Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 11.djvu/853

 PETROBRUSIANS

781

PETRONILLA

nuncio d'Adda are at the British Museum (Add. MSS., 15395 etc.) and at the Record Office. The so-called Letter to Phe La Chaise is clearly fictitious. J_ JJ^ PoLLEN

Petrobrusians, heretics of the twelfth century so I named from their founder Peter of Bruys. Our infor- mation concerning him is derived from the treatise of Peter the Veneratjie against the Petrobrusians and from a passage in Abelard. Peter was born perhaps at Bruis in south-eastern France. The history of his early life is unknowii, but it is certain that he was a priest who had been deprived of his charge. He began his propaganda in the Dioceses of Embrun, Die, and Gap, probably between 1117 and 1120. Twenty years later the populace of St. Gilles near Ntmes, exasper- ated by his burning of crosses, cast him into the flames. The bishops of the above-mentioned dioceses suppressed the heresy within their jurisdiction, but it gained adherents at Narbonne, Toulouse, and in Gas- cony. Henry of Lausanne, a former Cluniac monk, adopted the Petrobrusians' teaching about 1135 and spread it in a modified form after its author's death. Peter of Bruys admitted the doctrinal authority of the Gospels in their literal interpretation; the other New- Testament writings he probably considered value- less, as of doubtful Apostolic origin. To the New- Testament Epistles he assigned only a subordinate place as not coming from Jesus Christ Himself. He re- jected the Old Testament as well as the authority of the Fathers and of the Church. His contempt for the Church extended to the clergy, and physical violence was preached and exercised against priests and monks. In his system baptism is indeed a necessary condition for salvation, but it is baptism preceded by personal faith, so that its administration to infants is worthless. The Mass and the Eucharist are rejected because Jesus Christ gave His flesh and blood but once to His disci- ples, and repetition is impossible. All e.xternal forms of worship, ceremonies and chant, are condemned. As the Church consists not in walls, but in the community of the faithful, church buildings should be destroyed, for we may pray to God in a barn as well as in a church, and be heard, if worthy, in a stable as well as before an altar. No good works of the living can profit the dead. Crosses, as the instrument of the death of Christ, cannot de- serve veneration ; hence they were for the Petrobrusians objects of desecration and were destroyed in bonfires. Peter the Venerable, Epistota sivc iractatus adversus petro- brusianos harreiieos in P. L., CLXXXIX, 719-850; .\bel.ard, Introductio ad theologiam, II. iv, in P. L., CLXXVIII, 1056; Vernet in Diet, theol. cath., 11, 1151-56; Funk, Manual of Church History, tr. Cappadelta, I (St. Louia, 1910), 354-5.

N. A. Webek.

Petronilla, Saint, virgin, probably mart}Ted at Rome at the end of the first century. Almost all the sixth- and seventh-century lists of the tombs of the most highly venerated Roman martyrs mention St. Petronilla's grave as situated in the Via Ardeatina near Sts. Nereus and Achilleus (De Rossi, "Roma sot- terranea", I, 180-1). These notices have been com- pletely confirmed by the excavations in the Catacomb of Domitilla. One topography of the graves of the Roman martyrs, "Epitome libri de locis sanctorum martyrum", locates on the Via Ardeatina a church of St. Petronilla, in which Sts. Nereus and Achilleus, as well as Petronilla, were buried (De Rossi, loc. cit., 180). This church, built into the above-mentioned catacomb, has been discovered, and the memorials found in it removed all doubt that the tombs of the three saints were once venerated there (De Rossi in "BuUettino di archeol. crist.", 1874 sq., 5 sqq.). A painting, in which Petronilla is represented as receiv- ing a deceased person (named Veneranda) into heaven, was discovered on the closing stone of a tomb in an underground crypt behind the apse of the basilica (Wilpert, "Die Malercien der Katakomben Roms", Freiburg, 1903, plate 213; De Rossi, ibid., 1875, 5 sqq.). Beside the saint's picture is her name: Petro-

nilla Mart. (yr). That the painting was done shortly after 356, is proved by an inscription found in the tomb. It is thus cleariy established that Petronilla was venerated at Rome as a martyr in the fourth century, and the testimony must be accepted as cer- tainly historical, notwithstanding the later legend which recognizes her only as a virgin (see below). Another known, but unfortunately no longer extant, memorial was the marble sarcophagus which con- tained her remains, under Paul I (q. v. ; 757-65) trans- lated to St. Peter's. In the account of this in the "Liber Pontificalis" (ed. Duchesne, I, 466) the inscrip- tion carved on the sarcophagus is given thus: Arirece Petronillce Filice Dulcissima: (of the golden Petronilla, the sweetest daughter). We learn, however, from extant sixteenth-century notices concerning this sar- cophagus that the first word was Aiir. {Aiirelioe), so that the martyr's name was Aurelia Petronilla. The second name comes from Petro or Petronius, and, as the name of the great-grandfather of the Christian con- sul, Flavins Clemens, was Titus Flavins Petronius, it is very possible that Petronilla was a relative of the Christian Flavii, who were descended from the sena- torial family of the Aurelii. This theory would also explain why Petronilla was buried in the catacomb of the Flavian Domitilla. Like the latter, Petronilla may have suffered during the persecution of Domitian, per- haps not till later.

In the fourth-century Roman catalogue of martyrs' feasts, which is used in the " Martyrologium Hiero- nymianum", her name seems not to have been in- serted. It occurs in the latter martyrology (De Rossi- Duchesne, "Martyrol. Hieronym.", 69), but only as a later addition. Her name is given under 31 May and the Martyrologies of Bede and his imitators adopt the same date (Quentin, "Les martyrologes histor- iques", Paris, 1908, 51, 363 etc.). The absence of her name from the fourth-century Roman calendar of feasts suggests that Petronilla died at the end of the first or during the second century, since no special feasts for martyrs were celebrated during this period. After the erection of the basilica over her remains and those of Sts. Nereus and Acliilleus in the fourth cen- tury, her cult extended widely and her name was therefore admitted later into the martyrology. A legend, the existence of which in the sixth century is proved by its presence in the list of the tombs of the Roman martyrs prepared by .-^bbot John at the end of this century (De Rossi, "Roma sotterranoa", I, 180), regards Petronilla as a real daughter of St. Peter. In the Gno.stio apocryphal Acts of St. Peter, dating from the second century, a daughter of St. Peter is men- tioned, although her name is not given (Schmid, "Ein vorirenaische gnostisches Originalwerk in koptischer Sprache" in "Sitzungsber. der Berliner Akademie", 1896, 839 sqq.; Lipsius, "Die apokryphen Apostelge- schichtenu. Aposfcllcgcnden", II, i, "Brunswick, 1887, 203 sqq.). The legend iieing widely propagated by these apocryplKil .Vets, Petronilla was identified at Rome with this supposed daughter of St. Peter, prob- ably because of her name and the great antiquity of her tomb. As such, but now as a virgin, not as a martyr, she appears in the legendary Acts of the martyrs Sts. Nereus and Achilleus and in the "Lilier Pontificahs" (loc. cit.). From this legend of St. Nereus and Achilleus a similar notice was admitted into the historical martyrologies of the Middle Ages and thence into the modern Roman Martyrology. In 757 the cofFm containing the mortal remains of the saint was transferred to an old circular building (an imperial mausoleum dating from the end of the fourth century) near St. Peter's. This building was altered and became the Chapel of St. Petronilla (De Rassi, "Inscriptioneschri.stiana;urbisRoma;", 11,225). The saint subsequently appears as the special patroness of the treaties concluded between the popes and the Frankiah emperors. At the rebuilding of St. Peter's ia