops who threatened to cut him off if he refused. ¹ His first sermon as bishop apologized for his youth and gave obedience as his only reason for standing there. ¹

His preaching was valued enough that people copied it down without asking him. ¹ He wrote it out properly for a sick nobleman who had missed it. ¹ Rufinus thought even his everyday sermons deserved to be kept. ⁴

The embassy for Chrysostom achieved nothing that the sources record. ²³⁶ He and his companions were imprisoned, robbed of their letters, offered money to give up the cause, and shipped home in a vessel that was rumored to be meant to sink. ² They refused the money and prayed to get home. ² The cause was not won, and the sources do not pretend that it was.