Of the early years of Saint Agapius — Agabio, as the people of Novara have always called him — the sources tell us almost nothing but the one thing that mattered most to him: he was a disciple of Saint Gaudentius, the first bishop of Novara. In an age when the Church of northern Italy was still young and the countryside still half pagan, the young man attached himself to that great pastor, learned from him the care of souls, and made himself so faithful a son that his master looked on him as the future of the diocese.
While Gaudentius was still living he designated Agapius as the one who should succeed him upon the episcopal throne of Novara. It was a mark of trust rare in any age. And when the holy bishop died, it was Agapius who took charge of his burial, laying the body of his master in the basilica outside the city walls — the church that stood in Novara in those centuries and was demolished only in the sixteenth century. In that act the whole shape of his life is visible: a disciple who honours his father in the faith and then carries his work forward.
About the year 417 Agapius was raised to the see of Novara as its second bishop, and he held it for some thirty years. His episcopate was not marked by controversy or by dramatic conflict, but by patient construction. Under him the building of churches and Christian monuments flourished throughout the diocese; the faith which Gaudentius had preached was given walls, altars and roofs, so that the scattered Christians of the territory could gather, hear the word and receive the sacraments. Tradition remembers him above all for his devotion to the Eucharist, and Christian art has kept that memory alive: he is shown, unusually for a bishop, holding a chalice with the host, together with the mitre and pastoral staff, and in some representations a thurible, the signs of the priestly and episcopal service he rendered day after day.
He died at Novara on 10 September 440 — some accounts place his death a few years later, in 447 — and was buried outside the walls along the road that leads to Milan. The people did not forget the grave of their bishop. Over his tomb a church was raised and dedicated to him, and around it grew the quarter of the city that still bears his name.
In the year 890, when the raids of the Magyars threatened the shrines that lay beyond the protection of the city walls, Bishop Cadultus of Novara had the relics of Saint Agapius translated into the cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta, where they have been venerated ever since; the faithful also honour his memory in the Basilica of San Gaudentius, near the master whose grave he himself once tended. So the two bishops, teacher and disciple, remain together in the devotion of the city they evangelised. His feast is kept on 10 September.
May Saint Agapius of Novara obtain for us that quiet, persevering fidelity which builds up the Church stone by stone, and today let us honour the Eucharist he so loved with one act of deliberate reverence.
