Glorious in His Saints

St. George, Martyr

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ABOUT THE YEAR 303.

St. George is honoured in the Catholic church as one of the most illustrious martyrs of Christ. The Greeks have long distinguished him by the title of The Great Martyr, and keep his festival a holiday of obligation. There stood formerly in Constantinople five or six churches dedicated in his honour; the oldest of which was always said to have been built by Constantine the Great; who seems also to have been the founder of the church of St. George, which stood over his tomb in Palestine. Both these churches were certainly built under the first Christian emperors. In the middle of the sixth age the Emperor Justinian erected a new church, in honour of this saint, at Bizanes, in Lesser Armenia: the Emperor Mauritius founded one in Constantinople. It is related in the life of St. Theodorus of Siceon, that he served God a long while in a chapel which bore the name of St. George, had a particular devotion to this glorious martyr, and strongly recommended the same to Mauritius, when he foretold him the empire. One of the churches of St. George in Constantinople, called Manganes, with a monastery adjoining, gave to the Hellespont the name of the Arm of St. George. To this day is St. George honoured as principal patron or tutelar saint by several eastern nations, particularly the Georgians. The Byzantine historians relate several battles to have been gained, and other miracles wrought through his intercession. From frequent pilgrimages to his church and tomb in Palestine, performed by those who visited the Holy Land, his veneration was much propagated over the West. St. Gregory of Tours mentions him as highly celebrated in France in the sixth century.1 St. Gregory the Great ordered an old church of St. George, which was fallen to decay, to be repaired.2 His office is found in the sacramentary of that pope, and many others.3 St. Clotildis, wife of Clovis, the first Christian king of France, erected altars under his name; and the church of Chelles, built by her, was originally dedicated in his honour. The ancient life of Droctovæus mentions, that certain relics of St. George were placed in the church of St. Vincent, now called St. Germaris, in Paris, when it was first consecrated. Fortunatus of Poitiers wrote an epigram on a church of St. George, in Mentz. The intercession of this saint was implored especially in battles, and by warriors, as appears by several instances in the Byzantine history, and he is said to have been himself a great soldier. He is at this day the tutelar saint of the republic of Genoa; and was chosen by our ancestors in the same quality under our first Norman kings. The great national council, held at Oxford in 1222, commanded his feast to be kept a holiday of the lesser rank throughout all England.4 Under his name and ensign was instituted by our victorious King Edward III. in 1330, the most noble Order of knighthood in Europe, consisting of twenty-five knights, besides the sovereign. Its establishment is dated fifty years before the knights of St. Michael were instituted in France, by Lewis XI., eighty years before the Order of the Golden Fleece, established by Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy; and one hundred and ninety before the Order of St. Andrew was set up in Scotland by James V. The Emperor Frederick IV. instituted, in 1470, an Order of knights in honour of St. George; and an honourable military Order in Venice bears his name.5

The extraordinary devotion of all Christendom to this saint,7 is an authentic proof how glorious his triumph and name have always been in the church. All his acts relate, that he suffered under Dioclesian, at Nicomedia. Joseph Assemani8 shows, from the unanimous consent of all churches, that he was crowned on the 23rd of April. According to the account given us by Metaphrastes, he was born in Cappadocia, of noble Christian parents. After the death of his father, he went with his mother into Palestine, she being a native of that country, and having there a considerable estate, which fell to her son George. He was strong and robust in body, and having embraced the profession of a soldier, was made a tribune, or colonel in the army. By his courage and conduct, he was soon preferred to higher stations by the Emperor Dioclesian. When that prince waged war against the Christian religion, St. George laid aside the marks of his dignity, threw up his commission and posts, and complained to the emperor himself of his severities and bloody edicts. He was immediately cast into prison, and tried, first by promises, and afterwards put to the question, and tortured with great cruelty; but nothing could shake his constancy. The next day he was led through the city and beheaded. Some think him to have been the same illustrious young man who tore down the edicts when they were first fixed up at Nicomedia,9 as Lactantius relates in his book, On the Death of the Persecutors, and Eusebius in his history.10 The reason why St. George has been regarded as the patron of military men, is partly upon the score of his profession, and partly upon the credit of a relation of his appearing to the Christian army in the holy war, before the battle of Antioch. The success of this battle proving fortunate to the Christians, under Godfrey of Bouillon, made the name of St. George more famous in Europe, and disposed the military men to implore more particularly his intercession. This devotion was confirmed, as it is said, by an apparition of St. George to our king, Richard I., in his expedition against the Saracens: which vision, being declared to the troops, was to them a great encouragement, and they soon after defeated the enemy.11 St. George is usually painted on horseback, and tilting at a dragon, under his feet; but this representation is no more than an emblematical figure, purporting, that, by his faith and Christian fortitude, he conquered the devil, called the dragon in the Apocalypse.

Though many dishonour the profession of arms by a licentiousness of manners, yet, to show us that perfect sanctity is attainable in all states, we find the names of more soldiers recorded in the martyrologies than almost of any other profession. Every true disciple of Christ must be a martyr in the disposition of his heart, as he must be ready to lose all, and to suffer anything, rather than to offend God. Every good Christian is also a martyr, by the patience and courage with which he bears all trials. There is no virtue more necessary, nor of which the exercise ought to be more frequent, than patience. In this mortal life we have continually something to suffer from disappointments in affairs, from the severity of the seasons, from the injustice, caprice, peevishness, jealousy, or antipathy of others; and from ourselves, in pains either of mind or body. Even our own weaknesses and faults are to us subjects of patience. And as we have continually many burdens, both of our own and others, to bear, it is only in patience that we are to possess our souls. This affords us comfort in all our sufferings, and maintains our souls in unshaken tranquillity and peace. This is true greatness of mind, and the virtue of heroic souls. But, alas! every accident ruffles and disturbs us: and we are insupportable even to ourselves. What comfort should we find, what peace should we enjoy, what treasures of virtue should we heap up, what an harvest of merits should we reap, if we had learned the true spirit of Christian patience! This is the martyrdom, and the crown of every faithful disciple of Christ.

1 L. de Glor. Mart. c. 101.

2 L. 19, ep. 73, p. 1173, ed. Ben.

3 Not. Menardii in Sacram. S. Greg.

4 Conc. t. 11, p. 275.

5 See F. Honoré Hist. des Ordres de Chevalerie, t. 4; also Ashmole's Order of the Garter; Anstis's Register; and Pott's Antiquities of Windsor and Hist. of this Order, 4to. 1749, with the MS. notes of Dr. Buswell, canon of Westminster.

7 Certain ancient heretics forged false acts of St. George, which the learned Pope Gelasius condemned in his famous Roman council in 494. Calvin and the Centuriators call him an imaginary saint; but their slander is confuted by most authentic titles and monuments. Jurieu, (Apol. de Reform, t. 1,) Reynolds, and Echard blush not to confound him with George the Arian, usurper of the see of Alexandria, the infamous persecutor of St. Athanasius and the Catholics, whom he endeavoured to dragoon into Arianism, by butchering great numbers, banishing their bishops, plundering the houses of orphans and widows, and outraging the nuns with the utmost barbarity, till the Gentiles, exasperated by his cruelties and scandalous behaviour, massacred him, under Julian. The stories of the combat of St. George with the magician Athanasius, and the like trumpery, came from the mint of the Arians, as Baronius takes notice: and we find them rejected by Pope Gelasius and the other Catholics, who were too well acquainted with the Arian wolf, whose acts they condemned, to confound him with this illustrious martyr of Christ. Though the forgeries of the heretics have been so blended with the truth in the history of this holy martyr, that, as we have it, there is no means of separating the sterling from the counterfeit. See, in Dr. Heylin's History of St. George, the testimonies of writers in every age from Gelasius I. in 402, downwards, concerning this holy martyr.

8 Jos. Assemani in Calend. Univer. t. 6, p. 284. See Memoires de l'Académie des Inscript. t. 26, p. 436.

9 The proofs of this plausible conjecture, see in Papebroke, on St. George, sect. 4, Apr. t. 3, p. 107. Eusebius mentions this anonymous martyr to have been apprehended at Nicomedia, the first victim of the persecution, upon the approach of Easter-day, which fell that year on the 18th of April; so that he seems to have been apprehended on Good-Friday, and after having been tortured for eight days, to have received his crown on the Friday following, the 23rd of April. His body was most easily transported, in the time of the persecution, from Nicomedia, near the Propontis, into the Mediterranean Sea, and to Joppe, in Palestine. Sec also Jos. Assemani Comment. in Cal. Univ.

10 See the Acts of St. Anthimus and Comp.

11 See Dr. Heylin's History of St. George.

St. Soter, Pope, Martyr

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St. Soter was raised to the papacy upon the death of St. Anicetus, in 173. By the sweetness of his discourses, he comforted all persons with the tenderness of a father, and assisted the indigent with liberal alms, especially those who suffered for the faith. He liberally extended his charities, according to the custom of his predecessors, to remote churches, particularly to that of Corinth, to which he addressed an excellent letter, as St. Dionysius of Corinth testifies in his letter of thanks, who adds that his letter was found worthy to be read for their edification on Sundays at their assemblies to celebrate the divine mysteries, together with the letter of St. Clement, pope. St. Soter vigorously opposed the heresy of Montanus, and governed the church to the year 177. See Eusebius, from whose ecclesiastical history these few circumstances are gleaned. In the Martyrologies this pope is styled a martyr.

St. Anastasius the Sinaite, Anchoret

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He testifies of himself, that in his tender years he listened to the gospel with no less respect than if he had heard Christ himself speak; and received the blessed eucharist with the same love and tenderness as if he embraced him visibly present.— After visiting the holy places at Jerusalem, he went to mount Sinai, and was so much edified by the sight of the angelical lives of the hermits who inhabited it, that he built himself a cell among them. Here, perfectly dead to all earthly things and to himself, he deserved, by prayer and obedience, to receive from God the double talent of wisdom and spiritual science, the treasures of which are only communicated to the humble. He often left his desert to defend the church. At Alexandria he publicly convicted certain chiefs of the Acephali heretics, that, in condemning St. Flavian, they had condemned all the fathers of the church, insomuch that the people could scarcely be contained from stoning them. He confuted them by an excellent work entitled Odegus, or the Guide; in which, besides refuting the Eutychian errors, he lays down rules against all heresies. He has also left several ascetic works, full of piety and devotion. In his discourse on the Synaxis, or mass, he urges the duties of the confession of sins to a priest, respect at mass, and pardon of injuries in so pathetic a manner, that Canisius and Combefis recommended this piece to the diligent perusal of all preachers. This saint was living in 678, as Ceillier demonstrates from certain passages in his Odegus.1 See Henschenius, t. 2, Apr. p. 850; Ceillier, t. 17.

1 T. 17, p. 431.

St. Agnes of Monte Pulciano

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VIRGIN AND ABBESS.

From her life, written by F. Raymund of Capua, general of the Dominicans, thirty years after her death, with the remarks of F. Papebroke, Apr. t. 2, p. 791. Also her life, compiled from authentic instruments, by F. Laurence Surdini Mariani, in 1606; and in French, by F. Roux at Paris, in 1728.

A. D. 1317.

This holy virgin was a native Monte Pulciano, in Tuscany. She had scarcely attained to the use of reason, when she conceived an extraordinary relish and ardour for prayer, and in her infancy often spent whole hours in reciting the Our Father and Hail Mary, on her knees, in some private corner of a chamber. At nine years of age she was placed by her parents in a convent of Sackins, of the order of St. Francis, so called from their habit, or at least their scapular, being made of sackcloth. Agnes, in so tender an age, was a model of all virtues to this austere community: and she renounced the world, though of a plentiful fortune, being sensible of its dangers, before she knew what it was to enjoy it. At fifteen years of age she was removed to a new foundation of the Order of St. Dominic, at Proceno, in the county of Orvieto, and appointed abbess by Pope Nicholas IV. She slept on the ground, with a stone under her head in lieu of a pillow; and for fifteen years she fasted always on bread and water, till she was obliged by her directors, on account of sickness, to mitigate her austerities. Her townsmen, earnestly desiring to be possessed of her again, demolished a lewd house, and erected upon the spot a nunnery, which they bestowed on her. This prevailed on her to return, and she established in this house nuns of the Order of St. Dominic, which rule she herself professed. The gifts of miracles and prophecy rendered her famous among men, though humility, charity, and patience under her long sicknesses, were the graces which recommended her to God. She died at Monte Pulciano, on the 20th of April, 1317, being forty-three years old. Her body was removed to the Dominicans' church of Orvieto, in 1435, where it remains. Clement VIII. approved her office for the use of the Order of St. Dominic, and inserted her name in the Roman Martyrology. She was solemnly canonized by Benedict XIII. in 1726.

St. Ursmar, Bishop and Abbot

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OF LAUBES OR LOBES.

He was born near Avesne, in Haynault, and grew up from his cradle a model of all virtues, in which he made a continual progress by a life of humility, patience, and penance, and by an assiduous application to prayer, in which he usually shed abundance of tears. What he most earnestly asked of God was the gift of an ardent charity, that all his thoughts and actions, and those of all men, might, with the most pure and fervent intention, and in the most perfect manner, be directed in all things to fulfil his holy and adorable will. In his conversation it was his earnest desire and drift to induce persons of a secular life to fix their thoughts, as much as the condition of their state would allow, on heavenly things; and to accompany even their worldly business with such aspirations and thoughts, and to study to withdraw their hearts from all attachment to creatures. St. Landelin had then lately founded the abbey of Lobes, on the Sambre, in a territory which is now subject to the prince of Liege, though in the diocess of Cambray. Ursmar here put on the monastic habit. When St. Landelin retired into a closer solitude, where he soon after built the monastery of Crespin, he left Ursmar abbot of Lobes, in 686. Our saint redoubled his fervour in all the exercises of penance in this dignity. He never tasted any flesh-meat or fish, and for ten years never once touched bread, not even in a dangerous sickness. He finished the building of his abbey and church, and founded Aune and several other monasteries. He often left his dear cell to preach the faith to idolaters and sinners. He became the apostle of several districts in the diocess of Cambray, Arras, Tournay, Noyon, Terouanne, Laon, Metz, Tries, Cologne, and Maestricht. By virtue of a commission from the holy see, he exercised the functions of a bishop: his predecessor, St. Landelin, and his two successors, SS. Ennin and Theodulph, were invested with the same character. In his old age he resigned his abbacy to St. Ermin, and died in retirement in 713, being almost sixty-nine years old, on the 18th day of April, on which he is honoured as principal patron of Binche, Lobes, and Luxembourg; but is named on the 19th, which was the day of his burial, in the Roman and several other Martyrologies. His relics are venerated at Binche, four leagues from Mons. See his original life by a disciple, with the notes by Henschenius: also Folcuin, abbot of Laubes, in 980, in his accurate history of The Gests of the Abbots of Laubes, published by D'Achery, Spicileg. t. 6, p. 541. See also Folcuin's appendix on the miracles wrought at the shrine of St. Ursmar, under the author's own eyes, ib.; and in the Bollandists, 18 Apr. p. 564; and another life of this saint composed in heroic verse by Heriger, abbot of Laubes, in the year 1000.

St. Laserian, by Some Called Molaiske

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BISHOP OF LEIGHLIN, IN IRELAND.

Laserian was son of Cairel and Blitha, persons of great distinction, who intrusted his education, from his infancy, to the Abbot St. Murin. He afterwards travelled to Rome in the days of Pope Gregory the Great, by whom he is said to have been ordained priest. Soon after his return to Ireland, he visited Leighlin, a place situated a mile and a half westward of the river Barrow, where St. Goban was then abbot, who, resigning to him his abbacy, built a little cell for himself and a small number of monks. A great synod being soon after assembled there, in the White Fields, St. Laserian strenuously maintained the Catholic time of celebrating Easter against St. Munnu. This council was held in March 630. But St. Laserian not being able to satisfy in it all his opponents, took another journey to Rome, where Pope Honorius ordained him bishop, without allotting him any particular see, and made him his legate in Ireland. Nor was his commission fruitless: for, after his return, the time of observing Easter was reformed in the south parts of Ireland. St. Laserian died on the 18th of April, 638, and was buried in his own church which he had founded. In a synod held at Dublin, in 1330, the feasts of St. Patrick, St. Laserian, St. Bridget, St. Conic, and St. Edan, are enumerated among the double festivals through the province of Dublin. St. Laserian was the first bishop of Old Leighlin, now a village.— New Leighlin stands on the eastern bank of the river Barrow. See Ware, p. 54, and Colgan's MSS. on the 18th of April.

St. Anicetus, Pope, Martyr

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See Euseblus, b. 5, c. 24. Tillemont, t. 2, p. 442.

SECOND AGE.

He succeeded St. Pius in the latter part of the reign of Antoninus Pius, sat about eight years, from 165 to 173, and is styled a martyr in the Roman and other Martyrologies: if he did not shed his blood for the faith, he at least purchased the title of martyr by great sufferings and dangers. He received a visit from St. Polycarp, and tolerated the custom of the Asiatics in celebrating Easter on the fourteenth day of the first moon after the vernal equinox, with the Jews. His vigilance protected his flock from the wiles of the heretics, Valentine and Marcion, instruments whom the devil sent to Rome, seeking to corrupt the faith in the capital of the world. Marcion, in Pontus, after having embraced a state of continency, fell into a crime with a young virgin, for which he was excommunicated by the bishop who was his own father. He came to Rome in hopes to be there received into the communion of the church, but was rejected till he had made satisfaction, by penance, to his own bishop. Upon which he commenced heresiarch, as Tertullian and St. Epiphanius relate. He professed himself a stoic philosopher, and seems to have been a priest. Joining the heresiarch Cerdo, who was come out of Syria to Rome, in the time of Pope Hyginus, he established two gods, or first principles, the one, the author of all good; the other of all evil: also of the Jewish law, and of the Old Testament: which he maintained to be contrary to the New. Tertullian informs us,1 that he repented, and was promised at Rome to be again received into the church, on condition that he brought back all those souls which he had perverted. This he was labouring to effect when he died, though some understand this circumstance of his master Cerdo. He left many unhappy followers of his errors at Rome, in Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Persia, and Cyprus.2

The thirty-six first bishops of Rome, down to Liberius, and, this one excepted, all the popes to Symmachus, the fifty-second, in 498, are honoured among the saints; and out of two hundred and forty eight popes, from St. Peter to Clement XIII. seventy-eight are named in the Roman Martyrology. In the primitive ages, the spirit of fervour and perfect sanctity, which is now-adays so rarely to be found in the very sanctuaries of virtue, and in the world, seems in most places scarcely so much as known, was conspicuous in most of the faithful, and especially in their pastors. The whole tenour of their lives, both in retirement and in their public actions, breathed it in such a manner as to render them the miracles of the world, angels on earth, living copies of their divine Redeemer, the odour of whose virtues and holy law and religion they spread on every side. Indeed, what could be more amiable, what more admirable, than the perfect simplicity, candour, and sincerity; the profound humility, invincible patience and meekness: the tender charity, even towards their enemies and persecutors; the piety, compunction, and heavenly zeal, which animated all their words and their whole conduct, and which, by fervent exercise under sufferings and persecutions, were carried to the most heroic degree of perfection? By often repeating in our prayers, sacred protestations of our love of God, we easily impose upon ourselves, and fancy that his love reigns in our affections. But by relapsing so frequently into impatience, vanity, pride, or other sins, we give the lie to ourselves. For it is impossible for the will to fall so easily and so suddenly from the sovereign degree of sincere love. If, after making the most solemn protestations of inviolable friendship and affection for a fellow-creature, we should have no sooner turned our backs, but should revile and contemn him, without having received any provocation or affront from, him, and this habitually, would not the whole world justly call our protestations hypocrisy, and our pretended friendship a mockery? Let us by this rule judge if our love of God be sovereign, so long as our inconstancy betrays the insincerity of our hearts.

1 Præscr. c. 30.

2 The liberality of Pope Clement VIII. in giving the body of St. Anicetus, found in the Catacombs, to the domestic chapel of the prince of Altemps at Rome, induced John Angelo, prince of Altemps, to write his Vita Aniceti, Pap&aeli; et Martyris.

St. Peter Gonzales, C.

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COMMONLY CALLED ST. TELM, OR ELM, PATRON OF MARINERS.

From Bzovius ad an. 1246; the monuments collected by the Bollandists on the 14th of April, t. 2. p. 389. See F. Touron, Hommes Illustr. t. 1, p. 49.

A. D. 1246.

The best historians place the birth of St. Peter Gonzales, (in Latin, Gonsalvus,) in the year 1190, at Astorga, in the kingdom of Leon, in Spain, where he was descended of an illustrious family. His wonderful progress in his studies, showed him to be endowed with an extraordinary quickness of parts, and he embraced an ecclesiastical state, though at that time a stranger to the spirit of disengagement and humility which ought essentially to accompany it. His uncle, the bishop of Astorga, charmed with his capacity, preferred him to a canonry, and shortly after to the deanery of his chapter. The young dean, free indeed from vice, but full of the spirit of the world, took possession of his dignity with great pomp, but in the midst of his pride, happened, by a false step of his prancing horse, to fall into a sink. This was the moment in which God was pleased to strike his heart. This humiliation made the young gentleman enter into himself, and with remorse to condemn his own vanity, and fondness of applause, which deserved a much worse disgrace. Opening his heart to these sentiments of grace, without taking advice from flesh and blood, he retired to Palencia, to learn the will of God in solitude, fasting, and prayer. To fight against pride and self-love, he laboured strenuously to put off the old man by mortification and humility, and became quickly a new man in Christ, recollected, penitent, meek, and humble. The better to secure his victory over the world and himself, he entered the austere Order of St. Dominick. The world pursued him into his retreat. Its wise men left no stone unturned to make him return to his dignity: but he was guided by better lights, and baffled all their suggestions. Having made his vows, and strengthened his soul in the spirit of humility and penance, by the exercises of holy retirement and obedience, he was ordered by his superiors to employ his talents in the ministry of the divine word, to which he consecrated the remainder of his life, to the great advantage of innumerable souls. After he had passed the best part of the night in holy meditations, or in singing the praises of God, he spent the whole day in instructing the faithful: his words, always animated with a burning charity, and supported by example, produced in his hearers the perfect sentiments with which he endeavoured to inspire them. The greatest libertines melted into tears at his sermons, and cast themselves at his feet in a spirit of compunction and penance. The number of conversions which God wrought by his ministry in the kingdom of Leon and Castille, especially in the diocess of Palencia, made King Ferdinand III., though always taken up in his wars with the Saracens, desirous to see him; and so much was he taken with the man of God, that he would have him always near his person, both in the court and in the field. He would have him always be present at his discourses, whether made to the generals, courtiers, or soldiers; and the holy man, by his prayers and exhortations, reformed the corrupt manners both of the troops and court. His example gave the greatest weight to his words; for he lived in the court as he would have done in a cloister, with the same austerities, the same recollection, the same practices of humility, and other virtues. Yet some slaves of pleasure hardened themselves against his zeal, and occasioned him many sufferings. A courtesan was told by some of the nobility, that, if she heard Gonzales preach, she would change her life. She impudently answered: "If I had the liberty to speak to him in private, he could no more resist my charms than so many others." The lords, out of a malicious curiosity, promised her a great sum if she could draw him into sin. She went to the saint, and, that she might speak to him alone, said, she wanted to consult him on a secret affair of importance. When others were gone out, she fell on her knees, and, shedding forced tears, pretended she desired to change her life, and began to make a sham confession to him of her sins, but had nothing else in view than to ensnare the servant of God, and at last, throwing off all disguise, said all the devil prompted her in order to seduce him. But her artifices only served to make his triumph the more glorious. Stepping into another room, where there was a fire, and wrapping himself in his cloak, he threw himself upon the burning coals, and then called upon her to come, and see where he waited for her. She, amazed to see him not burn, cast herself on the ground, confessing her crimes aloud, and suddenly became a true penitent, as they did also who had employed her. The saint accompanied Ferdinand, king of Leon and Castille, in all his expeditions against the Moors, particularly in the siege and taking of Cordova, in 1236, which, from the year 718, had ever been the chief seat of the Moorish dominions in Spain. Gonzales had a great share in the conquests and temporal advantages of this prince, by his prudent counsels and prayers, and by the good order which he prevailed with the officers and soldiers to observe. The conquest of Cordova opened a new field to the zeal of Gonzales. He moderated the ardour of the conquerors, saved the honour of the virgins and the lives of many enemies, and purified the mosques, converting them into churches: in all which he was seconded by King Ferdinand III. surnamed the Saint. The great mosque of Cordova, the most famous of all Spain, became the cathedral church: and whereas the Moors, when they conquered Compostella, two hundred and sixty years before, had carried away the bells and ornaments on the backs of Christians, and placed them in this mosque, King Ferdinand compelled the infidels to carry them back themselves in the same manner to Compostella.

Gonzales burned with so ardent a desire to preach the great truths of our holy religion to the poor and the peasants, that no entreaties or solicitations could retain him any longer at court. Galicia, and the rest of the coast, were the chief theatres of his pious labours, the latter years of his life. Neither mountains, nor places of the most difficult access in Asturia, and other parts, nor the ignorance and brutality of the people, could daunt his courage. Under these fatigues, prayer was his refreshment. He appeared every where as a new apostle. But the success of his ministry was the most surprising in the diocess of Compostella and Tuy, in which also he wrought many miracles. At Bayona in Galicia, the number of his auditors having obliged him to preach in a great plain, in the open fields, and a violent storm arising with wind, thunder, and lightning, his whole audience began to be very uneasy, and thought to prevent the worst by flying. The holy preacher prevailed upon them to stay, and by prayer appeased the tempest. All places round about them were deluged; but not a drop fell on the auditory. The saint had a particular zeal to instruct the poor in the country, and the sailors, whom he sought on their vessels, and among whom he finished his mortal course. He foretold his death on Palm-Sunday, and desiring to die in the arms of his brethren at Compostella, set out from Tuy thither, but, growing worse on the road, returned to the former place on foot; so unwilling was he to remit anything in his penitential life. Luke, the famous bishop of Tuy, his great admirer and friend, attended him to his last breath; buried him honourably in his cathedral, and in his last will gave directions for his own body to be laid near the remains of this servant of God. They are now exposed to public veneration, in the same church, in a magnificent silver shrine, and have been honoured with many miracles. Some place his death on the 15th, and others on the 14th of April, in 1246. Pope Innocent IV. beatified him eight years after in 1254, and granted an office to his Order in Spain, which was extended to the city of Tuy, though he has not been solemnly canonized. Pope Benedict XIV. approved his office for the whole Order of St. Dominick. The Spanish and Portuguese mariners invoke his intercession in storms, and by it have often received sensible marks of the divine succour. They call him corruptly St. Telm, or Elmo, which Papebroke and Baillet derive originally from St. Erasmus, who was implored, anciently, as a patron by sailors, in the Mediterranean.

If we look into the lives of all holy preachers and pastors, especially that of our Divine model, the Prince of pastors and Saint of saints, we shall find the essential spirit of this state is that of interior recollection and devotion, by which the soul is constantly united to God. This is only learned by an apprenticeship of retirement, and is founded in rooted habits of humility, compunction and prayer. Great learning is indeed necessary for the discharge of the pastoral duties; but this, and all exterior talents, must be directed and made spiritual by the interior spirit and intention, or they will be pernicious to the pastor, if not also to those whom he ought to direct. For fear of the dangers and abuse of human qualifications, some have chosen in some measure to despise them, hoping thus more securely to find God in solitude, penance, and contemplation. This cannot be allowed to those who are destined to share in pastoral functions. But for such to place any confidence in human industry or abilities would be still a far more fatal disorder. It is from true interior charity, zeal, compunction, devotion, and humility, that they must derive all their power, and be made instrumental in promoting the divine honour, and the sanctification of souls. The pastor must be interiorly filled with the spirit of God and his pure love, that this holy disposition may animate all he says or does exteriorly. To entertain this interior spirit, self-denial, humility, perfect obedience, a contempt of the world, assiduous prayer, and constant recollection, must be his perpetual study. Those clergymen who pass their lives in dissipation, and whose thoughts and hearts are always wandering abroad, are undoubtedly strangers to the essential spirit of their state.

SS. Antony, John, and Eustachius, MM.

2010-04-14T06:09:00.001-07:00

They were three noblemen of Lithuania, and the two first brothers, commonly called in that country Kukley, Mihley, and Nizilo. They were all three chamberlains to Olgerd, the great duke of Lithuania, who governed that country from the year 1329 to 1381, and was father of the famous Jagello. They also attended on the great duchess, and were worshippers of fire, according to the idolatrous superstition of that country, till they had the happiness to be converted to the Christian faith, and baptized by a priest called Nestorius. For refusing to eat forbidden meats on fast-days, they were cast into prison, and, after many trials, put to death by order of Olgerd, the great duke; John, the eldest of them, on the 24th of April; his brother Antony on the 14th of June; Eustachius, who was then young, on the 13th of December. This last had suffered many other torments before his execution, having been beaten with clubs, had his legs broken, and the hair and skin of his head violently torn off, because he would not suffer his hair to be shaved, according to the custom of the heathens. They suffered at Vilna, about the year 1342, and were buried in the church of the Holy Trinity, of the Russian-Greek rite, united in communion to the Roman Catholic church. Their bodies still remain in that church, which is served by Basilian monks; but their heads were translated to the cathedral. The great oak tree on which they were hanged had long been the usual place of execution of malefactors; but, after their martyrdom, the Christians obtained a grant of it from the prince, and built a church upon the spot. These martyrs were ordered to be honoured among the saints by Alexius, patriarch of Kiow, of the Catholic communion. Their feast is kept at Vilna on the 14th of April, and they are regarded as the particular patrons of that city. See Kulcinius, in Specim, p. 12, and Albertus Wijuk Kojalowicz, in his Miscellanea rerum ad statum Eccles. in magno Lithuania Ducatu pertinentium. Henschenius, t. 2, Apr. p. 265. Jos. Assemani, in Kalend. Univ. t. 6, p. 254, ad 14 Apr.

1 See the history of his reign, by Albertus Wijuk Kojalowicz, Hist. Lithuan. l. 8.

St. Guinoch, B. C. in Scotland

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By his prayers and counsels, he was many years the support both of the church and state, among the Scots, in the ninth century, in the reign of Kenneth II, &c. The Aberdeen breviary and Henschenius place him under King Enos. He died about the year 838. See Major, 1, 2, c. 14. Camerarius in Menologio Scotico, King, &c.

St. Sabas the Goth, M.

2010-04-12T10:55:00.001-07:00

From his authentic acts contained in a letter, written by the Church of Gothia to that of Cappadocia, of which St. Basil was then the chief light; and penned, in all appearance, by St. Aschollus [sic], bishop of Thessalonica, at that time subject to the Goths.

A. D. 372.

The faith of Christ erected its trophies not only over the pride and sophistry of the heathen philosophers, and the united power of the Roman empire, but also over the kings of barbarous infidel nations; who, though in every other thing the contrast of the Romans, and enemies to their name, yet vied with them in the rage with which they sought, by every human stratagem, and every invention of cruelty, to depress the cross of Christ: by which the finger of God was more visible in the propagation of his faith. Even among the Goths, his name was glorified by the blood of martyrs. Athanaric, king of the Goths,1 in the year 370, and according to St. Jerom, raised a violent persecution against the Christians among them. The Greeks commemorate fifty-one martyrs who suffered in that nation. The two most illustrious are SS. Nicetas and Sabas. This latter was by birth a Goth, converted to the faith in his youth, and a faithful imitator of the obedience, mildness, humility, and other virtues of the apostles. He was affable to all men, yet with dignity; a lover of truth, an enemy to all dissimulation or disguise, intrepid, modest, of few words, and a lover of peace; yet zealous and active. To sing the divine praises in the church, and to adorn the altars, was his great delight. He was so scrupulously chaste, that he shunned all conversation with women, except what was indispensable. He often spent whole days and nights in prayer, and devoted his whole life to the exercises of penance: flying vain glory, and by words and example inducing others to a love of virtue, he burned with an ardent desire, in all things to glorify Jesus Christ. The princes and magistrates of Gothia began, in 370, to persecute the Christians, by compelling them to eat meats which had been sacrificed to idols, out of a superstitious motive, as if they were sanctified. Some heathens who had Christian relations, desiring to save them, prevailed upon the king's officers to present them common meats which had not been offered to the idols. Sabas condemned this impious collusion, and not only refused to eat such meats, but protested aloud that whoever should eat them would be no longer a Christian, having by that scandalous compliance renounced his faith. Thus he hindered many from falling into that snare of the devil, but displeased others, who banished him from his town, though they some time after recalled him home. The next year the persecution was renewed, and a commissary of the king arrived at St. Sabas's town in search of Christians. Some of the inhabitants offered to swear on the victims that there were no Christians in the place. Sabas appeared, and stepping up to those who were going to take that oath, said: "Let no man swear for me: for I am a Christian." Notwithstanding this, the commissary ordered the oath to be tendered. Therefore the principal men of the city hid the other Christians, and then swore that there was but one Christian in their town. The commissary commanded that he should appear. Sabas boldly presented himself. The commissary asked the by-standers what wealth he had: and being told he had nothing besides the clothes on his back, the commissary despised him, saying: "Such a fellow can do us neither good nor harm."

The persecution was renewed with much greater fury in 372, before Easter. Sabas considered how he could celebrate that solemnity, and for this purpose set out to go to a priest named Gouttica in another city. Being on the road, he was admonished by God to return, and keep the festival with the priest Sansala. He did so, and on the third night after Atharidus, son of one that enjoyed a petty sovereignty in that country, entered the town, and with an armed troop suddenly broke into the lodgings of Sansala, surprised him asleep, bound him, and threw him on a cart. They pulled Sabas out of bed without suffering him to put on his clothes, and dragged him naked as he was over thorns and briers, forcing him along with whips and staves. When it was day, Sabas said to his persecutors: "Have not you dragged me, quite naked, over rough and thorny grounds? Observe whether my feet are wounded, or whether the blows you gave me have made any impression on my body:" and indeed they could not perceive any the least marks. The persecutors being enraged, for want of a rack, took the axle-tree of a cart, laid it upon his neck, and stretching out his hands, fastened them to each end. They fastened another in like manner to his feet, and in this situation they tormented him a considerable part of the following night. When they were gone to rest, the woman of the house in which they lodged untied him: but he would not make his escape, and spent the remainder of that night in helping the woman to dress victuals for the family. The next day Atharidus commanded his hands to be tied, and caused him to be hung upon a beam of the house, and soon after ordered his servants to carry him and the priest certain meats that had been offered to idols, which they refused to eat, and Sabas said: "This pernicious meat is impure and profane, as is Atharidus himself who sent it." One of the slaves of Atharidus, incensed at these words, struck the point of his javelin against the saint's breast with such violence, that all present believed he had been killed. But St. Sabas said: "Do you think you have slain me? Know, that I felt no more pain than if the javelin had been a lock of wool." Atharidus, being informed of these particulars, gave orders that he should be put to death. Wherefore, having dismissed the priest Sansala, his companion, they carried away St. Sabas in order to throw him into the Musseus.2 The martyr, filled with joy in the Holy Ghost, blessed and praised God without ceasing for thinking him worthy to suffer for his sake. Being come to the river side, the officers said one to another: "Why don't we let this man go? He is innocent; and Atharidus will never know anything of the matter." St. Sabas, overhearing them, asked them why they trifled, and were so dilatory in obeying their orders? "I see," said he, "what you cannot: I see persons on the other side of the river ready to receive my soul, and conduct it to the seat of glory: they only wait the moment in which it will leave my body." Hereupon they threw him into the river, praising God to the last: and by the means of the axle-tree they had fastened about his neck, they strangled him in the water. He therefore suffered martyrdom, say the acts, by water and wood, the symbols of baptism and the cross: which happened on the 12th of April, Valentinian and Valens being emperors, in 372. After this the executioners drew his body out of the water, and left it unburied: but the Christians of the place guarded it from birds and beasts of prey. Junius Soranus, duke of Scythia, a man who feared God, carried off the body, which he sent into his country, Cappadocia. With these relics was sent a letter from the church of Gothia to that of Cappadocia, which contains an account of the martyrdom of St. Sabas, and concludes thus: "Wherefore offering up the holy sacrifice on the day whereon the martyr was crowned, impart this to our brethren, that the Lord may be praised throughout the Catholic and Apostolic Church for thus glorifying his servants." Thus the acts, which were sent to the church of Cappadocia, together with the relics of St. Sabas.3 Both the Greek and Latin Martyrologies mention this martyr.

The martyrs despised torments and death, because the immense joys of heaven were always before their eyes. If they made a due impression upon our souls, we should never be slothful in the practice of virtue. When an ancient monk complained of being weary of living in close solitude, his abbot said to him: "This weariness clearly proves that you have neither the joys of heaven nor the eternal torments of the damned before your eyes: otherwise no sloth or discouragement could ever seize your soul." St. Austin gives the following advice: "Not only think of the road through which thou art travelling, but take care never to lose sight of the blessed country in which thou art shortly to arrive. Thou meetest here with passing sufferings, but will soon enjoy everlasting rest. In order to labour with constancy and cheerfulness, consider the reward. The labourer would faint in the vineyard, if he were not cheered by the thought of what he is to receive. When thou lookest up at the recompense, everything thou doest or sufferest will appear light, and no more than a shadow: it bears no manner of proportion with what thou art to receive for it. Thou wilt wonder that so much is given for such trifling pains."4

1 That barbarous people, who swarmed originally from Gothland in Sweden, passed first into Pomerania, where Tacitus places them; thence to the borders of the Palus Mæotis, where Caracalla checked their inroads by a victory over them in 215. Yet they extended themselves along the Danube, and into Thrace and Greece, and by their furious incursions were to the Roman empire the most troublesome swarm of the whole northern hive, till they overthrew the empire of the West, erecting on its ruins the kingdoms of the Ostrogoths, or eastern Goths, in Italy, and of the Visigoths, or western Goths, in the southern parts of France and in Spain. The Goths began to receive the light of the faith about the reign of Valerian, from certain priests and other captives, whom, in their inroads, they had carried away out of Galatia and Cappadocia, and who, by healing their sick and preaching the gospel, converted several among them, as Sozomen (b. 2, c. 6,) and Philostorgius (b. 2, c. 5,) relate. Hence St. Basil (ep. 338, p. 330,) says, that the seeds of the gospel among the Goths were brought from Cappadocia by the blessed Eutychius, a man of eminent virtue, who, by the power of the Holy Ghost and his gifts, had softened the hearts of those barbarians. St. Cyril of Jerusalem, (Cat. 16, n. 22,) in 343, mentions the Goths and Sarmatians among the Christians who had bishops, priests, monks, holy virgins, and martyrs. In the council of Nice, among the subscriptions, we find that of Theophilus, bishop of Gothia. Ulphilas succeeded Theophilus, and after his example, adhered to the council of Nice and the Catholic faith, as Socrates (b. 2, c. 42,) and Sozomen (b. 6, c. 37,) expressly affirm; "which was the faith of his ancestors," says Theodoret, (b. 4, c. 33.) He taught the Goths to write, invented their alphabet, and translated the Bible into their language. In the year 374, St. Basil (ep. 164, p. 254,) still commended the faith of the Goths. But Ulphilas being sent to Constantinople, in 376, to beg of the Emperor Valens certain lands in Thrace, was gained over by Eudoxius and other crafty Arians, to embrace their heresy, and pervert the faith of his countrymen, as Sozomen (b. 6, c. 37,) and Theodoret (b. 4, c. 33,) testify. Athanaric, king of the Thervingian Goths, who bordered on the empire, raised a bloody persecution against the Christians in 370. Fritigernes, king of the western Goths, was at war with Athanaric, and being the weaker, in order to engage the Emperor Valens to succour him, embraced the Christian religion and the Arian heresy at the same time, by the means of Ulphilas. But the church, under the persecutor Athanaric, remained yet untainted; and both the Latin and Greek Church has always venerated the martyrs that suffered under him. Moreover, the acts of St. Sabas were addressed to the churches of Cappadocia, of which St. Basil was the metropolitan; and seem drawn up by St. Ascholius, bishop of Thessalonica, a prelate closely linked with St. Athanasius, as St. Basil assures us, (ep. 154, p. 243,) who also praised St. Ascholius (ep. 164, p. 254,) for propagating the faith among barbarous nations, whilst Christian princes sought by Arianism to destroy it. He also says, that one coming from those parts preached up against the Arians the purity of the faith professed there, (ep. 164, p. 254.) St. Ambrose extols their faith and zeal against Arianism, together with their martyrdom, (in c. 2, Lucse. p. 1294.) So does Theodoret, (Hist. b. 4, c. 28, 30, 33.) St. Austin says, that the king of the Goths persecuted the Christians with wonderful cruelty, when there were none but Catholics in Gothia, (de civ. Dei, 1. 18, c. 52.) This remark seemed necessary to correct the mistake of certain modern English writers, who pretend that the Goths embraced Christianity and Arianism at the same time.

2 A river in Wallachia, now called Mussovo, which falls into the Danube a little below Rebnik.

3 It is supposed that this letter was penned by St. Ascholius, bishop of Thessalonica, the capital of Macedonia: for St. Basil (ep. 164, p. 284,) writing to St. Ascholius, thanks him for his account of the persecution, and of the martyr's triumph by water and wood. And again (ep. 165, p. 256,) thanks him for the body of the martyr he had sent him, probably by the commission of Duke Soranus, a relation of St. Basil, who had written to him (ep. 155, p. 244, ed. Ben.) begging him to enrich his country with the relics of some martyrs in that persecution.

4 St. Aug. Conc. 2, on Ps. 36.

St. Antipas, M.

2010-04-11T03:00:00.000-07:00

Called by Christ his faithful witness, Apoc. xi. 13. He suffered at Pergamus, where his tomb was famed for miracles in after ages. See Papebroke, p. 4; Tillemont, t. 2, p. 130.

St. Bademus, Abbot, M.

2010-04-10T03:00:00.000-07:00

From his original Syriac acts, written by St. Maruthas, published by Assemani, t. 1. p. 165. The Greek from Metaphrastes were given us by Henschenius, p. 828. and Ruinart, p. 680.

A. D. 376.

Bademus was a rich and noble citizen of Bethlapeta, in Persia, who, desiring to devote himself to the service of God, out of his estates founded a monastery near that city, which he governed with great sanctity. The purity of his soul had never been sullied by any crime, and the sweet odour of his sanctity diffused a love of virtue in the hearts of those who approached him. He watched whole nights in prayer, and passed sometimes several days together without eating: bread and water were his usual fare. He conducted his religious in the paths of perfection with sweetness, prudence, and charity. In this amiable retreat he enjoyed a calmness and happiness which the great men of the world would view with envy, did they compare with it the unquiet scenes of vice and vanity in which they live. But, to crown his virtue, God permitted him, with seven of his monks, to be apprehended by the pursuivants of King Sapor, in the thirty-sixth year of his persecution. He lay four months in a dungeon, loaded with chains; during which lingering martyrdom he was every day called out to receive a certain number of stripes. But he triumphed over his torments by the patience and joy with which he suffered them for Christ. At the same time, a Christian lord of the Persian court, named Nersan, prince of Aria, was cast into prison, because he refused to adore the sun. At first he showed some resolution; but at the sight of tortures his constancy failed him, and he promised to conform. The king, to try if his change was sincere, ordered Bademus to be brought to Lapeta, with his chains struck off, and to be introduced into the prison of Nersan, which was a chamber in the royal palace. Then his majesty sent word to Nersan, by two lords, that if, with his own hand, he would despatch Bademus, he should be restored to his liberty and former dignities. The wretch accepted the condition; a sword was put into his hand, and he advanced to plunge it into the breast of the abbot. But being seized with a sudden terror, he stopped short, and remained some time without being able to lift up his arm to strike. The servant of Christ stood undaunted, and, with his eyes fixed upon him, said: "Unhappy Nersan, to what a pitch of impiety do you carry your apostacy. With joy I run to meet death; but could wish to fall by some other hand than yours: why must you be my executioner?" Nersan had neither courage to repent, nor heart to accomplish his crime. He strove, however, to harden himself, and continued with a trembling hand to aim at the sides of the martyr. Fear, shame, remorse, and respect for the martyr, whose virtue he wanted courage to imitate, made his strokes forceless and unsteady; and so great was the number of the martyr's wounds, that they stood in admiration at his invincible patience. At the same time they detested the cruelty, and despised the base cowardice of the murderer, who at last, aiming at his neck, after four strokes severed his head from the trunk. Neither did he escape the divine vengeance: for a short time after, falling into public disgrace, he perished by the sword, after tortures, and under the maledictions of the people. Such is the treachery of the world towards those who have sacrificed their all in courting it. Though again and again deceived by it, they still listen to its false promises, and continue to serve this hard master, till their fall becomes irretrievable. The body of St. Bademus was reproachfully cast out of the city by the infidels: but was secretly carried away and interred by the Christians. His disciples were released from their chains four years afterward upon the death of King Sapor. St. Bademus suffered on the 10th of the moon of April, in the year 376, of King Sapor the sixty-seventh.

Monks were called Mourners by the Syrians and Persians, because by their state they devoted themselves in a particular manner to the most perfect exercises of compunction and penance, which indeed are an indispensable duty of every Christian. The name of angels was often given them over all the East, during several ages,1 because by making heavenly contemplation and the singing of the divine praises their great and glorious employment, if they duly acquit themselves of it, they may be justly called the seraphim of the earth. The soul which loves God, is made a heaven which he inhabits, and in which she converses with him in the midst of her own substance. Though he is infinite, and the highest heavenly spirits tremble before him, and how poor and base soever we are, he invites us to converse with him, and declares that it is his delight to be with us. Shall not we look upon it as our greatest happiness and comfort to be with Him, and to enjoy the unspeakable sweetness of his presence? Oh! what ravishing delights does a soul taste which is accustomed, by a familiar habit, to converse in the heaven of her own interior with the three persons of the adorable Trinity! Dissipated worldlings wonder how holy solitaries can pass their whole time buried in the most profound solitude and silence of creatures. But those who have had any experience of this happiness, are surprised with far greater reason how it is possible that any souls which are created to converse eternally with God, should here live in constant dissipation, seldom entertaining a devout thought of Him, whose charms and sweet conversation eternally ravish all the blessed.

1 See Du Cange's Glossary of the Greek Language for the middle ages.

The Massylitan Martyrs in Africa

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Mentioned by Bede,1 and famous in ancient calendars. We have a sermon preached by St. Austin on their festivals.2 They suffered in Africa, and probably derived their name from Massyla, or the adjacent country, on the sea-coast.

1 In 1 Cor. ii.

2 Serm. 283. t. 5. p. 1138.

St. Dionysius of Corinth, B. C.

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From Eusebius, b. 4. c 23. St. Jerom, Cat. c. 30.

SECOND AGE.

St. Dionysius, bishop of Corinth, flourished under the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, and was one of the most holy and eloquent pastors of the church in the second age. Not content assiduously to instruct his own flock with the word of life, he comforted and exhorted others at a distance. Eusebius mentions several of his instructive letters to other churches, and one of thanks to the church of Rome, under the pontificate of St. Soter, for the alms received from them according to custom. "From the beginning," says he, "it is your custom to bestow your alms in all places, and to furnish subsistence to many churches—You send relief to the needy, especially to those who work in the mines; in which you follow the example of your fathers. Your blessed bishop Soter is so far from degenerating from your ancestors in that respect, that he goes beyond them; not to mention the comfort and advice he, with the bowels of a tender father towards his children, affords all that come to him. On this day we celebrated together the Lord's day, and read your letter, as we do that which was heretofore written to us by Clement." He means that they read these letters of instruction in the church after the reading of the holy scriptures, and the celebration of the divine mysteries. This primitive father says that SS. Peter and Paul, after planting the faith at Corinth, went both into Italy, and there sealed their testimony with their blood. He in another place complains that the ministers of the devil, that is, the heretics, had adulterated his works, and corrupted them by their poison. The monstrous heresies of the three first centuries sprang mostly, not from any perverse interpretation of the scriptures, but from erroneous principles of the heathenish schools of philosophy; whence it happened that those heresies generally bordered on some superstitious notions of idolatry. St. Dionysius, to point out the source of the heretical errors, showed from what sect of philosophers each heresy took its rise. The Greeks honour St. Dionysius as a martyr on the 29th of November, because he suffered much for the faith, though he seems to have died in peace: the Latins keep his festival on this day, and style him only confessor. Pope Innocent III. sent to the abbey of St. Denys, near Paris, the body of a saint of that name brought from Greece. The monks, who were persuaded that they were before possessed of the body of the Areopagite, take this second to be the body of St. Dionysius of Corinth, whose festival they also celebrate.

We adore the inscrutable judgments of God, and praise the excess of his mercy in calling us to his holy faith, when we see many to whom it was announced with all the reasonable proofs of conviction, reject its bright light, and resist the voice of heaven: also others who had so far despised all worldly considerations as to have embraced this divine religion, afterwards fall from this grace, and become the authors or abettors of monstrous heresies, by which they drew upon themselves the most dreadful curses. The source of their errors was originally in the disorder of their hearts, by which their understanding was misled. All those who have made shipwreck of their faith, fell because they wanted true simplicity of heart. This virtue has no affinity with worldly simplicity, which is a vice and defect, implying a want of prudence and understanding. But Christian simplicity is true wisdom and a most sublime virtue. It is a singleness of heart, by which a person both in his intention and all his desires and affections has no other object but the pure and holy will of God. This is grounded in self-knowledge, and in sincere humility and ardent charity. The three main enemies which destroy it, are, an attachment to creatures without us, an inordinate love of ourselves, and dissimulation or double dealing. This last, though most infamous and base, is a much more common vice than is generally imagined, for there are very few who are thoroughly sincere in their whole conduct towards God, their neighbour, and themselves. Perfect sincerity and an invariable uprightness is an essential part, yet only one ingredient of Christian simplicity. Nor is it enough to be also disengaged from all inordinate attachments to exterior objects: many who are free from the hurry and disturbance of things without them, nevertheless are strangers to simplicity and purity of heart, being full of themselves, and referring their thoughts and actions to themselves, taking an inordinate complacency in what concerns them, and full of anxieties and fear about what befals, or may befal them. Simplicity of the heart, on the contrary, settles the soul in perfect interior peace: as a child is secure in the mother's arms, so is such a soul at rest in the bosom of her God, resigned to his will, and desiring only to accomplish it in all things. The inexpressible happiness and advantages of this simplicity can only be discovered by experience. This virtue disposes the heart to embrace the divine revelation when duly manifested, and removes those clouds which the passions raise, and which so darken the understanding, that it is not able to discern the light of faith.

St. Hegesippus, a Primitive Father

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NEAR THE TIMES OF THE APOSTLES.

He was by birth a Jew, and belonged to the church of Jerusalem, but, travelling to Rome, he lived there nearly twenty years from the pontificate of Anicetus to that of Eleutherius, in 177, when he returned into the East, where he died very old, probably at Jerusalem, in the year of Christ 180, according to the chronicle of Alexandria. He wrote in the year 133 a History of the Church, in five books, from the passion of Christ down to his own time, the loss of which work is extremely regretted. In it he gave illustrious proofs of his faith, and showed the apostolical tradition, and that though certain men had disturbed the church by broaching heresies, yet down to his time no episcopal see or particular church had fallen into error, but had in all places preserved inviolably the truths delivered by Christ, as he assures us.1 This testimony he gave after having personally visited all the principal churches both of the East and West. He was a man replenished with the spirit of the apostles, and a love of Christian humility, which, says Jerom, he expressed by the simplicity of his style. The five books on the destruction of Jerusalem, compiled chiefly from the history of Josephus, are not the work of this father, as some have imagined; but of a younger Hegesippus, who wrote before the destruction of the Western empire, but after Constantine the Great. See Mabillon, Musæum Italicum, t. 1, p. 14, and Cave, Hist. Liter. t. 1, p. 265.

1 Apud Eus. Hist. l. 4. c. 22. ed. Vales.

St. Sixtus, or Xistus I., Pope, M.

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See Eus. b. 4. c. 4, 5. Tillemont, t. 2. p. 262.

SECOND AGE

This holy pope succeeded St. Alexander about the end of the reign of Trajan, and governed the church ten years, at a time when that dignity was the common step to martyrdom; and in all martyrologies he is honoured with the title of martyr. But it seems to be Sixtus II. who is mentioned in the canon of the mass, whose martyrdom was more famous in the church. A portion of the relics of St. Sixtus I. given by Pope Clement X. to Cardinal de Retz, was by him placed with great solemnity in the abbey of St. Michael in Lorrain.1

Those primitive pastors, who were chosen by God to be his great instruments in propagating his holy faith, were men eminently endued with the spirit of the most heroic Christian charity, so that we wonder not so much that their words and example were so powerful in converting the world, as that any could be so obstinate as to resist the spirit with which they delivered the divine oracles, and the miracles and sanctity of their lives, with which they confirmed their mission. What veneration must not the morality of the gospel command, when set off with all its lustre in the lives and spirit of those who profess it, seeing its bare precepts are allowed by Deists and Infidels themselves to be most admirable, and evidently divine! Only the maxims of the gospel teach true and pure virtue, and are such as extort applause from its enemies. The religion of a God crucified is the triumph over self-love: it commands us to tame our rebellious flesh, and subject it to the spirit; to divest ourselves of the old man, and to clothe ourselves with the new; to forget injuries and to pardon enemies. In these virtues, in this sublime disposition of soul, consist true greatness; not in vain titles and empty names. Religion, barely for the maxims which it lays down, and in which it is founded, claims the highest respect. The morality of the wisest Pagan philosophers was mingled with several shocking errors and extravagances, and their virtues were generally defective in their motives. Worldly heroism is founded in vice or human weaknesses. It is at the bottom no better than a base ambition, avarice, or revenge, which makes many despise death, though they gild over their courage with the glorious name of zeal for their prince or country. Worldly actions spring not from those noble motives which appear, but from some base disorder of the soul or secret passion. Among the heathen philosophers, the Stoic led an austere life; but for the sake of a vain reputation. Thus he only sacrificed one passion to another; and whilst he insulted the Epicurean for his voluptuousness, was himself the dupe of his own illusion.

1 Baron. ad an. 154.

Apologies

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The exigencies of modern life have kept me away during most of the Triduum. My apologies for the interruption. Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.

St. Melito, Bishop of Sardes in Lydia, C.

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IN THE REIGN OF MARCUS AURELIUS.

To that emperor, in 175, he addressed an elegant and modest apology for the faith. From an eminent spirit of prophecy with which he was endued by God, he was surnamed The Prophet, as St. Jerom1 and Eusebius testify.2

1 Catal. c. 24.

2 Eus. b. 4. Hist. c. 26. b. 5. c. 24.

St. Benjamin, Deacon, M.

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From Theodoret, Hist. Eccles. l. 5. c. 39. &c.

A.D. 424.

Isdegerdes, son of Sapor III., put a stop to the cruel persecutions against the Christians in Persia, which had been begun by Sapor II., and the Church had enjoyed twelve years' peace in that kingdom, when, in 420, it was disturbed by the indiscreet zeal of one Abdas, a Christian bishop, who burned down the Pyræum, or temple of fire, the great divinity of the Persians. King Isdegerdes threatened to demolish all the churches of the Christians, unless he would rebuild it. Abdas had done ill in destroying the temple, but did well in refusing to rebuild it; for nothing can make it lawful to contribute to any act of idolatry, or to the building a temple, as Theodoret observes. Isdegerdes therefore demolished all the Christian churches in Persia, put to death Abdas, and raised a general persecution against the Church, which continued forty years with great fury. Isdegerdes died the year following, in 421. But his son and successor, Varanes, carried on the persecution with greater inhumanity. The very description which Theodoret, a contemporary writer, and one that lived in the neighbourhood, gives of the cruelties he exercised on the Christians, strikes us with horror: some were flayed alive in different parts of the body, and suffered all kinds of torture that could be invented: others, being stuck all over with sharp reeds, were hauled and rolled about in that condition; others were tormented divers other ways, such as nothing but the most hellish malice was capable of suggesting. Amongst these glorious champions of Christ was St. Benjamin, a deacon. The tyrant caused him to be beaten and imprisoned. He had lain a year in the dungeon, when an ambassador from the emperor obtained his enlargement, on condition he should never speak to any of the courtiers about religion. The ambassador passed his word in his behalf that he would not: but Benjamin, who was a minister of the gospel, declared that he could not detain the truth in captivity, conscious to himself of the condemnation of the slothful servant for having hid his talent. He therefore neglected no opportunity of announcing Christ. The king, being informed that he still preached the faith in his kingdom, ordered him to be apprehended; but the martyr made no other reply to his threats than by putting this question to the king: What opinion he would have of any of his subjects who should renounce his allegiance to him, and join in war against him? The enraged tyrant caused reeds to be run in between the nails and the flesh both of his hands and feet, and the same to be thrust into other most tender parts, and drawn out again, and this to be frequently repeated with violence. He lastly ordered a knotty stake to be thrust into his bowels to rend and tear them, in which torment he expired in the year 424. The Roman Martyrology places his name on the 31st of March.

St. Ephrem considering the heroic constancy of the martyrs, makes on them the following pious reflections: "The wisdom of philosophers, and the eloquence of the greatest orators, are dumb through amazement, when they contemplate the wonderful spectacle and glorious actions of the martyrs: the tyrants and judges were not able to express their astonishment when they beheld the faith, the constancy, and the cheerfulness of these holy champions. What excuse shall we have in the dreadful day of judgment, if we who have never been exposed to any cruel persecutions, or to the violence of such torments, shall have neglected the love of God and the care of a spiritual life? No temptations, nor torments, were able to draw them from that love which they bore to God: but we, living in rest and delights, refuse to love our most merciful and gracious Lord. What shall we do in that day of terror, when the martyrs of Christ, standing with confidence near his throne, shall show the marks of their wounds? What shall we then show? Shall we present a lively faith? true charity towards God? a perfect disengagement of our affections from earthly things? souls freed from the tyranny of the passions? silence and recollection? meekness? almsdeeds? prayers poured forth with clean hearts? compunction, watchings, tears? Happy shall he be whom such good works shall attend. He will be the partner of the martyrs, and, supported by the treasure of these virtues, shall appear with equal confidence before Christ and his angels. We entreat you, O most holy martyrs, who cheerfully suffered most cruel torments for God our Saviour and his love, on which account you are now most intimately and familiarly united to him, that you pray to the Lord for us miserable sinners, covered with filth, that he infuse into us the grace of Christ, that it may enlighten our souls that we may love him, &c."1

1 St. Ephrem Hom. in SS. Martyres, t. 3. Op. Gr. et Lat. p. 251. ed. Vatic. an. 1746.

St. John Climacus, Abbot

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From his life written by Daniel, a monk of Raithu, soon after his death, and from his own works. See Bulteau, Hist. Monast. d'Orient, and d'Andilly or rather his nephew, Le Maitre, in his life prefixed to the French translation of his works. See also Jos. Assemani, in Cal. Univ. ad 30 Martii, t. 6. p. 213.

A.D. 605.

St. John, generally distinguished by the appellation of Climacus, from his excellent book entitled Climax, or the Ladder to Perfection, was born about the year 525, probably in Palestine. By his extraordinary progress in the arts and sciences, he obtained very young the surname of the Scholastic. But at sixteen years of age he renounced all the advantages which the world promised him, to dedicate himself to God in a religious state, in 547. He retired to Mount Sinai, which, from the time of the disciples of St. Antony and St. Hilarion, had been always peopled by holy men, who, in imitation of Moses, when he received the law on that mountain, lived in the perpetual contemplation of heavenly things. Our novice, fearing the danger of dissipation and relaxation, to which numerous communities are generally more exposed than others, chose not to live in the great monastery on the summit, but in an hermitage on the descent of the mountain, under the discipline of Martyrius, an holy ancient anchoret. By silence, he curbed the insolent itch of talking about every thing, an ordinary vice in learned men, but usually a mark of pride and self-sufficiency. By perfect humility and obedience, he banished the dangerous desire of self-complacency in his actions. He never contradicted, nor disputed with any one. So perfect was his submission, that he seemed to have no self-will. He undertook to sail through the deep sea of this mortal life securely. under the direction of a prudent guide, and shunned those rocks which he could not have escaped, had he presumed to steer alone, as he tells us.1 From the visible mountain he raised his heart, without interruption, in all his actions, to God, who is invisible; and, attentive to all the motions of his grace, studied only to do his will. Four years he spent in the trial of his own strength, and in learning the obligations of his state, before he made his religions profession which was in the twentieth year of his age. In his writings, he severely condemns engagements made by persons too young, or before a sufficient probation. By fervent prayer and fasting he prepared himself for the solemn consecration of himself to God, that the most intense fervour might make his holocaust the more perfect: and from that moment he seemed to be renewed in spirit; and his master admired the strides with which, like a mighty giant, the young disciple advanced, daily more and more, towards God by self-denial, obedience, humility, and the uninterrupted exercises of divine love and prayer.

In the year 560, and the thirty-fifth of his age, he lost Martyrius by death; having then spent nineteen years in that place in penance and holy contemplation. By the advice of a prudent director, he then embraced an eremitical life in a plain called Thole, near the foot of Mount Sinai. His cell was five miles from the church, probably the same which had been built a little befere, by order of the emperor Justinian, for the use of the monks, at the bottom of this mountain, in honour of the Blessed Virgin, as Procopius mentions.2 Thither he went every Saturday and Sunday to assist, with all the other anchorets and monks of that desert, at the holy office and at the celebration of the divine mysteries when they all communicated. His diet was very sparing, though to shun ostentation and the danger of vain-glory, he eat of every thing that was allowed among the monks of Egypt, who universally abstained from flesh, fish, &c. Prayer was his principal employment; and he practised what he earnestly recommends to all Christians, that in all their actions, thoughts, and words, they should keep themselves with great fervour in the presence of God, and direct all they do to his holy will.3 By habitual contemplation he acquired an extraordinary purity of heart, and such a facility of lovingly beholding God in all his works, that this practice seemed in him a second nature. Thus he accompanied his studies with perpetual prayer. He assiduously read the holy scriptures, and fathers, and was one of the most learned doctors of the church. But, to preserve the treasure of humility he concealed, as much as possible, both his natural and acquired talents, and the extraordinary graces with which the Holy Ghost enriched his soul. By this secrecy he fled from the danger of vain-glory, which, like a leech, sticks to our best actions, and sucking from them its nourishment robs us of their fruit. As if this cell had not been sufficiently remote from the eyes of men, St. John frequently retired into a neighbouring cavern, which he had made in the rock, where no one could come to disturb his devotions, or interrupt his tears. So ardent were his charity and compunction, that his eyes seemed like two fountains, which scarcely ever ceased to flow; and his continual sighs and groans to heaven, under the weight of the miseries inseparable from his mortal pilgrimage, were not to be equalled by the vehemency of the cries of those who suffer from knives and fire. Overcome by importunities, he admitted a holy anchoret named Moyses, to live with him as his disciple.

God bestowed on St. John an extraordinary grace of healing the spiritual disorders of souls. Among others, a monk called Isaac, was brought almost to the brink of despair by most violent temptations of the flesh. He addressed himself to St. John, who perceived by his tears how much he underwent from that conflict and struggle which he felt within himself. The servant of God commended his faith, and said: "My son, let us have recourse to God by prayer." They accordingly prostrated themselves together on the ground in fervent supplication for a deliverance, and from that time the infernal serpent left Isaac in peace. Many others resorted to St. John for spiritual advice: but the devil excited some to jealousy, who censured him as one who, out of vanity, lost much time in unprofitable discourse. The saint took this accusation, which was a mere calumny, in good part, and as a charitable admonition: he therefore imposed on himself a rigorous silence for near a twelvemonth. This his humility and modesty so much astonished his calumniators, that they joined the rest of the monks in beseeching him to reassume his former function of giving charitable advice to all that resorted to him for it, and not to bury that talent of science which he had received for the benefit of many. He who knew not what it was to contradict others, with the same humility and deference again opened his mouth to instruct his neighbour in the rules of perfect virtue: in which office, such was the reputation of his wisdom and experience, that he was regarded as another Moses in that holy place.

St. John was now seventy-five years old, and had spent forty of them in his hermitage, when in the year six hundred, he was unanimously chosen abbot of Mount Sinai, and superior general of all the monks and hermits in that country. Soon after he was raised to this dignity, the people of Palestine and Arabia, in the time of a great drought and famine, made their application to him as to another Elias, begging him to intercede with God in their behalf. The saint failed not with great earnestness to recommend their distress to the Father of mercies, and his prayer was immediately recompensed with abundant rains. St. Gregory the Great, who then sat in St. Peter's chair, wrote to our holy abbot,4 recommending himself to his prayers, and sent him beds, with other furniture and money, for his hospital, for the use of pilgrims near Mount Sinai. John, who had used his utmost endeavours to decline the pastoral charge, when he saw it laid upon him, neglected no means which might promote the sanctification of all those who were intrusted to his care. That posterity might receive some share in the benefit of his holy instructions, John, the learned and virtuous abbot of Raithu, a monastery situate towards the Red-Sea, entreated him by that obedience he had ever practised, even with regard to his inferiors that it would draw up the most necessary rules by which fervent souls might arrive at Christum perfection. The saint answered him, that nothing but extreme humility could have moved him to write to so miserable a sinner, destitute of every sort of virtue; but that he received his commands with respect, though far above his strength, never considering his own insufficiency. Wherefore, apprehensive of falling into death by disobedience, he took up his pen in haste, with great eagerness mixed with fear, and set himself to draw some imperfect outlines as an unskilful painter, leaving them to receive from him, as a great master, the finishing strokes. This produced the excellent work which he called Climax, or the Ladder of Religious Perfection. This book being written in sentences, almost in the manner of aphorisms, abounds more in sense than words. A certain majestic simplicity, an inexpressible unction and spirit of humility, joined with conciseness and perspicuity, very much enhance the value of this performance: but its chief merit consists in the sublime sentiments, and perfect description of all Christian virtues, which it contains. The author confirms his precepts by several edifying examples, as of obedience and penance.5 In describing a monastery of three hundred and thirty monks, which he had visited near Alexandria in Egypt, he mentions one of the principal citizens of that city, named Isidore, who petitioning to be admitted into the house, said to the abbot: "As iron is in the hands of the smith, so am I in your hands." The abbot ordered him to remain without the gate, and to prostrate himself at the feet of every one that passed by, begging their prayers for his soul struck with a leprosy. Thus he passed seven years in profound humility and patience. He told St. John, that during the first year he always considered himself as a slave condemned for his sins, and sustained violent conflicts. The second year he passed in tranquillity and confidence: and the third with relish and pleasure in his humiliations. So great was his virtue, that the abbot determined to present him to the bishop in order to be promoted to the priesthood; but the humility of the holy penitent prevented the execution of that design; for having begged at least a respite, he died within ten days. St. John could not help admiring the cook of this numerous community who seemed always recollected, and generally bathed in tears amidst his continual occupation, and asked him by what means he nourished so perfect a spirit of compunction, in the midst of such a dissipating laborious employment? He said, that serving the monks, he represented to himself that he was serving not men, but God in his servants: and that the fire he always had before his eyes, reminded him of that fire which will burn souls for all eternity. The moving description which our author gives of the monastery of penitents called the Prison, above a miie from the former, hath been already abridged in our language. John the Sabaite told our saint as of a third person, that seeing himself respected in his monastery, he considered that this was not the way to satisfy for his sins. Wherefore, with the leave of his abbot, he repaired to a severe monastery in Pontus, and after three years saw in a dream a schedule of his debts, to the amount in appearance of one hundred pounds of gold, of which only ten were cancelled. He therefore repeated often to himself; "Poor Antioch as thou hast still a great debt to satisfy." After passing other thirteen years in contempt and the most fervent practices of penance, he deserved to see in a vision his whole debt blotted out. Another monk, in a grievous fit of illness, fell into a trance, in which he lay as if he had been dead for the space of an hour: but recovering, he shut himself up in his cell, and lived a recluse twelve years, almost continually weeping, on the perpetual meditation of death. When he was near death, his brethren could only extort from him these words of edification: "He who hath death always before his eyes, will never sin." John, abbot of Raithu, explained this book of our saint by judicious comments, which are all extant. We have likewise a letter of St. John Climacus to the same person, concerning the duties of a pastor, in which he exhorts him in correcting others to temper severity with mildness, and encourages him zealously to fulfil the obligations of his charge; for nothing is greater or more acceptable to God than to offer him the sacrifice of rational souls sanctified by penance and charity.

St. John sighed continually under the weight of his dignity. During the four years that he governed the monks of Mount Sinai: and as he had taken upon him that burden with fear and reluctance, he with joy found means to resign the same a little before his death. Heavenly contemplation, and the continual exercise of divine love and praise, were his delight and comfort in his earthly pilgrimage: and in this imitation of the functions of the blessed spirits in heaven he placeth the essence of the monastic state.6 In his excellent maxims concerning the gift of holy tears, the fruit of charity,7 we seem to behold a lively portraiture of his most pure soul. He died in his hermitage on the 30th day of March, in 605, being fourscore years old. His spiritual son George, who had succeeded him in the abbacy, earnestly begged of God that he might not be separated from his dear master and guide; and followed him by a happy death within a few days. On several Greek commentaries on St. John Climacus's ladder, see Montfaucon, Biblioth. Coisliana, p. 305, 306.

St. John Climacus, speaking of the excellence and the effects of charity, does it with a feeling and energy worthy of such a subject. "A mother," says he,8 "feels less pleasure when she folds within her arms the dear infant whom she nourishes with her own milk, than the true child of charity does, when united, as he incessantly is, to his God, and folded as it were in the arms of his heavenly Father.9 Charity operates in some persons so as to carry them almost entirely out of themselves. It illuminates others, and fills them with such sentiments of joy, that they cannot help crying out: The Lord is my helper and my protector: in him hath my heart confided, and I have been helped. And my flesh hath flourished again, and with my will I will give praise to him.10 This joy which they feel in their hearts, is reflected on their countenances; and when once God has united, or, as we may say, incorporated them with his charity, he displays in their exterior, as in the reflection of a mirror, the brightness and serenity of their souls: even as Moses, being honoured with a sight of God, was encompassed round by his glory." [sic] St. John Climacus composed the following prayer to obtain the gift of charity: "My God, I pretend to nothing upon this earth, except to be so firmly united to you by prayer, that to be separated from you may be impossible: let others desire riches and glory: for my part, I desire but one thing, and that is, to be inseparably united to you, and to place in you alone all my hopes of happiness and repose."

1 Gr. 1.

2 Procop. l. 5. de ædif. Justin.

3 S. Jo. Clim. gr. 27. n. 67.

4 St. Greg. l. 11. Ep. 9. t. 12. Ep. 16. t. 2. p. 1091.

5 Gr. 4 and 5.

6 Gr. 1.

7 Gr. 7. 27. 30.

8 Grad. 30. n. 12.

9 Gr. n. 14.

10 Ps xxvii.

St. Gundleus, Confessor

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This saint, who was formerly honoured with great devotion in Wales, was son to the king of the Dimetians in South-Wales. After the death of his father, though the eldest son, he divided the kingdom with his six brothers, who nevertheless respected and obeyed him as if he had been their sovereign. He married Gladusa, daughter of Braghan, prince of that country, which is called from him Brecknockshire, and was father of St. Canoc and St. Keyna. St. Gundleus had by her the great St. Cadoc, who afterwards founded the famous monastery of Llancarvan, three miles from Cowbridge, in Glamorganshire. Gundleus lived so as to have always in view the heavenly kingdom for which we are created by God. To secure this, he retired wholly from the world long before his death, and passed his time in a solitary little dwelling near a church which he had built. His clothing was sack-cloth, his food was barley-bread, upon which he usually strewed ashes, and his drink was water. Prayer and contemplation were his constant occupation, to which he rose at midnight, and he subsisted by the labour of his hands: thus he lived many years. Some days before his death he sent for St. Dubritius and his son St. Cadoc, and by their assistance, and the holy rites of the church, prepared himself for his passage to eternity. He departed to our Lord towards the end of the fifth century, and was glorified by miracles. See his life in Capgrave and Henschenius, from the collection of John of Tinmouth. See also bishop Usher.

St. Sixtus III., Pope

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He was a priest among the Roman clergy in 418, when Pope Zozimus condemned the Pelagian heretics. Sixtus was the first, after this sentence, who pronounced publicly anathema against them, to stop their slander in Africa that he favoured their doctrine, as we are assured by St. Austin and St. Prosper in his chronicle. The former sent him two congratulatory letters the same year, in which he applauds this testimony of his zeal, and in the first of these letters professes a high esteem of a treatise written by him in defence of the grace of God against its enemies. It was that calumny of the Pelagian heretics that led Garnier into the mistake, that our saint at first favoured their errors. But a change of this kind would not have been buried in silence. After the death of St. Celestine, Sixtus was chosen pope, in 432. He wrote to Nestorius to endeavour to reclaim him after his condemnation at Ephesus, in 431: but his heart was hardened, and he stopped his ears against all wholesome admonitions. The pope had the comfort to see a happy reconciliation made, by his endeavours, between the Orientals and St. Cyril: in which he much commended the humility and pacific dispositions of the latter. He says, "that he was charged with the care and solicitude of all the churches in the world,1 and that it is unlawful for any one to abandon the faith of the Apostolic Roman Church, in which St. Peter teaches in his successors what he received from Christ."2 When Bassus, a nobleman of Rome, had been condemned by the emperor, and excommunicated by a synod of bishops for raising a grievous slander against the good pope, the meek servant of Christ visited and assisted him in person, administered him the viaticum in his last sickness, and buried him with his own hands. Julian of Eclanum or Eeulanum, the famous Pelagian, earnestly desiring to recover his see, made great efforts to be admitted to the communion of the Church, pretending that he had become a convert, and used several artifices to convince our saint that he really was so: but he was too well acquainted with them to be imposed on. This holy pope died soon after, on the 28th of March, in 440, having sat in the see near eight years. See his letters, Anastasius's Pontifical, with the notes of Bianchini, &c.

1 Ep. 1. ad Episc. Orient. p. 1236. Ep. decret. t. 1.

2 Ep. 6. ad Joan. Antioch. contra Nestor.

St. John of Egypt, Hermit

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From Rufinus, in the second hook of the lives of the fathers; and from Palladius in his Lausiaca: this last had often seen him. Also St. Jerom, St. Austin, Cassian, &c. See Tillemont, t. 10. p. 9. See also the Wonders of God in the Wilderness, p. 160.

A.D. 394.

St. John was born about the year 305, was of a mean extraction, and brought up to the trade of a carpenter. At twenty-five years of age he forsook the world, and put himself under the guidance and direction of an ancient holy anchoret, with such an extraordinary humility and simplicity as struck the venerable old man with admiration; who inured him to obedience by making him water a dry stick for a whole year, as if it were a live plant, and perform several other things as seemingly ridiculous, all which he executed with the utmost fidelity. To the saint's humility and ready obedience, Cassian1 attributes the extraordinary gifts he afterwards received from God. He seems to have lived about twelve years with this old man, till his death, and about four more in different neighbouring monasteries.

Being about forty years of age, he retired alone to the top of a rock of very difficult ascent, near Lycopolis.2 His cell he walled up, leaving only a little window through which he received all necessaries, and spoke to those who visited him what might be for their spiritual comfort and edification. During five days in the week he conversed only with God: but on Saturdays and Sundays all but women had free access to him for his instructions and spiritual advice. He never eat till after sunset, and then very sparingly; but never any thing that had been dressed by fire, not so much as bread. In this manner did he live from the fortieth or forty-second to the ninetieth year of his age. For the reception of such as came to him from remote parts, he permitted a kind of hospital to be built near his cell or grotto, where some of his disciples took care of them. He was illustrious for miracles, and a wonderful spirit of prophecy, with the power of discovering to those that came to see him, their most secret thoughts and hidden sins. And such was the fame of his predictions, and the lustre of his miracles which he wrought on the sick, by sending them some oil which he had blessed, that they drew the admiration of the whole world upon him.

Theodosius the Elder was then emperor, and was attacked by the tyrant Maximus, become formidable by the success of his arms, having slain the Emperor Gratian in 383, and dethroned Valentinian in 3S7. The pious emperor, finding his army much inferior to that of his adversary, caused this servant of God to be consulted concerning the success of the war against Maximus. Our saint foretold him, that he should be victorious almost without blood. The emperor, full of confidence in the prediction, marched into the West, defeated the more numerous armies of Maximus twice in Pannonia; crossed the Alps, took the tyrant in Aquileia, and suffered his soldiers to cut off his head. He returned triumphant to Constantinople, and attributed his victories very much to the prayers of St. John, who also foretold him the events of his other wars, the incursions of Barbarians, and all that was to befall his empire. Four years after, in 392, Eugenius, by the assistance of Arbogastes, who had murdered the Emperor Valentinian the Younger, usurped the empire of the West. Theodosius sent Eutropius the Eunuch into Egypt, with instructions to bring St. John with him to Constantinople, if it were possible; but that if he could not prevail with him to undertake the journey, to consult whether it was God's will that he should march against Eugenius, or wait his arrival in the East. The man of God excused himself as to his journey to court, but assured Eutropius that his prince should he victorious, but not without loss and blood: as also that he would die in Italy, and leave the empire of the West to his son; all which happened accordingly. Theodosius marched against Eugenius, and in the first engagement lost ten thousand men, and was almost defeated : but renewing the battle on the next day, the 6th of September, in 394, he gained an entire victory by the miraculous interposition of heaven, as even Claudian, the heathen poet, acknowledges. Theodosius died in the West, on the 17th of January, in 395, leaving his two sons emperors, Arcadius in the East, and Honorius in the West.

This saint restored sight to a senator's wife by some of the oil he had blessed for healing the sick. It being his inviolable custom never to admit any woman to speak to him, this gave occasion to a remarkable incident related by Evagrius, Palladius, and St. Austin, in his treatise of Care for the Dead. A certain general officer in the emperor's service, visiting the saint, conjured him to permit his wife to speak to him; for she was come to Lycopolis, and had gone through many dangers and difficulties to enjoy that happiness. The holy man answered, that during his stricter enclosure for the last forty years since he had shut himself up in that rock, he had imposed on himself an inviolable rule not to see or converse with women; so he desired to be excused the granting her request. The officer returned to Lycopolis very melancholy. His wife, who was a person of great virtue, was not to be satisfied. The husband went back to the blessed man, told him she would die of grief if he refused her request. The saint said to him: "Go to your wife, and tell her that she shall see me to-night. without coming hither, or stirring out of her house." This answer he carried to her, and both were very earnest to know in what manner the saint would perform his promise. When she was asleep in the night the man of God appeared to her in her dream, and said: "Your great faith, woman, obliged me to come to visit you; but I must admonish you to curb the like desires of seeing God's servants on earth. Contemplate only their life, and imitate their actions. As for me, why did you desire to see me? Am I a saint, or a prophet like God's true servants? I am a sinful and weak man. It is therefore, only in virtue of your faith that I have had recourse to our Lord, who grants you the cure of the corporal diseases with which you are afflicted. Live always in the fear of God, and never forget his benefits." He added several proper instructions for her conduct, and disappeared. The woman awaking, described to her husband the person she had seen in her dream, with all his features, in such a manner as to leave no room to doubt but it was the blessed man that had appeared to her. Whereupon he returned the next day to give him thanks for the satisfaction he had vouchsafed his wife. But the saint on his arrival prevented him, saying: "I have fulfilled your desire, I have seen your wife, and satisfied her in all things she had asked: go in peace." The officer received his benediction, and continued his journey to Seyne. What the man of God foretold happened to him, as, among other things, that he should receive particular honours from the emperor. Besides, the authors of the saint's life, St. Austin relates this history which he received from a nobleman of great integrity and credit, who had it from the very persons to whom it happened. St. Austin adds, had he seen St. John, he would have inquired of him, whether he himself really appeared to this woman, or whether it was an angel in his shape, or whether the vision only passed in her imagination.3

In the year 394, a little before the saint's death, he was visited by Palladius, afterwards bishop of Helenopolis, who is one of the authors of his life. Several anchorets of the deserts of Nitria, all strangers, the principal of whom were Evagrius, Albinus, Ammonius, had a great desire to see the saint. Palladius, one of this number, being young, set out first in July, when the flood of the Nile was high. Being arrived at his mountain, he found the door of his porch shut, and that it would not be open till the Saturday following. He waited that time in the lodgings of strangers. On Saturday, at eight. o'clock, Palladius entered the porch, and saw the saint sitting before his window, and giving advice to those who applied to him for it. Having saluted Palladius by an interpreter, he asked him of what country he was, and what was his business, and if he was not of the company or monastery of Evagrius? Palladius owned he was. In the mean time arrived Alypius, governor of the province, in great haste. The saint, on the arrival of Alypius, broke off his discourse with Palladius, who withdrew to make room for the governor to discourse with the saint. Their conversation was very long, and Palladius being weary, murmured within himself against the venerable old man, as guilty of exception of persons. He was even just going away, when the saint, knowing his secret thoughts, sent Theodorus, his interpreter, to him, saying: "Go, bid that brother not to be impatient: I am going to dismiss the governor, and then will speak to him." Palladius, astonished that his thoughts should be known to him, waited with patience. As soon as Alypius was gone, St. John called Palladius, and said to him: "Why were you angry, imputing to me in your mind what I was no way guilty of? To you I can speak at any other time, and you have many fathers and brethren to comfort and direct you in the paths of salvation. But this governor being involved in the hurry of temporal affairs, and being come to receive some wholesome advice during the short time his affairs will allow him to breathe in, how could I give you the preference?" He then told Palladius what passed in his heart, and his secret temptations to quit his solitude; for which end the devil represented to him his father's regret for his absence, and that he might induce his brother and sister to embrace a solitary life. The holy man bade him despise such suggestions; for they had both already renounced the world, and his father would yet live seven years. He foretold him that he should meet with great persecutions and sufferings, and should be a bishop, but with many afflictions: all which came to pass, though at that time extremely improbable.

The same year, St. Petronius, with six other monks, made a long journey to pay St. John a visit. He asked them if any amongst them were in holy orders? They said: No. One however, the youngest in the company, was a deacon, though this was unknown to the rest. The saint, by divine instinct, knew this circumstance, and that the deacon had concealed his orders out of a false humility, not to seem superior to the others, but their inferior, as he was in age. Therefore, pointing to him, he said: "This man is a deacon." The other denied it, upon the false persuasion that to lie with a view to one's own humiliation was no sin. St. John took him by the hand, and kissing it, said to him: "My son, take care never to deny the grace you have received from God, lest humility betray you into a lie. We must never lie, under any pretence of good whatever, because no untruth can be from God." The deacon received this rebuke with great respect. After their prayer together, one of the company begged of the saint to be cured of a certain ague. He answered: "You desire to be freed from a sickness which is beneficial to you. As nitre cleanses the body, so distempers and other chastisements purify the soul." However, he blessed some oil and gave it to him: he vomited plentifully after it, and was from that moment perfectly cured. They returned to their lodgings, where by his orders they were treated with all proper civility, and cordial hospitality. When they went to him again, he received them with joyfulness in his countenance, which evidenced the interior spiritual joy of his soul; he bade them sit down, and asked them whence they came? They said from Jerusalem. He then made them a long discourse, in which he first endeavoured to show his own baseness; after which he explained the means by which pride and vanity are to be banished out of the heart, and all virtues to be acquired. He related to them the examples of many monks, who, by suffering their hearts to be secretly corrupted by vanity, at last fell also into scandalous irregularities; as of one, who, after a most holy and austere life, by this means fell into fornication, and then by despair into all manner of disorders; also of another, who, from vanity, fell into a desire of leaving his solitude; but by a sermon he preached to others, in a monastery on his road, was mercifully converted and became an eminent penitent. The blessed John thus entertained Petronius and his company for three days till the hour of None. When they were leaving him, he gave them his blessing, and said: "Go in peace, my children; and know that the news of the victory which the religious prince Theodosius has gained over the tyrant Eugenius is this day come to Alexandria: but this excellent emperor will soon end his life by a natural death." Some days after their leaving him to return home, they were informed he had departed this life. Having been favoured by a foresight of his death, he would see nobody for the last three days. At end of this term he sweetly expired, being on his knees at prayer, towards the close of the year 394, or the beginning of 395. It might probably be on the 17th of October, on which day the Copths, or Egyptian Christians, keep his festival: the Roman and other Latin Martyrologies mark it on the 27th of March.

The solitude which the Holy Ghost recommends, and which the saints embraced, resembled that of Jesus Christ, being founded on the same motive or principle, having the same exercises and employments, and the same end. Christ was conducted by the Holy Ghost into the desert, and he there spent his time in prayer and fasting. Wo [sic] to those whom humour or passion lead into solitude, or who consecrate it not to God by mortification, sighs of penance, and hymns of divine praise. To those who thus sanctify their desert or cell, it will be an anticipated paradise, an abyss of spiritual advantages and comforts, known only to such as have enjoyed them. The Lord will change the desert into a place of delights, and will make the solitude a paradise, and a garden worthy of himself.4 In it only joy and jubilee shall be seen, nothing shall be heard but thanksgiving and praise. It is the dwelling of a terrestrial seraph, whose sole employment is to labour to know, and correct all secret disorders of his own soul, to forget the world, and all objects of vanity which could distract or entangle him; to subdue his senses, to purify the faculties of his soul, and entertain in his heart a constant fire of devotion, by occupying it assiduously on God, Jesus Christ, and heavenly things, and banishing all superfluous desires and thoughts; lastly, to make daily progress in purity of conscience, humility, mortification, recollection, and prayer, and to find all his joy in the most fervent and assiduous adoration, love, and praise of his sovereign Creator and Redeemer.

1 Coll. b. 4. c. 21. p. 81.

2 A city in the north of Thebais, in Egypt.

3 S. Aug. l. pro cura de mortuis, c. 17. p. 294.

4 Isa. lxiii.

St. Ludger, Bishop of Munster

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APOSTLE OF SAXONY.

From his life, written by Altfrid, one of his successors, and another compiled by a monk of Werden, about sixty years after the death of St. Ludger, of inferior authority to the former, both extant in Mabillon, Act. Bened. t. 4. p. 289: also a third life in Surius and the Bollandists, written by the monks of Werden, perhaps twenty years after the latter. See Hist. Liter. Fr. t. 5. p. 660.

A.D. 809.

St. Ludger was born in Friseland, about the year 743. His father, who was a nobleman of the first rank in that country, at the child's own request, committed him very young to the care of St. Gregory, the disciple of St. Boniface, and his successor in the government of the see of Utrecht. Ludger had the happiness to have seen that holy martyr, and received from him strong impressions of virtue. Gregory educated him in his monastery, and admiring his progress in learning and piety, gave him the clerical tonsure. Ludger, desirous of further improvement, passed over into England, and spent four years and a half under Alcuin, who was rector of a famous school at York. He was careful to employ his whole time in the exercises of piety, and the study of the holy scriptures and fathers. In 773, he returned home, and St. Gregory dying in 776, his successor, Alberic, compelled our saint to receive the holy order of priesthood, and employed him for several years in preaching the word of God in Friseland, where he converted great numbers, both among the Pagans and vicious Christians, founded several monasteries, and built many churches. This was the state of affairs, when the pagan Saxons, ravaging the country obliged him to leave Friseland. Whereupon he travelled to Rome to consult Pope Adrian II. what course to take, and what he thought God required of him. He then retired for three years and a half to Mount Cassino, where he wore the habit of the Order, and conformed to the practice of the rule during his stay but made no religious vows. In 787, Charlemagne overcame the Saxons and conquered Friseland, and the coast of the Germanic ocean as far as Denmark. Ludger hearing that by this revolution the mission was again opened, returned into east-Friseland, where he converted the Saxons to the faith; as he also did the province of Sudergou, now called Westphalia. He founded the monastery of Werden,1 in the county of La Mark, twenty-nine miles from Cologne. His old master Alcuin being come into France, made his merit known to the Emperor Charlemagne. In 802, Hildebald, archbishop of Cologne, not regarding his strenuous resistance, ordained him bishop of Mimigardeford, (or ford of the river Mimigard,) a city which afterwards changed this name for that of Munster, from the great monastery of regular canons which St. Ludger built there, to serve for his cathedral. He joined to his diocess five cantons of Friseland which he had converted, and also founded the monastery of Helmstad, afterwards called Ludger-Clooster, or Ludger's cloister, in the duchy of Brunswick.

He was very learned in the Holy Scriptures, and read daily lectures thereon to his disciples. He fasted and watched much, and always wore a hair shirt, but secretly, so that no one knew of it till a little before his death. He ate some flesh at certain times, chiefly to conform to others, but always observing a strict temperance. When invited to any entertainment, his discourse the whole time was on religious subjects, and he withdrew immediately after. To the poor he was affable and courteous, but firm and resolute to the proud rich. He exerted an episcopal vigour against impenitent sinners, and refused all manner of presents from an incestuous lady, and at length excommunicated her. Except what was absolutely necessary for his subsistence, he employed the revenues of his own estate and those of his bishopric in charities. He was accused to the emperor Charlemagne, among other things, of wasting his income, and neglecting the embellishment of churches within his jurisdiction. And this prince, who loved to see churches magnificent, giving ear to the information, ordered him to appear at court. The morning after his arrival, the emperor's chamberlain brought him word that his attendance was required. The saint, being then at his prayers, told the officer that he would follow him as soon as he had finished them. He was sent for three several times before he was ready, which the courtiers represented as a contempt of his majesty; and the emperor with some emotion, asked him why he had made him wait so long, though he had sent for him so often? The bishop answered, that though he had the most profound respect for his majesty, yet God was infinitely above him; that whilst we are occupied with him, it is our duty to forget every thing else; and that in this he judged he had rather obeyed than neglected his majesty's orders, who, when he was chosen bishop, had recommended to him ever to prefer the service of God to that of men. This answer made such an impression on the emperor, in favour of the saint, that he looked upon it as a complete justification of his conduct as to every particular that had been laid to his charge: he accordingly dismissed him with honour, and disgraced his accusers. The saint took this liberty with a religious prince, that he might condemn the sloth of many who suffer distractions or earthly trifles to interrupt their commerce with God; but they who leave prayer for necessary works of charity or obedience, find God still in the exercises of those virtues. St. Ludger required so devout an attention at divine service, that being at prayers one night with his clergy, and one of them stooping down to mend the fire and hinder it from smoking, the saint after prayer severely rebuked him for it, and inflicted on him a penance for some days. St. Ludger was favoured with the gift of miracles and prophecy. He foretold the invasion of the Normans from Denmark and Norway, and what ravages they would make in the French empire, and this at a time when there was not the least apprehension of any such thing. His great zeal inclined him to go and preach the faith to these northern nations, but the king would not allow of it. His last sickness, though violent, did not hinder him from continuing his functions to the very last day of his life, which was Passion-Sunday, on which day he preached very early in the morning, said mass towards nine, and preached again before night, foretelling withal to those that were about him, that he should die the following night, and fixing upon a place in his monastery of Werden where he chose to be interred. He died accordingly on the 26th of March, at midnight. His relics are still kept at Werden. Joseph, an Engglishman [sic], a disciple of Alcuin, whom he attended into France, wrote, in sixteen verses, an eulogium of St. Ludger, published by Vossius2 and Mabillon, as a specimen of good poetry for that age.

Nothing so much scandalizes the very infidels, or shows the decay of piety, and loss of all sense of religion among Christians, as their disrespectful behaviour in the house of God and at the time of prayer. An awful strict silence, the most profound exterior respect, and penetrating inward devotion of heart, must essentially accompany our homages when we present them before the throne of God, in whose presence the highest seraphim annihilate themselves. This silence we must observe not only with our tongues, but also with our bodies and all our limbs, both out of respect to the presence of God and his altar, and also not to give the least occasion of distraction to others. Prayer is an action so sublime and supernatural, that the Church in her canonical hours teaches us to begin it by a fervent petition of grace to perform it well. What an insolence and mockery is it to join with this petition an open disrespect and a neglect of all necessary precautions against distractions! We ovght never to appear before God, to tender him our homages or supplications, without trembling, and without being deaf to all creatures, and shutting all our senses to every object that can distract our minds from God. In the life of F. Simon Gourdan, a regular cannon of St. Victor's at Paris, who died in the odour of sanctity, in the year 1729, the eighty-fifth of his age, it is related that King Lewis XIV. came to see him, and to recommend himself to his prayers, The [sic] servant of God made him wait till he had finished his thanks, giving [sic] after mass, which edified that great prince, who said, "he does well; for he is employed in attending on a much greater king." Though St. Francis of Sales on the like occasions chose rather to forego or defer his own private devotions, than not to be ready immediately to wait on others, in order to give them all the spiritual advice they desired; yet, at prayer, at least, he and all truly religious persons seemed in some degree to rival the heavenly spirits in their awe and reverence. Silence at that holy time, or place, has always been esteemed a thing so sacred, that when the temple of Solomon was building, God commanded that there should not be heard so much as the sound of a hammer, or any other instrument. Even when we come from conversing with God, we ought to appear all penetrated with the divine presence, and rather as angels than men. Sanctity, modesty, and the marks of an heavenly spirit, ought to shine in our exterior, and to inspire others by our very sight with religious awe and devotion.

1 Some have, by mistake, confounded this place with Fermen, or Werden, beyond the Weser.

2 Voss. de histor. lat. l. 2. c. 3.

St. Edelwald, Priest, C.

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He was, for his eminent sanctity, honoured with the priesthood whilst he lived in the monastery of Rippon. Afterwards he led an eremitical life in the isle of Farne, where he died in 699, about eleven years after St. Cuthbert. His body was translated to Lindisfarne, afterwards to Durham.—See Bede in vita S. Cuthberti, n. 68.

St. Paul, Bishop of Narbonne, C.

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St. Gregory of Tours informs us,1 that he was sent with other preachers from Rome to plant the faith in Gaul. St. Saturninus of Thoulouse, and St. Dionysius of Paris, were crowned with martyrdom: but St. Paul of Narbonne, St. Trophimus of Arles, St. Martial of Limoges, and St. Gatian of Tours, after having founded those churches amidst many dangers, departed in peace. Prudentius says,2 that the name of Paul had rendered the city of Narbonne illustrious.

1 Hist. Franc. l. 1. c. 30.

2 Hymn. 4.

St. Serapion

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Called the Sindonite, from a single garment of coarse linen which he always wore. He was a native of Egypt. Exceeding great was the austerity of his penitential life. Though he travelled into several countries, he always lived in the same poverty, mortification, and recollection. In a certain town, commiserating the spiritual blindness of an idolater, who was also a comedian, he sold himself to him for twenty pieces of money. His only sustenance in this servitude was bread and water. He acquitted himself at the same time of every duty belonging to his condition with the utmost diligence and fidelity, joining with his labour assiduous prayer and meditation. Having converted his master and the whole family to the faith, and induced him to quit the stage, he was made free by him, but could not be prevailed upon to keep for his own use, or even to distribute to the poor, the twenty pieces of coin he had received as the price of his liberty. Soon after this he sold himself a second time, to relieve a distressed widow. Having spent some time with his new master, in recompense, of signal spiritual services, besides his liberty, he also received a cloak, a tunic, or under-garment, and a book of the gospels. He had scarcely gone out of doors, when, meeting a poor man, he bestowed on him his cloak; and shortly after to another starving with cold, he gave his tunic; and was thus reduced again to his single linen garment. Being asked by a stranger who it was that had stripped him and left him in that naked condition, showing his book of the gospels, he said : "This it is that hath stripped me." Not long after, he sold the book itself for the relief of a person in extreme distress. Being met by an old acquaintance, and asked what was become of it, he said: "Could you believe it? this gospel seemed continually to cry to me: Go, sell all thou hast, and give to the poor. Wherefore I have also sold it, and given the price to the indigent members of Christ." Having nothing now left but his own person, he disposed of that again on several other occasions, where the corporal or spiritual necessities of his neighbour called for relief: once to a certain Manichee at Lacedæmon, whom he served for two years, and before they were expired, brought both him and his whole family ever to the true faith. St. John the Almoner having read the particulars of this history, called for his steward, and said to him, weeping: "Can we flatter ourselves that we do any great matters because we give our estates to the poor? Here is a man who could find means to give himself to them, and so many times over. St. Serapion went from Lacedæmon to Rome, there to study the most perfect models of virtue, and, returning afterwards into Egypt, died in the desert, being sixty years old, some time before Palladius visited Egypt in 388. Henschenius, in his Notes on the Life of St. Auxentius,1) and Bollandus2 take notice that in certain Menæa he is honoured on the 21st of March; yet they have not given his acts on that day. Baronius confounds him with St. Serapion, the Sidonian martyr. See Pallad. Lausiac. ch. 83. and Leontius in the Life of Saint John the Almoner.

1 Henschen. Not. in Vit. S. Auxentii, ad 24 Febr. t. 3. Febr.

2 Bolland. ad 23 Jan. p. 508. t. 2. Jan.

St. Wulfran, Archbishop of Sens

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AND APOSTOLIC MISSIONARY IN FRISELAND.

His father was an officer in the armies of King Dagobert, and the saint spent some years in the court of King Clotaire III. and of his mother St. Bathildes, but occupied his heart only on God, despising worldly greatness as empty and dangerous, and daily advancing in virtue in a place where virtue is often little known. His estate of Maurilly he bestowed on the abbey of Fontenelle, or St. Vandrille, in Normandy. He was chosen and consecrated archbishop of Sens, in 682, wich diocess he governed during two years and a half with great zeal and sanctity. A tender compassion for the blindness of the idolators of Friseland, and the example of the English zealous preachers in those parts, moved him to resign his bishopric with proper advice, and after a retreat at Fontenelle, to enter Friseland in quality of a poor missionary priest. He baptized great multitudes, with a son of King Radbod, and drew the people from the barbarous custom of sacrificing men to idols. The lot herein decided, on great festivals, who should be the victim; and the person was instantly hanged or cut in pieces. The lot having fallen on one Ovon, St. Wulfran earnestly begged his life of King Radbod; but the people ran tumultuously to the palace, and would not suffer what they called a sacrilege. After many words, they consented that if the God of Wulfran should save Oven's life, he should ever serve him, and be Wulfran's slave. The saint betook himself to prayer, and the man, after hanging on the gibbet two hours, being left for dead, by the cord breaking fell to the ground; and being found alive was given to the saint, and became a monk and priest at Fontenelle. Wulfran also miraculously rescued two children from being drowned in the sea, in honour of the idols. Radbod, who had been an eye-witness to this last miracle, promised to become a Christian, and was instructed among the catechumens; but his criminal delays rendered him unworthy such a mercy. As he was going to step into the baptismal font, he asked where the great number of his ancestors and nobles were in the next world? The saint replied, that hell is the portion of all who die guilty of idolatry. At which the prince drew back, and refused to be baptized, saying, he would go with the greater number. This tyrant sent afterwards to St. Willebrord to treat with him about his conversion; but before the arrival of the saint was found dead. St. Wulfran retired to Fontenelle, that he might prepare himself for death, and died there on the 20th of April, in 720. His relics were removed to Abbeville, where he is honoured as patron. See his life written by Jonas, monk of Fontenelle, eleven years after his death, purged from spurious additions, by Mabillon, sæc. 3. Ben. Floury, b. 41. t. 9. p. 190. See also the history of the discovery of his relics at St. Vandrille's, accompanied with miracles, and the translation to Rouen in 1062, well written by an anonymous author who assisted at that ceremony, several parts of which work are published by D'Achery, Spicil. t. 3. p. 248. the Bollandists and Mabillon. The Bollandists have added a relation of certain miracles said to have been performed by the relics of this saint at Abbeville.

St. Joseph

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The glorious St. Joseph was lineally descended from the greatest kings of the tribe of Juda, and from the most illustrious of the ancient patriarchs; but his true glory consisted in his humility and virtue. The history of his life hath not been written by men; but his principal actions are recorded by the Holy Ghost himself. God intrusted him with the education of his divine Son, manifested in the flesh. In this view he was espoused to the Virgin Mary. It is an evident mistake of some writers, that by a former wife he was the father of St. James the Less, and of the rest who are styled in the gospels the brothers of our Lord: for these were only cousin-germans to Christ, the sons of Mary, sister to the Blessed Virgin, wife of Alphæus, who was living at the time of our Redeemer's crucifixion. St. Jerom assures us,1 that St. Joseph always preserved his virgin chastity; and it is of faith that nothing contrary thereto ever took place with regard to his chaste spouse, the Blessed Virgin Mary. He was given her by heaven to be the protector of her chastity, to secure her from calumnies in the birth of the Son of God, and to assist her in his education, and in her journies, fatigues, aud persecutions. How great was the purity and sanctity of him who was chosen the guardian of the most spotless Virgin! This holy man seems, for a considerable time, to have been unacquainted that the great mystery of the Incarnation had been wrought in her by the Holy Ghost. Conscious therefore of his own chaste behaviour towards her, it could not but raise a great concern in his breast, to find that, notwithstanding the sanctity of her deportment, yet he might be well assured that she was with child. But being a just man, as the scripture calls him, and consequently possessed of all virtues, especially of charity and mildness towards his neighbour, he was determined to leave her privately, without either condemning or accusing her, committing the whole cause to God. These his perfect dispositions were so acceptable to God, the lover of justice, charity, and peace, that before he put his design in execution, he sent an angel from heaven not to reprehend anything in his holy conduct, but to dissipate all his doubts and fears, by revealing to him this adorable mystery. How happy should we be if we were as tender in all that regards the reputation of our neighbour; as free from entertaining any injurious thought or suspicion, whatever certainty our conjectures or our senses may seem to rely on; and as guarded in our tongue! We commit these faults only because in our hearts we are devoid of that true charity and simplicity, whereof St. Joseph sets us so eminent an example on this occasion.

In the next place we may admire in secret contemplation, with what devotion, respect, and tenderness, he beheld and adored the first of all men, the new-born Saviour of the world, and with what fidelity he acquitted himself of his double charge, the education of Jesus, and the guardianship of his blessed mother. "He was truly the faithful and prudent servant," says St. Bernard,2 "whom our Lord appointed the master of his household, the comfort and support of his mother, his fosterfather, [sic] and most faithful cooperator in the execution of his deepest counsels on earth." "What a happiness," says the same father, "not only to see Jesus Christ, but also to hear him, to carry him in his arms, to lead him from place to place, to embrace and caress him, to feed him, and to be privy to all the great secrets which were concealed from the princes of this world."

"O astonishing elevation! O unparalleled dignity!" cries out the pious Gerson,3 in a devout address to St. Joseph, "that the mother of God, queen of heaven, should call you her lord; that God himself, made man, should call you father, and obey your commands. O glorious Triad on earth, Jesus, Mary, Joseph, how dear a family to the glorious Trinity in heaven, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost! Nothing is on earth so great, so good, so excellent." Amidst these his extraordinary graces, what more wonderful than his humility! He conceals his privileges, lives as the most obscure of men, publishes nothing of God's great mysteries, makes no further inquiries into them, leaving it to God to manifest them at his own time, seeks to fulfil the order of providence in his regard, without interfering with any thing but what concerns himself. Though descended from the royal family which had long been in possession of the throne of Judæa, he is content with his condition, that of a mechanic or handicraftsman,4 and makes it his business, by labouring in it, to maintain himself, his spouse, and the divine child.

We should be ungrateful to this great saint, if we did not remember that it is to him, as the instrument under God, that we are indebted for the preservation of the infant Jesus from Herod's jealousy and malice, manifested in the slaughter of the Innocents. An angel appearing to him in his sleep, bade him arise, take the child Jesus, and fly with him into Egypt, and remain there till he should again have notice from him to return. This sudden and unexpected flight must have exposed Joseph to many inconveniences and sufferings in so long a journey, with a little babe and a tender virgin, the greater part of the way being through deserts, and among strangers; yet he alleges no excuses, nor inquiries [sic] at what time they were to return. St. Chrysostom observes that God treats thus all his servants, sending them frequent trials, to clear their hearts from the rust of self-love, but intermixing seasons of consolation.5 "Joseph," says he, "is anxious on seeing the Virgin with child; an angel removes that fear; he rejoices at the child's birth, but a great fear succeeds; the furious king seeks to destroy the child, and the whole city is in an uproar to take away his life. This is followed by another joy, the adoration of the Magi: a new sorrow then arises; he is ordered to fly into a foreign unknown country, without help or acquaintance." It is the opinion of the fathers, that upon their entering Egypt, at the presence of the child Jesus, all the oracles of that superstitious country were struck dumb, and the statues of their Gods trembled, and in many places fell to the ground, according to that of Isaiah xix. And the statues of the Egyptians shall be shaken in his presence.6 The Fathers also attribute to this holy visit the spiritual benediction poured on that country, which made it for many ages most fruitful in saints.7

After the death of King Herod, which was notified to St. Joseph by a vision, God ordered him to return with the child and his mother into the land of Israel, which our saint readily obeyed. But when he arrived in Judæa, hearing that Archelaus succeeded Herod in that part of the country, apprehensive he might be infected with his father's vices—cruelty and ambition— he feared on that account to settle there, as he would otherwise probably have done, for the more commodious education of the child. And therefore, being directed by God in another vision, he retired into the dominions of his brother Herod Antipas, in Galilee, to his former habitation in Nazareth, where the wonderful occurrences of our Lord's birth were less known. St. Joseph being a strict observer of the Mosaic law, in conformity to its direction, annually repaired to Jerusalem to celebrate the passover. Archelaus, being banished by Augustus, and Judæa made a Roman province, he had now nothing more to fear at Jerusalem. Our Saviour being advanced to the twelfth year of his age, accompanied his parents thither; who, having performed the usual ceremonies of the feast, were now returning with many of their neighbours and acquaintance towards Galilee, and never doubting but that Jesus had joined himself with some of the company, they travelled on for a whole day's journey without further inquiry after him, before they discovered that he was not with them. But when night came on, and they could hear no tidings of him among their kindred and acquaintance, they, in the deepest affliction, returned with the utmost speed to Jerusalem: where, after an anxious search of three days, they found him in the temple, sitting among the learned doctors of the law, bearing them discourse, and asking them such questions as raised the admiration of all that heard him, and made them astonished at the ripeness of his understanding: nor were his parents less surprised on this occasion. And when his mother told him with what grief and earnestness they had sought him, and to express her sorrow for that, though short, privation of his presence, said to him: "Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us? Behold, thy father and I sought thee in great affliction of mind;" she received for answer, that being the Messias and Son of God, sent by his Father into the world in order to redeem it, he must be about his Father's business, the same for which he had been sent into the world; and therefore that it was most likely for them to find him in his Father's house: intimating that his appearing in public on this occasion, was to advance his Father's honour, and to prepare the princes of the Jews to receive him for their Messias; pointing out to them from the prophets the time of his coming. But though in thus staying in the temple, unknown to his parents, he did something without their leave, in obedience to his heavenly Father, yet in all other things he was obedient to them, returning with them to Nazareth, and there living in all dutiful subjection to them.

Aelred, our countryman, abbot of Rieval, in his sermon on losing the child Jesus in the temple, observes that this his conduct to his parents is a true representation of that which he shows us, whilst he often withdraws himself for a short time from us to make us seek him the more earnestly. He thus describes the sentiments of his holy parents on this occasion:8 "Let us consider what was the happiness of that blessed company, in the way to Jerusalem, to whom it was granted to behold his face, to hear his sweet words, to see in him the signs of divine wisdom and virtue; and in their mutual discourse to receive the influence of his saving truths and example. The old and young admire him. I believe boys of his age were struck with astonishment at the gravity of his manners and words. I believe such rays of grace darted from his blessed countenance as drew on him the eyes, ears, and hearts of every one. And what tears do they shed when he is not with them?" He goes on considering what must be the grief of the parents when they had lost him; what their sentiments, and how earnest their search: but what their joy when they found him again. "Discover to me," says he, "O my Lady, Mother of my God, what were your sentiments, what your astonishment and your joy when you saw him again, and sitting, not amongst boys, but amidst the doctors of the law: when you saw every one's eyes fixed on him, every one's ears listening to him, great and small, learned and unlearned, intent only on his words and motions. You now say: I have found him whom I love. I will hold him, and will no more let him part from me. Hold him, sweet Lady, hold him fast; rush on his neck, dwell on his embraces, and compensate the three days' absence by multiplied delights in your present enjoyment of him. You tell him that you and his father sought him in grief. For what did you grieve? not for fear of hunger or want in him whom you knew to be God: but I believe you grieved to see yourself deprived of the delights of his presence even for a short time; for the Lord Jesus is so sweet to those who taste him, that his shortest absence is a subject of the greatest grief to them." This mystery is an emblem of the devout soul, and Jesus sometimes withdrawing himself, and leaving her in dryness, that she may be more earnest in seeking him. But, above all, how eagerly ought the soul which has lost God by sin, to seek him again, and how bitterly ought she to deplore her extreme misfortune!

As no further mention is made of St. Joseph, he must have died before the marriage of Cana, and the beginning of our divine Saviour's ministry. We cannot doubt but he had the happiness of Jesus and Mary attending at his death, praying by him, assisting and comforting him in his last moments. Whence he is particularly invoked for the great grace of a happy death and the spiritual presence of Jesus in that tremendous hour. The church reads the history of the patriarch Joseph on his festival, who was styled the saviour of Egypt, which he delivered from perishing by famine; and was appointed the faithful master of the household of Putephar, and of that of Pharaoh and his kingdom. But our great saint was chosen by God the saviour of the life of him who was the true Saviour of the souls of men, rescuing him from the tyranny of Herod. He is now glorified in heaven, as the guardian and keeper of his Lord on earth. As Pharaoh said to the Egyptians in their distress: "Go to Joseph;" so may we confidently address ourselves to the mediation of him, to whom God, made man, was subject and obedient on earth.

The devout Gerson expressed the warmest devotion to St. Joseph, which he endeavoured by letters and sermons to promote. He composed an office in his honour, and wrote his life in twelve poems, called Josephina. He enlarges on all the circumstances of his life by pious affections and meditations. St. Teresa chose him the chief patron of her order. In the sixth chapter of her life she writes thus: "I chose the glorious St. Joseph for my patron, and I commend myself in all things singularly to his intercession. I do not remember ever to have asked of God anything by him which I did not obtain. I never knew any one, who, by invoking him, did not advance exceedingly in virtue: for he assists in a wonderful manner all who address themselves to him." St. Francis of Sales, throughout his whole nineteenth entertainment, extremely recommends devotion to him, and extols his merits, principally his virginity, humility, constancy, and courage. The Syrians and other eastern churches celebrate his festival on the 20th of July; the western church, on the 19th of March. Pope Gregory XV. in 1621, and Urban VIII., in 1642, commanded it to be kept a holiday of obligation. The holy family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, presents to us the most perfect model of heavenly conversation on earth. How did those two seraphim, Mary and Joseph, live in their poor cottage! They always enjoyed the presence of Jesus, always burning with the most ardent love for him, inviolably attached to his sacred person, always employed and living only for him. What were their transports in beholding him, their devotion in listening to him, and their joy in possessing him! O heavenly life! O anticipation of the heavenly bliss! O divine conversation! We may imitate them, and share some degree of this advantage, by conversing often with Jesus, and by the contemplation of his most amiable goodness, kindling the fire of his holy love in our breasts. The effects of this love, if it be sincere, will necessarily appear in our putting on his spirit, and imitating his example and virtues; and in our studying to walk continually in the divine presence, finding God every where, and esteeming all the time lost which we do not spend with God, or for his honour.

1 L. adv. Helvid. c. 9.

2 Hom. 2. super missus est, n. 16, p. 742.

3 Serm. de Nativ.

4 This appears from Matt. xiii. 55. St. Justin, (Dial. n. 89. ed. Ben. p. 186.) St. Ambrose, (in Luc. p. 3.) and Theodoret (b. 3. Hist. c. 18.) say he worked in wood, as a carpenter. St. Hilary (in Matt. c. 14. p. 17.) and St. Peter Chrysologus (Serm. 48.) say he wrought in iron as a smith; probably he wrought both in iron and in wood; which opinion St. Justin favours, by saying: "He and Jesus made ploughs and yokes for oxen."

5 Hom. 8 in Matt. t. 7. p. 123. ed. Ben.

6 This is affirmed by St. Athanasius, (l. de Incarn.) Eusebius, (Demonstrat. Evang. l. 6. c. 20.) St. Cyril, (Cat. 10.) St. Ambrose, (in Ps. 118. Octon. 5.) St. Jerom, (in Isai. 19.) St. Chrysostom, St. Cyril of Alexandria, (in Isai.) Sozomen, (l. 5. c. 20.) &c.

7 See the Lives of the Fathers of the Desert.

8 Bibl. Patr. t. 13.

St. Edward, King and Martyr

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He was monarch of England, and succeeded his father, the glorious King Edgar, in 975, being thirteen years old. He followed in all things the counsels of St. Dunstan; and his ardour in the pursuit of all virtues is not to be expressed. His great love of purity of mind and body, and his fervent devotion, rendered him the miracle of princes, whilst by his modesty, clemency, prudence, charity, and compassion to the poor, he was the blessing and the delight of his subjects. His stepmother, Elfrida, had attempted to set him aside that the crown might fall on her own son, Ethelred, then seven years old. Notwithstanding her treasonable practices, and the frequent proofs of her envy and jealousy, Edward always paid her the most dutiful respect and deference, and treated his brother with the most tender affection. But the fury of her ambition made her insensible to all motives of religion, nature, and gratitude. The young king had reigned three years and a half, when being one day weary with hunting in a forest near Wareham, in Dorsetshire, he paid a visit to his step-mother at Corfesgeate, now Corfe-castle, in the isle of Purbeck, and desired to see his young brother, at the door. The treacherous queen caused a servant to stab him in the belly whilst he was stooping out of courtesy, after drinking. The king set spurs to his horse, but fell off dead, on the 18th of March, 979, his bowels being ripped open so as to fall out. His body was plunged deep into a marsh, but discovered by a pillar of light, and honoured by many miraculous cures of sick persons. It was taken up and buried in the church of our Lady, at Wareham; but found entire in three years after, and translated to the monastery at Shaftesbury. His lungs were kept at the village called Edwardstow, in 1001: but the chief part of his remains were deposited at Wareham, as the Saxon Chronicle and Florence of Worcester say: but part was afterwards removed to Shaftesbury, not Glastenbury, as Caxton mistakes. The long thin knife with which he was stabbed, was kept in the church of Faversham, before the suppression of the monasteries, as Hearne mentions. His name is placed in the Roman Martyrology. The impious Elfrida, being awaked by the stings of conscience, and by the voice of miracles, retired from the world, and built the monasteries of Wherwell and Ambresbury, in the first of which she lived and died in the practice of penance. The reign of her son Ethelred was weak and unfortunate, and the source of the greatest miseries to the kingdom, especially from the Danes. See Malmesbury, Brompton, abbot of Jorvil, in Yorkshire, and Ranulf Higden, in his Polychronicon, published by Gale. Also an old MS. life of the saint, quoted by Hearne, on Langtoft's Chronicle, t. 2, p. 628. and from the MS. lives of saints, in the hands of Mr. Sheldon, of Weston.

St. Patrick, B.C.

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APOSTLE OF IRELAND.

The Irish have many lives of their great apostle, whereof the two principal are, that compiled by Jocelin, a Cistercian monk, in the twelfth century, who quotes four lives written by disciples of the saint; and that by Probus, who, according to Bollandus, lived in the seventh century. But in both are intermixed several injudicious popular reports. We, with Tillemont, chiefly confine ourselves to the saint's own writings, his Confession, and his Letter to Corotic, which that judicious critic doubts not to be genuine. The style in both is the same; he is expressed in them to be the author; the Confession is quoted by all the authors of his life, and the Letter was written before the conversion of the Franks under King Clovis, in 496. See Tillemont, t. 16, p. 455. and Brittania Sancta.

A.D. 464.

If the virtue of children reflects an honour on their parents, much more justly is the name of St. Patrick rendered illustrious by the innumerable lights of sanctity with which the church of Ireland, planted by his labours in the most remote corner of the then known world, shone during many ages; and by the colonies of saints with which it peopled many foreign countries; for, under God, its inhabitants derived from their glorious apostle the streams of that eminent sanctity, by which they were long conspicuous to the whole world. St. Patrick was born in the decline of the fourth century;1 and as he informs us in his Confession, in a village called Bonaven Taberniæ, which seems to be the town of Killpatrick, on the mouth of the river Cluyd, in Scotland, between Dunbriton and Glasgow. He calls himself both a Briton and a Roman, or of a mixed extraction, and says his father was of a good family named Calphurnius, and a denizen of a neighbouring city of the Romans, who not long after abandoned Britain, in 409. Some writers call his mother Conchessa, and say she was niece to St. Martin of Tours. At fifteen years of age he committed a fault, which appears not to have been a great crime, yet was to him a subject of tears during the remainder of his life. He says, that when he was sixteen, he lived still ignorant of God, meaning of the devout knowledge and fervent love of God, for he was always a Christian: he never ceased to bewail this neglect, and wept when he remembered that he had been one moment of his life insensible of the divine love. In his sixteenth year he was carried into captivity by certain barbarians, together with many of his father's vassals and slaves, taken upon his estate. They took him into Ireland, where he was obliged to keep cattle on the mountains and in the forests, in hunger and nakedness, amidst snows, rain, and ice. Whilst he lived in this suffering condition, God had pity on his soul, and quickened him to a sense of his duty by the impulse of a strong interior grace. The young man had recourse to him with his whole heart in fervent prayer and fasting; and from that time faith and the love of God acquired continually new strength in his tender soul. He prayed often in the day, and also many times in the night, breaking off his sleep to return to the divine praises. His afflictions were to him a source of heavenly benedictions, because he carried his cross with Christ, that is, with patience, resignation and holy joy. St. Patrick, after six months spent in slavery under the same master, was admonished by God in a dream to return to his own country, and informed that a ship was then ready to sail thither. He repaired immediately to the sea-coast, though at a great distance, and found the vessel; but could not obtain his passage, probably for want of money. Thus new trials ever await the servants of God. The saint returned towards his hut, praying as he went, but the sailors, though pagans, called him back, and took him on board. After three days' sail, they made land, probably in the north of Scotland: but wandered twenty-seven days through deserts, and were a long while distressed for want of provisions, finding nothing to eat. Patrick had often entertained the company on the infinite power of God: they therefore asked him, why he did not pray for relief? Animated by a strong faith, he assured them that if they would address themselves with their whole heart to the true God, he would hear and succour them. They did so, and on the same day met with a herd of swine. From that time provisions never failed them till on the twenty-seventh day they came into a country that was cultivated and inhabited. During their distress, Patrick refused to touch meats which had been offered to idols. One day a great stone from a rock happened to fall upon him, and had like to have crushed him to death, whilst he had laid down to take a little rest. But he invoked Elias, and was delivered from the danger. Some years afterwards he was again led captive; but recovered his liberty after two months. When he was at home with his parents, God manifested to him, by divers visions, that he destined him to the great work of the conversion of Ireland. He thought he saw all the children of that country from the wombs of their mothers stretching out their hands, and piteously crying to him for relief.2

Some think he had travelled into Gaul before he undertook his mission, and we find that, whilst he preached in Ireland, he had a great desire to visit his brethren in Gaul, and to see those whom he calls the saints of God, having been formerly acquainted with them. The authors of his life say, that after his second captivity, he travelled into Gaul and Italy, and had seen St. Martin, St. Germanus of Auxerre, and Pope Celestine, and that he received his mission, and the apostolical benediction from this pope, who died in 432. But it seems, from his Confession, that he was ordained deacon, priest, and bishop, for his mission in his own country. It is certain that he spent many years in preparing himself for those sacred functions. Great opposition was made against his episcopal consecration and mission, both by his own relations and by the clergy. These made him great offers in order to detain him among them, and endeavoured to affright him by exaggerating the dangers to which he exposed himself amidst the enemies of the Romans and Britons, who did not know God. Some objected, with the same view, the fault which he had committed thirty years before as an obstacle to his ordination. All these temptations threw the saint into great perplexities, and had like to have made him abandon the work of God. But the Lord, whose will he consulted by earnest prayer, supported him, and comforted him by a vision; so that he persevered in his resolution. He forsook his family, sold, as he says, his birth-right and dignity, to serve strangers, and consecrated his soul to God, to carry his name to the end of the earth. He was determined to suffer all things for the accomplishment of his holy design, to receive in the same spirit both prosperity and adversity, and to return thanks to God equally for the one as for the other, desiring only that his name might be glorified, and his divine will accomplished to his own honour. In this disposition he passed into Ireland, to preach the gospel, where the worship of idols still generally reigned. He devoted himself entirely for the salvation of these barbarians, to be regarded as a stranger, to be condemned as the last of men, to suffer from the infidels imprisonment and all kinds of persecution, and to give his life with joy, if God should deem him worthy to shed his blood in his cause. He travelled over the whole island, penetrating into the remotest corners without fearing any dangers, and often visited each province. Such was the fruit of his preachings and sufferings, that he consecrated to God, by baptism, an infinite number of people, and laboured effectually that they might be perfected in his service by the practice of virtue. He ordained every where clergymen, induced women to live in holy widowhood and continency, consecrated virgins to Christ, and institued monks. Great numbers embraced these states of perfection with extreme ardour. Many desired to confer earthly riches on him, who had communicated to them the goods of heaven; but he made it a capital duty to decline all self-interest, and whatever might dishonour his ministry. He took nothing from the many thousands whom he haptized, and often gave back the little presents which some laid on the altar, choosing rather to mortify the fervent than to scandalize the weak or the infidels. On the contrary, he gave freely of his own, hoth to pagans and Christians, distributed large alms to the poor in the provinces where he passed, made presents to the kings; judging that necessary for the progress of the gospel, and maintained and educated many children whom he trained up to serve at the altar. He always gave till he had no more to bestow, and rejoiced to see himself poor, with Jesus Christ, knowing poverty and afflictions to be more profitable to him than riches and pleasures. The happy success of his labours cost him many persecutions.

A certain prince named Corotick, a Christian, though in name only, disturbed the peace of his flock. He seems to have reigned in some part of Wales, after the Britons had been abandoned by the Romans. This tyrant, as the saint calls him, having made a descent into Ireland, plundered the country where Saint Patrick had been just conferring the holy chrism, that is, confirmation, on a great number of Neophytes, who were yet in their white garments after baptism. Corotick, without paying any regard to justice, or to the holy sacrament, massacred many, and carried away others, whom he sold to the infidel Picts or Scots. This probably happened at Easter or Whitsuntide. The next day the saint sent the barbarian a letter by a holy priest whom he had brought up from his infancy, entreating him to restore the Christian captives, and at least part of the booty he had taken, that the poor people might not perish for want; but was only answered by railleries, as if the Irish could not be the same Christians with the Britons: which arrogance and pride sunk those barbarous conquerors beneath the dignity of men, whilst by it they were puffed up above others in their own hearts. The saint. therefore, to prevent the scandal which such a flagrant enormity gave to his new converts, wrote with his own hand a public circular letter. In it he styles himself a sinner and an ignorant man; for such is the sincere humility of the saints, (most of all when they are obliged to exercise any acts of authority,) contrary to the pompous titles which the world affects. He declares, nevertheless, that he is established bishop of Ireland, and pronounces Corotick and the other parricides and accomplices separated from him and from Jesus Christ, whose place he holds, forbidding any to eat with them, or to receive their alms, till they should have satisfied God by the tears of sincere penance, and restored the servants of Jesus Christ to their liberty. This letter expresses his most tender love for his flock, and his grief for those who had been slain yet mingled with joy, because they reign with the prophets, apostles, and martyrs. Jocelin assures us, that Corotick, was overtaken by the divine vengeance. St. Patrick wrote his Confession as a testimony of his mission, when he was old.3 It is solid, full of good sense and piety, expresses an extraordinary humility and a great desire of martyrdom, and is written with spirit. The author was perfectly versed in the holy scriptures. He confesses every where his own faults with a sincere humility, and extols the great mercies of God towards him in this world, who had exalted him, though the most undeserving of men: yet, to preserve him in humility, afforded him the advantage of meeting with extreme contempt from others, that is from the heathens. He confesses, for his humiliation, that, among other temptations, he felt a great desire to see again his own country, and to visit the saints of his acquaintance in Gaul: but durst not abandon his people: and says, that the Holy Ghost had declared to him that to do it would be criminal. He tells us, that a little before he had written this, he himself and all his companions had been plundered and laid in irons, for his having baptized the son of a certain king against the will of his father: but were released after fourteen days. He lived in the daily expectation of such accidents, and of martyrdom; but feared nothing, having his hope as a firm anchor fixed in heaven, and reposing himself with an entire confidence in the Almighty. He says, that he had lately baptized a very beautiful young lady of quality, who some days after came to tell him, that she had been admonished by an angel to consecrate her virginity to Jesus Christ, that she might render herself the more acceptable to God. He gave God thanks, and she made her vows with extraordinary fervour six days before he wrote this letter.

St. Patrick held several councils to settle the discipline of the church which he had planted. The first, the acts of which are extant under his name in the editions of the councils, is certainly genuine. Its canons regulate several points of discipline, especially relating to penance.4 St. Bernard and the tradition of the country testify, that St. Patrick fixed his metropolitan see at Armagh. He established some other bishops, as appears by his council and other monuments. He not only converted the whole country by his preaching and wonderful miracles, but also cultivated this vineyard with so fruitful a benediction and increase from heaven, as to render Ireland a most flourishing garden in the church of God, and a country of saints. And those nations, which had for many ages esteemed all others barbarians, did not blush to receive from the utmost extremity of the uncivilized or barbarous world, their most renowned teachers and guides in the greatest of all sciences, that of the saints.

Many particulars are related of the labours of St. Patrick, which we pass over. In the first year of his mission he attempted to preach Christ in the general assembly of the kings and states of all Ireland, held yearly at Taraghe, or Temoria, in East-Meath, the residence of the chief king, styled the monarch of the whole island, and the principal seat of the Druids or priests, and their paganish rites. The son of Neill, the chief monarch, declared himself against the preacher: however, he converted several, and, on his road to that place, the father of St. Benen, or Benignus, his immediate successor in the see of Armagh. He afterwards converted and baptized the kings of Dublin and Munster, and the seven sons of the king of Connaught, with the greater part of their subjects, and before his death almost the whole island. He founded a monastery at Armagh; another called Domnach-Padraig, or Patrick's church; also a third, named Sabhal-Padraig, and filled the country with churches and schools of piety and learning; the reputatation [sic] of which, for the three succeeding centuries, drew many foreigners into Ireland.5 Nennius, abbot of Bangor, in 620, in his history of the Britons,6 published by the learned Thomas Gale, says, that St. Patrick took that name only when he was ordained bishop, being before called Maun; that he continued his missions over all the provinces of Ireland, during forty years; that he restored sight to many blind, health to the sick, and raised nine dead persons to life.7 He died and was buried at Down, in Ulster. His body was found there in a church of his name in 1185, and translated to another part of the same church. His festival is marked on the 17th of March, in the Martyrology of Bede, &c.

The apostles of nations were all interior men, endowed with a sublime spirit of prayer. The salvation of souls being a supernatural end, the instruments ought to bear a proportion to it, and preaching proceed from a grace which is supernatural. To undertake this holy function, without a competent stock of sacred learning, and without the necessary precautions of human prudence and industry, would be to tempt God. But sanctity of life and the union of the heart with God, are a qualification far more essential than science, eloquence, and human talents. Many almost kill themselves with studying to compose elegant sermons, which flatter the ear yet reap very little fruit. Their hearers applaud their parts, but very few are converted. Most preachers, now-a-days, have learning, but are not sufficiently grounded in true sanctity, and a spirit of devotion. Interior humility, purity of heart, recollection, and the spirit and the assiduous practice of holy prayer, are the principal preparation for the ministry of the word, and the true means of acquiring the science of the saints. A short devout meditation and fervent prayer, which kindle a fire in the affections, furnish more thoughts proper to move the hearts of the hearers, and inspire them with sentiments of true virtue, than many years employed barely in reading and study. St. Patrick, and other apostolic men, were dead to themselves and the world, and animated with the spirit of perfect charity and humility, by which they were prepared by God to be such powerful instruments of his grace, as, by the miraculous change of so many hearts, to plant in entire barbarous nations not only the faith, but also the spirit of Christ. Preachers, who have not attained to a disengagement and purity of heart, suffer the petty interests of self-love secretly to mingle themselves in their zeal and charity, and have reason to suspect that they inflict deeper wounds in their own souls than they are aware, and produce not in others the good which they imagine.

1 According to Usher and Tillemont, in 372. The former places his death in 493; but Tillemont, about the year 455. Nennius, published by Mr. Gale, says he died fifty-seven years before the birth of St. Columba, consequently in 464.

2 St. Prosper, in his chronicle, assures us that Pope Celestine ordained St. Palladius bishop of the Scots in 431, and by him converted their country to the faith; this apostle seems to have preached to this nation first in Ireland, and afterwards in Scotland. Though Palladius be styled by St. Prosper and Bede their first bishop, yet the light of the faith had diffused its rays from Britain into Ireland before that time, as several monuments produced by Usher demonstrate. But the general conversion of the inhabitants of this island was reserved for St. Patrick.
The Scots are distinguished from the native Irish in the works of St. Patrick, and in other ancient monuments. As to their original, the most probable conjecture seems to be, that they were a foreign warlike nation who made a settlement in Ireland before the arrival of St. Patrick. We find them mentioned there in the fourth century. Several colonies of them passed not long after into Scotland. But the inhabitants of Ireland were promiscuously called Scots or Irish for many ages.

3 The style is not polished; but the Latin edition is perhaps, only a translation: or his captivities might have prevented his progress in polite learning being equal to that which he made in the more sublime and more necessary studies.

4 A second council, extant in the same collection, ought rather to be ascribed to a nephew of this saint. Other Irish canons, published in the ninth tome of D'Achery's Spicilege, and more by Martenne, (Anecd. tome 4. part 2.) though they bear the name of St. Patrick, are judged to have been framed by some of his successors. See Wilkins, Conc. Britan. & Hibern. t. 1, p. 3.
The treatise, of the Twelve Abuses, published among the works of St. Austin and St. Cyprian, is attributed to St. Patrick, in a collection of ecclesiastical ordinances made in Ireland, in the eighth age, by Arbedoc, and in other ancient monuments. The style is elegant; but it may be a translation from an Irish original. Sir James Ware published the works of St. Patrick at London, in 1658, in octavo.

5 It seems demonstrated that the St. Patrick who flourished among the hermits of Glastenbury, and was there buried, was distinct from our saint, and somewhat older.

6 C. 55, 56, 57, 58, 61.

7 The popular tradition attributes the exemption of their country from venemous creatures to the benediction of St. Patrick, given by his staff, called the staff of Jesus, which was kept with great veneration in Dublin, as is mentioned in the year 1360, by Ralph Higden, in his Polychronicon, published by Mr. Gale and by others. The isle of Malta is said to derive a like privilege from St. Paul, who was there bitten by a viper.
St. Patrick's purgatory is a cave in an island in the lake Dearg, in the county of Donnegal, near the borders of Fermanagh. Bollandus shows the falsehood of many things related concerning it. Upon complaint of certain superstitious and false notions of the vulgar, in 1497, it was stopped up by an order of the pope. See Bollandus, Tillemont, p. 787, Alemand in his Monastic History of Ireland, and Thiers, Hist. des Superst. t. 4. ed. Nov. It was soon after opened again by the inhabitants; but only according to the original institution, as Bollandus takes notice, as a penitential retirement for those who voluntarily chose it, probably in imitation of St. Patrick, or other saints, who had there dedicated themselves to a penitential state. The penitents usually spend there several days, living on bread and water, lying on rushes or furze, and praying much, with daily stations which they perform barefoot.

St. Julian, of Cilicia

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MARTYR.

From the panegyric of St. Chrysostom, t. 2, p. 671. Ed. Ben. Tillem. t. 5, p. 573.

This saint was a Cilician, of a senatorian family in Anazarbus, and a minister of the gospel. In the persecution of Dioclesian he fell into the hands of a judge, who, by his brutal behaviour, resembled more a wild beast than a man. The president, seeing his constancy proof against the sharpest torments, hoped to overcome him by the long continuance of his martyrdom. He caused him to be brought before his tribunal every day; sometimes he caressed him; at other times threatened him with a thousand tortures. For a whole year together he caused him to be dragged as a malefactor through all the towns of Cilicia, imagining that this shame and confusion might vanquish him: but it served only to increase the martyr's glory, and gave him an opportunity of encouraging in the faith all the Christians of Cilicia by his example and exhortations. He suffered every kind of torture. The bloody executioners had torn his flesh, furrowed his sides, laid his bones bare, and exposed his very bowels to view. Scourges, fire, and the sword, were employed various ways to torment him with the utmost cruelty. The judge saw that to torment him longer was labouring to shake a rock, and was forced at length to own himself conquered by condemning him to death: in which, however, he studied to surpass his former cruelty. He was then at Ægea, a town on the sea-coast; and he caused the martyr to be sewed up in a sack with scorpions, serpents, and vipers, and so thrown into the sea. This was the Roman punishment for parricides, the worst of malefactors, yet seldom executed on them. Eusebius mentions, that St. Ulpian of Tyre suffered a like martyrdom, being thrown into the sea in a leather sack, together with a dog and an aspick. The sea gave back the body of our holy martyr, which the faithful conveyed to Alexandria of Cilicia, and afterwards to Antioch, where Saint Chrysostom pronounced his panegyric before his shrine. He eloquently sets forth how much these sacred relics were honoured; and affirms, that no devil could stand their presence, and that men by them found a remedy for their bodily distempers, and the cure of the evils of the soul.

The martyrs lost with joy their worldly honours, dignity, estates, friends, liberty, and lives, rather than forfeit for one moment their fidelity to God. They courageously bade defiance to pleasures and torments, to prosperity and adversity, to life and death, saying, with the apostle: "Who shall separate us from the love of Jesus Christ?" Crowns, sceptres, worldly riches, and pleasures, you have no charms which shall ever tempt me to depart in the least tittle from the allegiance which I owe to God. Alarming fears of the most dreadful evils, prisons, racks, fire, and death, in every shape of cruelty, you shall never shake my constancy. Nothing shall ever separate ue from the love of Christ. This must be the sincere disposition of every Christian. Lying protestations of fidelity to God cost us nothing: but he sounds the heart. Is our constancy such as to bear evidence to our sincerity, that rather than to fail in the least duty to God we are ready to resist to blood? and that we are always upon our guard to keep our ears shut to the voices of those syrens who never cease to lay snares to our senses?

St. Abraham, Hermit

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AND HIS NIECE, ST. MARY, A PENITENT.

From his life written by his friend, St. Ephrem, Op. t. 2, p. 1. Ed. nov. Vatic. See other acts of St. Abraham, given in Latin by Lipoman, 29 Oct., and by Surius, 16 March, mentioned in Greek by Lambecius, Bibl. Vind. t. 8, p. 255, 260, 266. and by Montfaucon, Bibl. Coislin. p. 211. Two other kinds of Greek Acts are found among the MSS. at the abbey of Saint Germain-des-Prez, at Paris, Bibl. Coisl. ib. See also Jos. Assemani, Bibl. Orient. t. 1, p. 38 and 396, from the Chronicle of Edessa: likewise Kohlius, Introductio in historiam et rem literariam Sclavorum, p. 316. Altonaviæ, A.D. 1729.

About the Year 360.

St. Abraham was born at Chidana, in Mesopotamia, near Edessa, of wealthy and noble parents, who, after giving him a most virtuous education, were desirous of engaging him in the married state. In compliance with their inclinations, Abraham took to wife a pious and noble virgin: but earnestly desiring to live and die in the state of holy virginity, as soon as the marriage ceremony and feast were over, having made known his resolution to his new bride, he secretly withdrew to a cell two miles from the city Edessa; where his friends found him at prayer after a search of seventeen days. By earnest entreaties he obtained their consent, and after their departure walled up the door of his cell leaving only a little window, through which he received what was necessary for his subsistence. He spent his whole time ia adoring and praising God, and imploring his mercy. He every day wept abundantly. He was possessed of no other earthly goods but a cloak and a piece of sackcloth which he wore, and a little vessel out of which he both eat [sic] and drank. For fifty years he was never wearied with his austere penance and holy exercises, and seemed to draw from them every day fresh vigour. Ten years after he had left the world, by the demise of his parents, he inherited their great estates, but commissioned a virtuous friend to distribute the revenues in alms-deeds. Many resorted to him for spiritual advice, whom he exceedingly comforted and edified by his holy discourses.

A large country town in the diocess of Edessa, remained till that time addicted to idolatry, and its inhabitants had loaded with injuries and outrages all the holy monks and others who had attempted to preach the gospel to them. The bishop at length cast his eye on Abraham, ordained him priest though much against his will, and sent him to preach the faith to those obstinate infidels. He wept all the way as he went, and with great earnestness repeated this prayer: "Most merciful God, look down on my weakness : assist me with thy grace, that thy name may be glorified. Despise not the works of thy own hands." At the sight of the town, reeking with the impious rites of idolatry, he redoubled the torrents of his tears: but found the citizens resolutely determined not to hear him speak. Nevertheless, he continued to pray and weep among them without intermission, and though he was often beaten and ill-treated, and thrice banished by them, he always returned with the same zeal. After three years the infidels were overcome by his meekness and patience, and being touched by an extraordinary grace, all demanded baptism. He staid one year longer with them to instruct them in the faith; and on their being supplied with priests and other ministers, he went back to his cell.

His brother dying soon after his return thither, left an only daughter, called Mary, whom the saint undertook to train up in a religious life. For this purpose he placed her in a cell near his own, where, by the help of his instructions, she became eminent for her piety and penance. At the end of twenty years she was unhappily seduced by a wolf in sheep's clothing, a wicked monk; who resorted often to the place under colour of receiving advice from her uncle. Hereupon falling into despair, she went to a distant town, where she gave herself up to the most criminal disorders. The saint ceased not for two years to weep and pray for her conversion. Being then informed where she dwelt, he dressed himself like a citizen of that town, and going to the inn where she lived in the pursuit of her evil courses desired her company with him at supper. When he saw her alone, he took off his cap which disguised him, and with many tears said to her: "Daughter Mary, don't you know me? What is now become of your angelical habit, of your tears and watchings in the divine praises?" &c.

Seeing her struck and filled with horror and confusion, he tenderly encouraged her and comforted her, saying that he would take her sins upon himself if she would faithfully follow his advice, and that his friend Ephrem also prayed and wept for her. She with many tears returned him her most hearty thanks, and promised to obey in all things his injunctions. He set her on his horse, and led the beast himself on foot. In this manner he conducted her back to his desert, and shut her up in a cell behind his own. There she spent the remaining fifteen years of her life in continual tears, and the most perfect practices of penance and other virtues. Almighty God was pleased within three years after her conversion, to favour her with the gift of working miracles by her prayers. And as soon as she was dead, "her countenance appeared to us," says St. Ephrem, "so shining, that we understood that choirs of angels had attended at her passage out of this life into a better." St. Abraham died five years before her: at the news of whose sickness, almost the whole city and country flocked to receive his benediction. When he had expired, every one strove to procure for themselves some part of his clothes, and St. Ephrem, who was an eye-witness, relates, that many sick were cured by the touch of these relics. SS. Abraham and Mary were both dead when St. Ephrem wrote, who died himself in 378.1 St. Abraham is named in the Latin, Greek, and Coptic calendars, and also St. Mary in those of the Greeks.

St. Abraham converted his desert into a paradise, because he found in it his God, whose presence makes Heaven. He wanted not the company of men, who enjoyed that of God and his angels; nor could he ever be at a loss for employment, to whom both the days and nights were two [sic] short for heavenly contemplation. Whilst his body was employed in penitential manual labour, his mind and heart were sweetly taken up in God, who was to him All in All, and the centre of all his desires and affections. His watchings were but an uninterrupted sacrifice of divine love, and by the ardour of his desire, and the disposition of his soul and its virtual tendency to God, his sleep itself was a continuation of his union with God, and exercise of loving him. He could truly say with the spouse, I sleep, but my heart watcheth. Thus Christians, who are placed in distracting stations, may also, if they accustom themselves, converse interiorly with God in purity of heart, and in all their actions and desires have only his will in view. Such a life is a kind of imitation of the Seraphim, to whom to live and to love are one and the same thing. "The angels," says St. Gregory the Great, "always carrry [sic] their Heaven about with them wheresoever they are sent, because they never depart from God, or cease to behold him; ever dwelling in the bosom of his immensity; living and moving in him, and exercising their ministry in the sanctuary of his divinity." This is the happiness of every Christian who makes a desert, by interior solitude, in his own heart.

1 Bollandus, Papebroke, and Pagi pretend that St. Abraham the hermit lived near the Hellespont, and long after St. Ephrem: but are clearly confuted by Jos. Assemani, Bibl. Orient. t. 1. and Com. in Calend. Univ. t. 5, p. 324. ad 29 Oct. The Chronicle of Edessa assures us that he was a native of Chidana, and was living in the year of the Greeks, 667; of Christ, 356.

St. Boniface

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BISHOP OF ROSS, IN SCOTLAND, C.

An ardent zeal for the salvation of souls brought this servant of God from Italy to North-Britain. Near the mouth of the Tees, where he landed, he built a church under the invocation of St. Peter, another at Tellein, three miles from Alect, and a third at Restennet. This last was served by a famous monastery of regular canons of the order of Saint Austin, when religious houses were abolished in Scotland. St. Boniface, by preaching the word of God, reformed the manners of the people in the provinces of Angus, Marris, Buchan, Elgin, Murray, and Ross. Being made bishop in this last county, he filled it with oratories and churches, and by planting the true spirit of Christ in the hearts of many, settled that church in a most flourishing condition. He died about the year 630, and was buried at Rosmark, the capital of the county of Ross. The Breviary of Aberdeen mentions that he founded one hundred and fifty churches and oratories in Scotland, and ascribes many miracles to his intercession after his death. See that Breviary, and King on this day, bishop Lesley, l. 4. Hist. Scot. and Hector Boetius, l. 9. Hist.

St. Gerald, Bishop

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He was an Englishman, who, passing into Ireland, became a monk in the abbey of Megeo, or Mayo, founded by Colman of Lindisfarne, for the English. Gerald was advanced successively to the dignity of abbot and bishop, and founded the abbey of Elytheria, or Tempul-Gerald in Connaught, that of Teagh-na-Saxon, and a nunnery which he put under the care of his sister Segretia. He departed to our Lord in 732, and was buried at Mayo, where a church dedicated to God under his patronage remains to this day. See Colgan.

St. Maximilian, M.

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He was the son of Victor, a Christian soldier in Numidia. According to the law which obliged the sons of soldiers to serve in the army at the age of twenty-one years, his measure was taken, that he might be enrolled in the troops, and he was foand to be of due stature, being five Roman feet and ten inches high,1 that is, about five feet and a half of our measure. But Maximilian refused to receive the mark, which was a print on the hand, and a leaden collar about the neck, on which were engraved the name and motto of the emperor. His plea was, that in the Roman army superstitions, contrary to the Christian faith, were often practised, with which he could not defile his soul. Being condemned by the proconsul to lose his head, he met death with joy in the year 296. See his acts in Ruinart.

1 See Tr. sur la Milice Romaine, t. 1.

St. Sophronius, Patriarch of Jerusalem

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CONFESSOR.

He was a native of Damascus, and made such a progress in learning that he obtained the name of the Sophist. He lived twenty years near Jerusalem, under the direction of John Moschus, an holy hermit, without engaging himself in a religious state. These two great men visited together the monasteries of Egypt, and were detained by St. John the Almoner, at Alexandria, about the year 610, and employed by him two years in extirpating the Eutychians, and in reforming his diocess. John Moschus wrote there his Spiritual Meadow which he dedicated to Sophronius. He made a collection in that book of the edifying examples of virtue which he had seen or heard of among the monks, and died shortly after at Rome. Athanasius, patriarch of the Jacobites or Eutychians, in Syria, acknowledged two distinct natures is Christ, the divine and the human; but allowed only one will. This Demi-Eutychianism was a glaring inconsistency: because the will is the property of the nature. Moreover, Christ sometimes speaks of his human will distinct from the divine, as in his prayer in his agony in the garden. This Monothelite heresy seemed an expedient whereby to compound with the Eutychians. The Emperor Heraclius confirmed it by an edict called Ecthesis, or the Exposition, declaring that there is only one will in Christ, namely, that of the Divine Word: which was condemned by Pope John IV. Cyrus, bishop of Phasis, a virulent Monothelite, was by Heraclius preferred to the patriarchate of Alexandria, in 629. St. Sophronius, falling at his feet conjured him not to publish his erroneous articles; but in vain. He therefore left Egypt, and came to Constantinople, were he found Sergius, the crafty patriarch, sowing the same error in conjunction with Theodorus of Pharan. Hereupon he travelled into Syria, where, in 634, he was, against his will, elected patriarch of Jerusalem.

He was no sooner established in this see, than he assembled a council of all the bishops of his patriarchate, in 634, to condemn the Monothelite heresy, and composed a synodal letter to explain and prove the Catholic faith. This excellent piece was confirmed in the sixth general council. St. Sophronius sent this learned epistle to Pope Honorius and to Sergius. This latter had, by a crafty letter and captious expressions, persuaded Pope Honorius to tolerate a silence as to one or two wills in Christ. It is evident from the most authentic monuments, that Honorius sever assented to that error, but always adhered to the truth.1 However, a silence was ill-timed, and though not so designed, might be deemed by some a kind of connivance; for a rising heresy seeks to carry on its work under ground without noise: it is a fire which spread's itself under cover. Sophronius seeing the emperor and almost all the chief prelates of the East conspire against the truth, thought it his duty to defend it with the greater zeal. He took Stephen, bishop of Doria, the eldest of his suffragans, led him to Mount Calvary, and there abjured him by Him who was crucified on that place, and by the account which he should give him at the last day, "to go to the apostolic see, where are the foundations of the holy doctrine, and not to cease to pray till the holy persons there should examine and condemn the novelty." Stephen did so, and staid at Rome ten years, till he saw it condemned by Pope Martin I. in the council of Lateran, in 649. Sophronius was detained at home by the invasion of the Saracens. Mahomet had broached his impostures at Mecca, in 608, but being rejected there, fled to Medina, in 622. Aboubeker succeeded him in 634, under the title of Caliph, or vicar of the prophet. He died after a reign of two years. Omar, his successor, took Damacus in 636, and after a siege of two years, Jerusalem, in 638. He built a mosque in the place of Solomon's temple, and because it fell in the night, the Jews told him it would not stand unless the cross of Christ, which stood on Mount Calvary, was taken away: which the Caliph caused to be done.2 Sophronius, in a sermon on the exaltation of the cross, mentions the custom of taking the cross out of its case at Mid-Lent to be venerated.3 Photius takes notice that his works breathe an affecting piety, but that the Greek is not pure. They consist of his synodal letter, his letter to Pope Honorius, and a small number of scattered sermons. He deplored the abomination of desolation set up by the Mahometans in the holy place. God called him out of those evils to his kingdom on the llth of March, 639, or as Papebroke thinks,4 in 644. See the council of Lateran, t. 6. Conc. Fleury, b. 37, 38. and Le Quien, Oriens Christ. t. 3, p. 264.

1 See Nat. Alexander, Sæc. 7. Wittasse and Tournely Tr. de Incap.

2 Theophanes, p. 284.

3 In medio jejunii, adorationis gratia, proponi solet vitale lignum venerandæ crucis. Sophr. Serm. in Exalt. Crucis. Bibl. Patr. t. 12, p. 214. et apud Gretser, t. 2, de Cruce, p. 88.

4 Papebr. Tr. prælim. ad t. 3, Maii, n. 144, p. 32.

St. Mackessoge, or Kessoge, C.

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BISHOP IN THE PROVINCES OF LEVIN AND BOIN IN SCOTLAND.

By his instructions and counsels the pious King Congal II. governed with extraordinary prudence, zeal, and sanctity. This saint was illustrious for miracles, and died in 560. A celebrated church in that country still bears the title of Saint Kessoge-Kirk. The Scots for their cry in battle for some time used his name, but afterwards changed it for that of St. Andrew. They sometimes painted St. Kessoge in a soldier's habit, holding a bow bent with an arrow in it. See the Aberdeen Breviary, the chronicle of Pasley, (a great monastery of regular canons in the shire of Renfrew,) Florarium, and Buchanan, l. 5.

St. Catherine of Bologna, Virgin

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ABBESS OF THE POOR CLARES IN THAT CITY.

She was born of noble parentage at Bologna, in 1413. Early ardent sentiments of piety seemed to have prevented in her the use of reason. At twelve years of age she was placed in quality of a young maid of honour in the family of the princess Margaret, daughter to Nicholas of Est, marquis of Ferrara. Two years after, upon the marriage of that princess, she found means to recover her liberty, and entered herself in a community of devout ladies of the Third Order of St Francis, at Ferrara, who soon after formed themselves into a regular monastery, and adopted the austere rule of St. Clare. A new nunnery of Poor Clares being founded at Bologna, St. Catherine was chosen first prioress, and sent thither by Leonarda, abbess of the monastery of Corpus Christi, in which she had made her religious profession at Ferrara. Catherine's incredible zeal and solicitude for the souls of sinners made her pour forth prayers and tears, almost without intermission, for their salvation. She always spoke to God or of God, and bore the most severe interior trials with an heroic patience and cheerfulness. She looked upon it as the greatest honour to be in anything the servant of the spouses of Christ, and desired to be despised by all, and to serve all in the meanest employments. She was favoured with the gifts of miracles and prophecy: but said she had been sometimes deceived by the devil. She died on the 9th of March, 1463, in the fiftieth year of her age. Her body is still entire, and shown in the church of her convent through bars and glass, sitting richly covered, but the hands, face, and feet naked. It was seen and described by Henschenius, Lassels, and other travellers. Her name was inserted in the Roman Martyrology by Clement VIII., in 1592. The solemnity of her canonization was performed by Clement XI., though the bull was only published by Benedict XIII., in 1724.1 A book of her revelations was printed at Bologna, in 1511. She also left notes in her prayer-book of certain singular favours which she had received from God. These revelations were published and received their dress from another hand, which circumstance is often as great a disadvantage in such works as if an illiterate and bold transcriber were to copy, from a single defective manuscript, Lycophron, or some other obscure author, which he did not understand. St. Catherine wrote some treatises in Italian, others in Latin, in which language she was well skilled. The most famous of her works is the book entitled, On the Seven Spiritual Arms. See her life in Bollandus, written by F. Paleotti, fifty years after her death.

1 Bullar. Roman. t. 13, p. 87.

St. Felix, B.C.

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He was a holy Burgundian priest, who converted and baptized Sigebert, prince of the East-Angles, during his exile in France, whither he was forced to retire, to secure himself from the insidious practices of his relations. Sigebert being called home to the crown of his ancestors, invited out of France his spiritual father St. Felix, to assist him in bringing over his idolatrous subjects to the Christian faith; these were the inhabitants of Norfolk, Suffolk, and Cambridgeshire. Our saint being ordained bishop of Honorius, archbishop of Canterbury, and deputed by him to preach to the East-Angles, was surprisingly successful in his undertaking, and made almost a thorough conversion of that country. The most learned and most Christian king, Sigebert, as he is styled by Bede, concurred with him in all things, and founded churches, monasteries, and schools. From those words of Bede, that "he set up a school for youth, in which Felix furnished him with masters," some have called him the founder of the university of Cambridge. St. Felix established schools at Felixtow; Cressy adds at Flixtou or Felixton.

King Sigebert, after two years, resigned his crown to Egric, his cousin, and became a monk at Cnobersburgh, now Burgh-Castle, in Suffolk, which monastery he had founded for St. Fursey. Four years after this, the people dragged him out of his retirement by main force, and conveyed him into the army, to defend them against the cruel King Penda, who had made war upon the East-Angles. He refused to bear arms, as inconsitent [sic] with the monastic profession; and would have nothing but a wand in his hand. Being slain with Egric in 642, he was honoured as a martyr in the English calendars, on the 27th of September, and in the Gallican on the 7th of August. Egric was succeeded by the good King Annas, the father of many saints; as, SS. Erconwald, bishop; Ethelrede, Sexburge, Ethelburge and Edilburge, abbesses; and Withburge. He was slain fighting against the pagans, after a reign of nineteen years, and buried at Blitheburg: his remains were afterwards removed to St. Edmond's-bury. St. Felix established his see at Dummoc, now Dunwich, in Suffolk, and governed it seventeen years, dying in 646. He was buried at Dunwich; but his relics were translated to the abbey of Ramsey, under King Canutus. See Bede, l. 2. Malmesbury; Wharton, t. 1, p. 403.1

1 Dunwich was formerly a large city, with fifty-two religious houses in it, but was gradually swallowed up by the sea. The remains of the steeples are still discoverable, under water, about five miles from the shore. See Mr. Gardiner's History and Antiquities of Dunwich, 4to. in 1754.

SS. Perpetua, and Felicitas, MM.

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WITH THEIR COMPANIONS.

From their most valuable genuine acts, quoted bv Tertullian, l. de anima, c. 55. and by St. Austin, serm. 280, 283, 294. The first part of these acts, which reaches to the eve of her martyrdom, was written by Saint Perpetua. The vision of St. Saturus was added by him. The rest was subjoined by an eye-witness of their death. See Tillemont, t. 3, p. 139. Ceillier, t. 2, p. 213. These acts have been often republished: but are extant, most ample and correct, in Ruinart. They were publicly read in the churches of Africa, as appears from St. Austin. Serm. 180. See them vindicated from the suspicion of Montanism, by Orsi, Vindicæ Act. SS. Perpetuæ et Felicitatis.

A.D. 203.

A violent persecution being set on foot by the emperor Severus, in 202, it reached Africa the following year; when, by order of Minutius Timinianus, (or Firminianus) five catechumens were apprehended at Carthage for the faith: namely Revocatus and his fellow-slave Felicitas, Saturninus, Secundulus, and Viba Perpetua. Felicitas was seven months gone with child; and Perpetua had an infant at her breast, was of a good family, twenty-two years of age, and married to a person of quality in the city. She had a father, a mother, and two brothers; the third, Dinocrates, died about seven years old. These five martyrs were joined by Saturus, probably brother to Saturninus, and who seems to have been their instructor: he underwent a voluntary imprisonment, because he would not abandon them. The father of St. Perpetua, who was a pagan, and advanced in years, loved her more than all his other children. Her mother was probably a Christian, as was one of her brothers, the other a catechumen. The martyrs were for some days before their commitment kept under a strong guard in a private house: and the account Perpetua gives of their sufferings to the eve of their death, is as follows: "We were in the hands of our persecutors, when my father, out of the affection he bore me, made new efforts to shake my resolution. I said to him: 'Can that vessel, which you see, change its name ?' He said: 'No.' I replied: 'Nor can I call myself any other than I am, that is to say a Christian.' At that word my father in a rage fell upon me, as if he would have pulled my eyes out, and beat me: but went away in confusion, seeing me invincible: after this we enjoyed a little repose, and in that interval received baptism. The Holy Ghost, on our coming out of the water, inspired me to pray for nothing but patience under corporal pains. A few days after this we were put into prison: I was shocked at the horror and darkness of the place1 for till then I knew not what such sort of places were.

"We suffered much that day, chiefly on account of the great heat caused by the crowd, and the ill-treatment we met with from the soldiers. I was moreover tortured with concern, for that I had not my infant. But the deacons, Tertius and Pomponius, who assisted us, obtained, by money, that we might pass some hours in a more commodious part of the prison to refresh ourselves. My infant being brought to me almost famished, I gave it the breast. I recommended him afterwards carefully to my mother, and encouraged my brother; but was much afflicted to see their concern for me. After a few days my sorrow was changed into comfort, and my prison itself seemed agreeable. One day my brother said to me: 'Sister, I am persuaded that you are a peculiar favourite of heaven: pray to God to reveal to you whether this imprisonment will end in martyrdom or not, and acquaint me of it.' I, knowing God gave me daily tokens of his goodness, answered full of confidence, I will inform you to-morrow. I therefore asked that favour of God, and had this vision. I saw a golden ladder which reached from earth to the heavens; but so narrow that only one could mount it at a time. To the two sides were fastened all sorts of iron instruments, as swords, lances, hooks, and knives; so that if any one went up carelessly he was in great danger of having his flesh torn by those weapons. At the foot of the ladder lay a dragon of an enormous size, who kept guard to turn back and terrify those who endeavoured to mount it. The first that went up was Saturus, who was not apprehended with us, but voluntarily surrendered himself afterwards on our account: when he was got to the top of the ladder, he turned towards me and said: 'Perpetua, I wait for you; but take care lest the dragon bite you.' I answered: 'In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, he shall not hurt me.' Then the dragon, as if afraid of me, gently lifted his head from under the ladder, and I, having got upon the first step, set my foot upon his head. Thus I mounted to the top, and there I saw a garden of an immense space, and in the middle of it a tall man sitting down dressed like a shepherd, having white hair. He was milking his sheep, surrounded with many thousands of persons clad in white. He called me by my name, bid me welcome, and gave me some curds made of the milk which he had drawn: I put my hands together and took and eat them; and all that were present said aloud Amen. The noise awaked me, chewing something very sweet. As soon as I had related to my brother this vision, we both concluded that we should suffer death.

"After some days, a rumour, being spread that we were to be examined, my father came from the city to the prison overwhelmed with grief: 'Daughter,' said he, 'have pity on my gray hairs, have compassion on your father, if I yet deserve to be called your father; if I myself have brought you up to this age: if you consider that my extreme love of you, made me always prefer you to all your brothers, make me not a reproach to mankind. Have respect for your mother and your aunt; have compassion on your child that cannot survive you; lay aside this resolution, this obstinacy, lest you ruin us all: for not one of us will dare open his lips any more if any misfortune befall you.' He took me by the hands at the same time and kissed them; he threw himself at my feet in tears, and called me no longer daughter, but, my lady. I confess, I was pierced with sharp sorrow when I considered that my father was the only person of our family that would not rejoice at my martyrdom. I endeavoured to comfort him, saying: 'Father, grieve not; nothing will happen but what pleases God; for we are not at our own disposal.' He then departed very much concerned. The next day, whilst we were at dinner, a person came all on a sudden to summon us to examination. The report of this was soon spread, and brought together a vast crowd of people into the audience chamber. We were placed on a sort of scaffold before the judge, who was Hilarian, procurator of the province, the proconsul being lately dead. All who were interrogated before me confessed boldly Jesus Christ. When it came to my turn, my father instantly appeared with my infant. He drew me a little aside, conjuring me in the most tender manner not to be insensible to the misery I should bring on that innocent creature to which I had given life. The president Hilarian joined with my father and said: 'What! will neither the gray hairs of a father you are going to make miserable, nor the tender innocence of a child, which your death will leave an orphan, move you? Sacrifice for the prosperity of the emperors.' I replied, 'I will not do it.' 'Are you then a Christian?' said Hilarian. I answered: 'Yes, I am.' As my father attempted to draw me from the scaffold, Hilarian commanded him to be beaten off, and he had a blow given him with a stick, which I felt as much as if I had been struck myself, so much was I grieved to see my father thus treated in his old age. Then the judge pronounced our sentence, by which we were all condemned to he exposed to wild beasts. We then joyfully returned to our prison; and as my infant had been used to the breast, I immediately sent Pomponius, the deacon, to demand him of my father, who refused to send him. And God so ordered it that the child no longer required to suck, nor did my milk incommode me." Secundulus, being no more mentioned, seems to have died in prison before this interrogatory. Before Hilarian pronounced sentence he had caused Saturus, Saturninus, and Revocatus to be scourged; and Perpetua and Felicitas to be beaten on the face. They were reserved for the shows which were to be exhibited for the soldiers in the camp, on the festival of Geta, who had been made Cæsar four years before by his father Severus, when his brother Caracalla was created Augustus.

St. Perpetua relates another vision with which she was favoured, as follows; "A few days after receiving sentence, when we were altogether in prayer, I happened to name Dinocrates, at which I was astonished, because I had not before had him in my thoughts; and I that moment knew that I ought to pray for him. This I began to do with great fervour and sighing before God; and the same night I had the following vision: I saw Dinocrates coming out of a dark place, where there were many others, exceedingly hot and thirsty; his face was dirty, his complexion pale, with the ulcer in his face of which he died at seven years of age, and it was for him that I had prayed. There seemed a great distance between him and me, so that it was impossible for us to come to each other. Near him stood a vessel full of water, whose brim was higher than the statue of an infant: he attempted to drink, but though he had water he could not reach it. This mightily grieved me, and I awoke. By this I knew my brother was in pain, but I trusted I could by prayer relieve him: so I began to pray for him, beseeching God with tears, day and night, that he would grant me my request; as I continued to do till we were removed to the camp prison: being destined for a public show on the festival of Cæsar Geta. The day we were in the stocks2 I had this vision: I saw the place which I had beheld dark before, now luminous; and Dinocrates, with his body very clean and well clad, refreshing himself, and instead of his wound a scar only. I awaked, and I knew he was relieved from his pain.3

"Some days after, Pudens the officer, who commanded the guards of the prison, seeing that God favoured us with many gifts, had a great esteem of us, and admitted many people to visit us for our mutual comfort. On the day of the public shows my father came to find me out, overwhelmed with sorrow. He tore his beard, he threw himself prostrate on the ground, cursed his years, and said enough to move any creature; and I was ready to die with sorrow to see my father in so deplorable a condition. On the eve of the shows I was favoured with the following vision. The deacon Pomponius, methought, knocked very hard at the prison-door, which I opened to him. He was clothed with a white robe, embroidered with innumerable promegranates of gold. He said to me: 'Perpetua, we wait for you, come along.' He then took me by the hand and led me through very rough places into the middle of the amphitheatre, and said: 'Fear not.' And, leaving me, said again: 'I will be with you in a moment, and bear a part with you in your pains.' I was wondering the beasts were not let out against us, when there appeared a very ill-favoured Egyptian, who came to encounter me with others. But another beautiful troop of young men declared for me, and anointed me with oil for the combat. Then appeared a man of a prodigious stature, in rich apparel, having a wand in his hand like the masters of the gladiators, and a green bough on which hung golden apples. Having ordered silence, he said that the bough should be my prize, if I vanquished the Egyptian: but that if he conquered me, he should kill me with a sword. After a long and obstinate engagement, I threw him on his face, and trod upon his head. The people applauded my victory with loud acclamations. I then approached the master of the amphitheatre, who gave me the bough with a kiss, and said: 'Peace be with you, my daughter.' After this I awoke, and found that I was not so much to combat with wild beasts as with the devils." Here ends the relation of St. Perpetua.

St. Saturus had also a vision which he wrote himself. He and his companions were conducted by a bright angel into a most delightful garden, in which they met some holy martyrs, lately dead, named Jocundus, Saturninus, and Artaxius, who had been burned alive for the faith, and Quintus, who died in prison. They inquired after other martyrs of their acquaintance, say the acts, and were conducted into a most stately palace, shining like the sun: and in it saw the king of this most glorious place surrounded by his happy subjects, and heard a voice composed of many, which continually cried, "Holy, holy, holy!" Saturus, turning to Perpetua, said, "You have here what you desired." She replied, "God be praised, I have more joy here than ever I had in the flesh." He adds, "Going out of the garden they found before the gate, on the right hand, their bishop of Carthage, Optatus, and on the left, Aspasius, priest of the same church, both of them alone and sorrowful. They fell at the martyrs' feet, and begged they would reconcile them together, for a dissension had happened between them. The martyrs embraced them, saying: "Are not you our bishop, and you a priest of our Lord? It is our duty to prostrate ourselves before you." Perpetua was discoursing with them; but certain angels came and drove hence Optatus and Aspasius; and bade them not to disturb the martyrs, but be reconciled to each other. The bishop Optatus was also charged to heal the divisions that reigned among several of his church. The angels, after these reprimands, seemed ready to shut the gates of the garden. "Here," says he, "we saw many of our brethren and martyrs likewise. We were fed with an ineffable odour, which delighted and satisfied us." Such was the vision of Saturus. The rest of the acts were added by an eye-witness. God had called to himself Secondulus in prison. Felicitas was eight months gone with child, and as the day of the shows approached she was inconsolable lest she should not be brought to bed before it came; fearing that her martyrdom would be deferred on that account, because women with child were not allowed to be executed before they were delivered: the rest also were sensibly afflicted on their part to leave her alone in the road to their common hope. Wherefore they unanimously joined in prayer to obtain of God that she might be delivered against the shows. Scarcely had they finished their prayer, when Felicitas found herself in labour. She cried out under the violence of her pain: one of the guards asked her, if she could not bear the throes of child-birth without crying out, what she would do when exposed to the wild beasts? She answered: "It is I who suffer what I now suffer; but then there will be anether in me that will suffer for me, because I shall suffer for him." She was then delivered of a daughter, which a certain Christian woman took care of, and brought up as her own child. The tribune, who had the holy martyrs in custody, being informed by some persons of little credit, that the Christians would free themselves out of prison by some magic enchantments, used them the more cruelly on that account, and forbade any to see them. Thereupon Perpetua said to him: "Why do you not afford us some relief, since we are condemned by Cæsar, and destined to combat at his festival? Will it not be to your honor that we appear well fed?" At this the tribune trembled and blushed, and ordered them to be used with more humanity, and their friends to be admitted to see them. Pudens, the keeper of the prison, being already converted, secretly did them all the good offices in his power.

The day before they suffered they gave them, according to custom, their last meal, which was called a free supper, and they eat in public. But the martyrs did their utmost to change it into an Agape, or Love-feast. Their chamber was full of people, whom they talked to with their usual resolution, threatened them with the judgments of God, and extolling the happiness of their own sufferings. Saturus, smiling at the curiosity of those who came to see them, said to them: "Will not to-morrow suffice to satisfy your inhuman curiosity in our regard? However you may seem now to pity us, to-morrow you will clap your hands at our death, and applaud our murderers. But observe well our faces, that you may know them again at that terrible day when all men shall be judged." They spoke with such courage and intrepidity, as astonished the infidels, and occasioned the conversion of several among them.

The day of their triumph being come, they went out of the prison to go to the amphitheatre. Joy sparkled in their eyes, and appeared in all their gestures and words. Perpetua walked with a composed countenance and easy pace, as a woman cherished by Jesus Christ, with her eyes modestly cast down: Felicitas went with her, following the men, not able to contain her joy. When they came to the gate of the amphitheatre the guards would have given them, according to custom the superstitious habits with which they adorned such as appeared at these sights.—For the men, a red mantle, which was the habit of the priest of Saturn: for the women, a little fillet round the head, by which the priestesses of Ceres were known. The martyrs rejected those idolatrous ceremonies; and by the mouth of Perpetua, said, they came thither of their own accord on the promise made them that they should not be forced to anything contrary to their religion. The tribune then consented that they might appear in the amphitheatre habited as they were. Perpetua sung, as being already victorious; Revocatus, Saturninus, and Saturus threatened the people that beheld them with the judgments of Gcd: and as they passed over against the balcony of Hilarian, they said to him: "You judge us in this world, but God will judge you in the next."

The people enraged at their boldness, begged they might be scourged, which was granted. They accordingly passed before the Venatores,4 or hunters, each of whom gave them a lash. They rejoiced exceedingly in being thought worthy to resemble our Saviour in his sufferings. God granted to each uf them the death they desired; for when they were discoursing together about what kind of martyrdom would be agreeable to each, Saturninus declared that he would choose to be exposed to beasts of several sorts in order to the aggravation of his sufferings. Accordingly he and Revocatus, after having been attacked by a leopard, were also assaulted by a bear. Saturus dreaded nothing so much as a bear, and therefore hoped a leopard would despatch him at once with his teeth. He was then exposed to a wild boar, but the beast turned upon his keeper, who received such a wound from him that he died in a few days after, and Saturus was only dragged along by him. Then they tied the martyr to the bridge near a bear, but that beast came not out of his lodge, so that Saturus, being sound and not hurt, was called upon for a second encounter. This gave him an opportunity of speaking to Pudens, the jailor who had been converted. The martyr encouraged him to constancy in the faith, and said to him: "You see I have not yet been hurt by any beast, as I desired and foretold; believe then stedfastly in Christ; I am going where you will see a leopard with one bite take away my life." It happened so, for a leopard being let out upon him covered him all over with blood, whereupon the people jeering, cried out, "He is well baptized." The martyr said to Pudens, "Go, remember my faith, and let our sufferings rather strengthen than trouble you. Give me the ring you have on your finger." Saturus, having dipt it in his wound, gave it him back to keep as a pledge to animate him to a constancy in his faith, and fell down dead soon after. Thus he went first to glory to wait for Perpetua, according to her vision. Some with Mabillon,5 think this Pudens is the martyr honoured in Africa, on the 29th of April.

In the mean time, Perpetua and Felicitas had been exposed to a wild cow; Perpetua was first attacked, and the cow having tossed her up, she fell on her back. Then putting herself in a sitting posture, and perceiving her clothes were torn, she gathered them about her in the best manner she could to cover herself, thinking more of decency than her sufferings. Getting up, not to seem disconsolate, she tied up her hair, which was fallen loose, and perceiving Felicitas on the ground much hurt by a toss of the cow, she helped her to rise. They stood together, expecting another assault from the beasts, but the people crying out that it was enough, they were led to the gate Sanevivaria, where those that were not killed by the beasts were despatched at the end of the shows by the confectores. Perpetua was here received by Rusticus, a catechumen, who attended her. This admirable woman seemed just returning to herself out of a long ecstasy, and asked when she was to fight the wild cow. Being told what had passed, she could not believe it till she saw on her body and clothes the marks of what she had suffered, and knew the catechumen. With regard to this circumstance of her acts, St. Austin cries out, "Where was she when assaulted and torn by so furious a wild beast, without feeling her wounds, and when after that furious combat, she asked when it would begin? What did she, not to see what all the world saw? What did she enjoy who did not feel such pain? By what love, by what vision, by what potion was she so transported out of herself, and as it were divinely inebriated, to seem without feeling in a mortal body?" She called for her brother, and said to him and Rusticus: "Continue firm in the faith, love one another, and be not scandalized at our sufferings." All the martyrs were now brought to the place of their butchery. But the people not yet satisfied with beholding blood, cried out to have them brought into the middle of the amphitheatre, that they might have the pleasure of seeing them receive the last blow. Upon this, some of the martyrs rose up, and having given one another the kiss of peace, went of their own accord into the middle of the arena; others were despatched without speaking, or stirring out of the place they were in. St. Perpetua fell into the hands of a very timorous and unskilful apprentice of the gladiators, who, with a trembling hand, gave her many slight wounds, which made her languish a long time. Thus, says St.Austin, did two women, amidst fierce beasts and the swords of gladiators, vanquish the devil and all his fury. They day [sic] of their martyrdom was the 7th of March, as it is marked in the most ancient martyrologies, and in the Roman calendar as old as the year 354, published by Bucherius. St. Prosper says they suffered at Carthage, which agrees with all the circumstances. Their bodies were in the great church of Carthage, in the fifth age, as St. Victor6 informs us. St. Austin says, their festival drew yearly more to honour their memory in their church, than curiosity had done to their martyrdom. They are mentioned in the canon of the mass.

1 The prisons of the ancient Romans, still to be seen in many old amphitheatres, &c. are dismal holes; having at most one very small aperture for light, just enough to show day.

2 These stocks, called Nervus, were a wooden machine with many holes, in which the prisoners' feet were fastened and stretched to great distances, as to the fourth or fifth holes, for the increase of their torment. St. Perpetua remarks, they were chained, and also set in this engine during their stay in the camp-prison, which seems to have been several days, in expectation of the day of the public shows.

3 By the conclusions which St. Perpetua was led to make from her two visions, it evidently appears that the church, in that early age, believed the doctrine of the expiation of certain sins after death, and prayed for the faithful departed. This must be allowed, even though it should be pretended that her visions were not from God. But neither St. Austin, nor any other ancient father, ever entertained the least suspicion on that head. Nor can we presume that the goodness of God would permit one full of such ardent love of him to be imposed upon in a point of this nature. The Oxonian editor of these acts knew not what other answer to make to this ancient testimony, than that St. Perpetua seems to have been a Montanist. (p. 14.) But this unjust censure Dodwell (Diss. Cypr. A. n. 8, p. 15.) and others have confuted. And could St. Austin, with the whole Catholic church, have ranked a Montanist among the most illustrious martyrs? That father himself, in many places of his works, clearly explains the same doctrine of the Catholic faith, concerning a state of temporary sufferings in the other world, and conformably to it speaks of these visions. (L. de Orig. Animæ, l. 1, c. 10, p. 343. & l. 4, c. 18, p. 401, t. 10. &c.) He says, that Dinocrates must have received baptism, but afterwards sinned, perhaps by having been seduced by his pagan father into some act of superstition, or by lying, or by some other faults of which children in that tender age may be guilty. Illius ætatis pueri et mentiri et verum loqui, et confiteri et negare jam possunt. Lib. 1, c. 10. See Orsi, Diss. de Actis SS. Perpetuæ et Felicitatis. Florentiæ, 1738, 4to.

4 Pro ordine venatorum. Venatores, is the name given to those that were armed to encounter the beasts, who put themselves in ranks, with whips in their hands, and each of them gave a lash to the Bestiarii, or those condemned to the beasts, whom they obliged to pass naked before them in tht middle of the pit or arena.

5 Analect. t. 3, p. 403.

6 Victor. l. 1, p. 4.

St. Chrodegang, Bishop of Metz

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CONFESSOR.

From Paul the Deacon, l. 2. de Gest. Longob. c. 16. Henschenius, p. 453. Mahill. Annal. Hen. l. 22, t. 2. & Act SS. Ord. Ben. t. 4, p. 184. Ceillier, t. 18, p. 176. His life, published by George Von. Eckart, Hist. Franciæ Orient. t. 1, p. 912. Also Meurisse, Hist. des Evêques de Metz, l. 2.

A.D. 766.

This saint, nobly born in Brabant, then called Hasbain, was educated in the abbey of St. Tron, and for his great learning and virtue was made referendary, chancellor of France, and prime minister, by Charles Martel, mayor of the French palace, in 737. He was always meanly clad from his youth; he macerated his body by fasting, watching, and hair-cloths, and allowed his senses no superfluous gratifications of any kind. His charity to all in distress seemed to know no bounds; he supported an incredible number of poor, and was the protector and father of orphans aud widows. Soon after the death of Charles Martel, he was chosen bishop of Metz, in 742. Prince Pepin, the son and successor of Charles, uncle to our saint by his mother, Landrada, would not consent to his being ordained, but on the condition that he should still continue at the helm of the state. Chrodegang always retained the same sweetness, humility, recollection, and simplicity in his behaviour and dress. He constantly wore a rough hair-shirt under his clothes, spent great part [sic] of the night in watching, and usually at his devotions watered his cheeks with tears. Pope Stephen III. being oppressed by the Lombards, took refuge in France. Chrodegang went to conduct him over the Alps, and King Pepin was no sooner informed that he had passed these mountains in his way to France, but he sent Charles his eldest son, to accompany him to Pont-yon, in Champagne, where the king was to receive him. The pope being three miles distant from that city, the king came to meet him, and having joined him alighted from his horse, and prostrated himself, as did the queen, his children, and the lords of his court; and the king walked some time by the side of his horse to do him honour. The pope retired to the monastery of St. Denys; and King Pepin, in the year 754, sent St. Chrodegang on an embassy to Astulph, king of the Lombards, praying him out of respect to the holy apostles not to commit any hostilities against Rome, nor to oblige the Romans to superstitions contrary to their laws, and to restore the towns which he had taken from the holy see; but this embassy was without effect. The saint, in 755, converted the chapter of secular canons of his cathedral into a regular community, in which he was imitated by many other churches. He composed for his regular canons a rule, consisting of thirty-four articles. In the first he lays down humility for the foundation of all the rest.1 He obliged the canons to confess at least twice a year to the bishop, before the beginning of Advent and Lent.2 But these churches, even that of Metz, have again secularized themselves. The saint built and endowed the monasteries of St. Peter, that of Gorze, and a third in the diocess of Worms, called Lorsh or Laurisham. He died on the 6th of March, in 766, and was buried at Gorze, to which by his will, which is still extant, he demised several estates. He is named in the French, German, and Belgic Martyrologies.

The zeal of St. Chrodegang in restoring the primitive and apostolic spirit in the clergy, particularly their fervour and devotion in the ministry of the altar, is the best proof of his ardour to advance the divine honour. To pay to Almighty God the public homage of praise and love, in the name of the whole church, is a function truly angelical. Those, who by the divine appointment are honoured with this sublime charge resemble those glorious heavenly spirits who always assist before the throne of God. What ought to be the sanctity of their lives! how pure their affections, how perfectly disengaged from all inordinate attachments to creatures, particularly how free from the least filth of avarice, and every other vice! All Christians have a part in this heavenly function.

1 Ch. 14.

2 See the other regulations abridged in Fleury, &c. the entire rule published genuine in Le Cointe's Annals, t. 5. and in the later editions of the councils.

St. Roger, C.

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A disciple of St. Francis of Assisio, who received him into his Order in 1216, and sent him into Spain, though Wading calls him a layman. The spirit of poverty which he professed, he inherited of his holy father in the most perfect degree, and St. Francis commended his charity above all his other disciples. The gifts of prophecy and miracles rendered him illustrious both living and after his death, which happened in 1236. His head is kept at Villa Franca, in the diocess of Asturia, and his body at Todi in Italy, where he is honoured with a particular office ratified by Gregory IX. See Wading's Annals, published by Fonseca, at Rome, in 1732. t. 2, p. 413, 414. also Henschenius, p. 418. Pope Benedict XIV. granted to the Franciscans for his festival the 5th of March.

St. Casimir, Prince of Poland

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From his life compiled by Zachary Ferrier, legate of Leo X., in Poland, thirty-six years after his death; and an authentic relation of his miracles, with many circumstances of his life, by Gregory Swiecicki, canon of Vilna; also the Commentary of Henschenius, p. 337.

A.D. 1483.

St. Casimir was the third among the thirteen children of Casimer III., king of Poland, and of Elizabeth of Austria, daughter to the emperor Albert II., a most virtuous woman, who died in 1506. He wae born in 1458, on the 5th of October. From his childhood he was remarkably pious and devout. His preceptor was John Dugloss, called Longinus, canon of Cracow, a man of extraordinary learning and piety, who constantly refused all bishoprics, and other dignities of the church and state, which were pressed upon him. Uladislas, the eldest son, was elected king of Bohemia, in 1471, and became king of Hungary in 1490. Our saint was the second son: John Albert, the third son, succeeded the father in the kingdom of Poland in 1492; and Alexander, the fourth son, was called to the same in 1501. Casimir and the other princes were so affectionately attached to the holy man who was their preceptor, that they could not bear to be separated from him. But Casimir profited most by his pious maxims and example. He consecrated the flower of his age to the exercises of devotion and penance, and had a horror of that softness and magnificence which reign in courts. His clothes were very plain, and under them he wore a hair shirt. His bed was frequently the ground, and he spent a considerable part of the night in prayer and meditation, chiefly on the passion of our Saviour. He often went out in the night to pray before the church-doors, and in the morning waited before them till they were opened to assist at matins. By living always under a sense of the divine presence he remained perpetually united to, and absorbed in, his Creator, maintained an uninterrupted cheerfulness of temper, and was mild and affable to all. He respected the least ceremonies of the church: everything that tended to promote piety was dear to him. He was particularly devout to the passion of our blessed Saviour, the very thought of which excited him to tears, and threw him into transports of love. He was no less piously affected towards the sacrifice of the altar, at which he always assisted with such reverence and attention that he seemed in raptures. And as a mark of his singular devotion to the Blessed Virgin, he composed, or at least frequently recited, the long hymn that bears his name, a copy of which was, by his desire, buried with him. His love for Jesus Christ showed itself in his regard for the poor, who are his members, to whose relief he applied whatever he had, and employed his credit with his father, and his brother Uladislas, king of Bohemia, to procure them succour. His compassion made him feel in himself the afflictions of every one.

The Palatines and other nobles of Hungary, dissatisfied with Matthias Corvin, their king, son of the great Huniados, begged the king of Poland to allow them to place his son Casimir on the throne. The saint, not then quite fifteen years of age, was very unwilling to consent; but in compliance with his father's will he went, at the head of an army of twenty thousand men, to the frontiers in 1471. There hearing that Matthias had formed an army of sixteen thousand men to defend him, and that all differences were accommodated between him and his people, and that Pope Sixtus IV. had sent an embassy to divert his father from that expedition, he joyfully returned, having with difficulty obtained his father's consent so to do. However, as his dropping this project was disagreeable to the king his father, not to increase his affliction by appearing before him, he did not go directly to Cracow, but retired to the castle of Dobzki, three miles from that city, where he continued three months in the practice of penance. Having learned the injustice of the attempt against the king of Hungary, in which obedience to his father's command prevailed upon him to embark when he was very young, he could never be engaged to resume it by a fresh pressing invitation of the Hungarians, or the iterated orders and entreaties of his father. The twelve years he lived after this he spent in sanctifying himself in the same manner as he had done before.

He observed to the last an untainted chastity, notwithstanding the advice of physicians who excited him to marry, imagining, upon some false principle, this to be a means necessary to preserve his life. Being wasted with a lingering consumption, he foretold his last hour, and having prepared himself for it by redoubling his exercises of piety, and receiving the sacraments of the church, he made a happy end at Vilna, the capital of Lithuania, on the 4th of March, 1482, being twenty-three years and five months old. He was buried in the church of St. Stanislaus. So many were the miracles wrought by his intercession, that Swiecicki, a canon of Vilna, wrote a whole volume of them from good memoirs, in 1604. He was canonized by Pope Leo X. whose legate in Poland, Zachary Ferrier, wrote the saint's life. His body and all the rich stuffs it was wrapped in, were found quite entire, and exhaling a sweet smell, one hundred and twenty years after his death, notwithstanding the excessive moisture of the vault. It is honoured in a large rich chapel of marble, built on purpose in that church. St. Casimir is the patron of Poland, and several other places, and is proposed to youth as a particular pattern of purity. His original picture is to be seen in his chapel in St. German des Prez in Paris, built by John Casimir, King of Poland, the last of the family of Waza, who, renouncing his crown, retired to Paris, and died abbot of St. Germain's, in 1668.

What is there on earth which can engage the affections of a Christian, or be the object of his ambition, in whose soul God desires to establish his kingdom? Whoever has conceived a just idea of this immense happiness and dignity, must look upon all the glittering baubles of this world as empty and vain, and consider everything in this life barely as it can advance or hinder the great object of all his desires. Few arrive at this happy and glorious state, because scarcely any one seeks it with his whole heart, and has the courage sincerely to renounce all things and die to himself: and this precious jewel cannot be purchased upon any other terms. The kingdom of God can only be planted in a soul upon the ruins of self-love: so long as this reigns, it raises insuperable obstacles to the perfect establishment of the empire of divine love. The amiable Jesus lives in all souls which he animates by his sanctifying grace, and the Holy Ghost dwells in all such. But in most of these how many worldly maxims and inclinations diametrically opposite to those of our most holy heavenly king, hold their full sway? how many secret disorders and irregular attachments are cherished? how much is found of self love, with which sometimes their spiritual exercises themselves are infected?

The sovereign king of men and their merciful Redeemer is properly said to reign only in those souls which study effectually, and without reserve, to destroy in their affections whatever is opposite to his divine will, to subdue all their passions, and to subject all their powers to his holy love. Such fall not into any venial sins with full deliberation, and wipe away those of frailty into which they are betrayed, by the compunction and penance in which they constantly live and by the constant attention with which they watch daily over themselves. They pray with the utmost earnestness that God may deliver them from all the power of the enemy, and establish in all their affections the perfect empire of his grace and love; and to fulfil his will in the most perfect manner in all their actions, is their most earnest desire and hearty endeavour. How bountifully does God reward, even in this life, those who are thus liberal towards him! St. Casimir, who had tasted of this happiness, and learned truly to value the heavenly grace, loathed all earthly pomp and delights. With what joy ought not all Christians, both rich and poor, to be filled when they hear: The kingdom of God is with you ! With what ardour ought they not to devote themselves to make God reign perfectly in their hearts! How justly did St. Casimir prefer this pursuit to all earthly kingdoms!

St. Cunegundes, Empress

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From her life, written by a canon of Bamberg, about the year 1152: also the Dissertation of Henschenius, p. 267.

A.D. 1040.

St. Cunegundes was the daughter of Sigefride, the first count of Luxemburgh, and Hadeswige his pious wife. They instilled into her from her cradle the most tender sentiments of piety, and married her to St. Henry, duke of Bavaria, who, upon the death of the emperor Otho III. was chosen king of the Romans and crowned at Mentz on the 6th of June, 1002. She was crowned at Paderborn on St. Laurence's day, on which occasion she made great presents to the churches of that city. In the year 1014 she went with her husband to Rome, and received the imperial crown with him from the hands of Pope Benedict VIII. She had, by St. Henry's consent before her marriage, made a vow of virginity. Calumniators afterwards accused her to him of freedoms with other men. The holy empress, to remove the scandal of such a slander, trusting in God the protector of innocence, in proof of hers, walked over red hot plough-shares without being hurt. The emperor condemned his too scrupulous fears and credulity, and made her ample amends. They lived from that time in the strictest union of hearts, conspiring to promote in everything God's honour, and the advancement of piety.

Going once to make a retreat in Hesse, she fell dangerously ill, and made a vow to found a monastery, if she recovered, in a place then called Capungen, now Kaffungen, near Cassel, in the diocess of Paderhorn, which she executed in a stately manner, and gave it to nuns of the Order of St. Benedict. Before it was finished St. Henry died, in 1024. She earnestly recommended his soul to the prayers of others, especially to her dear nuns, and expressed her longing desire of joining them. She had already exhausted her treasures and her patrimony in founding bishoprics and monasteries, and in relieving the poor. Whatever was rich or magnificent she thought hetter suited churches than her palace. She had therefore little now left to give. But still thirsting to embrace perfect evangelical poverty, and to renounce all to serve God without obstacle, on the anniversary day of her husband's death, 1025, she assembled a great number of prelates to the dedication of her church of Kaffungen; and after the gospel was sung at mass, offered on the altar a piece of the true cross, and then put off her imperial robes, and clothed herself with a poor habit: her hair was cut off, and the bishop put on her a veil, and a ring as the pledge of her fidelity to her heavenly spouse. After she was consecrated to God in religion, she seemed entirely to forget that she had been empress, and behaved as the last in the house, being persuaded that she was so before God. She feared nothing more than whatever could bring to her mind the remembrance of her former dignity. She prayed and read much, worked with her hands, abhorred the least appearance of worldly nicety, and took a singular pleasure in visiting and comforting the sick. Thus she passed the fifteen last years of her life, never suffering the least preference to be given her above any one in the community. Her mortifications at length reduced her to a very weak condition, and brought on her last sickness. Her monastery and the whole city of Cassel were grievously afflicted at the thought of their approaching loss: she alone appeared without concern, lying on a coarse hair-cloth, ready to give up the ghost, whilst the prayers of the agonizing were read by her side. Perceiving they were preparing a cloth fringed with gold to cover her corpse after her death, she changed colour and ordered it to be taken away; nor could she be at rest till she was promised she should be buried as a poor religious in her habit. She died on the 3rd of March, 1040. Her body was carried to Bamberg, and buried near that of her husband. The greater part of her relics still remain in the same church. She was solemnly canonized by Innocent III. in 1200. The author of her life relates many miracles wrought at her tomb, or by the intercession of this holy virgin and widow.

Few arrive at any degree of perfection amongst those who aspire after virtue, because many behave as if they placed it barely in multiplying exercises of piety and good works. This costs little to self-love, which it rather feeds by entertaining a secret vanity, or self-complacency, in those who are not very careful in watching over their hearts. It is a common thing to see persons who have passed forty or fifty years in the constant practice of penance and all religious exercises, and the use of the most holy sacraments, still subject to habitual imperfections, and venial disorders, incompatible with a state of sanctity or perfection. They give marks of sudden resentment, if they happen to be rebuked or despised: are greedy of the esteem of others, take a secret satisfaction in applause, love too much their own ease and conveniences, and seek those things which flatter self-love. How much are these souls their own enemies by not giving themselves to God without reserve, and taking a firm resolution to labour diligently in watching over themselves, and cutting off all irregular attachments, and purifying their hearts! The neglect of this fosters many habitual little disorders and venial sins, which incredibly obstruct the work of our sanctification, and the advancement of the kingdom of divine grace in our souls. These little enemies wilfully caressed, weaken our good desires, defile even our spiritual actions with a thousand imperfections, and stop the abundant effusion with which the Holy Ghost is infinitely desirous to communicate himself to our souls, and to fill them with his light, grace, peace, and holy joy. The saints, by the victory over themselves, and by making it their principal study to live in the most perfect disengagement and purity of heart, offered to God, even in their smallest actions, pure and full sacrifices of love, praise, and obedience. If we desire to cultivate this purity of heart, we must carefully endeavour to discover the imperfections and disorders of our souls, especially such as are habitual, and strenuously labour to root them out. Secondly, we must keep our senses under a strict guard, and accustom them to restraint by frequent denials. Thirdly, we must live as much as may be in a habit of recollection, and the practice of the divine presence, and, after any dissipating affairs, return eagerly to close retirement for some short time. Fourthly, we must, with perfect simplicity, lay open our whole interior to our spiritual director, and be most solicitous to do this, with particular candour and courage, in things in which we are tempted to use any kind of duplicity or dissimulation. Lastly, we must propose to ourselves, in all our thoughts and actions, the most perfect accomplishment of the will of God, and study to square our whole lives hy this great rule, watching in all we do with particular care against motives of vanity, pride, sensuality, interest, and aversions, the great enemies to purity of intention.

St. Marnan, B.C.

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To his holy prayers Aidan, king of the Scots, ascribed a wonderful victory which he gained over Ethelfrid, the pagan king of the Northumbrian English; and by his councils Eugenius IV. who succeeded his father Aidan in the kingdom soon after this battle, treated all the prisoners with the utmost humanity and generosity, by which they were gained to the Christian faith. The Northumbrian princes, Oswald and Oswi, were instructed in our holy religion, and grounded in its spirit by St. Marnan, who died in Annandale, in the year 620. His head was kept with singular devotion at Moravia, and was carried in processions attended by the whole clan of the Innis's, which from the earliest times was much devoted to this saint. See the Breviary of Aberdeen, Buchanan, 1. 5. in Aidano et Eugenio Regibus, and MS. Memoirs in the Scottish college at Paris. St. Marnan is titular saint of the church of Aberkerdure upon the river Duvern, formerly much frequented out of devotion to his relics kept there.

St. David, Archbishop

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PATRON OF WALES.

See his life by Giraldus Cambrensis, in Wharton's Anglia Sacra, t. 2. also Doctor Brown Willis, and Wilkins, Conc. Britan. & Hibern. t.1.

About the Year 544.

St. David, in Welch Dewid, was son of Xantus, prince of Ceretica, now Cardiganshire. He was brought up in the service of God, and being ordained priest, retired into the Isle of Wight, and embraced an ascetic life, under the direction of Paulinus, a learned and holy man, who had been a disciple of St. Germanus of Auxerre. He is said by the sign of the cross to have restored sight to his master, which he had lost by old age, and excessive weeping in prayer. He studied a long time to prepare himself for the functions of the holy ministry. At length, coming out of his solitude, like the Baptist out of the desert, he preached the word of eternal life to the Britons. He built a chapel at Glastenbury, a place which had been consecrated to the divine worship by the first apostles of this island. He founded twelve monasteries, the principal of which was in the vale of Ross,1 near Menevia, where he formed many great pastors and eminent servants of God. By his rule he obliged all his monks to assiduous manual labour in the spirit of penance: he allowed them the use of no cattle to ease them at their work in tilling the ground. They were never suffered to speak but on occasions of absolute necessity, and they never ceased to pray, at least mentally, during their labour. They returned late in the day to the monastery, to read, write, and pray. Their food was only bread and vegetables, with a little salt, and they never drank anything better than a little milk mingled with water. After their repast they spent three hours in prayer and adoration; then took a little rest, rose at cock-crowing, and continued in prayer till they went out to work. Their habit was of the skins of beasts. When any one petitioned to be admitted, he waited ten days at the door, during which time he was tried by harsh words, repeated refusals, and painful labours, that he might learn to die to himself. When he was admitted, he left all his worldly substance behind him, for the monastery never received anything on the score of admission. All the monks discovered their most secret thoughts and temptations to their abbot.

The Pelagian heresy springing forth a second time in Britain, the bishops, in order to suppress it, held a synod at Brevy, in Cardiganshire, in 512, or rather in 519.2 St. David, being invited to it, went thither, and in that venerable assembly confuted and silenced the infernal monster by his eloquence, learning and miracles. On the spot where this council was held, a church was afterwards built called Llan-Devi-Brevi, or the church of St. David near the river Brevi. At the close of the synod, St. Dubritius, the archbishop of Caerleon, resigned his see to St. David, whose tears and opposition were only to be overcome by the absolute command of the synod; which however allowed him, at his request, the liberty to transfer his see from Caerleon, then a populous city, to Menevia, now called St. David's, a retired place, formed by nature for solitude, being as it were almost cut off from the rest of the island, though now an intercourse is opened to it from Milford-Haven. Soon after the former synod, another was assembled by Saint David at a place called Victoria; in which the acts of the first were confirmed, and several canons added relating to discipline, which were afterwards confirmed by the authority of the Roman church; and these two synods were, as it were, the rule and standard of the British churches. As for St. David, Giraldus adds, that he was the great ornament and pattern of his age. He spoke with great force and energy; but his example was more powerful than his eloquence; and he has in all succeeding ages been the glory of the British church. He continued in his last see many years; and having founded several monasteries, and been the spiritual father of many saints, hoth British and Irish, died ahout the year 544, in a very advanced age. St. Kentigern saw his soul born up by angels into heaven. He was buried in his church of St. Andrew, which hath since taken his name, with the town and the whole diocess. Near the church stand several chapels, formerly resorted to with great devotion: the principal is that of Saint Nun, mother of Saint David, near which is a beautiful well, still frequented by pilgrims. Another chapel is sacred to St. Lily, surnamed Gwas-Dewy, that is, St. David's man; for he was his beloved disciple and companion in his retirement. He is honoured there on the 3rd., and St. Nun, who lived and died the spiritual mother of many religious women, on the 2nd of March. The three first days of March were formerly holidays in South Wales in honour of these three saints; at present only the first is kept a festival throughout all Wales. John of Glastenbury3 informs us, that in the reign of King Edgar, in the year of Christ 962, the relics of St. David were translated with great solemnity from the vale of Ross to Glastenbury, together with a portion of the relics of St. Stephen the Protomartyr.

By singing assiduously the divine praises with pure and holy hearts, dead to the world and all inordinate passions, monks are styled angels of the earth. The divine praise is the primary act of the love of God; for a soul enamoured of his adorable goodness and perfections, summons up all her powers to express the complacency she takes in his infinite greatness and bliss, and sounds forth his praises with all her strength. In this entertainment she feels an insatiable delight and sweetness, and with longing desires aspires after that bliss in which she will love and praise without intermission or impediment. By each act of divine praise, the fervour of charity and its habit, and with it every spiritual good and every rich treasure, is increased in her: moreover, God in return heaps upon her the choicest blessings of his grace. Therefore, though the acts of divine praise seem directly to be no more than a tribute or homage of our affections, which we tender to God, the highest advantages accrue from these exercises to our souls. St. Stephen of Grandmont was once asked by a disciple, why we are so frequently exhorted in the scriptures to bless and praise God, who, being infinite, can receive no increase from our homages? To which the saint replied: "A man who blesses and praises God receives from thence the highest advantage imaginable; for God, in return, bestows on him all his blessings, and for every word that he repeats in these acts, says: 'For the praises and blessings which you offer me, I bestow my blessings on you; what you present to me returns to yourself with an increase which becomes my liberality and greatness.' It is the divine grace," goes on this holy doctor, "which first excites a man to praise God, and he only returns to God his own gift: yet by his continually blessing God, the Lord pours forth his divine blessings upon him, which are so many new increases of charity in his soul."4

1 This denomination was given to the valley from the territory where it was situated, which was called Ross. Frequent mention is made of this monastery in the acts of several Irish saints, under the name of Rosnat or Rosnant.

2 See Wilkins, Conc. t. 1.

3 In his History of Glastenbury, p. 130, published by Mr. Thomas Hearne, in 1726.

4 Maximes de S. Etienne de Grandmont, ch. 105, p. 228. Item l. Sententiarum S. Stephani Grand. c. 105, p. 103.

St. Proterius

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PATRIARCH OF ALEXANDRIA, MARTYR.

He was ordained priest by St. Cyril, but opposed Dioscorus his successor, on his patronizing Eutycheus, and giving into his errors, notwithstanding his endeavour to gain him to his interest, by making him archpriest, and intrusting him with the care of his church. Dioscorus being condemned and deposed by the council of Chalcedon, Proterius was elected in his room, and was accordingly ordained and installed in 552. The people of Alexandria, famed for riots and tumults, then divided; some demanding the return of Dioscorus, others supporting Proterius. The factious party was headed by two vicious ecclesiastics, Timothy, surnamed Elurus, and Peter Mongus, whom the saint had canonically excommunicated. And so great and frequent were the tumults and seditions they raised against him, that during the whole course of his pontificate he was never out of danger of falling a sacrifice to the schismatical party, regardless both of the imperial orders and decisions of the council of Chalcedon. In the height of one of these tumults, Elurus, having caused himself to be ordained by two bishops of his faction, who had been formerly deposed, took possession of the episcopal throne, and was proclaimed by his party the sole lawful bishop of Alexandria. But being soon after driven out of the city by the imperial commander, this so inflamed the Eutychian party, that their barefaced attempts obliged the holy patriarch to take sanctuary in the baptistery adjoining to the church of St. Quirinus, where the schismatical rabble breaking in, they stabbed him on Good Friday, in the year 557. Not content with this, they dragged his dead body through the whole city, cut it in pieces, burnt it, and scattered the ashes in the air. The bishops of Thrace, in a letter to the emperor Leo, soon after his death, declared that they placed him among the martyrs, and hoped to find mercy through his intercession. Sanctissiuium Proteriuin in ordine et choro sanctorum martyrum ponimus, et ejus intercessionibus misericordem et propitium Deum nobis fieri postulamus. Conc. t. 4, p. 907. His name occurs in the Greek calendars on the 28th of February.—See Evagrius, Hist. Eccl. l. 2, c. 4. Liberat. Diac. in Breviar. c. 15. Theophanes in Marciano et Leone. Theodor. Lect. l. 1. F. Cacciari, Diss. in Op. S. Leonis, t. 3. Henschenius, t. 3. Febr. p. 729.

St. Nestor, B.M.

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Epolius, whom the emperor Decius had appointed governor of Lycia, Pamphylia, and Phrygia, sought to make his court to that prince by surpassing his colleagues in the rage and cruelty with which he persecuted the meek disciples of Christ. At that time Nestor, bishop of Sida in Pamphylia, (as Le Quien demonstrates, not of Perge, or of Mandis, or Madigis, as some by mistake affirm,) was distinguished in those parts for his zeal in propagating the faith, and for the sanctity of his life. His reputation reached the governor, who sent an Irenarch to apprehend him. The martyr was conducted to Perge, and there crucified, in imitation of the Redeemer of the world, whom he preached. His triumph happened in 250. His Latin Acts, given by the Bollandists, are to be corrected by those in Greek, found among the manuscript acts of saints, honoured by the Greeks in the month of February, in the king's library at Paris, Cod. 2010, written in the tenth century.

St. Porphyrius, Bishop of Gaza

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CONFESSOR.

From his life, written with great accuracy by his faithful disciple Mark. See Fleury, t. 5. Tillemont, t. 10. Chatelain, p. 777. In the king's library at Paris is a Greek MS. life of St. Porphyrius, (abridged from that of Mark,) which has never been translated.

A.D. 420.

Porphyrius, a native of Thessalonica in Macedonia, was of a noble and wealthy family. The desire of renouncing the world made him leave his friends and country at twenty-five years of age, in 378, to pass into Egypt, where he consecrated himself to God in a famous monastery in the desert of Scete. After five years spent there in the penitential exercises of a monastic life, he went into Palestine to visit the holy places of Jerusalem. After this he took up his abode in a cave near the Jordan, where he passed other five years in great austerity, till he fell sick, when a complication of disorders obliged him to leave that place and return to Jerusalem. There he never failed daily to visit devoutly all the holy places, leaning on a staff, for he was too weak to stand upright. It happened about the same time that Mark, an Asiatic, and the author of his life, came to Jerusalem with the same intent, where he made some stay. He was much edified at the devotion with which Porphyrius continually visited the place of our Lord's resurrection, and the other oratories. And seeing him one day labour with great pain in getting up the stairs in the chapel built by Constantine, he ran to him to offer him his assistance, which Porphyrius refused, saying: "It is not just that I who am come hither to beg pardon for my sins, should be eased by any one: rather let me undergo some labour and inconvenience, that God, beholding it, may have compassion on me." He in this condition never omitted his usual visits of piety to the holy places, and daily partook of the mystical table, that is, of the holy sacrament. And as to his distemper, so much did he contemn it, that he seemed to be sick in another's body and not in his own. His confidence in God always supported him. The only thing which afflicted him was, that his fortune had not been sold before this for the use of the poor. This he commissioned Mark to do for him, who accordingly set out for Thessalonica, and in three months' time returned to Jerusalem with money and effects to the value of four thousand five hundred pieces of gold. When the blessed man saw him, he embraced him, with tears of joy for his safe and speedy return. But Porphyrius was now so well recovered, that Mark scarcely knew him to be the same person: for his body had no signs of its former decay, and his face looked full, fresh, and coloured with a healthy red. He, perceiving his friend's amazement at his healthy looks, said to him with a smile: "Be not surprised. Mark, to see me in perfect health and strength, but admire the unspeakable goodness of Christ, who can easily cure what is despaired of by men." Mark asked him by what means he had recovered. He replied: "Forty days ago, being in extreme pain, I made a shift to reach Mount Calvary, where, fainting away, I fell into a kind of trance or ecstacy, during which I seemed to see our Saviour on the cross, and the good thief in the same condition near him. I said to Christ, Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom: whereupon he ordered the thief to come to my assistance, who, raising me off the ground on which I lay, bade me go to Christ. I ran to him, and he, coming off his cross, said to me: Take this wood (meaning his cross) into thy custody. In obedience to him, methought I laid it on my shoulders, and carried it some way. I awaked soon after, and have been free from pain ever since, and without the least appearance of my having ever ailed anything." Mark was so edified with the holy man's discourse and good example, that he became more penetrated with esteem and affection for him than ever, which made him desirous of living always with him in order to his own improvement; for he seemed to have attained to a perfect mastery over all his passions: he was endued at the same time with a divine prudence, an eminent spirit of prayer, and the gift of tears. Being also well versed in the holy scriptures and spiritual knowledge, and no stranger to profane learning, he confounded all the infidels and heretics who attempted to dispute with him. As to the money and effects which Mark had brought him, he distributed all among the necessitous in Palestine and Egypt, so that, in a very short time, he had reduced himself to the necessity of labouring for his daily food. He therefore learned to make shoes and dress leather, while Mark, being well skilled in writing, got a handsome livelihood by copying books, and had some to spare. He therefore desired the saint to partake of his earnings. But Porphyrius replied, in the words of St. Paul: He that doth not work let him not eat. He led this laborious and penitential life till he was forty years of age, when the bishop of Jerusalem ordained him priest, though much against his will, and committed to him the keeping of the holy cross: this was in 393.

The saint changed nothing in his austere penitential life, feeding only upon roots and the coarsest bread, and not eating till after sunset, except on Sundays and holidays, when he eat at noon, and added a little oil and cheese; and on account of a great weakness of stomach, he mingled a very small quantity of wine in the water he drank. This was his method of living till his death. Being elected bishop of Gaza, in 396, John, the metropolitan and archbishop of Cæsarea, wrote to the patriarch of Jerusalem to desire him to send over Porphyrius, that he might consult him on certain difficult passages of scripture. He was sent accordingly, but charged to be back in seven days. Porphyrius, receiving this order, seemed at first disturbed, but said: "God's will be done." That evening he called Mark, and said to him: "Brother Mark, let us go and venerate the holy places and the sacred cross, for it will be long before we shall do it again." Mark asked him why he said so. He answered: Our Saviour had appeared to him the night before, and said: "Give up the treasure of the cross which you have in custody, for I will marry you to a wife, poor indeed and despicable, but of great piety and virtue. Take care to adorn her well: for, however contemptible she may appear, she is my sister." "This," said he, "Christ signified to me last night: and I fear, in consequence, my being charged with the sins of others, whilst I labour to expiate my own; but the will of God must be obeyed." When they had venerated the holy places and the sacred cross, and Porphyrius had prayed long before it, and with many tears, he shut up the cross in its golden case, and delivered the keys to the bishop; and having obtained his blessing, he and his disciple Mark set out the next day, with three others, among whom was one Barochas, a person whom the saint had found lying in the street almost dead, and had taken care of, cured, and instructed; who ever after served him with Mark. They arrived the next day, which was Saturday, at Cæsarea. The archbishop obliged them to sup with him. After spiritual discourses they took a little sleep, and then rose to assist at the night service. Next morning the archbishop bid the Gazæans lay hold on St. Porphyrius, and, while they held him, ordained him bishop. The holy man wept bitterly, and was inconsolable for being promoted to a dignity he judged himself so unfit for. The Gazæans, however, performed their part in endeavouring to comfort him; and, having assisted at the Sunday office, and stayed one day more at Cæsarea, they set out for Gaza, lay at Diospolis, and, late on Wednesday night, arrived at Gaza, much harassed and fatigued. For the heathens living in the villages near Gaza, having notice of their coming, had so damaged the roads in several places, and clogged them with thorns and logs of wood, that they were scarcely passable. They also contrived to raise such a smoke and stench, that the holy men were in danger of being blinded or suffocated. There happened that year a very great drought, which the pagans ascribe [sic] to the coming of the new Christian bishop, saying that their god Marnas had foretold Porphyrius would bring public calamities and disasters on their city. In Gaza stood a famous temple of that idol which the emperor Theodosius the Elder had commanded to be shut up, but not demolished, on account of its beautiful structure. The governor afterwards had permitted the heathens to open it again. As no rain fell the two first months after St. Porphyrius's arrival, the idolaters, in great affliction, assembled in this temple to offer sacrifices, and make supplications to this god Marnas, whom they called the Lord of rains. These they repeated for seven days, going also to a place of prayer out of the town but seeing all their endeavours ineffectual, they lost all hopes of a supply of what they so much wanted. A dearth ensuing, the Christians, to the number of two hundred and eighty, women and children included, after a day's fast, and watching the following night in prayer, by the order of their holy bishop, went out in procession to St. Timothy's church, in which lay the relics of the holy martyr St. Meuris, and of the confessor St. Thees, singing hymns of divine praise. But at their return to the city they found the gates shut against them, which the heathens refused to open. In this situation the Christians and St. Porphyrius above the rest, addressed almighty God with redoubled fervour for the blessing so much wanted; when in a short time, the clouds gathering, as at the prayers of Elias, there fell such a quantity of rain that the heathens opened their gates, and joining them, cried out: "Christ alone is God: He alone has overcome." They accompanied the Christians to the church to thank God for the benefit received, which was attended with the conversion of one hundred and seventy-six persons, whom the saint instructed, baptized, and confirmed, as he did one hundred and five more before the end of that year. The miraculous preservation of the life of a pagan woman in labour, who had been despaired of, occasioned the conversion of that family and others, to the number of sixty-four.

The heathens perceiving their number decrease, grew very troublesome to the Christians, whom they excluded from commerce and all public offices, and injured them all manner of ways. St. Porphyrius, to screen himself and his flock from their outrages and vexations had recourse to the emperor's protection. On this errand he sent Mark, his disciple, to Constantinople, and went afterwards himself in company with John, his metropolitan archbishop of Cæsarea. Here they applied themselves to St. John Chrysostom, who joyfully received them, and recommended them to the eunuch Amantius, who had great credit with the empress, and was a zealous servant of God. Amantius having introduced them to the empress, she received them with great distinction, assured them of her protection, and begged their prayers for her safe delivery, a favour she received a few days after. She desired them in another visit to sign her and her newborn son, Theodosius the Younger, with the sign of the cross, which they did. The young prince was baptized with great solemnity, and on that occasion the empress obtained from the emperor all that the bishops had requested, and in particular that the temples of Gaza should be demolished; an imperial edict being drawn up for this purpose and delivered to Cynegius, a virtuous patrician, and one full of zeal, to see it executed. They stayed at Constantinople during the feast of Easter, and at their departure the emperor and empress bestowed on them great presents. When they landed in Palestine, near Gaza, the Christians came out to meet them with a cross carried before them, singing hymns. In the place called Tetramphodos, or Four-ways-end, stood a marble statue of Venus, on a marble altar, which was in great reputation for giving oracles to young women about the choice of husbands, but had often grossly deceived them, engaging them in most unhappy marriages; so that many heathens detested its lying impostures. As the two bishops, with the procession of the Christians, and the cross borne before them, passed through that square, this idol fell down of itself, and was broken to pieces, whereupon thirty-two men and seven women were converted.

Ten days after arrived Cynegius, having with him a consular man, and a duke, or general, with a strong guard of soldiers, besides the civil magistrates of the country. He assembled the citizens and read to them the emperor's edict, commanding their idols and temples to be destroyed, which was accordingly executed, and no less than eight public temples in the city were burnt; namely, those of the Sun, Venus, Apollo, Proserpine, Hecate, the Hierion, or of the priests, Tycheon, or of Fortune, and of Marnion of Marnos, their Jupiter. The Marnion, in which men had been often sacrificed, burned for many davs. After this, the private houses and courts were all searched; the idols were every where burned or thrown into the common sewers, and all books of magic and superstition were cast into the flames. Many idolaters desired baptism; but the saint took a long time to make trial of them, and to prepare them for that sacrament by daily instructions. On the spot where the temple of Marnas had stood, was built the church of Eudoxia in the figure of a cross. She sent for this purpose, precious pillars and rich marble from Constantinople. Of the marble taken out of the Marnion, St. Porphyrius made steps and a road to the church, that it might be trampled upon by men, dogs, swine, and other beasts; whence many heathens would never walk thereon. Before he would suffer the church to be begun he proclaimed a fast, and the next morning being attended by his clergy and all the Christians in the city, they went in a body to the place from the church Irene, singing the Venite exultemus Domino, and other psalms, and answering to every verse Alleluia, Barochas carrying a cross before them. They all set to work, carrying stones and other materials, and digging the foundations according to the plan marked out and directed by Rufinus, a celebrated architect, singing psalms and saying prayers during their work. It was begun in 403, when thirty high pillars arrived from Constantinople, two of which, called Carostiæ, shone like emeralds when placed in the church. It was five years building, and when finished in 408, the holy bishop performed the consesecration [sic] of it on Easter-day with the greatest pomp and solemnity. His alms to the poor on that occasion seemed boundless, though they were always exceedingly great. The good bishop spent the remainder of his life in the zealous discharge of all pastoral duties; and though he lived to see the city clear for the most part of the remains of paganism, superstition, and idolatry, he had always enough to suffer from such as continued obstinate in their errors. Falling sick, he made his pious will, in which he recommended all his dear flock to God. He died in 420, being about sixty years of age, on the 26th of February, on which day both the Greeks and Latins make mention of him. The pious author of his life concludes it, saying: "He is now in the paradise of delight, interceding for us with all the saints, by whose prayers may God have mercy on us."

St. Victorinus

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AND SIX COMPANIONS, MARTYRS.

From their genuine acts published from the Chaldaic by Monsignor Stephen Assemar. Act. Mart. Occid. t. 2. p. 60. See also Henschenius on this day.

A.D. 284.

These seven martyrs were citizens of Corinth, and confessed their faith before Tertius the proconsul, in their own country, in 219, in the beginning of the reign of Decius. After their torments they passed into Egypt, whether by compulsion or by voluntary banishment is not known, and there finished their martyrdom at Diospolis, capital of Thebais, in the reign of Numerian, in 284, under the governor Sabinus. After the governor had tried the constancy of martyrs by racks, scourges, and various inventions of cruelty, he caused Victorinus to be thrown into a great mortar (the Greek Menology says, of marble.) The executioners began by pounding his feet and legs, saying to him at every stroke: "Spare yourself, wretch. It depends upon you to escape this death, if you will only renounce your new God." The prefect grew furious at his constancy, and at length commanded his head to be beaten to pieces. The sight of this mortar, so far from casting a damp on his companions, seemed to inspire them with the greater ardour to be treated in the like manner. So that when the tyrant tnreatened Victor with the same death, he only desired him to hasten the execution; and, pointing to the mortar, said: "In that is salvation and true felicity prepared for me!" He was immediately cast into it and beaten to death. Nicephorus, the third martyr, was impatient of delay, and leaped of his own accord into the bloody mortar. The judge enraged at his boldness, commanded not one, but many executioners at once, to pound him in the same manner. He caused Claudian, the fourth, to be chopped in pieces, and his bleeding joints to be thrown at the feet of those who were yet living. He expired, after his feet, hands, arms, legs, and thighs were cut off. The tyrant, pointing to his mangled limbs and scattered bones, said to the other three: "It concerns you to avoid this punishment; I do not compel you to suffer." The martyrs answered with one voice: "On the contrary, we rather pray that if you have any other more exquisite torment you would inflict it on us. We are determined never to violate the fidelity which we owe to God, or to deny Jesus Christ our Saviour, for he is our God, from whom we have our being, and to whom alone we aspire." The tyrant became almost distracted with fury, and commanded Diodorus to be burnt alive, Serapion to be beheaded, and Papias to be drowned. This happened on the 25th of February; on which day the Roman and other Western Martyrologies name them; but the Greek Menæa, and the Menology of the Emperor Basil Porphyrogenitus honour them on the 21st of January, the day of their confession at Corinth.

St. Lethard, Bishop of Senlis, C.

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CALLED BY VENERABLE BEDE, LUIDHARD.

Bede, William of Malmesbury, and other historians relate, that when Bertha, daughter of Charibert, king of the French, was married to Ethelbert, king of Kent, about the year 566, this holy French prelate accompanied her into England, and resided at Canterbury in quality of almoner and chaplain to the queen. Though his name does not occur in the imperfect catalogue of the bishops of Senlis, which is found in the ancient copy of St. Gregory's sacramentary, which belonged to that church in 880, nor in the old edition of Gallia Christiana, yet, upon the authority of the English historians, it is inserted in the new edition, the thirteenth, from St. Regulus, the founder of that see, one of the Roman missionaries in Gaul about the time of St. Dionysius. The relics of St. Regulus are venerated in the ancient collegiate church which hears his name in Senlis, and his principal festival is kept on the 23rd of April. St. Lethard having resigned this see to St. Sanctinus, was only recorded in England. On the high altar of St. Augustine's monastery at Canterbury, originally called SS. Peter and Paul's, his relics were exposed in a shrine near those of the holy king Ethelbert, as appears from the Monasticon. St. Lethard died at Canterbury about the year 596. Several miracles are recorded to have been obtained by his intercession, particularly a ready supply of rain in time of drought. See Bede, l. 1, c. 25. Will. of Malmesbury, de Pontiff. l. 1. Monas. Angl. t. 1, p. 24. Tho. Sprot, in his History of the Abbey of Canterbury, Thorn. Henschenius ad 24 Feb. Gallia Christ. Nova, t. 10, p. 1382.

St. Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna, M.

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From his acts, written by the church of Smyrna in an excellent circular letter to the churches of Pontus, immediately after his martyrdom: apiece abridged by Eusebius, b. 4, c. 14. highly esteemed by the ancients. Joseph Scaliger, a supercilious critic, says that nothing in the whole course of church history so strongly affected him as the perusal of these acts, and those relating to the martyrs of Lyons: that he never read them, but they gave him extraordinary emotions. Animad. in Chron. Eusebii. n. 2183, &c. They are certainly most valuable pieces of Christian antiquity. See Eusebius, St. Jerom, and St. Irenæus. Also Tillemont, t. 2, p. 327. Dom Ceillier, t. 1. Dom Marechal, Concordance des Pères Grecs et Latins, t. 1.

A.D. 166.

St. Polycarp was one of the most illustrious of the apostolic fathers, who, being the immediate disciples of the apostles, received instructions from their mouths, and inherited of them the spirit of Christ, in a degree so much the more eminent, as they lived nearer the fountain head. He embraced Christianity very young, about the year 80; was a disciple of the apostles, in particular of St. John the Evangelist, and was constituted by him bishop of Smyrna, probably before his banishment to Patmos, in 96: so that he governed that important see seventy years. It seems to have been the angel or bishop of Smyrna, who was commended above all the bishops of Asia by Christ himself in the Apocalypse,1 and the only one without a reproach. Our Saviour encouraged him under his poverty, tribulation, and persecutions, especially the calumnies of the Jews, called him rich in grace, and promised him the crown of life by martyrdom. This saint was respected by the faithful to a degree of veneration. He formed many holy disciples, among whom were St. Irenæus and Papias. When Florinus, who had often visited St. Polycarp, had broached certain heresies, St. Irenæus wrote to him as follows:2 "These things were not taught you by the bishops who preceded us. I could tell you the place where the blessed Polycarp sat to preach the word of God. It is yet present to my mind with what gravity he every where came in and went out: what was the sanctity of his deportment, the majesty of his countenance and of his whole exterior, and what were his holy exhortations to the people. I seem to hear him now relate how he conversed with John and many others, who had seen Jesus Christ; the words he had heard from their mouths. I can protest before God, that if this holy bishop had heard of any error like yours, he would have immediately stopped his ears, and cried out, according to his custom: Good God! that I should be reserved to these times to hear such things! That very instant he would have fled out of the place in which he had heard such doctrine." Saint Jerom3 mentions, that St. Polycarp met at Rome the heretic Marcion in the streets, who resenting that the holy bishop did not take that notice of him which he expected, said to him: "Do not you know me, Polycarp?" "Yes," answered the saint, "I know you to be the first-born of Satan." He had learned this abhorrence of the authors of heresy, who knowingly and willingly adulterate the divine truths, from his master St. John, who fled out of the bath in which he saw Cerinthus.4 St. Polycarp kissed with respect the chains of St. Ignatius, who passed by Smyrna on the road to his martyrdom, and who recommended to our saint the care and comfort of his distant church of Antioch; which he repeated to him in a letter from Troas, desiring him to write in his name to those churches of Asia to which he had not leisure to write himself.5 St. Polycarp wrote a letter to the Philippians shortly after, which is highly commended by Saint Irenæus, St. Jerom, Eusebius, Photius and others, and is still extant. It is justly admired both for the excellent instructions it contains, and for the simplicity and perspicuity of the style; and was publicly read in the church in Asia, in Saint Jerom's time. In it he calls a heretic, as above, the eldest son of Satan. About the year 158, he undertook a journey of charity to Rome, to confer with Pope Anicetus about certain points of discipline, especially about the time of keeping Easter; for the Asiatic churches kept it on the fourteenth day of the vernal equinoctial moon, as the Jews did, on whatever day of the week it fell; whereas Rome, Egypt, and all the West observed it on the Sunday following. It was agreed that both might follow their custom without breaking the bands of charity. St. Anicetus, to testify his respect, yielded to him the honour of celebrating the Eucharist in his own church.6 We find no further purticulars concerning our saint recorded before the acta of his martyrdom.

In the sixth year of Marcus Aurelius, and Lucius Verus, Statius Quadratus being proconsul of Asia, a violent persecution broke out in that country, in which the faithful gave heroic proofs of their courage and love of God, to the astonishment of the infidels. When they were torn to pieces with scourges till their very bowels were laid bare, amidst the moans and tears of the spectators, who were moved with pity at the sight of their torments, not one of them gave so much as a single groan : so little regard had they for their own flesh in the cause of God. No kinds of torture, no inventions of cruelty were forborne to force them to a conformity to the pagan worship of the times. Germanicus, who had been brought to Smyrna with eleven or twelve other Christians, signalized himself above the rest, and animated the most timorous to suffer. The proconsul in the amphitheatre called upon him with tenderness, entreating him to have some regard for his youth, and to value at least his life: but he, with a holy impatience, provoked the beasts to devour him, to leave this wicked world. One Quintus, a Phrygian, who had presented himself to the judge, yielded at the sight of the beasts let out upon him, and sacrificed. The authors of these acts justly condemn the presumption of those who offered themselves to suffer,7 and say that the martyrdom of St. Polycarp was conformable to the gospel, because he exposed not himself to the temptation, but waited till the persecutors laid hands on him, as Christ our Lord taught us by his own example. The same venerable authors observe, that the martyrs by their patience and constancy demonstrated to all men, that, whilst their bodies were tormented, they were in spirit estranged from the flesh, and already in heaven; or rather that our Lord was present with them and assisted them; for the fire of the barbarous executioners seemed as if it had been a cooling refreshment to them.8 The spectators, seeing the courage of Germanicus and his companions, and being fond of their impious bloody diversions, cried out: "Away with the impious; let Polycarp be sought for." The holy man, though fearless, had been prevailed upon by his friends to withdraw and conceal himself in a neighbouring village, during the storm, spending most of his time in prayer. Three days before his martyrdom, he in a vision saw his pillow on fire; from which he understood by revelation, and foretold his companions, that he should be burnt alive. When the persecutors were in quest of him he changed his retreat, but was betrayed by a boy, who was threated [sic] with the rack unless he discovered him. Herod the Irenarch, or keeper of the peace, whose office it was to prevent misdemeanors and apprehend malefactors, sent horesemen [sic] by night to beset his lodgings. The saint was above stairs in bed, but refused to make his escape, saying: "God's will be done." He went down, met them at the door, ordered them a handsome supper, and desired only some time for prayer before he went with them. This granted, he began his prayer standing, which he continued in that posture for two hours, recommending to God his own flock and the whole church with so much earnestness and devotion, that several of those who were come to seize him, repented they had undertaken the commission. They set him on an ass, and were conducting him towards the city, when he was met on the road by Herod and his father Nicetes, who took him into their chariot, and endeavoured to persuade him to a little compliance, saying: "What harm is there in saying Lord Caesar, or even in sacrificing, to escape death?" By the word Lord was meant nothing less than a kind of deity or godhead. The bishop at first was silent, in imitation of our Saviour but being pressed, he gave them this resolute answer: "I shall never do what you desire of me." At these words, taking off the mask of friendship and compassion, they treated him with scorn and reproaches, and thrust him out of the chariot with such violence, that his leg was bruised by the fall. The holy man went forward cheerfully to the place where the people were assembled. Upon his entering it, a voice from heaven was heard by many, saying: "Polycarp, be courageous, and act manfully."9 He was led directly to the tribunal of the proconsul, who exhorted him to respect his own age, to swear by the genius of Cæsar, and to say: "Take away the impious," meaning the Christians. The saint, turning towards the people in the pit, said, with a stern countenance: "Exterminate the wicked," meaning by this expression either a wish that they might cease to be wicked by their conversion to the faith of Christ: or this was a prediction of the calamity which befel their city in 177, when Smyrna was overturned by an earthquake, as we read in Dion10 and Aristides.11 The proconsul repeated: "Swear by the genius of Cæsar, and I discharge you; blaspheme Christ." Polycarp replied: "I have served him these fourscore and six years, and he never did me any harm, but much good; and how can I blaspheme my King and my Saviour? If you require of me to swear by the genius of Cæsar, as you call it, hear my free confession: I am a Christian; but if you desire to learn the Christian religion, appoint a time, and hear me." The proconsul said: "Persuade the people." The martyr replied: "I address my discourse to you; for we are taught to give due honour to princes as far as is consistent with religion. But the populace is an incompetent judge to justify myself before." Indeed rage rendered them incapable of hearing him.

The proconsul then assuming a tone of severity, said: "I have wild beasts;" "Call for them," replied the saint, "for we are unalterably resolved not to change from good to evil. It is only good to pass from evil to good." The proconsul said: "If you contemn the beasts, I will cause you to be burnt to ashes." Polycarp answered: "You threaten me with a fire which burns for a short time, and then goes out; but are yourself ignorant of the judgment to come, and of the fire of everlasting torments, which is prepared for the wicked. Why do you delay? Bring against me what you please." Whilst he said this and many other things, he appeared in a transport of joy and confidence and his countenance shone with a certain heavenly grace, and pleasant cheerfulness, insomuch, that the proconsul himself was struck with admiration. However, he ordered a crier to make public proclamation three times in the middle of the Stadium (as was the Roman custom in capital cases): "Polycarp hath confessed himself a Christian."12 At this proclamation the whole multitude of Jews and Gentiles gave a great shout, the latter crying out: "This is the great teacher of Asia; the father of the Christians; the destroyer of our gods, who preaches to men not to sacrifice to or adore them." They applied to Philip the Asiarch,13 to let loose a lion upon Polycarp. He told them that it was not in his power, because those shows had been closed. Then they unanimously demanded, that he should be burnt alive. Their request was no sooner granted, but every one ran with all speed, to fetch wood from the baths and shops. The Jews were particularly active and busy on this occasion. The pile being prepared, Polycarp put off his garments, untied his girdle, and began to take off his shoes; an office he had not been accustomed to, the Christians having always striven who should do these things for him, regarding it as a happiness to be admitted to touch him. The wood and other combustibles were heaped all round him. The executioners would have nailed him to the stake; but he said to them: "Suffer me to be as I am. He who gives me grace to undergo this fire, will enable me to stand still without that precaution." They therefore contented themselves with tying his hands behind his back, and in this posture looking up towards heaven, he prayed as follows: "O Almighty Lord God, Father of thy beloved and blessed Son Jesus Christ, by whom we have received the knowledge of thee, God of angels, powers, and every creature, and of all the race of the just that live in thy presence! I bless thee for having been pleased in thy goodness to bring me to this hour, that I may receive my portion in the number of thy martyrs, and partake of the chalice of thy Christ, for the resurrection to eternal life, in the incorruptibleness of the Holy Spirit. Amongst whom grant me to be received this day as a pleasing sacrifice, such a one as thou thyself hast prepared, that so thou mayest accomplish what thou, O true and faithful God! hast foreshown. Wherefore, for all things I praise, bless, and glorify thee, through the eternal high priest Jesus Christ thy beloved Son, with whom, to Thee and the Holy Ghost be glory now and for ever. Amen." He had scarcely said Amen, when fire was set to the pile, which increased to a mighty flame. But behold a wonder, say the authors of these acts, seen by us reserved to attest it to others; the flames forming themselves into an arch, like the sails of a ship swelled with the wind, gently encircled the body of the martyr; which stood in the middle, resembling not roasted flesh, but purified gold or silver, appearing bright through the flames; and his body sending forth such a fragrancy, that we seemed to smell precious spices. The blind infidels were only exasperated to see that his body could not be consumed, and ordered a spearman to pierce him through, which he did, and such a quantity of blood issued out of his left side as to quench the fire.14 The malice of the devil ended not here: he endeavoured to obstruct the relics of the martyr being carried off by the Christians; for many desired to do it, to show their respect to his body. Therefore, by the suggestion of Satan, Nicetes advised the proconsul not to bestow it on the Christians, lest, said he, abandoning the crucified man, they should adore Polycarp: the Jews suggested this, "Not knowing," say the authors of the acts, "that we can never forsake Christ, nor adore any other, though we love the martyrs, as his diciples and imitators, for the great love they bore their king and master." The centurion, seeing a contest raised by the Jews, placed the body in the middle, and burnt it to ashes. "We afterwards took up the bones," say they, "more precious than the richest jewel or gold, and deposited them decently in a place at which may God grant us to assemble with joy, to celebrate the birth-day of the martyr," Thus these disciples and eye-witnesses. It was at two o'clock in the afternoon, which the authors of the acts call the eighth hour, in the year 166, that St. Polycarp received his crown, according to Tillemont; but in 169, according to Basnage.15 His tomb is still shown with great veneration at Smyrna, in a small chapel. St. Irenæus speaks of St. Polycarp as being of an uncommon age.

The epistle of St. Polycarp to the Philippians, which is the only one among those which he wrote that has been preserved, is, even in the dead letter, a standing proof of the apostolic spirit with which he was animated, and of that profound humility, perfect meekness, burning charity, and holy zeal, of which his life was so admirable an example. The beginning is an effusion of the spiritual joy and charity with which he was transported at the happiness of their conversion to God, and their fervour in divine love. His extreme abhorrence of heresy makes him immediately fall upon that of the Docætæ, against which he arms the faithful, by clearly demonstrating that Christ was truly made man, died, and rose again: in which his terms admirably express his most humble and affectionate devotion to our divine Redeemer, under these great mysteries of love. Besides walking in truth, he takes notice, that to be raised with Christ in glory, we must also do his will, keep all his commandments, and love whatever he loves; refraining from all fraud, avarice, detraction, and rash judgment; repaying evil with good, forgiving and showing mercy to others that we ourselves may find mercy, "These things," says he, "I write to you on justice, because you incited me; for neither I, nor any other like me, can attain to the wisdom of the blessed and glorious Paul, into whose epistles if you look, you may raise your spiritual fabric by strengthening faith, which is our mother, hope following, and charity towards God, Christ, and our neighbour preceding us. He who has charity is far from all sin." The saint gives short instructions to every particular state, then adds: "Every one who hath not confessed that Jesus Christ is come to the flesh, is antichrist;16 and who hath not confessed the suffering of the cross, is of the devil; and who hath drawn the oracles of the Lord to his passions, and hath said that there is no resurrection nor judgment, he is the oldest son of Satan." He exhorts to watching always in prayer, lest we be led into temptation: to be constant in fasting, persevering, joyful in hope, and in the pledge of our justice, which is Christ Jesus, imitating his patience; for, by suffering for his name, we glorify him. To encourage them to suffer, he reminds them of those who had suffered before our eyes: Ignatius, Zozimus, and Rufus, and some of their own congregation,17 "who are now," says our saint, "in the place which is due to them with the Lord, with whom they also suffered."

1 Ch. ii. v. 9.

2 Eus. Hist. l. 5, c. 20, p. 188.

3 Cat. vir. illustr. c. 17.

4 See also 1 John ii. 18, 22. and 2 John 10.

5 St. Ignatius begins his letter to the faithful at Smyrna, by glorifying God for their great spiritual wisdom, saying, he knew them to be perfect in their unshaken faith, as men crucified with our Lord Jesus in flesh, and in spirit, and deeply grounded in charity by the blood of Christ. He then solidly confutes the Docætæ, heretics who imagined that Christ was not incarnate, and died only in appearance; whom he calls demoniacs. He adds: "I give you this caution, knowing that you hold the true faith, but that you may stand upon your guard against these wild beasts in human shape, whom you ought not to receive under your roof, nor even meet if possible; and be content only to pray for them that they may be converted, if it be possible; for it is very difficult; though it is the power of Jesus Christ our true life. If Jesus Christ did all this in appearance only, then I am only chained in imagination; and why have I delivered myself up to death, to fire, to the sword, to beasts? But who is near the sword is near God: he who is among beasts is with God. I suffer all things only in the name of Jesus Christ, that I may suffer with him, he giving me strength, who was made perfectly man. What does it avail me to be commended by any one, if he blaspheme our Lord, not confessing him to have flesh? The whole consists in faith and charity; nothing can take place before these. Now consider those who maintain a false opinion of the grace of Jesus Christ, how they also oppose charity; they take no care of the widow, or orphan, or him who is afflicted, or pining with hunger or thirst. They abstain from the Eucharist and prayer, (says he) because they confess not the Eucharist to be the flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ, which was crucified for our sins, and which the father, by his goodness raised again. It is advisable for you to separate yourselves from them, and neither to speak to them in public or in private. Shun schisms and all discord, as the source of evils. Follow your bishop as Christ his Father, and the college of priests as the apostles; respect the deacons as the precept of God. Let no one do any thing that belongs to the church without the bishop. Let that Eucharist be regarded as lawful which is celebrated by the bishop or one commissioned by him. Wherever the bishop makes his appearance, there let the people be assembled, as wherever Christ Jesus is, there is the Catholic church. It is not lawful to baptize or celebrate the Agape without the bishop or his authority. What he approves of is acceptable to God. He who does any thing without the bishop's knowledge, serves the devil." The saint most affectionately thanks them for the kindness they had shown him and his followers; begs they will depute some person to his church in Syria, to congratulate with his flock for the peace which God had restored to them, adding that he was unworthy to be called a member of that church of which he was the last. He asks the succour of their prayers, that by them he might enjoy God. "Seeing," says he, "that you are perfect, entertain perfect sentiments of : for God is ready to bestow on you who desire to do well." After the most tender salutations of many in particular, and of all in general, especially the virgins who were called widows, (i. e. the deaconesses, who were called widows, because they were often such, though these were virgins,) he closes his letter by praying for their advancement in all charity, grace, mercy, peace, and patience. Saint Ign. ep. ad Smyrnæos, p. 872. ed. Cotel.

The apostolic St. Ignatius writes as follows, in his letter to St. Polycarp "Thy resolution in God, founded as it were upon an unshaken rock, I exceedingly commend, having been made worthy of thy holy face, which I pray I may enjoy in God. I conjure thee in the grace with which thou art enriched, to encrease the stock in thy course, and to exhort all that they may be saved. Have great care of unity and concord, than which nothing is better. Bear with all men that God may bear with thee: bear all men by charity, as thou dost apply thyself to prayer without interruption. Ask more perfect understanding than thou hast. Watch, seeing that the spirit which sleepeth not, dwelleth within thee. Speak to every one according to the grace which God giveth thee. Bear the weakness and distempers of all as a stout champion. Where the labour is greater, the gain is exceedingly great. If thou lovest the disciples who are good, thou deservest not thanks; strive rather to subdue the wicked by meekness. Every wound is not healed by the same plaster; assuage inflammations by lenitives. Be not intimidated by those who seem worthy of faith, yet teach things that are foreign. Stand firm, as an anvil which is beaten: it is the property of a true champion to be struck and to conquer. Let not the widows be neglected. Let religious assemblies be most frequent. Seek out every one in them by name. Despise not the slaves, neither suffer them to be puffed up; but to the glory of God let them serve with greater diligence that they may obtain of God a better liberty. Let them not desire that their liberty be purchased or procured for them by the congregation, lest they fall under the slavery of their own passions. Fly evil artifices; let them not be so much as named. Engage my sisters to love the Lord, and never entertain a thought of any man but their husbands. In like manner enjoin my brethren, in the name of Jesus Christ, to love their wives as Christ loveth his church. If any one be able to remain in a state of continency, in honour of our Lord's flesh, let him be constantly humble: if he boast, or is puffed up, he is lost. Let all marriages be made by the authority of the bishop, that they may be made in the Lord, not by the passions of men. Let all things be done to the honour of God." Then addressing himself to all the faithful at Smyrna, he writes: 'Listen to your bishop, that God may also hearken to you. With joy I would lay down my life for those who are subject to the bishop, priests, and deacons. May my portion be with them in God. Let all things be in common among you; your labour, your warfare, your sufferings, your rest, and your watching, as becomes the dispensers, the assessors, and the servants of God. Please him in whose service you fight, and from whom you receive your salary. Let your baptism be always your weapons, faith your helmet, charity your spear, and patience your complete armour. Let your good works be the treasure which you lay up, that you may receive the fruit which is worthy. Bear with each other in all meekness, as God bears with you. I pray that I may always enjoy and rejoice in you. Because the church of Antioch by your prayers now enjoys peace, I am in mind secure in God; provided still that by suffering I may go to God, and be found in the resurrection your servant. You will do well, O Polycarp, most blessed in God, to hold an assembly, and choose a very dear person fit for despatch in a journey, who may be styled the divine messenger; him honour with a commission to go to Antioch, and there hear witness of the fervour of your charity. A christian lives not for himself alone, but belongs to God' The holy martyr concludes by desiring St. Polycarp to write for him to the other churches of Asia, he being that moment called on board by his guards to sail from Troas to Naples.

6 St. Iren. b. 3, c. 3. Euseb. b. 5, c. 24. S. Hieron. c. 17.

7 N. 1. and 4.

8 Go pyr hn autois psykhon to twn apathwn basanizwn. Frigidus ipsis videbatur im...ium carnficium ignis. n. 2, p. 1020.

9 Dr. Middleton pretends, that this voice was only heard by some few: but the acts in Ruinart say, by those that were present, hoi parontes: Eusebius says, polloi: Rufinus plurimi, very many. A voice from heaven must certainly be sensibly discerned to be more than human, and manifest itself sufficiently, to be perceived that it could not come from the crowd.

10 L. 71

11 Or. 20, 21, 22, 41.

12 The great council of Asia seems to have been held at that time at Smyrna, instead of Ephesus, which the Arundelian marbles show sometimes to have been done.

13 Or president of the public games, chosen yearly by the common-council of Asia.

14 Dr. Middleton ridicules the mention of a dove issuing out of the wound of the side; but this is only found in some modern MSS. by the blunder of a transcriber: it is not in Eusebius, Rufinus, Nicephorus, or the Greek Menæa: though the two last would have magnified a prodigy if they had found the least authority for any. According to Le Moyne, (Prolog, ad varia. sacra.) Ceillier, &c. the true reading is ep' arizera, on the left side; which some transcriber blundered into perizera, a dove. As to the foregoing miracle, that a wind should naturally divest the fire of its property of burning, and form it into an arch about the body, is a much more wonderful supposition of the doctor's than any miracle.

15 St. Polycarp says himself, "That he had served Christ eighty-six years." Basnage thinks he had been bishop so long, and was a hundred and twenty years old when he suffered: but it is far more probable that this is the term he had been a Christian, having been converted in his youth, and dying about one hundred years old or upwards, as Tillemont understands it.

16 1 John iv. 3.

17 Some of the Philippians had seen St. Ignatius in chains, and perhaps at Rome. The primitive martyrs, Zozimus and Rufus, are commemorated in the Martyrologies on the 18th of December.

The Chair of St. Peter at Antioch

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See Baronius, Annot. in Martyrol. ad 18 Januarii, the Bollandists, ib. t. 2. p. 182. sec. 5. and 6. and especially Jos. Bianchini, Dissert. De Romana Cathedra in notis in Anastatium Biblioth. t. 4. p. 150.

That Saint Peter, before he went to Rome, founded the see of Antioch is attested by Eusebius,1 Origen,2 St. Jerom,3 St. Innocent,4 Pope Gelasius, in his Roman Council,5 St. Chrysostom and others. It was just that the prince of the apostles should take this city under his particular care and inspection, which was then the capital of the East, and in which the faith took so early and so deep root as to give birth in it to the name of Christians. St. Chrysostom says, that St. Peter made there a long stay: St. Gregory the Great,6 that he was seven years bishop of Antioch; not that he resided there all that time, but only that he had a particular care over that church. If he sat twenty-five years at Rome, the date of his establishing his chair at Antioch must be within three years after our Saviour's ascension; for in that supposition he must have gone to Rome in the second year of Claudius.

The festival of St. Peter's chair in general, Natale Petri de Cathedra, is marked on this day in the most ancient calendar extant, made in the time of Pope Liberius, about the year 354.7 It also occurs in Gregory's sacramentary, and in all the martyrologies. It was kept in France in the sixth century, as appears from the council of Tours,8 and from Le Conte.9

In the first ages it was customary, especially in the East, for every Christian to keep the anniversary of his baptism, on which he renewed his baptismal vows, and gave thanks to God for his heavenly adoption: this they called their spiritual birth-day. The bishops in like manner kept the anniversary of their own consecration, as appears from four sermons of St. Leo on the anniversary of his accession or assumption to the pontifical dignity; and this was frequently continued by the people after their decease, out of respect to their memory. St. Leo says, we ought to celebrate the chair of St. Peter with no less joy than the day of his martyrdom; for as in this he was exalted to a throne of glory in heaven, so by the former he was installed head of the church on earth.10

On this festival we are especially bound to adore and thank the divine goodness for the establishment and propagation of his church, and earnestly to pray that in his mercy he may preserve the same, and dilate its pale, that his name may be glorified by all nations, and by all hearts, to the boundaries of the earth, for his divine honour and the salvation of souls, framed to his divine image, and the price of his adorable blood. The church of Christ is his spiritual kingdom: he is not only the architect and founder; but continues to govern it, and by his spirit, to animate its members to the end of the world as its invisible head: though he has left in St. Peter and his successors a vicar, or lieutenant, as a visible head, with an established hierarchy for its exterior government. If we love him and desire his honour, if we love men on so many titles linked with us, can we cease weeping and praying, that by his sweet omnipotent grace he may subdue all the enemies of his church, converting to it all infidels and apostates? In its very bosom sinners fight against him. Though these continue his members by faith, they are dead members, because he lives not in them by his grace and charity, reigns not in their hearts, animates them not with his spirit. He will indeed always live by grace and sanctity in many members of his mystical body. Let us pray that by the destruction of the tyranny of sin all souls may subject themselves to the reign of his holy love. Good Jesus! for your mercy's sake, hear me in this above all other petitions: never suffer me to be separated from you by forfeiting your holy love: may I remain always rooted and grounded in your charity, as is the will of your Father. Eph. iii.

1 Chron. and Hist. l. 3, c. 30.

2 Hom. 6 in Luc.

3 In Catal. c. 1.

4 Ep. 18, t. 2. Conc. p. 1269.

5 Conc. t. 4, p. 1262.

6 Ep. 40, l. 7, t. 2, p. 888. Ed. Ben.

7 Some have imagined that the feast of the Chair of St. Peter was not known, at least in Africa, in the fifth century, because it occurs not in the ancient calendar of Carthage. But how should the eighth day before the calends of March now appear in it, since the part is lost from the fourteenth before the calends of March to the eleventh before the calends of May? Hence St. Pontius, deacon, and martyr, on the eighth before the ides of March; St. Donatus, and some other African martyrs, are not there found. At least it is certain that it was kept at Rome long before that time. Saint Leo preached a sermon on St. Peter's chair. (Serm. 100, t. 1, p. 285. ed. Rom.) Quesnel denied it to be genuine in his first edition; but in the second at Lyons, in 1700, he corrected this mistake, and proved this sermon to be St. Leo's; which is more fully demonstrated by Cacciari in his late Roman edition of St. Leo's works, t. 1. p. 285.

8 Can. 22.

9 Ad an. 566.

10 St. Leo, Serm. 100. in Cathedra S. Petri, t. 1, p. 285. ed. Romanæ.

St. Severianus, Martyr

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BISHOP OF SCYTHOPHOLIS.

From the life of St. Euthymius, written by Cyril the monk; a letter of thr Emperor Marcian; Evagrius, l. 2, c. 5. Nicephorus Calixt. l. 15. c. 9. collected by Bollandus, p. 246.

A.D. 452, or 453.

In the reign of Marcian and St. Pulcheria, the council of Chalcedon which condemned the Eutychian heresy, was received by St. Euthymius, and by a great part of the monks of Palestine. But Theodosius, an ignorant Eutychian monk, and a man of a most tyrannical temper, under the protection of the empress Eudoxia, widow of Theodosius the Younger, who lived at Jerusalem, perverted many among the monks themselves, and having obliged Juvenal, bishop of Jerusalem, to withdraw, unjustly possessed himself of that important see, and in a cruel persecution which he raised, filled Jerusalem with blood, as the emperor Marcian assures us: then, at the head of a band of soldiers, he carried desolation over the country. Many however had the courage to stand their ground. No one resisted him with greater zeal and resolution than Severianus, bishop of Scythopolis, and his recompense was the crown of martyrdom; for the furious soldiers seized his person, dragged him out of the city, and massacred him in the latter part of the year 452, or in the beginning of the year 453. His name occurs in the Roman Martyrology, on the 21st of February.

Palestine, the country which for above one thousand four hundred years had been God's chosen inheritance under the Old Law, when other nations were covered with the abominations of idolatory, had been sanctified by the presence, labours, and sufferings of our divine Redeemer, and had given birth to his church, and to so many saints, became often the theatre of enormous scandals, and has now, for many ages, been enslaved to the most impious and gross superstition. So many flourishing churches in the East, which were planted by the labours of the chiefest among the apostles, watered with the blood of innumerable glorious martyrs, illustrated with the bright light of the Ignatiuses, the Polycarps, the Basils, the Ephrems, and the [sadly my copy of Butler is missing a page or two starting here].

St. Eleutherius, Martyr

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BISHOP OF TOURNAY.

A.D. 532.

He was born at Tournay, of Christian parents, whose family had been converted to Christ by St. Piat, one hundred and fifty years before. The faith had declined at Tornay ever since St. Piat's martyrdom, by reason of its commerce with the heathen islands of Taxandria, now Zeland, and by means of the heathen French kings, who resided some time at Tournay. Eleutherius was chosen bishop of that city, in 486; ten years after which King Clovis was baptized at Rheims. Eleutherius converted the greater part of the Franks in that country to the faith, and opposed most zealously certain heretics who denyed the mystery of the Incarnation, by whom he was wounded on the head with a sword, and died of the wound five weeks after, on the first of July, in 532. The most ancient monuments, relating to this saint, seem to have perished in a great fire which consumed his church, and many other buildings, at Tournay, in 1092, with his relics. See Miræus, and his life written in the ninth century, extant in Bollandus, p. 187.1 Of the sermons ascribed to St Eleutherius, in the Library of the Fathers, t. 8. none seem sufficiently warranted genuine, except three on the Incarnation and Birth of Christ, and the Annunciation, See Dom Rivet, Hist. Liter, t. 3, p. 154, and t. 5, p. 40, 41. Galia Christ. Nova, t. 3, p. 571. and Henschenius, p. 180.

1 This author wrote before the invasion of the Normans, and the translation of the saint's relics: but long after the saint's death, and by making him be born in the reign of Dioclesian, yet contemporary with St. Medard, destroys his own credit. Some years after, another author much enlarged this life, and inserted a history of the translation of the relics of this saint made in 897. A third writer added a relation of later miracles, and of the translation of these relics into the city of Tournay, in 1164. All these authors deserve little notice, except in relating facts of their own time.

St. Barbatus, or Barbas, C.

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BISHOP OF BENEVENTO.

From his two authentic lives in Bollandus, t, 3. Febr. p. 139. See Ughelli, Italia Sacra, t. 8. p. 13.

A.D. 682.

St. Barbatus was born in the territory of Benevento, in Italy, towards the end of the pontificate of St. Gregory the Great, in the beginning of the seventh 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 entertainment; and the innocence, simplicity, and purity of his manners, and extraordinary progress in all virtues, qualified him for the service of the altar, to which he was assumed by taking 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, made curate of St. Basil's, in Morcona, a town near Benevento. His parishioners were steeled in their irregularities, and averse from 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 endeavoured to awake them to a sense of their miseries, and to sincere repentance: they treated him as a disturber of their peace, and persecuted him with the utmost violence. Finding their malice conquered by his patience and humility, and his character shining still more bright, they had recourse to slanders, in which, such was their virulence and success, that he was obliged to withdraw his charitable endeavours amongst them. By these fiery trials, God purified his heart from all earthly attachments, and perfectly crucified it to the world. 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 been first sown at Benevento by St. Potin, who is said to have been sent thither by St. Peter, and is looked upon as the first bishop of this see. We have no names of his successors till St. Januarius, by whom this church was exceedingly increased, and who was honoured with the crown of martyrdom in 305. Totila, the Goth, laid the city of Benevento in ruins, in 545. The Lombards having possessed themselves of that country, repaired it, and King Autharis 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, with their duke Arichis, 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, or prince Romuald, authorized by his example, though son of Grimoald, king of the Lombards, who 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 honour to a tree, on which they hung the skin of a wild beast, and these ceremonies were closed by public games, in which the skin served for a mark at which bowmen shot arrows over their shoulder. St. Barbatus preached zealously against these abuses, and laboured long to no purpose : yet 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 grievous alarms and fears, they listened to the holy preacher, and, entering into themselves, renounced their errors and idolatrous practices. Hereupon, St. Barbatus gave them the comfortable assurance that the siege should be raised, and the emperor worsted: 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. Ildebrand, bishop of Benevento, dying during the siege, after the public tranquillity was restored, St. Barbatus was consecrated bishop on the 10th of March, 663; for this see was only raised to the archiepiscopal dignity by Pope John XIII. about the year 965. Barbatus, being invested with the episcopal character, pursued and completed the good work which he had so happily begun, and destroyed every trace or the least remain of superstition in the prince's closet, and in the whole state. In the year 680 he assisted in a council held by Pope Agatho at Rome, and the year following in the sixth general council held at Constantinople against the Monothelites. He did not long survive this great assembly, for he died on the 29th of February, 682, being about seventy years old, almost nineteen of which he had spent in the episcopal chair. He is named in the Roman Martyrology, and honoured at Benevento among the chief patrons of that city.

Many sinners are moved by alarming sensible dangers or calamities to enter into themselves, on whom the terrors of the divine judgment make very little impression. The reason can only be a supine neglect of serious reflection, and a habit of considering them only transiently, and as at a distance; for it is impossible for any one 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 effect not a change of heart. Amongst the pretended conversions which sickness daily produces, very few bear the character of sincerity, as appears by those who, after their recovery, live on in their former lukewarmness and disorders.1 St. Austin, in a sermon which he made upon the news, that Rome had been sacked by the barbarians, relates,2 that not long before, at Constantinople, upon the appearance of an unusual meteor, and a rumour of a pretended prediction that the city would be destroyed by fire from heaven, the inhabitants were seized with a panic fear, all began to do penance like Ninive, and fled, with the emperor at their head, to a great distance from the city. After the term appointed for its pretended destruction was elapsed, they sent scouts to the city which they had left quite empty, and, hearing that it was still standing, returned to it, and with their fears forgot their repentance and all their good resolutions. To prevent the danger of penitents imposing upon 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.

 The devil was sick, the devil a monk would be;
 The devil was well, the devil no monk was he.

2 S. Aug. Serm. de Excidio Urbis, c. 6, t. 6, p. 627. ed Ben.

St. Simeon, Bishop of Jerusalem

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MARTYR.

From Euseb. l. 3, c. 32. Tillem, t. 1, p. 186. and t. 2. Le Quien, Oriens Christ, t. 3, p. 140.

A.D. 116.

St. Simeon was the son of Cleophas, otherwise called Alpheus, brother to St. Joseph, and of Mary, sister of the Blessed Virgin. He was therefore nephew both to St. Joseph and to the Blessed Virgin, and cousin-german to Christ. Simeon and Simon are the same name, and this saint is, according to the best interpreters of the holy scripture, the Simon mentioned,1 who was brother to St. James the Lesser, and St. Jude, apostles, and to Joseph or José. He was eight or nine years older than our Saviour. We cannot doubt but he was an early follower of Christ, as his father and mother and three brothers were, and an exception to that of St. John,2 that our Lord's relations did not believe in him. Nor does St. Luke3 leave us any room to doubt but that he received the Holy Ghost on the day of Pentecost with the Blessed Virgin and the apostles; for he mentions present St. James and St. Jude, and the brothers of our Lord. Saint Epiphanius relates,4 that when the Jews massacred St. James the Lesser, his brother Simeon reproached them for their atrocious cruelty. St. James, bishop of Jerusalem, being put to death in the year 62, twenty-nine years after our Saviour's resurrection, the apostles and disciples met at Jerusalem to appoint him a successor. They unanimously chose St. Simeon, who had probably before assisted his brother in the government of that church.

In the year 66, in which SS. Peter and Paul suffered martyrdom at Rome, the civil war began in Judea, by the seditions of the Jews against the Romans. The Christians in Jerusalem were warned by God of the impending destruction of that city, and by a divine revelation5 commanded to leave it, as Lot was rescued out of Sodom. They therefore departed out of it the same year, before Vespasian, Nero's general, and afterwards emperor, entered Judæa, and retired beyond the Jordan to a small city called Pella; having St. Simeon at their head. After the taking and burning of Jerusalem, they returned thither again, and settled themselves amidst its ruins, till Adrian afterwards entirely razed it. St. Epiphanius6 and Eusebius7 assure us, that the church here flourished extremely, and that multitudes of Jews were converted by the great number of prodigies and miracles wrought in it.

St. Simeon, amidst the consolations of the Holy Ghost and the great progress of the church, had the affliction to see two heresies arise within its bosom, namely, those of the Nazareans and the Ebionites; the first seeds of which, according to St. Epiphanius, appeared at Pella. The Nazareans were a sect of men between Jews and Christians, but abhorred by both. They allowed Christ to be the greatest of the prophets, but said he was a mere man, whose natural parents were Joseph and Mary: they joined all the ceremonies of the old law with the new, and observed both the Jewish Sabbath and the Sunday. Ebion added other errors to these, which Cerenthus had also espoused, and taught many superstitions, permitted divorces, and allowed of the most infamous abominations. He began to preach at Cocabe, a village beyond the Jordan, where he dwelt; but he afterwards travelled into Asia, and thence to Rome. The authority of St. Simeon kept the heretics in some awe during his life, which was the longest upon earth of any of our Lord's disciples. But as Eusebius says, he was no sooner dead than a deluge of execrable heresies broke out of hell upon the church, which durst not openly appear during his life.

Vespasian and Domitian had commanded all to be put to death who were of the race of David. St. Simeon had escaped their searches; but Trajan having given the same order, certain heretics and Jews accused him, as being both of the race of David and a Christian, to Atticus, the Roman governor in Palestine. The holy bishop was condemned by him to be crucified: who, after having undergone the usual tortures during several days, which, though one hundred and twenty years old, he suffered with so much patience that he drew on him a universal admiration, and that of Atticus in particular, he died in 107, according to Eusebius in his chronicle, but in 116, according to Dodwell, bishop Loyde, and F. Pagi. He must have governed the church of Jerusalem about forty-three years.

The eminent saints among the primitive disciples of Jesus Christ, were entirely animated by his spirit, and being dead to the world and themselves, they appeared like angels among men. Free from the secret mixture of the sinister views of all passions, to a degree which was a miracle of grace, they had in all things only God, his will and honour before their eyes, equally aspiring to him through honour and infamy. In the midst of human applause they remained perfectly humbled in the centre of their own nothingness: when loaded with reproaches and contempt, and persecuted with all the rage that malice could inspire, they were raised above all these things so as to stand fearless amidst racks and executioners, inflexibly constant in their fidelity to God, before tyrants, invincible under torments, and superior to them almost as if they had been impassible. Their resolution never failed them, their fervour seemed never slackened. Such wonderful men wrought continual miracles in converting souls to God. We bear the name of Christians, and wear the habit of saints; but are full of the spirit of worldlings, and our actions are infected with its poison. We secretly seek ourselves, even when we flatter ourselves that God is our only aim, and whilst we undertake to convert the world, we suffer it to pervert us. When shall we begin to study to crucify our passions and die to ourselves, that we may lay a solid foundation of true virtue and establish its reign in our hearts?

1 Matt. xiii. 55.

2 John vii. 5.

3 Acts i. 14.

4 Hær. 78. c. 14.

5 Eus. l. 3, c. 5. Epiph. hær. 29. c. 7. hær. 30. c. 2.

6 L. de Pond. et Mensur. c. 15.

7 Demonst. l. 3, c. 5.

St. Loman, or Luman, B.C.

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Jocelin calls him a nephew of St. Patrick, by a sister. He was at least a disciple of that saint, and first bishop of Trim, in Meath. Port-Loman, a town belonging to the Nugents in Westmeath, takes its name from him, and honours his memory with singular veneration. St. Forcherne, son of the lord of that territory, was baptized by St. Loman, succeeded him in the bishopric of Trim, and is honoured among the saints in Ireland, both on this same day and on the llth of October. See Colgan on the 17th Febr. Usher's Antiqu. ad ann. 433.

SS. Elias, Jeremy, Isaias, Samuel, and Daniel

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WITH OTHER HOLY MARTYRS AT CÆSAREA, IN PALESTINE.

From Eusebius's relation of the martyrs of Palestine, at the end of the eighth book of his history, c. 11, 12. p. 346. Ed. Vales.

A.D. 309.

IN the year 309, the emperors Galerius Maximianus and Maximinus continuing the persecution begun by Dioclesian, these five pious Egyptians went to visit the confessors condemned to the mines in Cilicia, and on their return were stopped by the guards of the gates of Cæsarea, in Palestine, as they were entering the town. They readily declared themselves Christians, together with the motive of their journey; upon which they were apprehended. The day following they were brought before Firmilian, the governor of Palestine, together with St. Pamphilus and others. The judge, before he began his interrogatory, ordered the five Egyptians to be laid on the rack, as was his custom. After they had long suffered all manner of tortures, he addressed himself to him who seemed to be their chief, and asked him his name and his country. They had changed their names, which, perhaps, before their conversion, where [sic] those of some heathen gods, as was customary in Egypt. The martyr answered, according to the names they had given themselves, that he was called Elias, and his companions, Jeremy, Isaias, Samuel, and Daniel. Firmilian then asked their country; he answered Jerusalem, meaning the heavenly Jerusalem, the true country of all Christians. The judge inquired in what part of the world that was, and ordered him to be tormented with fresh cruelty. All this while the executioners continued to tear his body with stripes, whilst his hands were bound behind him, and his feet squeezed in the woodstocks, called the Nervus. The judge, at last, tired with tormenting them, condemned all five to be beheaded, which was immediately executed.

Porphyrius, a youth who was a servant of St. Pamphilus, hearing the sentence pronounced, cried out, that at least the honour of burial ought not to be refused them. Firmilian, provoked at this boldness, ordered him to be apprehended; and finding that he confessed himself a Christian, and refused to sacrifice, ordered his sides to be torn so cruelly, that his very bones and bowels were exposed to view. He underwent all this without a sigh or tear, or so much as making the least complaint. The tyrant, not to be overcome by so heroic a constancy, gave orders for a great fire to be kindled, with a vacant space to be left in the midst of it, for the martyr to be laid in, when taken off the rack. This was accordingly done, and he lay there a considerable time surrounded by the flames, singing the praises of God, and invoking the name of Jesus; till at length, quite broiled by the fire, he consummated a slow, but glorious martyrdom.

Seleucus, an eye-witness of this victory, was heard by the soldiers applauding the martyr's resolution; and being brought before the governor, he, without more ado, ordered his head to be struck off.

SS. Faustinus and Jovita, MM.

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A.D. 121.

Faustinus and Jovita were brothers, nobly born, and zealous professors of the Christian religion, which they preached without fear in their city of Brescia, whilst the bishop of that place lay concealed during the persecution. The acts of their martyrdom seeming of doubtful authority, all we can affirm with certainty of them is, that their remarkable zeal excited the fury of the heathens against them, and procured them a glorious death for their faith at Brescia in Lombardy, under the emperor Adrian. Julian, a heathen lord, apprehended them; and the emperor himself passing through Brescia, when neither threats nor torments could shake their constancy, commanded them to be beheaded. They seem to have suffered about the year 121.1 The city of Brescia honours them as its chief patrons, and possesses their relics. A very ancient church in that city bears their name, and all martyrologies mention them.

The spirit of Christ is a spirit of martyrdom, at least of mortification and penance. It is always the spirit of the cross. The remains of the old man, of sin and of death, must be extinguished, before one can be made heavenly by putting on affections which are divine. What mortifies the senses and the flesh gives life to the spirit, and what weakens and subdues the body strenthens the soul. Hence the divine love infuses a spirit of mortification, patience, obedience, humility, and meekness, with a love of sufferings and contempt, in which consists the sweetness of the cross. The more we share in the suffering life of Christ, the greater share we inherit in his spirit, and in the fruit of his death. To souls mortified to their senses and disengaged from earthly things, God gives frequent foretastes of the sweetness of eternal life, and the most ardent desires of possessing him in his glory. This is the spirit of martyrdom, which entitles a Christian to a happy resurrection and to the bliss of the life to come.

1 See Tillemont, t. 2, p. 249. Pagi, &c.

St. Valentine

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Priest and Martyr.

His acts are commended by Henschenius, but objected to by Tillemont, &c. Here is given only an abridgement of the principal circumstances, from Tillem. t. 4, p. 678.

Third Age.

Valentine was a holy priest in Rome, who, with St. Marina and his family, assisted the martyrs in the persecution under Claudius II. He was apprehended, and sent hy the emperor to the prefect of Rome; who, on finding all his promises to make him renounce his faith ineffectual, commanded him to be beaten with clubs, and afterwards to be beheaded, which was executed on the 14th of February, about the year 270. Pope Julias [sic] I. is said to have built a church near Ponte Mole to his memory, which for a long time gave name to the gate, now called Porta del Popolo, formerly Porta Valentini. The greater part of his relics are now in the church of St. Praxedes. His name ia celebrated as that of an illustrious martyr in the sacramentary of St. Gregory, the Roman missal of Thomasius, in the calendar of F. Fronto, and that of Allatius, in Bede, Usuard, Ado, Notker and all other martyrologies on this day. To abolish the heathen's lewd superstitious custom of boys drawing the names of Girls in honour of their goddess Februta Juno, on the 15th of thia month, several zealous pastors substituted the names of saints in billets given on this day. See January 29, on St. Francis de Sales.

B. Roger, Abbot

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Having embraced the Cistercian order at Loroy, or Locus Regis, in Berry, he was chosen abbot of Elan near Retel in Champagne, and died about the year 1175. His remains are enshrined in a chapel which bears his name, in the church at Elan, where his festival is kept with a mass in his honour on the 13th of February. His life was written by a monk of Elan. See Chatelain, on the 4th of January, on which day his name occurs in a Cistercian calendar printed at Dijon.

St. Benedict, of Anian, Abbot

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From his life, written with great piety, gravity, and erudition, by St. Ardo Smaragdus, his disciple, to whom he committed the government of his monastery of Anian, when he was called by the emperor near the court. Ardo died March the 7th, in 843, and is honoured at Anian among the saints. He is not to be confounded with Smaragdus, abbot in the diocess of Verdun, author of a commentary on the rule of St. Bennet. This excellent life is published by Dom Menard, at the head of St. Bennet's Concordia Regularum; by Henschenius, 12 Feb. and by Dom Mabillon, Acta SS. Ben. vol. 5, p. 191, 217. See Helyot, Hist. des Ord. Relig. t. 5, p. 139. See also Bulteau, Hist, de l'Ord. de S. Benoit. l. 5, c. 2, p. 342. Eckart. de Reb. Fran. t. 2, p. 117, 163.

A.D. 821.

He was son of Aigulf, count or governor of Languedoc, and served King Pepin and his son Charlemagne in quality of cupbearer, enjoying under them great honours aud possessions. Grace made him sensible of the vanity of all perishable goods, and at twenty years of age he took a resolution of seeking the kingdom of God with his whole heart. From that time he led a most mortified life in the court itself for three years, eating very sparingly and of the coarsest fare, allowing himself very little sleep, and mortifying all his senses. In 774, having narrowly escaped being drowned in the Tesin, near Pavia, in endeavouring to save his brother, he made a vow to quit the world entirely. Returning to Languedoc, he was confirmed in his resolution by the pious advice of a hermit of great merit and virtue, called Widmar; and under a pretext of going to the court at Aix-la-Chapelle, he went to the abbey of St. Seine, five leagues from Dijon, and having sent back all his attendants, became a monk there. He spent two years and a half in wonderful abstinence, treating his body as a furious wild beast, to which he would show no other mercy than barely not to kill it. He took no other sustenance on any account but bread and water; and when overcome with weariness, he allowed himself nothing softer than the bare ground whereon to take a short rest; thus making even his repose a continuation of penance. He frequently passed the whole night in prayer, and stood barefoot on the ground in the sharpest cold. He studied to make himself contemptible by all manner of humiliations, and received all insults with joy, so perfectly was he dead to himself. God bestowed on him an extraordinary spirit of compunction, and the gift of tears, with an infused knowledge of spiritual things to an eminent degree. Not content to fulfil the rule of St. Benedict in its full rigour, he practised all the severest observances, prescribed by the rules of St. Pachomius and St. Basil. Being made cellerist, he was very solicitous to provide for others whatever St. Benedict's rule allowed and had a particular care of the poor and of the guests.

His brethren, upon the abbot's death, were disposed to choose our saint, but he, being unwilling to accept of the charge on account of their known aversion to a reformation, left them, and returned to his own country, Languedoc, in 780, where he built a small hermitage near a chapel of St. Saturninus, on the brook Anian, near the river Eraud, upon his own estate. Here he lived some years in extreme poverty, praying continually that God would teach him to do his will, and make him faithfully correspond with his eternal designs. Some solitaries, and with them the holy man Widmar, put themselves under his direction, though he long excused himself. They earned their livelihood by their labour, and lived on bread and water, except on Sundays and solemn festivals, on which they added a little wine and milk when it was given them in alms. The holy superior did not exempt himself from working with the rest in the fields, either carrying wood or ploughing; and sometimes he copied good books. The number of his disciples increasing, he quitted the valley, and built a monastery in a more spacious place, in that neighbourhood. He showed his love of poverty by his rigorous practice of it: for he long used wooden, and afterwards glass or pewter chalices at the altar; and if any presents of silk ornaments were made him, he gave them to other churches. However, he some time after changed his way of thinking with respect to the church; built a cloister, and a stately church adorned with marble pillars, furnished it with silver chalices, and rich ornaments, and bought a great number of books. He had in a short time three hundred religious under his direction, and also exercised a general inspection over all the monasteries of Provence, Languedoc, and Gascony, which respected him as their common parent and master. At last he remitted something in the austerities of the reformation he had introduced among them. Felix, bishop of Urgel, had advanced that Christ was not the natural, but only the adoptive son of the eternal Father. St. Benedict most learnedly opposed this heresy, and assisted in 794 at the council assembled against it at Francfort. He employed his pen to confute the same, in four treatises, published in the miscellanies of Balusius.

Benedict was become the oracle of the whole kingdom, and he established his reformation in many great monasteries with little or no opposition. His most illustrious colony was the monastery of Gellone, founded in 804, by William, duke of Aquitain, who retired into it himself, whence it was called St. Guillem du Desert. By the councils held under Charlemagne, in 813, and by the capitulars of that prince, published the same year, it was ordained that the canons should live according to the canons and laws of the church, and the monks according to the rule of St. Bennet: by which regulation an uniformity was introduced in the monastic order in the West. The emperor Lewis Debonnair, who succeeded his father on the 28th of January, 814, committed to the saint the inspection of all the abbeys in his kingdom. To have him nearer his own person, the emperor obliged him to live in the abbey of Marmunster, in Alsace; and as this was still too remote, desirous of his constant assistance in his councils, he built the monastery of Inde, two leagues from Aix-la-Chapelle, the residence of the emperor and court. Notwithstanding St. Benedict's constant abode in this monastery, he had still a hand in restoring monastic discipline throughout France and Germany; as he also was the chief instrument in drawing up the canons for the reformation of prebendaries and monks in the council of Aix-la-Chapelle, in 817, and presided in the assembly of abbots the same year, to enforce restoration of discipline. His statutes were adopted by the order, and annexed to the rule of St. Benedict, the founder. He wrote, whilst a private monk at Seine, the code of Rules, being a collection of all the monastic regulations, which he found extant; as also a book of homilies for the use of monks, collected, according to the custom of that age, from the works of the fathers: likewise a Penitential, printed in the additions to the Capitulars. In his Concord of Rules he gives that of St. Bennet, with those of other patriarchs of the monastic order, to show their uniformity in the exercises which they prescribe.1 This great restorer of the monastic order in the West, worn out at length with mortification and fatigues, suffered much from continual sickness the latter years of his life. He died at Inde with extraordinary tranquillity and cheerfulness on the llth of February, 821, being then about seventy-one years of age, and was buried in the same monastery, since called St. Cornelius's, the church being dedicated to that holy pope and martyr. At Anian his festival is kept on the llth, but by most other Martyrologies on the 12th of February, the day of his burial. His relics remain in the monastery of St. Cornelius, or of Inde, in the duchy of Cleves, and have been honoured with miracles.

St. Bennet, by the earnestness with which he set himself to study the spirit of his holy rule and state, gave a proof of the ardour with which he aspired to Christian perfection. The experienced masters of a spiritual life, and the holy legislators of monastic institutes, have in view the great principles of an interior life, which the gospel lays down: for in the exercises which they prescribe, powerful means are offered by which a soul may learn perfectly to die to herself, and be united in all her powers to God. This dying to, and profound annihilation of ourselves, is of such importance, that so long as a soul remains in this state, though all the devils in hell were leagued together, they can never hurt her. All their efforts will only make her sink more deepty in this feeling knowledge of herself, in which she finds her strength, her repose, and her joy, because by it she is prepared to receive the divine grace: and if self-love be destroyed, the devil can have no power over us; for he never makes any successful attacks upon us but by the secret intelligence which he holds with this domestic enemy. The crucifixion of the old man, and perfect disengagement of the heart, by the practice of universal self-denial, is absolutely necessary before a soul can ascend the mountain of the God of Jacob, on which his infinite majesty is seen, separated from all creatures; as Blosius,2 and all other directors in the paths of an interior life, strongly inculcate.

1 See Codex Regularum, collectus a S. Benedicto Anianæ, auctus a Luca Holstenio, printed by Holstenius at Rome, in 1661. Also, Concordia Regularum, authore S. Benedicto Anianæ abbate, edita ab. Hug. Menardo Benedictino. Parisiis, 1638.

2 Instit. Spir. c. 1, n. 6, &c.

The Empress Theodora

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Whom the Greeks Rank among the Saints.

By her mildness and patience she often softened the cruel temper of her brutish husband, Theophilus, and protected the defenders of holy images from the fury of his persecution. Being left by his death regent of the empire during the minority of her son, Michael III., she put an end to the Iconoclast heresy, one hundred and twenty years after the first establishment of it by Leo the Isaurian: and the patriarch Methodius with great solemnity restored holy images in the great church in Constantinople, on the first Sunday of Lent, which we call the second, of which event the Greeks make an annual commemoration, calling it the feast of Orthodoxy. After she had governed the empire with great glory twelve years, she was banished by her unnatural son and his impious uncle Bardas. She prepared herself for death by spending the last eight years of her life in a monastery, where she gave up her soul to God in 867. She is ranked among the saints in the Menology of the emperor Basil, in the Menæa, and other calendars of the Greeks. See the compilations of Bollandus from the authors of the Byzantine history.

St. Scholastica, Virgin

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From St. Gregory the Great, Dial. l. 2, c. 33. and 34.

About the year 543.

This saint was sister to the great St. Benedict. She consecrated herself to God from her earliest youth, as St. Gregory testifies. Where her first monastery was situated is not mentioned; but after her brother removed to Mount Cassino, she choose her retreat at Plombariola, in that neighbourhood, where she founded and governed a nunnery about five miles distant to the south from St. Benedict's monastery.1 St. Bertharius, who was abbot of Cassino three hundred years after, says, that she instructed in virtue several of her own sex. And whereas St. Gregory informs us, that St. Benedict governed nuns as well as monks, his sister must have been their abbess under his rule and direction. She visited her holy brother once a year, and as she was not allowed to enter his monastery, he went out with some of his monks to meet her at a house at some small distance. They spent these visits in the praises of God, and in conferring together on spiritual matters. St. Gregory relates a remarkable circumstance of the last of these visits. Scholastica having passed the day as usual in singing psalms, and pious discourses, they sat down in the evening to take their refection. After it was over, Scholastica, perhaps foreknowing it would be their last interview in this world, or at least desirous of some further spiritual improvement, was very urgent with her brother to delay his return till the next day, that they might entertain themselves till morning upon the happiness of the other life. St. Benedict, unwilling to transgress his rule, told her he could not pass a night out of his monastery: so desired her not to insist upon such a breach of monastic discipline. Scholastica finding him resolved on going home, laying her hands joined upon the table and her head upon them, with many tears begged of Almighty God to interpose in her behalf. Her prayer was scarcely ended, when there happened such a storm of rain, thunder, and lightning, that neither St. Benedict nor any of his companions could set a foot out of doors. He complained to his sister, saying: "God forgive you, sister; what have you done ?" She answered: "I asked you a favour, and you refused it me: I asked it of Almighty God, and he has granted it me." St. Benedict was therefore obliged to comply with her request, and they spent the night in conferences on pious subjects, chiefly on the felicity of the blessed, to which both most ardently aspired, and which she was shortly to enjoy. The next morning they parted, and three days after St. Scholastica died in her solitude. St. Benedict was then alone in contemplation on Mount Cassino, and lifting up his eyes to heaven, he saw the soul of his sister ascending thither in the shape of a dove. Filled with joy at her happy passage, he gave thanks for it to God, and declared her death to his brethren; some of whom he sent to bring her corpse to his monastery, where he caused it to be laid in the tomb which he had prepared for himself. She must have died about the year 543. Her relics are said to have been translated into France, together with those of St. Benedict, in the seventh century, according to the relation given by the monk Adrevald.2 They are said to have been deposited at Mans, and kept in the collegiate church of St. Peter in that city, in a rich silver shrine.3 In 1562 this shrine was preserved from being plundered by the Hugonots, as is related by Chatelain. Her principal festival at Mans is kept a holyday on the llth of July, the day of the translation of her relics. She was honoured in some places with an office of three lessons, in the time of St. Lewis, as appears from a calendar of Longchamp, wrote in his reign.

Lewis of Granada, treating on the perfection of the love of God, mentions the miraculous storm obtained by St. Scholastica, to show with what excess of goodness God is always ready to hear the petitions and desires of his servants. This pious soul must have received strong pledges and most sensible tokens of his love, seeing she depended on receiving so readily what she asked of him. No child could address himself with so great confidence to his most tender parent. The love which God bears us, and his readiness to succour and comfort us, if we humbly confess and lay before him our wants, infinitely surpasses all that can be found in creatures. Nor can we be surprised that he so easily heard the prayer of this holy virgin, since at the command of Joshua he stopped the heavens, God obeying the voice of man! He hears the most secret desires of those who fear and love him, and does their will: if he sometimes seems deaf to their cries, it is to grant their main desire by doing what is most expedient for them, as St. Austin frequently observes. The short prayer by which St. Scholastica gained this remarkable victory over her brother, who was one of the greatest saints on earth, was doubtless no more than a single act of her pure desires, which she continually turned toward, and fixed on her beloved. It was enough for her to cast her eyes interiorly upon him with whom she was closely and inseparably united in mind and affections, to move him so suddenly to change the course of the elements in order to satisfy her pious desire. By placing herself, as a docile scholar, continually at the feet of the Divine Majesty, who filled all the powers of her soul with the sweetness of his heavenly communications, she learned that sublime science of perfection in which she became a mistress to so many other chaste souls by this divine exercise. Her life in her retirement, to that happy moment which closed her mortal pilgrimage, was a continued uniform contemplation, by which all her powers were united to, and transformed into, God.

1 This nunnery underwent the same fate with the abbey of Mount Cassino, both being burned to the ground by the Lombards. When Rachim, king of that nation, having been converted to the Catholic faith by the exhortations of Pope Zachary, re-established that abbey, and taking the monastic habit, ended his life there, his queen Tasia and his daughter Ratiuda rebuilt and richly endowed the nunnery of Plombariola, in which they lived with great regularity to their deaths, as is related by Leo of Ostia in his Chronicle of Mount Cassino, ad an. 750. It has been since destroyed, so that at present the land is only a farm belonging to the monastery of Mount Cassino. See Dom Mege, Vie de St. Benoit, p. 412. Chatelain, Notes, p. 605. Muratori Antichita, £c. t. 3, p. 400. Diss. 66. dei Monasteri delle Monache.

2 See Paul the deacon, Hist. Longob. and Dom Mege, Vie de St. Benoit, p. 48.

3 That the relics of St. Benedict were privately carried off from Mount Cassino, in 660, soon after the monastery was destroyed, and brought to Fleury on the Loire by Aigiulph the monk, and those of St. Scholastica by certain persons of Mans to that city, is maintained by Mabillon, Menard, and Bosche. But that the relics of both these saints still remain at Mount Cassino, is strenuously affirmed by Loretus Angelus de Nuce, and Marchiarelli, the late learned monk of the Order of Camaldoli; and this assertion Benedict XIV. looks upon as certain, (de Canoniz. l. 4, part. 2, c. 24, t. 4, p. 245.) For Pope Zachary in his bull assures us, that he devoutly honoured the relics of SS. Benedict and Scholastica at Mount Cassino, in 746. Lee Ostiensis and Peter the deacon visited them and found them untouched in 1071, as Alexander II. affirms in the bull he published when he consecrated the new church there. By careful visitations made by authority, in 1486 and 1545, the same is proved. Yet Angelus de Nuce allows some portions of both saints to be at Mans and Fleury, on the Loire. Against the supposed translation of the whole shrines of St. Benedict and St. Scholastica into France, see Muratori, Antichita, &c. dissert. 58, t. 3, p. 244.

St. Nicephorus, M.

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From his genuine acts in Ruinart, p. 244. Tillemont, t. 4, p. 17.

A.D. 260.

There dwelt in Antioch a priest called Sapricius, and a layman, named Nicephorus, who had been linked together for many years by the strictest friendship. But the enemy of mankind sowing between them the seeds of discord, this their friendship was succeeded by the most implacable hatred, and they declined meeting each other in the streets. Thus it continued a considerable time. At length, Nicephorus, entering into himself, and reflecting on the grievousness of the sin of hatred, resolved on seeking a reconciliation. He accordingly deputed some friends to go to Sapricius to beg his pardon, promising him all reasonable satisfaction for the injury done him. But the priest refused to forgive him. Nicephorus sent other friends to him on the same errand, but though they pressed and entreated him to be reconciled, Sapricius was inflexible. Nicephorus sent a third time, but to no purpose; Sapricius having shut his ears not to men only but to Christ himself, who commands us to forgive as we ourselves hope to be forgiven. Nicephorus, finding him deaf to the remonstrances of their common friends, went in person to his house, and casting himself at his feet owned his fault, and begged pardon for Christ's sake; but all in vain.

The persecution suddenly began to rage under Valerian and Gallien in the year 260. Sapricius was appehended and brought before the governor, who asked him his name. "It is Sapricius," answered he. Governor.—"Of what profession are you?" Sapricius.—"I am a Christian." Governor.—"Are you of the clergy?" Sapricius.—"I have the honour to be a priest." He added: "We Christians acknowledge one Lord and Master Jesus Christ, who is God; the only and true God, who created heaven and earth. The gods of nations are devils." The president, exasperated at his answer, gave orders for him to be put into an engine, like a screw-press, which the tyrants had invented to torment the faithful. The excessive pain of this torture did not shake Sapricius's constancy, and he said to the judges: "My body is in your power; but my soul you cannot touch. Only my Saviour Jesus Christ is master of this." The president seeing him so resolute, pronounced this sentence: "Sapricius, priest of the Christians, who is ridiculously persuaded that he shall rise again, shall be delivered over to the executioner of public justice to have his head severed from his body, because he has contemned the edict of the emperors."

Sapricius seemed to receive the sentence with great cheerfulness, and was in haste to arrive at the place of execution in hopes of his crown. Nicephorus ran out to meet him, and casting himself at his feet, said: "Martyr of Jesus Christ, forgive me my offence." But Sapricius made him no answer. Nicephorus waited for him in another street which he was to pass through, and as soon as he saw him coming up, broke through the crowd, and falling again at his feet, conjured him to pardon the fault he had committed against him, through frailty rather than design. This he begged by the glorious confession he had made of the divinity of Jesus Christ. Sapricius's heart was more and more hardened, and now he would not so much as look on him. The soldiers laughed at Nicephorus, saying: "A greater fool than thee was never seen, in being so solicitous for a man's pardon who is upon the point of being executed." Being arrived at the place of execution, Nicephorus redoubled his humble entreaties and supplications: but all in vain; for Sapricius continued as obstinate as ever, in refusing to forgive. The executioners said to Sapricius: "Kneel down that we may cut off your head." Sapricius said: "Upon what account?" They answered: "Because you will not sacrifice to the gods, nor obey the emperor's orders, for the love of that man that is called Christ." The unfortunate Sapricius cried out: "Stop, my friends; do not put me to death; I will do what you desire; I am ready to sacrifice." Nicephorus, sensibly afflicted at his apostasy, cried aloud to him: "Brother, what are you doing? renounce not Jesus Christ our good master. Forfeit not a crown you have already gained by tortures and sufferings." But Sapricius would give no manner of attention to what he said. Whereupon, Nicephorus, with tears of bitter anguish for the fall of Sapricius, said to the executioners: "I am a Christian, and believe in Jesus Christ, whom this wretch has renounced; behold me here ready to die in his stead." All present were astonished at such an unexpected declaration. The officers of justice being under an uncertainty how to proceed, despatched a lictor or beadle, to the governor with this message: "Sapricius promiseth to sacrifice, but here is another desirous to die for the same Christ, saying: "I am a Christian, and refuse to sacrifice to your gods, and comply with the edicts of the emperors." The governor on hearing this, dictated the following sentence: "If this man persist in refusing to sacrifice to the immortal gods, let him die by the sword." which was accordingly put in execution. Thus Nicephorus received three immortal crowns, namely, of faith, humility, and charity, triumphs which Sapricius had made himself unworthy of. The Greek and the Roman Martyrologies mention him on this day.

St. Paul, Bishop of Verdun, C.

2010-02-08T03:00:00.000-08:00

Having lived in the world a perfect pattern of perfection by alms, fasts, assiduous prayer, meekness, and charity, he retired among the hermits of Mount Voge, near Triers, on a hill called from him Paulberg. King Dagobert placed him in the episcopal chair of Verdun and was his protector in his zealous labours, and ample foundations of that church. The saint died in 631. See his authentic anonymous life in Henschenius. Also Calmet, Hist. de Lorraine, t. 1, 1. 9, n. 41, p. 402. Bollandus, Feb. t. 2, p. 169.

St. Richard, King & C.

2010-02-07T03:00:00.000-08:00

This saint was an English prince, in the kingdom of the West-Saxons, and was perhaps deprived of his inheritance by some revolution in the state: or he renounced it to be more at liberty to dedicate himself to the pursuit of Christian perfection. His three children, Winebald, Willibald, and Warburga, are all honoured as saints. Taking with him his two sons, he undertook a pilgrimage of penance and devotion, and sailing for Hamblehaven, landed in Neustria on the Western coasts of France. He made a considerable stay at Rouen, and made his devotions in the most holy places that lay in his way through France. Being arrived at Lucca in Italy, in his road to Rome, he there died suddenly, about the year 722, and was buried in St. Fridian's church there. His relics are venerated to this day in the same place, and his festival kept at Lucca with singular devotion. St. Richard, when living, obtained by his prayers the recovery of his younger son Willibald, whom he laid at the foot of a great crucifix erected in a public place in England, when the child's life was despaired of in a grievous sickness: and since his death, many have experienced the miraculous power of his intercession with God, especially where his relics invite the devotion of the faithful. His festival is kept at Lucca, and his name honoured in the Roman Martyrology on the 7th of February. See the life of St. Willibald by his cousin, a nun of Heidenheim, in Canisius's Lectiones Antiquæ, with the notes of Basnage. Henschenius, Feb. t. 2. p. 70.

St. Dorothy, Virgin & Martyr

2010-02-06T03:00:00.000-08:00

See St. Aldhelm, Ado, Usuard, &c. in Bollandus, p. 771.

St. Aldhelm relates from her acts,1 that Fabricius, the governor of Cæsarea, in Cappadocia, inflicted on her most cruel torments, because she refused to marry, or to adore idols: that she converted two apostate women sent to seduce her: and that being condemned to be beheaded, she converted one Theophilus, by sending him certain fruits and flowers miraculously obtained of her heavenly spouse. She seems to have suffered under Dioclesian. Her body is kept in the celebrated church which bears her name, beyond the Tiber, in Rome. She is mentioned on this day in the ancient Martyrology under the name of St. Jerom. There was another holy virgin, whom Rufin calls Dorothy, a rich and noble lady of the city of Alexandria, who suffered torments and a voluntary banishment, to preserve her faith and chastity against the brutish lust and tyranny of the emperor Maximinus, in the year 308, as is recorded by Eusebius2 and Rufinus:3 but many take this latter, whose name is not mentioned by Eusebius, to be the famous St. Catharine of Alexandria.

The blood of the martyrs flourished in its hundred-fold increase, as St. Justin has well observed: "We are slain with the sword, but we increase and multiply: the more we are persecuted and destroyed, the more are added to our numbers. As a vine, by being pruned and cut close, shoots forth new suckers, and bears a greater abundance of fruit; so is it with us."4 Among other false reflections, the baron of Montesquieu, an author too much admired by many, writes:5 "It is hardly possible that Christianity should ever be established in China. Vows of virginity, the assembling of women in the churches, their necessary intercourse with the ministers of religion, their participation of the sacraments, auricular confession, the marrying but one wife; all this oversets the manners and customs, and strikes at the religion and laws of the country." Could he forget that the gospel overcame all these impediments where it was first established, in spite of the most inveterate prejudices, and of all worldly opposition from the great and the learned; whereas philosophy, though patronized by princes, could never in any age introduce its rules even into one city. In vain did the philosopher Plotinus solicit the emperor Gallienus to rebuild a ruined city in Campania, that he and his disciples might establish in it the republic of Plato: a system, in some points, flattering the passions of men, almost as Mahometism fell in with the prejudices and passions of the nations where it prevails. So visibly is the church the work of God.

1 L. de Laud. Virgin. c. 25.

2 L. 8, c. 14.

3 L. 1, c. 17.

4 Apol. 2, ol. 1.

5 L'Esprit des Lois, b. xix, 18.

St. Agatha, Virgin & Martyr

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We have her panegyrics by St. Aldhelm, in the seventh, and St. Methodius, patriarch of Constantinople, in the ninth, centuries: also a hymn in her honour among the poems of Pope Damasus, and another by St. Isidore of Seville, in Bollandus, p. 596. The Greeks have interpolated her acts: but those in Latin are very ancient. They are abridged by Tillemont, t. 3. p. 409. See also Rocci Pyrrho, in Sicilia Sacra, on Palermo, Catana, and Malta.

A.D. 251.

The cities of Palermo and Catana, in Sicily, dispute the honour of her birth: but they do much better who, by copying her virtues, and claiming her patronage, strive to become her fellow-citizens in heaven. It is agreed that she received the crown of martyrdom at Catana, in the persecution of Decius, in the third consulship of that prince, in the year of our Lord 251. She was of a rich and illustrious family, and having been consecrated to God from her tender years, triumphed over many assaults upon her chastity. Quintianus, a man of consular dignity, bent on gratifying both his lust and avarice, imagined he should easily compass his wicked designs on Agatha's person and estate, by means of the emperor's edict against the Christians. He therefore caused her to be apprehended and brought before him at Catana. Seeing herself in the hands of the persecutors, she made this prayer: "Jesus Christ, Lord of all things, you see my heart, you know my desire: possess alone all that I am. I am your sheep, make me worthy to overcome the devil." She wept, and prayed for courage and strength all the way she went. On her appearance, Quintianus gave orders for her being put into the hands of Aphrodisia, a most wicked woman who with six daughters, all prostitutes, kept a common stew. The saint suffered in this infamous place, assaults and stratagems against her virtue, infinitely more terrible to her than any tortures or death itself. But placing her confidence in God, she never ceased with sighs and most earnest tears to implore his protection, and by it was an overmatch for all their hellish attempts, the whole month she was there. Quintianus being informed of her constancy after thirty days, ordered her to be brought before him. The virgin, in her first interrogatory, told him, that to be a servant of Jesus Christ was the most illustrious nobility, and true liberty. The judge, offended at her resolute answers, commanded her to be buffeted, and led to prison. She entered it with great joy, recommending her future conflict to God. The next day she was arraigned a second time at the tribunal, and answered with equal constancy that Jesus Christ was her life and her salvation. Quintianus then ordered her to be stretched on the rack, which torment was usually accompanied with stripes, the tearing of the sides with iron hooks, and burning them with torches or matches. The governor, enraged to see her suffer all this with cheerfulness, commanded her breast to be tortured, and afterwards to be cut off. At which she made him this reproach: "Cruel tyrant, do you not blush to torture this part of my body, you that sucked the breasts of a woman yourself?" He remanded her to prison with a severe order, that neither salves nor food should be allowed her. But God would be himself her physician, and the apostle St. Peter in a vision comforted her, healed all her wounds, and filled her dungeon with a heavenly light. Quintianus, four days after, not the least moved at the miraculous cure of her wounds, caused her to be rolled naked over live coals mixed with broken potsherds. Being carried back to prison, she made this prayer; "Lord, my Creator, you have ever protected me from the cradle. You have taken from me the love of the world, and given me patience to suffer: receive now my soul." After which words she sweetly gave up the ghost. Her name is inserted in the canon of the mass, in the calendar of Carthage, as ancient as the year 530, and in all martyrologies of the Latins and Greeks. Pope Symmachus built a church in Rome on the Aurelian way, under her name, about the year 500, which is fallen to decay.1 St. Gregory the Great enriched a church which he purged from the Arian impiety, with her relics2 which it still possesses. This church had been rebuilt in her honour by Ricimer, general of the western empire, in 460. Gregory II. built another famous church at Rome, under her invocation, in 726, which Clement VIII. gave to the congregation of the Christian doctrine. St. Gregory the Great,3 ordered some of her relics to be placed in the church of the monastery of St. Stephen, in the Isle of Capreæ, now Capri. The chief part which remained at Catana, was carried to Constantinople by the Greek general, who drove the Saracens out of Sicily about the year 1040: these were brought back to Catana in 1127, a relation of which translation, written by Mauritius, who was then bishop, is recorded by Rocci Pyrrho, and Bollandus.4 The same authors relate in what manner the torrent of burning sulphur and stones which issue from Mount Ætna, in great eruptions, was several times averted from the walls of Catana by the veil of St. Agatha (taken out of her tomb) which was carried in procession. Also that through her intercession Malta (where she is honoured as patroness of the island) was preserved from the Turks who invaded it in 1551. Small portions of relics of St. Agatha are said to be distributed in many places.

The perfect purity of intention by which St. Agatha was entirely dead to the world and herself, and sought only to please God, is the circumstance which sanctified her sufferings, and rendered her sacrifice complete. The least cross which we bear, the least action which we perform in this disposition, will be a great holocaust, and a most acceptable offering. We have frequently something to suffer, sometimes an aching pain in the body, at other times some trouble of mind, often some disappointment, some humbling rebuke, or reproach, or the like. If we only bear these trials with patience, when others are witnesses, or if we often speak of them, or are fretful under them, or if we bear patiently public affronts or great trials, yet sink under those which are trifling, and are sensible to small, or secret injuries, a is evident [sic] that we have not attained to true purity of intention in our patience; that we are not dead to ourselves, and love not to disappear to the eyes of creatures, but court them, and take a secret complacency in things which appear great. We profess ourselves ready to die for Christ; yet cannot bear the least cross or humiliation. How agreeable to our divine spouse is the sacrifice of a soul which suffers in silence, desiring to have no other witness of her patience than God alone, who sends her trials; which shuns superiority and honours, but takes all care possible that no one knows the humility or modesty of such a refusal; which suffers humiliations, and seeks no comfort or reward but from God. This simplicity and purity of heart; this love of being hidden in God, through Jesus Christ, is the perfection of all our sacrifices, and the complete victory over self love, which it attacks and forces out of its strongest intrenchments; this says to Christ, with St. Agatha, "Possess alone all that I am."

1 Fronteau Cal. p. 25.

2 Dial. l. 3. c. 30.

3 L. 1. ep. 52.

4 Feb. t. 1. p. 647.

St. Rembert

2010-02-04T03:00:00.000-08:00

ARCHBISHOP OF BREMEN, C.

He was a native of Flanders, near Bruges, and a monk in the neighbouring monastery of Turholt. St. Anscharius called him to his assistance in his missionary labours, and in his last sickness recommended him for his successor, saying : "Rembert is more worthy to be archbishop, than I to discharge the office of his deacon." After his death, in 865, St. Rembert was unanimously chosen archbishop of Hanburgh and Bremen, and superintended all the churches of Sweeden [sic], Denmark, and the Lower Germany, finishing the work of their conversion. He also began the conversion of the Sclavi and the Vandals, now called Brandenburghers. He sold the sacred vessels to redeem captives from the Normans; and gave the horse on which he was riding for the ransom of a virgin taken by the Sclavi. He was most careful never to lose a moment of time from serious duties and prayer; and never to interrupt the attention cf his mind to God in his exterior functions. He died on the llth of June in 888, but is commemorated in the Roman Martyrology on the 4th of February, the day on which he was chosen archbishop. His life of St. Anscharius is admired, both for the author's accuracy and piety, and for the elegance and correctness of the composition, His letter to Walburge, first abbess of Nienherse, is a pathetic exhortation to humility and virginity. The see of Hanburgh being united to Bremen by St. Anscharius, this became the metropolitan church of all the north of Germany : but the city becoming Lutheran, expelled the archbishop in the reign of Charles V. This see and that of Ferden were secularized and yielded to the Swedes by the treaty of Westphalia, in 1648. See his life written soon after his death, in Henschenius, p. 555. Mabillon, Act. Bened. &c.