CORPI SANTI. - By these are meant those bodies that were taken from ancient cemeteries and placed in veneration as the bodies of previously unknown martyrs. This practice began as early as the 4th century, grew especially in the 9th century, and reached its greatest flourishing in the 17th and 18th centuries. It was favored by the incredible desire of the faithful to possess relics of martyrs and fed by the belief that the ancient Christian burial places, and in particular the Roman catacombs, were essentially cemeteries of martyrs.
In the 4th and 5th centuries there is frequent mention of pious women, monks or ecclesiastics who carried around and spread relics of previously unknown martyrs: and not a few discoveries of the bodies of martyrs that occurred at that time, especially in Palestine, and of martyrs of the 1st century of Christianity, are not free from every suspicion and difficulty for the historian.
In the 9th century, through the work of Charlemagne and of the abbots of the principal monasteries of his Empire, an intense movement toward Rome was created to obtain there some bodies of the most famous Roman martyrs. But sometimes, instead of those, there departed from the City the bodies of martyrs until then unknown, or even the names were falsified to satisfy the desires of the interested parties. A certain deacon Deusdona is known, who was certainly guilty of this sacrilegious traffic.
Toward the end of the 16th century the catacombs of Rome were rediscovered, and the first thing sought in them in that fervor of the Counter-Reformation were the bodies of the martyrs with which they were believed to be full. Some took possession indiscriminately of whatever corpse presented itself, others sought some sign that they considered indicative of martyrdom, such as the palm, the Constantinian monogram, the ampulla (v.) believed to be full of blood, some phrase of the inscription, etc. In this way many licenses were obtained from the popes to extract from the catacombs at their own discretion the bodies of previously unknown martyrs, or those loosely identified with the most famous Roman martyrs, and to distribute them to the various churches to be venerated.
Following abuses and the protests of many, Pope Clement IX instituted a special Congregation to regulate this matter, and it, by a decree of 10 April 1668, established that the following were to be considered sufficient signs of martyrdom: « palmam et vas illorum sanguine tinctum » found upon the tombs of the deceased. Immediately afterward the Pope established that from then on the search for and extraction of these bodies of martyrs and their distribution should be carried out solely by the cardinal vicar and the pontifical sacristan.
In this way, for about two centuries, until the middle of the 19th century, there were extracted from the catacombs of Rome and from other ancient burial places outside Rome (as at Cagliari, Pompeii, and near Nancy) innumerable holy bodies placed in veneration as martyrs, previously unknown, and sometimes even anonymous but conveniently rebaptized. As signs of martyrdom the two aforementioned served principally, but also many others (such as the cross, the monogram, etc.) that had never been expressly reproved. Almost all the churches of Christendom had some, and certain ones, especially of princes or religious, with true abundance (cf. for example, A. M. Zaccaria, Menologium sanctorum quorum reliquiae in Cremonensi PP. Societatis Iesu ecclesia adservantur, in the appendix to the Cremonensium episcoporum series, Milan 1749, pp. 190 ff., 239). At the beginning, in order to authorize such procedures more fully, genuine forgeries were also created, especially of inscriptions that were to authenticate the relics put into circulation. Quite a few of these come from the abbot Giacomo Crescenzi of S. Equizio of Norcia.
Nevertheless there never lacked learned and prudent men who opposed, or at least made reservations about, the manner in which the extractions and recognitions of these holy bodies were carried out. They were especially Papebroch, Mabillon, Di Costanzo, de Buck, Le Blant, and, finally, De Rossi, who obtained that around the middle of the 19th century that traffic was practically brought to an end, from the time when the Commission of Sacred Archaeology was created for the governance of the catacombs, in which the voice of De Rossi and of Fr. Marchi was always heard. Pius X had reassembled in the catacombs the holy body of a woman named Fortissima, brought in the 18th century to the basilica of St. Mark.
Bibliography6 works
PRESENT PRACTICE OF THE S. CONGREGATION OF RITES
The Sacred Congregation of Rites, bearing in mind that it is by now absolutely certain that after the 8th century no bodies of known martyrs remained in the catacombs, since these had been transferred from the outskirts into the interior of Rome to save them from profanation by the Lombard troops, for about forty years, in response to insistent requests for feasts with Office and Mass in honor of the so-called saints, whose remains recently extracted from the catacombs are venerated in several places, even though authenticated by the cardinal vicars and the pontifical sacristans, has constantly refused the granting of the feast, the Office and the Mass and has advised that this cult, even private, be prudently brought to an end, and that the relics be withdrawn from cult and possibly replaced by others that are certainly authentic.
It may also be added that the same Sacred Congregation, even in past centuries, when historical studies had not made the present progress, did not grant Office and Mass in honor of the so-called saints not registered in the Martyr. Romanum and whose relics' identity and authenticity were not established, although it did not forbid their veneration (cf. Decretum generale of 19 Oct. 1691; for others: Decreta authentica Congregationis Sacrorum Rituum, I, Rome 1898, no. 1853).