The wisdom inherent in sanctity as personified in the lives of the aforementioned saints and blesseds provides a substantial confirmation of the decrees of the ordinary Magisterium which granted public ecclesiastical devotion to the martyr saint. Worthy of particular mention is the significant number of saints and blesseds who immediately participated in veneration of Philomena within the same half century of the discovery of her sacred remains, some before any certain statement concerning her public veneration was issued by Rome. (43) Note also the predominant importance of the supernatural intervention of miracles in the Church process of canonization. Without the documented miracles, the cause of an individual does not typically advance past the status of "servant of God," even with extensive historical evidence of an earthly life of heroic virtue. The Church places its greatest emphasis for canonization, along with an essential historical basis, upon God's witness to the sanctity of the candidate through the manifestation of miraculous intercession by the person. It was therefore most appropriate for Gregory XVI to place the greater importance of sanctity discernment upon the history of miracles documented to the intercession of Philomena, rather than upon the history of her earthly existence beyond the Church approved criteria of historically establishing her martyrdom. Our contemporary Church examination of the sanctity of St. Philomena should, like Gregory XVI, Bl. Pius IX, Leo XIII, St. Pius X, and our own contemporary principles of discernment for canonization, use the same criterion of evaluation, with a predominance of the documented supernatural over the non-essentially historical. Archeological Controversy Archeologist Oracio Marucchi introduced controversy into the status of devotion to St. Philomena with a 1906 publication, "Osservazioni archeologiche sulla Iscrizione di S. Filomena" (44) in which Marucchi put forth the following theory: 1. Concerning the unusual word order on the three tiles, "LUMENA PAXTE CUMFI" the three tiles were purposely re-arranged on the loculus to indicate that this was a case of a re-using of the original tiles for the remains of a different person. 2. The tiles were originally used to close in the remains of one called "Filumena," from the middle to the end of the second century, and later used again for the loculus of another young maiden during the fourth century, which was a time of peace for Christianity. 3. The person designated by the inscription was likely, but not certainly, a martyr. (45) The theory of Marucchi was immediately responded to by a professor of the Gregoriana, Guiseppe Bonavenia, S.J., (along with Catacomb scientist J. B. De Rossi, a renowned expert in early Christian archeology) (46) in his Controversia sul celeberrimo epitaffio di Santa Filomena, V. e M.47 Fr. Bonavenia and others offered the following refutation of Marucchi's theory: 1. It was frequently the custom in the catacombs to start the epitaph on the second tile, and hence the inscription is properly read (as it was by Msgr. Ponzetti, Custodian of the Sacred Relics), "PAX TECUM FILUMENA" ("Peace to you, Philomena"). 2. The tomb digger, not able to write the entire name on the first tile and to conserve the proportions of his writing, proceeded to write the "FI" on the last tile and the "LUMENA" on the first. 3. At least 12 catacombs located in the Priscilla catacombs begin with "PAX TECUM", "PAX TIBI" or IN PACE." 4. The tiles are at least of the third century, and not from the first or second centuries (which would include the persecution of Diocletian) and thus not from a time of peace. |
