Adapted from Various Sources.
St. Barbatus, Bishop of Benevento and Apostle of the Lombards († 682; Feast – February 19)
St. Barbatus was born in the territory of Benevento, situated not far to the northeast of Naples, towards the end of the Pontificate of
St. Gregory the Great, in the beginning of the 7th 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
interest; and the innocence, simplicity, and purity of his manners, and extraordinary progress in all virtues, qualified him for service
at the altar, to which he was assumed by receiving 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, he was made pastor of St. Basil's
in Morcona, a town near Benevento. His parishioners were hardened in their irregularities, and averse to whatever looked like
establishing order and discipline amongst them. As they desired only to slumber on in their sins, they could not bear the remonstrances
of their pastor, who endeavored to awaken in them a sense of their miseries and to sincere repentance; but they treated him as a
disturber of the peace, and persecuted him with the utmost violence. Finding their malice conquered by his patience and humility,
and his character shining still more brightly, they had recourse to slanders. Such was their virulence and success that he was obliged
to withdraw his charitable endeavors amongst them. By these fiery trials, God purified his heart from all earthly attachments,
and perfectly crucified it to the world.
St. 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 first been sown at Benevento by St. Potinus, who is said to have been sent there by St. Peter,
and is looked upon as the first Bishop of this See. We have no names of his successors until 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 in ruins in 545.
The Lombards, who began their invasion of Italy in 568, and having taken possession of that country, repaired Benevento; and King Authari
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 – their duke Arichis having been
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 Romuald authorized by his bad example, in spite of the fact that his father Grimoald,
King of the Lombards, 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, said to be the site of Satanic practices and even witchcraft.
St. Barbatus preached zealously against these abuses and labored long, seemingly without success; yet he 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 from grievous alarms and fears,
they listened to the holy preacher, entered into themselves, and renounced their errors and idolatrous practices. Hereupon,
St. Barbatus gave them the comforting assurance that the siege would be raised, and the Emperor defeated; 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.
The Bishop of Benevento, Ildebrand, had died during the siege; so after public tranquility was restored, St. Barbatus
was consecrated Bishop on March 10, 663 (this See was not raised to the dignity of an Archdiocese until Pope John XIII did so,
about the year 965). The new Bishop pursued and completed the good work he had so happily begun, and destroyed every trace of
superstition in the whole state. In the year 680 he assisted at a Council held in Rome by Pope Agatho, and the year following he
assisted at the Sixth General Council held at Constantinople against the Monothelites. He did not long survive this great assembly,
for he died on February 19, 682, being about seventy years old, almost nineteen of which he had spent on the episcopal throne.
He is named in the Roman Martyrology and honored at Benevento among the chief patrons of that city.
Many sinners, on whom the terrors of divine judgment make very little impression, are moved by alarming sensible dangers
or calamities to enter into themselves. The reason can only be a supine neglect of serious reflection and a habit of only considering
divine judgment transiently, and as at a great distance; for it is impossible for anyone 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 do not effect a change of heart.
Amongst the pretended conversions which sickness frequently produces, very few bear the character of sincerity, as appears by those who,
after their recovery, live on in their former lukewarmness and disorders. St. Augustine, in a sermon which he made on the news that Rome
had been sacked by the Barbarians (de Excidio Urbis, c. 6, t. 6), relates 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 by a panic fear and all began to do penance like Ninive, fleeing, with the Emperor at their head,
to a great distance from the city. After the term appointed for its pretended destruction had elapsed, they sent scouts to the city,
which they had left quite empty, and hearing that it was still standing, they returned to it, forgetting their fears as well as their
repentance and all their good resolutions. To prevent the danger of penitents harming themselves by superficial conversions,
St. Barbatus took all necessary precautions to improve their first dispositions to a sincere and perfect change of heart,
and to cut off and remove all dangerous occasions of temptations.
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