Saint Januarius

“ On these occasions the substance contained in the phial liquefies, and the Neapolitans see in this phenomenon a supernatural manifestation. The “miracle of St Januarius” did not occur before the middle of the 15th century. ”

“ The name (Lat. Januarius) is derived from the two-faced Roman god Janus, to whom the month was dedicated. As doorkeeper of heaven, as looking both into the past and the future, and as being essentially the deity who busied himself with the beginnings of all enterprises, he was appropriately made guardian of the fortunes of the new year. The consecration of the month took place by an offering of meal, salt, frankincense and wine, each of which was new. The Anglo-Saxons called January Wulfmonath, in allusion to the fact that hunger then made the wolves bold enough to come into the villages. ”

“ A great number of saints of the name of Januarius are mentioned in the martyrologies. The best-known are the Roman martyr (festival, the 10th of July) , whose epitaph was written by Pope Damasus (De Rossi, Bullettino, p. 17, 1863) , and the martyr of Cordova, who forms along with Faustus and Martialis the group designated by Prudentius (Peristephanon, iv. 20) by the name of tres coronae. The festival of these martyrs is celebrated on the 13th of October. ”

“ In England, it was not until 1752 that the 1st of January became the initial day of the legal, as it had long been of the popular, year. Several other countries made this change earlier than England—France in 1564, Scotland in 1600, Holland and Russia in 1700.
The Roman calendar, which made January the first month of the year, is credited to the second King of Rome, Numa Pompilius, more than six hundred years b.c. He added two months to the ten into which the year had been previously divided, and called the first one Januarius, in honor of Janus, the deity supposed to preside over doors. ”

“ Januarius,” who always comes in for a large share of their veneration; and this morning having heard that the Neapolitans still present each other with a cake upon New-year’s day, I began to hug my favourite hypothesis closer, recollecting the old ceremony of the wheaten cake seasoned with salt, and called Janualis in the Heathen days. All this however must still end in mere conjecture; for though the weather here favours one’s idea of Janus, who loosened the furrow and liquefied the frost, to which the melting our martyr’s blood might, without much straining of the matter, be made to allude ”

“ It is impossible to exaggerate the firmness of their faith or the depth and tenacity of the affection of the Neapolitans for this their miracle. Whatever else happens to their fair city, nothing must interfere with their devotion to St. Januarius and the proper celebration of these festivals—neither wars nor pestilence, nor eruptions nor earthquakes, nor change of rulers. Once a battle raging in the streets prevented an outdoor procession. But, within the cathedral, there was a procession through the aisles and nave, and all things else went on as usual. ”

“ He let his children grow up in no worse ignorance than ignorance of their rank: they were to be formed for future co-workers in his administration. Januarius was, to be sure, sensual and somewhat feeble, but—except where he feared—extremely philanthropic.
Lord Horion met Prince January twice on his journeys: the first time he cut across the princely planetary orbit as a comet, in the sense of a hairy star; the second, as a comet with a tail when in its perihelion. ”

“ Januarius is preserved in a phial in a church in Naples, and on a certain holiday a miracle takes place causing it to liquefy. The people think a great deal of this miracle, and become very excited if the liquefying process is retarded, as happened once during the French occupation. ”

“ Januarius, then, our brother and fellow-bishop of the metropolitan city of Caralis (Cagliari) , has been here in the city of Rome, and informed us that the glorious magister militum, Theodorus, who is known to have received the dukedom of the island of Sardinia, is doing many things there contrary to the commands of our most pious lords, whereby with fitting clemency and gentleness they removed many hardships of proprietors, or of citizens of their empire. ”

“ It was not necessary, in a letter like that we have made use of, to enter on the discussion of mooted points of archæology. The writer simply sets forth the opinions which, after more or less of examination, he felt inclined to adopt. We say here that there is a difference among writers as to the year in which the body of St. Januarius was transferred from the original sepulchre to the church of San Gennaro extra muros, and there is still a graver difference as to the precise place of the original tomb. ”

“ They spent the greater part of the year 1661 at Rome, at Naples—where the blood and relics of St. Januarius were specially exhibited to them, an honour only conferred on kings and their ambassadors—and amid the rich libraries of the numerous abbeys of Southern Italy. But even when absent from Rome their work there went on apace. They enjoyed the friendship of some wealthy merchants from their own land, who liberally supplied them with money, enabling them to employ five or six scribes to copy the manuscripts they selected ”

“ The family had long been connected with Naples, and the father of the future cardinal became commander-in-chief of the land and sea forces of that kingdom, and a knight of St. Januarius, and he was also prime minister of Naples for several years. Charles Januarius Edward was born in the city of Naples 6 March 1803, and on the death of his father in 1811 he, with his elder brother Sir Richard, was sent to England for education. ”

“ If with the aids of science and skill at their command, men have failed to reproduce the liquefaction of the blood of St. Januarius, is it not clear that the priests and monks of Naples are not competent of themselves to produce the original? ”

“ In fact, adultery is, with princes of the January stamp, nothing but a milder sort of ruling and conquering. And yet honest regents always return—with pleasure the wives, so soon as they have conquered them, to their former lords. This, however, is only the same greatness which led the Romans to deprive the greatest kings of their realms, in order afterward to present them with them again.
As princes are not, like jurists, bad Christians, but prefer to be none at all, January prepossessed our Victor by sundry sparks of religion, and by some hatred of the French Encyclopedists ”

“ In July 1792 he proceeded to Italy as a companion to Lord Berwick. He visited Turin, Genoa, Bologna, Florence, Rome, and Naples, keeping a journal, in which, among other items, there is a description of Vesuvius and a lively account of the liquefaction of St. Januarius's blood at Naples. He returned to England 30 Nov. 1793, out was again on the continent from January 1794 till the summer; he went up the Rhine and visited Venice and other Italian cities. ”

“ A king of Italy, said to have been the son of Coelus, others say of Apollo; he sheltered Saturn when he was driven from heaven by Jupiter. Janus presided over highways, gates, and locks, and is usually represented with two faces, because he was acquainted with the past and the future; or, according to others, because he was taken for the sun, who opens the day at his rising, and shuts it at his setting. A brazen temple was erected to him in Rome, which was always open in time of war, and closed during peace. ”

“ Januarius, containing the tomb of Pergolesi, the celebrated musical composer, now occupies the site of the pagan shrine, and has six of its Corinthian pillars, that looked down upon the apostle as he landed, built into its walls. A temple of Diana and a temple of the Nymphs also adorned the town, from which numerous columns and sculptures have been recently recovered. On every side the apostle would see mournful tokens that the city was wholly given up to idolatry,—to the worship of mortal men and an ignoble crowd of gods and goddesses borrowed from all nations ”

“ But Numa Pompilius, who was the father of all the Roman ceremonies and religion, seeing that reckoning to agree neither with the course of the sun nor the moon, thereunto added two monethes, Januarie and Februarie; wherein it seemeth, that wise king minded upon good reason to begin the year at Januarie, of him therefore so called tanquam janua anni, the gate and entrance of the year ”

“ January shook his head incredulously. "For," the other continued, "as he knows not his high rank, he more readily adopted certain French principles, which would have alleviated for him his death quite as much as certain Englishmen would have made use of them with the people to prevent it." As a proof, by the way, he adduced the blowing-up of the powder-house.
January saw with astonishment a light glide into a dark cavern, and saw far into the cavern.
One wrongs the excellent Evangelist, if one thinks it satisfies him merely to have saved his friend. ”

“ Januarius's blood by eye-witnesses, one an eminent Catholic of the seventeenth century, and the other a distinguished Protestant of our own time, see Murray's Handbook for South Italy and Naples, description of the Cathedral of San Gennaro. For an interesting series of articles on the subject, see The Catholic World for September, October, and November, 1871. For the incredible filthiness of the great cities of Spain, and the resistance of the people, down to a recent period, to the most ordinary regulations prompted by decency, see Bascome, History of the Epidemic Pestilences, especially pp. ”

“ In the second century—the discovery of the tombs of SS. Felicitas and Cecilia, of the grave of S. Januarius, the eldest son of Felicitas, [123] substantiate the existence and death of the famous martyrs, whose very existence has been doubted even by earnest Christian students, and whose life-story has been generally relegated to the sphere of religious romance. ”

“ Repente.—A play on the meaning of the English and the form of the Latin word repente is clearly intended.
Line 70. "Denarii dicti, quod denos æris valebant; quinarii, quod quinos" (Varro) .
Line 93. Janus is frequently, though not invariably, represented in mythology as guardian of the entrance to heaven; in which capacity he holds in his right hand a staff, and in his left a key, symbolical of his office (Ovid, Fast. i. 125) . The names of Jupiter and Janus were usually coupled in prayer, as the divinities whose aid it was necessary to invoke at the beginning of any undertaking. ”

“ What, then, is the result the writers of Janus arrive at as to their own position? "Inwardly a great gulf separates" them from such a church and its chief pastor—that is, from Pius IX. and the episcopacy. For in another place (p. 3) he affirms that the doctrines he attacks are "identical with those of the chief head." Does it not follow from these premises that Janus excludes himself from this "centre of unity," as the see of Rome has been called by St. Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage? ”

“ There are some who on the Kalends of January practise auguries, and do not allow fire out of their houses or any other favour to anyone who asks. Also they both receive and give diabolical presents (strenas) . Some country people, moreover, lay tables with plenty of things necessary for eating ... thinking that thus the Kalends of January will be a warranty that all through the year their feasting will be in like measure abundant. Now as for them who on those days observe any heathen customs, it is to be feared that the name of Christian will avail them nought. ”

“ Such developments of the original Janus were no doubt as old as the State itself. In the Salian hymn he is already ‘deorum deus’ [1284] , and ‘duonus cerus’ [1285] , which Festus tells us meant creator bonus. But even in the State there are, as we have seen, sufficiently clear traces of his original nature to forbid us to attribute these titles to any lofty and abstract philosophical ideas of religion. ”

“ The little building, half arch, half shrine, which you observe standing free where the roads converge upon the Forum, is the famous sanctuary of Janus, of which the doors are never shut unless there is complete peace throughout the Roman world. So long as Rome is anywhere engaged in a great or little war, the open doors of Janus tell the fact to a people which might otherwise be unconscious of so slight or remote a circumstance. ”

“ They are men of one mind and both creatures of that treacherous King of Naples. If Janus had had more wit, he would have left Gioan Peres Fabrici to this day, bargaining for his cargoes of grain, instead of naming him to the Council of the Realm and lavishing the honors of the kingdom upon this faithless favorite. ”

“ The Jansenists indignantly denied that such propositions were to be found in the Augustinus, and that they expressed the sense attributed to them; but Alexander VII., who was now the reigning Pope, declared, by a bull, that the propositions were really to be found in Jansenius’ book. Of all the extravagant pretensions of the Roman See, this was assuredly the greatest. The Jansenists, in their defence, while they declared themselves good and devout Catholics, asserted, nevertheless, that the Pope’s infallibility did not extend to matters of fact. “Why make such a noise?” ”

“ Janus, who looked to the past and to the future, was the god whose temple stood always open during war, that he might bring peace upon earth. And in our day it is only the view of the past and the future which can warn us of evils to come, and save us from violence and confusion. ”