Oude gebeden tot Sint-Hermes en hagiografie

Pedro de Ribadeneyra (1526-1611), vertaald naar het Engels door W.P. Esquire, 1669

The life of Saint Hermes Martyr    28 august

The blessed Saint Alexander, pope and martyr, was a great servant of God, and by his holy life, admirable doctrin, and inmumerable miracles which he wrought, converted to the faith of Christ our saviour a great part of the Roman centry, among which was one Hermes, a very noble, and a very rich man, and governor of the city of Rome: who having seen his son raised from death to life, illuminated with light from heaven, received holy baptism together with his wife, and children, and sister Theodora, and all his family, which consisted of a thousand two hundred and fifty persons. He gave liberty to his slaves, and to the poor, and to his servants a good part of his wealth, and to his son the government of his house, preparing himself for martyrdom. The conversion of Saint Hermes made a great noyse throughout the city, because he was a person of such note and quality, and so well known. The prefect Aurelius commanded him to be apprehended together with Saint Alexander, and commited him to the charge of Quirinus Tribun, or master of the camp, who had a daughter, called Balbina very sick of the kingsevil. Quirinus compassionating Saint Hermes said unto him, that he wondered that a man of such quality, and such high dignity, and held for a wise and discreet man as he was, would suffer himself to be so abused and for a foolish superstition would lose so great honor, nobility and riches, and be basely settered in a silthy prison, and seing that the happines of man ended with his life, and that he was only once to be born and once to dy, when he could enjoy the pleasures and goods of this life, he would rather make choice of the sufferings and miseries which he endured, seing they could avail and profit him nothing. S. Hermes answered him that himself had been in the same error, but Saint Alexander had freed him from it, and had also restored life to a son of his, and fight to his servant and nurs: more over he solved his arguments, and compacted with him, that if S. Alexander, who was bound in chains in another prison, should come that night to visit Hermes, Guirinus should embrace the faith of Christ. Guirinus doubled his setters and guards upon Saint Alexander, that he might not be able to get out of prison, and come to Saint Hermes: but Saint Alexander conducted by an angel, who appeared unto him with a torch in his hand, in the shape of a child, of about five years old, came to the house of Quirinus, and visited Saint Hermes, and cured Balbina, Guirinus his daughter, of the Kings evill: whereupon Quirinus and all his family, illuminated by light from heaven, made themselves Christians, and were all of them afterwards Martyrs of our Lord: for the prefect Aurelian, having understoed what had passed, commanded all those that had been baptized, to be put into a ship, and wirh stones tyed to their necks to be cast out into the deep sea. Quirinus was diversly tormented, and at last beheaded: and Saint Hermes passes the same sentence, whose body his sister Saint Theodora took, and buried in the way called Salaria, not far from Rome. The martyrdom of Saint Hermes was upon the eight and twentith of august, upon which the holy church celebrates it, and it happened in the year of our Lord one hundred thirty and two, Adrian being Emperor, Pelagius the second pope of that name, adorned and illuminated the place where Saint Hermes was buried. All the martyrologes make mention of this martyrdom: especially that of Ado, which treats more largely of it, taking out of the Acts of Saint Alexander Pope, what is there written concerning it, which acts are in the third tome of Surius.