Feast: 18 May ☩ Duplex
Among the youthful blossoms cut down in the springtide of the Church’s persecutions, few have shone with so resplendent a fortitude as the boy-martyr Venantius of Camerino, whose blood, shed in the fifteenth year of his age, watered the soil of Picenum and raised up a harvest of confessors in his wake. The Roman Martyrology, under this day, recounts with sober gravity: “Camerini sancti Venantii Martyris, qui, sub Decio Imperatore et Antiocho Praeside, post catenas, carceres, fustes, ignes, lampades, equuleum, ac plurima alia tormenta, una cum decem aliis Martyribus, gladio percussus, martyrii palmam, Christo duce, adeptus est”—“At Camerino, the holy Martyr Venantius, who, under the Emperor Decius and the Prefect Antiochus, after chains, prisons, scourging, fire, torches, the rack, and many other torments, was struck with the sword together with ten other Martyrs, and obtained the palm of martyrdom, Christ leading him.”
The Age of Decian Fury
The Church beheld in the year of Our Lord 250 one of her most ferocious tribulations. The Emperor Decius, jealous of the antique gods of Rome and resolved to extirpate the nomen Christianum from the face of his dominions, promulgated his infamous edict requiring of every subject sacrifice to the idols and the procurement of a libellus attesting to apostasy. In this hour, when many of the faithful trembled and not a few fell—those whom the Fathers would name thurificati and libellatici—the Lord raised up new athletes from the ranks of His little ones. As Tertullian had taught in an earlier persecution (Apologeticus, cap. l): “Semen est sanguis Christianorum”—“The blood of Christians is seed.” That seed, in the city of Camerino, was sown by a boy.
The Young Confessor
Venantius, born of noble parents and instructed from infancy in the Faith by a holy priest named Porphyrius, was scarcely fifteen years old when he was denounced before Antiochus, the Praeses of the province. The traditional Acta preserved by the Bollandists and embedded in the Lessons of Matins for his Office relate that he was led before the tribunal not by force of arms alone but by the providential summons of God, that the boldness of his confession might confound the Gentiles and console the brethren. When commanded to offer incense to the gods, he answered—so the lessons of his Office record—that the gods of the heathen were demons and that he acknowledged no Lord save Jesus Christ, the Son of the living God. Recall here the word of Wisdom (Sap. iv. 13–14, in the Douay): “Being made perfect in a short space, he fulfilled a long time. For his soul pleased God: therefore he hastened to bring him out of the midst of iniquities.”
The Torments
The cruelty unleashed upon his slender frame was such as one trembles to recount, yet the Church preserves the memory that the faithful may marvel at the strength which Christ communicates to His members. He was beaten with clubs and his teeth shattered; he was hung head-downward over a smoking pyre that his very breath might suffocate him; he was scourged with leaded thongs; his jaws were broken; he was cast among lions, which, mindful of their Maker more than was the prefect, lay down at his feet as once before they had spared Daniel (Dan. vi. 22). He was hurled from a precipice and rose unharmed; he was bound upon the equuleum and his sides torn with hooks. At each remove the boy emerged not vanquished but enkindled, and—as the Acta testify—through his constancy and the miracles wrought in his behalf, his judge Anastasius, the soldier-attendant of the prefect, together with his mother Anastasia, his brothers, and divers others among the soldiers and citizens, were converted to the Faith and themselves crowned with martyrdom. Here was fulfilled the saying of the Lord in the holy Gospel (Matth. x. 19–20): “Nolite cogitare quomodo aut quid loquamini… non enim vos estis qui loquimini, sed Spiritus Patris vestri qui loquitur in vobis.”
The Consummation
When at length neither beasts nor fire nor the cunning of his torturers could prevail against him, Venantius was led forth without the walls of Camerino with ten companions—won to Christ by the spectacle of his fortitude—and there, kneeling in prayer, gave his neck to the sword. So the Roman Martyrology summarises in two clauses what the Acta unfold in many: gladio percussus, martyrii palmam… adeptus est. It is recorded that at the place of his beheading a spring of water gushed forth from the rock—a sign by which the Lord seemed to declare that from this slight body had flowed forth waters living and abundant, as from a new Horeb struck by the rod of grace.
Veneration and Cultus
His sacred relics were enshrined in the cathedral of Camerino, of which city he is the principal Patron; and his feast, elevated to the rank of Duplex in the universal calendar by Pope Clement X in 1670, has been kept by the Roman Church on this eighteenth day of May. The proper Office composed at that elevation, with its noble hymns Athleta Christi nobilis, Martyr Dei Venantius, and Haec est dies, qua Martyris, is among the loveliest given to any youthful martyr in the Breviary, and is itself a catechesis in the spirit of Christian fortitude. The Gospel pericope assigned to his Mass, Nisi granum frumenti cadens in terram (Ioan. xii. 24–26), interprets his death in the Lord’s own words: unless the grain die, it abides alone; but dying, it bringeth forth much fruit.
Lessons for Imitation
The faithful soul who would draw profit from this hagiography should mark especially three things:
The first is the precocity of grace. Sanctity is no work of mere maturity; the Holy Ghost prepares His temples even in youth. Parents and godparents have here a stern admonition to instruct their children in the Faith without delay, that the foundation be laid before the storms arise. “Adolescens iuxta viam suam, etiam cum senuerit, non recedet ab ea” (Prov. xxii. 6).
The second is the primacy of confession over comfort. Venantius was offered, as every confessor is offered, an easy avenue of escape: a pinch of incense, a brief external act, a private mental reservation. He chose torment instead, because he knew that the denial of Christ before men brings denial of the soul before the Father (Matth. x. 33). In our age, where the demand is rarely for a public sacrifice to idols but constantly for silent acquiescence in the spirit of the world, his example reproves every cowardice of speech and conduct.
The third is the fecundity of fidelity. From the constancy of one boy, ten souls were brought to Heaven. No Christian endures rightly for himself alone; the patience of one is the conversion of many. “In patientia vestra possidebitis animas vestras” (Luc. xxi. 19).
A Suggested Practice
It is a venerable custom among the devout of Camerino to recite upon this day the Litaniae Sancti Venantii or, where these are unavailable, to offer fifteen Aves in honour of the fifteen years of his earthly life and the fifteen mysteries of the Rosary by which he conquered. Conjoined with this, an examination of conscience touching the small daily denials of Christ—in speech, in silence when one ought to speak, in compromise with the spirit of the age—will draw down upon the soul a participation in the boy-martyr’s fortitude.
Oratio
Deus, qui hunc diem beati Venantii Martyris tui triumpho consecrasti: exaudi preces populi tui, et praesta; ut, qui ejus merita veneramur, fidei constantiam imitemur. Per Dominum nostrum Jesum Christum, Filium tuum, qui tecum vivit et regnat in unitate Spiritus Sancti Deus, per omnia saecula saeculorum. Amen.
O God, who hast consecrated this day by the triumph of blessed Venantius Thy Martyr: graciously hear the prayers of Thy people, and grant that we who venerate his merits may imitate his constancy in the Faith. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. Amen.
Sancte Venanti, Martyr Christi invictissime, ora pro nobis.
If it would profit you, a companion piece might be drawn from the Lives of the Saints path treating another youthful martyr—St. Pancras (12 May) or St. Tarcisius—to set Venantius within the great company of adolescentes Christi; or, on the Sacred Liturgy path, a meditation on the proper hymns Athleta Christi nobilis and Martyr Dei Venantius from his Office, which unfold his theology in poetic compression.