Book III
.
[60] There is not space to give an account of S. Fursey's vision, which seems to have been the original of Dante's Divina Commedia.
January 17.
SS. BRETHREN, SPEUSIPPUS, ELEUSIPPUS, MELEUSIPPUS, AND COMPANIONS, _MM. in Cappadocia_. S. GENULPH, _B. in France, 3rd cent._ S. ANTONY THE GREAT, _Ab. in Egypt_, A.D. 356. S. SABINE, _B. of Piacenza, in Italy, 4th cent._ S. NENN, _Ab. in Ulster, Ireland, 6th cent._ S. SULPICIUS, _B. of Bourges, in France, circ._ A.D. 647. S. MILDGYTHA, _V. in Kent, circ._ A.D. 730. S. RICMER, _Ab. at Le Mans, in France, circ._ A.D. 700.
SS. SPEUSIPPUS, ELEUSIPPUS, MELEUSIPPUS, LEONILLA, JONILLA, NEO AND TURBO, MM.
(DATE UNCERTAIN.)
[Roman Martyrology and Greek Menaea. The relics of these Saints having been moved to Langres, in France, they are sometimes called Martyrs of Langres, and are supposed to have suffered there; but this is a mistake. A copy of the Acts of their martyrdom was sent from Langres by one Varnahair to S. Ceraunus, Bishop of Paris, in the beginning of the 7th century. The original Acts are said to have been written by SS. Neo and Turbo, but they have not come down to us without manifest corruption and interpolation.]
Speusippus, Eleusippus, and Meleusippus were three sons at a birth of a believing mother and a heathen father. They were instructed in the Christian faith by their aunt, Leonilla, and then, in boyish enthusiasm, they rushed from her knee, where they had been taught, to demolish the idols in the temples of the city they inhabited. They were taken and burnt in one pyre, and received the baptism of blood. Jonilla, a woman standing by, with her little babe in her arms, cried out, "I also am a Christian, I believe in Christ, my God and my King." Then the judge ordered her hands to be bound behind her back, and that she should be hung by her hair. Her husband, horrified at the sentence, implored her to save her life for his sake and that of the babe; but she answered, "True, that I gave life to this dear little one, but it is true also that I owe my life to God, and I cannot set God after my child." Leonilla, the aunt of the brothers, was executed. Then Neo, who wrote these Acts, closing his tablets, in which he had inscribed what had taken place, gave them to his colleague, Turbo, and ran to the image of Nemesis, and cast it down, and stamped on the marble fragments. And when the guardians of the temple saw this, they seized him and beat and stoned him till he yielded up his soul to God. "Turbo also, who wrote the victories of these confessors, not long afterwards suffered martyrdom." With these words the Acts close.
These saintly brothers are called in France Les SS. _Jaumes_, that is to say Gemelli, for Tergemini; sometimes _Geaumes_.
S. GENULPH, B. C.
(3RD CENT.)
[Commemorated on this day at Cahors, of which diocese he is regarded as the Apostle and first Bishop. He is however mentioned in several Martyrologies as Bishop of Bourges. It is probable that he was a missionary Bishop without settled see. Called in the Roman Martyrology, June 17th, Gundulph; same day and name the same in the Bourges Breviary, that being the day of his translation, Jan. 17th, of his death. His life was written by S. Sebastus, three years after the death of S. Genulph, but this has not come down to us in its original form. It has, however, doubtless formed the basis of a life written about A.D. 910, published by Bollandus.]
Genitus and his wife, Aclia, were pious Christians at Rome, serving God constantly, night and day, and happy in one another's love. But one thing they lacked which grieved them sore, they had no child. Having asked God to look upon them and give them a son, He heard their prayer, and the wife of Genitus brought forth a man-child, and they called him Genulph, or Gundulph. At the age of five, the parents gave him to S. Sixtus, Bishop of Rome, to educate him in the knowledge and love of God. On the breaking out of the Decian persecution, S. Sixtus ordained Genulph bishop, bade him and his father go into Gaul, and preach the Gospel there. S. Genulph ever wore a garment of camel's hair, "except when he celebrated the Holy Mysteries, when he was arrayed in soft linen, and such other shining vestments as pertain to so great a mystery. But when the mystery was celebrated, he put on him again the rough garb."[61] Having entered the territory of the Cadurci, now called Cahors, he preached the word of God vehemently, and wrought many miracles of healing. Then he and his father were denounced to the Governor, and were beaten and scorched with fire, but remained constant to the faith, witnessing a good profession, so that the Governor marvelled, and questioned them about their faith, and so was brought to a knowledge of the truth; and he released the confessors from prison, and they preached boldly, and multitudes came and were baptized; so mightily grew the word of God and prevailed. And afterwards he left Cahors, and went north, till he came to the country of the Bituriges, or Berry, and there he took up his residence in a haunted cell, which all the people of the neighbourhood avoided, through fear. But Genulph sprinkled it with holy water, and signed himself with the cross, and boldly took up his residence therein, nor was he troubled by evil spirits. Living in this cell, he laboured diligently with his hands, cultivating the soil, and keeping very many cocks and hens. The fame of his sanctity drew others to him, and he became the head of a community. Also many sick came there to be nursed, and the peasants to be instructed. Then Genulph fed them with the eggs, and with the hens, which he killed and roasted. One day a fox came, and carried off a hen. Hearing the noise in the poultry yard, Genulph ran out, and saw the fox stealing away with his prey. Then he cried, "Reynard! that hen is not thine. Wherefore dost thou rob the poor brothers, who have not injured thee?" And the fox let go the hen unhurt.
When he was dying, he exhorted the brethren to wrap him in sack-cloth and bury him outside the church, "for it seemed to him unfitting that the prey of worms and corruption should be placed within the holy tabernacle."
S. ANTONY THE GREAT, AB.
(A.D. 356.)
[S. Antony is famous in the East as in the West, and is named in all Kalendars. His life was written by S. Athanasius, and is quite genuine. S. Antony is also spoken of at length by Sozomen, Socrates, S. Jerome, Ruffinus, Theodoret, Evagrius, &c. The following account is a condensed translation of the life of the great patriarch of monks, by S. Athanasius. It is necessarily very much abbreviated.]
Antony was an Egyptian by race, born of noble parents,[62] who had a sufficient property of their own: and as they were Christians, he too was Christianly brought up, and when a boy was nourished in the house of his parents, besides whom and his home he knew nought. But when he grew older, he would not be taught letters,[63] not wishing to mix with other boys; but all his longing was (according to what is written of Jacob) to dwell simply in his own house. But when his parents took him into the Lord's house he was not saucy, as a boy, nor inattentive as he grew older; but was subject to his parents, and attentive to what was read, turning it to his own account. Nor, again, did he trouble his parents for various and expensive dainties; but was content with what he found, and asked for nothing more. When his parents died, he was left alone with a little sister, when he was about eighteen or twenty years of age, and he took care both of his house and of her. But not six months after their death, as he was going as usual to the Lord's house, and collecting his thoughts, he meditated, as he walked, how the Apostles had left all and followed the Saviour; and how those in the Acts brought the price of what they had sold, and laid it at the Apostles' feet, to be given away to the poor; and what, and how great, a hope was laid up for them in heaven. With this in his mind he entered the church. And it befell then that the Gospel was being read; and he heard how the Lord had said to the rich man, "If thou wilt be perfect, go, sell all that thou hast, and give to the poor; and come, follow me, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven." Antony, therefore, as if the remembrance of the saints had come to him from God, and as if the lesson had been read on his account, went forth at once from the Lord's house, and gave away to those of his own village the possessions he had inherited from his ancestors (three hundred plough-lands, fertile and very fair), that they might give no trouble either to him or his sister. All his moveables he sold, and a considerable sum which he received for them he gave to the poor. But having kept back a little for his sister, when he went again into the Lord's house, he heard the Lord saying in the Gospel, "Take no thought for the morrow;" and, unable to endure any more delay, he went out and distributed that too to the needy. And having committed his sister to known and faithful virgins, and given to her wherewith to be educated in a nunnery, he himself thenceforth devoted himself, outside his house, to training; taking heed to himself, and using himself severely. For monasteries were not then common in Egypt, nor did any monks know the wide desert; but each, who wished to take heed to himself, exercised himself alone, not far from his own village. There was then, in the next village, an old man who had trained himself in a solitary life from his youth. When Antony saw him, he emulated him in that which is noble. And first he began to stay outside the village; and then, if he heard of any earnest man, he went to seek him, and did not return till he had seen him. So dwelling there at first, he settled his mind neither to look back towards his parents' wealth nor to recollect his relations; but he put all his longing and all his earnestness on training himself more intensely. For the rest he worked with his hands, because he had heard, "If any man will not work, neither let him eat;" and of his earnings he spent some on himself and some on the needy. He prayed continually, because he knew that one ought to pray secretly, without ceasing. He attended also so much to what was read, that with him none of the Scriptures fell to the ground, but he retained them all, and for the future his memory served him instead of books. Behaving thus, Antony was beloved by all; and submitted truly to the earnest men to whom he used to go. And from each of them he learnt some improvement in his earnestness and his training: he contemplated the courtesy of one, and another's assiduity in prayer; another's freedom from anger; another's love of mankind: he took heed to one as he watched; to another as he studied: one he admired for his endurance, another for his fasting and sleeping on the ground; he laid to heart the meekness of one, and the long-suffering of another; and stamped upon his memory the devotion to Christ and the mutual love which all in common possessed. And thus filled full, he returned to his own place of training, gathering to himself what he had got from each, and striving to show all their qualities in himself. He never emulated those of his own age, save in what is best; and did that so as to pain no one, but make all rejoice over him. And all in the village who loved good, seeing him thus, called him the friend of God; and some embraced him as a son, some as a brother.
But the devil, who hates and envies what is noble, would not endure such a purpose in a youth: but attempted against him all that he is wont to do; suggesting to him the remembrance of his wealth, care for his sister, relation to his kindred, love of money, love of glory, the various pleasures of luxury, and the other solaces of life; and then the harshness of virtue, and its great toil; and the weakness of his body, and the length of time; and altogether raised a great dust-cloud of arguments in his mind, trying to turn him back from his righteous choice. But when the enemy saw himself to be too weak for Antony's determination, then he attacked him with the temptations which he is wont to use against young men; but Antony protected his body with faith, prayers, and fastings. At last, when the evil one could not overthrow Antony even thus, as if beside himself he appeared to the sight as a black child, and falling down before him, no longer tempted him to argue, but using a human voice, said, "I have deceived many; I have cast down many. But now I have been worsted in the battle." Then, when Antony asked him, "Who art thou who speakest thus to me?" he forthwith replied in a pitiable voice, "I am the spirit of impurity."
[Illustration: S. ANTHONY TORTURED BY DEMONS. From the Design by Martin Schonguer. Jan. 17.]
This was Antony's first struggle against the devil: or rather this mighty deed in him was the Saviour's, who condemned sin in the flesh that the righteousness of the Lord should be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. But neither did Antony, because the evil one had fallen, grow careless and despise him; neither did the enemy, when worsted by him, cease from lying in ambush against him. Antony ate once a day, after the setting of the sun, and sometimes only once in two days, often even in four; his food was bread with salt, his drink nothing but water. When he slept he was content with a rush-mat; but mostly he lay on the bare ground. He would not anoint himself with oil, saying that it was more fit for young men to be earnest in training than to seek things which softened the body; and that they must accustom themselves to labour. So forgetting the past, he daily, as if beginning afresh, took more pains to improve, saying over to himself continually the Apostle's words, "Forgetting what is behind, stretching forward to what is before." Antony then went to the tombs, which happened to be some way from the village; and having bidden one of his acquaintances bring him bread at intervals of many days, he entered one of the tombs, and, shutting the door upon himself, remained there alone. But Satan, terrified lest in a little while he should fill the desert with his training, coming one night with a multitude of daemons, beat him so much with stripes that he lay speechless from the torture. But by the providence of God, the next day his acquaintance came, bringing him the loaves. And having opened the door, and seeing him lying on the ground for dead, he carried him to the Lord's house in the village, and laid him on the ground; and many of his kinsfolk and the villagers sat round him, as round a corpse. But about midnight, Antony coming to himself, and waking up, saw them all sleeping, and only his acquaintance awake, and, nodding to him to approach, begged him to carry him back to the tomb, without waking any one. When that was done, the door was shut, and he remained as before, alone inside. And because he could not stand on account of the daemon's blows, he prayed prostrate. And after his prayer, he said with a shout, "Here am I, Antony: I do not fly from your stripes; yea, do your worst, nothing shall separate me from the love of Christ." And then he sang, "Though an host were laid against me, yet shall not my heart be afraid." So then, in the night, the devils made such a crash, that the whole place seemed shaken, and the daemons, as if breaking in the four walls of the room, seemed to enter through them, changing themselves into the shapes of beasts and creeping things; and the place was forthwith filled with shapes of lions, bears, leopards, bulls and snakes, asps, scorpions and wolves, and each of them moved according to his own fashion. The lion roared, longing to attack; the bull seemed to toss; the serpent writhed, and the wolf rushed upon him; and altogether the noises of all the apparitions were dreadful. But Antony lay unshaken and awake in spirit. He groaned at the pain of his body: but clear in intellect, and as it were mocking, he said, "If there were any power in you, it were enough that one of you should come on; but since the Lord has made you weak, therefore you try to frighten me by mere numbers. And a proof of your weakness is, that you imitate the shapes of brute animals." And taking courage, he said again, "If ye can, and have received power against me, delay not, but attack; but if ye cannot, why do ye disturb me in vain? For a seal to us and a wall of safety is our faith in the Lord." The devils, having made many efforts, gnashed their teeth at him, because he rather mocked at them than they at him. But neither then did the Lord forget Antony's wrestling, but appeared to help him. For, looking up, he saw the roof as it were opened, and a ray of light coming down towards him. The devils suddenly became invisible, and the pain of his body forthwith ceased, and the building became quite whole. But Antony, feeling the succour, and getting his breath again, and freed from pain, questioned the vision which appeared, saying, "Where wert thou? Why didst thou not appear to me from the first, to stop my pangs?" And a voice came to him, "Antony, I was here, but I waited to see thy fight. Therefore, since thou hast withstood, and hast not been worsted, I will be to thee always a succour, and will make thee become famous everywhere." Hearing this, he rose and prayed, and was so strong, that he felt that he had more power in his body than he had before. He was then about thirty-and-five years old. And on the morrow he went out, and was yet more eager for devotion to God; and, going to that old man aforesaid, he asked him to dwell with him in the desert. But when he declined, because of his age, and because no such custom had yet arisen, he himself straightway set off to the mountain. But the fiend cast in his way a great silver plate. But Antony, perceiving the trick of him who hates what is noble, stopped. And he judged the plate worthless; and said, "Whence comes a plate in the desert? This is no beaten way. Had it fallen, it could not have been unperceived, from its great size; and besides, he who lost it would have turned back and found it, because the place is desert. This is a trick of the devil. Thou shalt not hinder, devil, my determination by this: let it go with thee into perdition." Then again he saw gold lying in the way as he came up. Antony, wondering at the abundance of it, stepped over it and never turned, but ran on in haste, until he had lost sight of the place. And growing even more and more intense in his determination, he rushed up the mountain, and finding an empty enclosure full of creeping things, on account of its age, he dwelt in it. The creeping things straightway left the place: but he blocked up the entry, having taken with him loaves for six months (for the Thebans do this, and they often remain a whole year fresh), and having water with him, entering, as into a sanctuary, he remained alone, never going forth, and never looking at any one who came. Thus he passed a long time there training himself, and only twice a year received loaves, let down from above through the roof. But those of his acquaintance who came to him, as they often remained days and nights outside (for he did not allow any one to enter), used to hear as it were crowds inside clamouring, thundering, lamenting, crying, "Depart from our ground. What dost thou even in the desert? Thou canst not abide our onset." At first those without thought that there were some men fighting with him, and that they had got in by ladders: but when, peeping in through a crack, they saw no one, then they took for granted that they were devils. His acquaintances came up continually, expecting to find him dead, and heard him singing, "Let God arise, and let his enemies be scattered; let them also that hate Him flee before Him. Like as the wax melteth at the fire, so let the ungodly perish at the presence of God." And again, "All nations compassed me round about, but in the name of the Lord will I destroy them."
He endured this for twenty years, training himself alone; neither going forth, nor being seen by any one for long periods of time. But after this, when many longed for him, and wished to imitate his training, and others who knew him came, and would have burst in the door by force, Antony came forth, as from some inner shrine, initiated into the mysteries of God. And when they saw him they wondered; for his body had neither grown fat, nor waxed lean from fasting, but he was just such as they had known him before his retirement. They wondered again at the purity of his soul, because it was neither contracted, as if by grief, nor relaxed by pleasure, nor possessed by laughter or by depression; for he was neither troubled at beholding the crowd, nor over-joyful at being saluted by too many; but was altogether equal, as being governed by reason, and standing on that which is according to nature. Many sufferers in body, who were present, did the Lord heal by him. And He gave to Antony grace in speaking, so that he comforted many who grieved, and reconciled others who were at variance, exhorting all to prefer nothing in the world to the love of Christ, and persuading and exhorting them to be mindful of the good things to come, and of the love of God towards us, who spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all. He persuaded many to choose the solitary life; and so, thenceforth, cells sprang up in the mountains, and the desert was colonized by monks.
But when he returned to the cell, he persisted in the noble labours of his youth; and by continued exhortations he increased the willingness of those who were already monks, and stirred to love of training the greater number of the rest; and quickly, as his speech drew men on, the cells became more numerous; and he governed them all as a father.
The cells in the mountains were like tents filled with divine choirs, singing, discoursing, fasting, praying, rejoicing over the hope of the future, working that they might give alms thereof, and having love and concord with each other. And there was really to be seen, as it were, a land by itself, of piety and justice; for there was none there who did wrong, or suffered wrong; but a multitude of men training themselves, and in all of them a mind set on virtue. After these things, the persecution which happened under the Maximinus of that time,[64] laid hold of the Church; and when the holy martyrs were brought to Alexandria, Antony too followed, leaving his cell, and saying, "Let us depart too, that we may wrestle if we be called, or see them wrestling." And he longed to be a martyr himself, but, not choosing to give himself up, he ministered to the confessors in the mines, and in the prisons. And he was very earnest in the judgment-hall to excite the readiness of those who were called upon to wrestle; and to receive and bring on their way, till they were perfected, those of them who went to martyrdom. At last the judge, seeing the fearlessness and earnestness of him and those who were with him, commanded that none of the monks should appear in the judgment-hall, or haunt at all in the city. So all the rest thought good to hide themselves that day; but Antony cared so little for the order, that he washed his cloak, and stood next day upon a high place, and appeared to the Governor in shining white. Therefore, when all the rest wondered, and the Governor saw him, and passed by with his array, he stood fearless. He himself prayed to be a martyr, and was like one grieved, because he had not borne his witness. But the Lord was preserving him for our benefit, and that of the rest, that he might become a teacher to many in the training which he had learnt from Scripture. For many, when they only saw his manner of life, were eager to emulate it. So he again ministered continually to the confessors; and, as if bound with them, wearied himself in his services. And when at last the persecution ceased, and the blessed Bishop Peter had been martyred, he left the city, and went back to his cell. And he was there, day by day, a martyr in his conscience, and wrestling in the conflict of faith; for he imposed on himself a much more severe training than before; and his garment was within of hair, without of skin, which he kept till his end.
When, then, he retired, and had resolved neither to go forth himself, nor to receive any one, one Martinian, a captain of soldiers, came and gave trouble to Antony. For he had with him his daughter, who was possessed by a devil. And while he remained a long time knocking at the door, and expecting him to come to pray to God for the child, Antony could not bear to open, but leaning from above, said, "Man, why criest thou to me? I, too, am a man, as thou art. But if thou believest, pray to God, and it shall come to pass." Forthwith, therefore, he believed, and called on Christ; and went away, his daughter made whole. Most of the sufferers, when he did not open the door, sat down outside the cell, and praying, were cleansed. But when he saw himself troubled by many, and not being permitted to retire, as he wished, being afraid lest he himself should be puffed up by what the Lord was doing by him, or lest others should count of him above what he was, he resolved to go to the Upper Thebaid, to those who knew him not. And, in fact, having taken loaves from the brethren, he sat down on the bank of the river, watching for a boat to pass, that he might embark and go up in it. And as he watched, a voice came to him: "Antony, whither art thou going, and why?" And he, not terrified, but as one accustomed to be often called thus, answered when he heard it, "Because the crowds will not let me be at rest; therefore am I minded to go up to the Upper Thebaid, on account of the many annoyances which befall me; and above all, because they ask of me things beyond my strength." And the voice said to him, "Even if thou goest up to the Thebaid, even if, as thou art minded to do, thou goest down to the cattle pastures,[65] thou wilt have to endure more; but if thou wilt really be at rest, go now into the inner desert." And when Antony said, "Who will show me the way, for I have not tried it?" forthwith he was shown Saracens who were going to journey that road. So, going to them, and drawing near them, Antony asked leave to depart with them into the desert. They willingly received him; and, journeying three days and three nights with them, he came to a very high mountain;[66] and there was water under the mountain, clear, sweet, and very cold, and a plain outside; and a few neglected date-palms. Then Antony, as if stirred by God, loved the spot. Having received bread from those who journeyed with him, he remained alone in the mount, no one else being with him. For he recognized that place as his own home, and kept it thenceforth. And the Saracens themselves seeing Antony's readiness, came that way on purpose, and joyfully brought him loaves; and he had, too, the solace of the dates, which were then small and paltry. But after this, the brethren, having found out the spot, like children remembering their father, were anxious to send things to him; but Antony saw that, in bringing him bread, some were put to trouble and fatigue; so he asked some who came to him to bring him a hoe and a hatchet, and a little corn; and when these were brought, having gone over the land round the mountain, he found a very narrow place which was suitable, and tilled it; and, having plenty of water to irrigate it, he sowed; and, doing this year by year, he got his bread from thence, rejoicing that he should be burdensome to no one on that account. But after this, seeing again some people coming, he planted also a very few pot-herbs, that he who came might have some small solace, after the labour of that hard journey. At first, however, the wild beasts in the desert, coming on account of the water, often hurt his crops and his tillage; but he, gently laying hold of one of them, said to them all, "Why do you hurt me, who have not hurt you? Depart, and, in the name of the Lord, never come near this place." And from that time forward, as if they were afraid of his command, they never came near the place. So he was there alone in the inner mountain, having leisure for prayer and for training. But the brethren who ministered to him asked him that they might bring him olives, and pulse, and oil every month; for, after all, he was old.
Being once asked by the monks to come down to them, and to visit them and their places, he journeyed with the monks who came for him. A camel carried their loaves and their water, for that desert is all dry, and there is no drinkable water except in that mountain where his cell is. But when the water failed on the journey, and the heat was most intense, they all began to be in danger; for finding no water, they could walk no more, but lay down on the ground, and they let the camel go, and gave themselves up. Then the old man, seeing them in danger, was grieved, and departing a little way from them, he bent his knees, and stretching out his hands, he prayed, and forthwith the Lord caused water to come out where he had stopped and prayed. Thus all of them drinking, took breath again; and having filled their skins, they sought the camel, and found her; for it befell that the halter had been twisted round a stone, and thus she had been stopped. So, having brought her back, and given her to drink, they put the skins on her, and went through their journey unharmed. And when they came to the outer cells, all embraced him, looking on him as a father. And there was joy again in the mountains, and comfort through their faith in each other. And he too rejoiced, seeing the willingness of the monks, and his sister grown old in maidenhood, and herself the leader of other virgins. And so, after certain days, he went back again to his own mountain.
And after that many came to him; and others, who suffered, dared also to come. Now to all the monks who came to him he gave continually this command: To trust in the Lord and love Him, and to keep themselves from foul thoughts and fleshly pleasures; and not to be deceived by fulness of bread; and to avoid vainglory; and to pray continually; and to sing before sleep and after sleep; and to lay by in their hearts the commandments of Scripture; and to remember the works of the Saints, in order to have their souls attuned to emulate them. But especially he counselled them to meditate continually on the Apostle's saying, "Let not the sun go down upon your wrath;" and this he said was spoken of all commandments in common, in order that, not on wrath alone, but on every other sin, the sun should never go down; for it was noble and necessary that the sun should never condemn us for a baseness by day, nor the moon for a sin or even a thought by night; therefore, in order that that which is noble may be preserved in us, it was good to hear and to keep what the Apostle commanded: for he said, "Judge yourselves, and prove yourselves." Let each then take account with himself, day by day, of his daily and nightly deeds; and if he has not sinned, let him not boast, but let him endure in what is good and not be negligent, neither condemn his neighbour, neither justify himself until the Lord comes who searches secret things. For we often deceive ourselves in what we do. Giving therefore the judgment to Him, let us sympathize with each other; and let us bear each other's burdens, and examine ourselves; and what we are behind in, let us be eager to fill up. And let this, too, be our counsel for safety against sinning. Let us each note and write down the deeds and motions of the soul as if we were about to relate them to another; and be confident that as we shall be utterly ashamed that they should be known, we shall cease from sinning, and even from desiring anything mean. As therefore, when in each other's sight we dare not commit a crime, so if we write down our thoughts, and confess them, we shall keep ourselves the more from foul thoughts, for shame lest they should be known. And thus forming ourselves we shall be able to bring the body into slavery, and please the Lord on the one hand, and on the other trample on the snares of the enemy. This was his exhortation to those who met him: but with those who suffered he suffered, and prayed with them. And those who suffered he exhorted to keep up heart, and to know that the power of cure was none of his, nor of any man's; but only belonged to God, who works when and whatsoever He chooses. So the sufferers received this as a remedy, learning not to despise the old man's words, but rather to keep up heart; and those who were cured, learned not to bless Antony, but God alone.
But when two brethren were coming to him, and water failed them on the journey, one of them died, and the other was about to die. In fact, being no longer able to walk, he too lay upon the ground expecting death. But Antony, as he sat on the mountain, called two monks who happened to be there, and hastened them, saying, "Take a pitcher of water, and run on the road towards Egypt; for of two who are coming hither one has just expired, and the other will do so if you do not hasten. For this has been showed to me as I prayed." So the monks, going, found the one lying dead, and buried him; and the other they recovered with the water, and brought him to the old man. Now the distance was a day's journey. But this alone in Antony was wonderful, that sitting on the mountain he kept his heart watchful, and the Lord showed him things afar off.
And concerning those who came to him, he often predicted some days, or even a month, beforehand, and the cause why they were coming. For some came only to see him, and others on account of sickness, and all thought the labour of the journey no trouble, for each went back aware that he had been benefited.
But how tolerant was his temper, and how humble his spirit! for though he was so great, he wished to put every ecclesiastic before himself in honour. For to the bishops and priests he bowed his head; and if a deacon came to him, he discoursed with him on what was profitable, but in prayer he gave place to him. He often asked questions, and deigned to listen to all present, confessing that he was profited if any one said aught that was useful. Moreover, his countenance had great and wonderful grace; and this gift too he had from the Saviour. For if he was present among the multitude of monks, and any one who did not previously know him wished to see him, as soon as he came, he passed by all the rest, and ran to Antony himself, as if attracted by his eyes. He did not differ from the rest in stature or in stoutness, but in the steadiness of his temper, and the purity of his soul; for as his soul was undisturbed, his outward senses were undisturbed likewise, so that the cheerfulness of his soul made his face cheerful. And he was altogether wonderful in faith, and pious, for he never communicated with the Meletian[67] schismatics, knowing their malice and apostasy from the beginning; nor did he converse amicably with Manichaeans or any other heretics, save only to exhort them to be converted to piety. For he held that their friendship and converse was injury and ruin to the soul. So also he detested the heresy of the Arians, and exhorted all not to approach them, nor hold their misbelief.[68]
Being sent for by the bishops and all the brethren, he went down from the mountain, and entering Alexandria, he denounced the Arians, teaching the people that the Son of God was not a created thing, but that He is the Eternal Word and Wisdom of the Essence of the Father. Wherefore he said, "Do not have any communication with these most impious Arians; for there is no communion between light and darkness. For you are pious Christians: but they, when they say that the Son of God, who is from the Father, is a created being, differ nought from the heathen, because they worship the creature instead of the Creator." All the people therefore rejoiced at hearing that heresy anathematized by such a man; and all those in the city ran together to see Antony; and the Greeks,[69] and those who are called their priests, came into the church, wishing to see the man of God. And many heathens wished to touch the old man, believing that it would be of use to them; and in fact as many became Christians in those few days as would have been usually converted in a year. And when some thought that the crowd troubled him, he quietly said that they were not more numerous than the fiends with whom he wrestled on the mountain. But when he left the city, and we were setting him on his journey, when we came to the gate, a certain woman called to him: "Wait, man of God, my daughter is grievously vexed with a devil; wait, I beseech thee, lest I too harm myself with running after thee." The old man hearing it, and being asked by us, waited willingly. But when the woman drew near, the child dashed itself on the ground; and when Antony prayed and called on the name of Christ, it rose up sound, the unclean spirit having gone out; and the mother blessed God, and we all gave thanks: and he himself rejoiced at leaving the city for the mountain, as for his own home.
Now he was very prudent; and what was wonderful, though he had never learnt letters, he was a shrewd and understanding man.
When some philosophers met him in the outer mountain, and thought to mock him, because he had not learnt letters, Antony answered, "Which is first, the sense or the letters? And, which is the cause of the other, the sense of the letters, or the letters of the sense?" And when they said that the sense came first, Antony replied, "If then the sense be sound, the letters are not needed." So they went away wondering, when they saw so much understanding in an unlearned man. For though he had lived, and grown old, in the mountain, his manners were not rustic, but graceful and courteous; and his speech was seasoned with the divine salt.
The fame of Antony reached even the kings, for Constantine, and his sons, Constantius and Constans, hearing of these things, wrote to him as to a father, and begged to receive an answer from him. But he did not make much of the letters, nor was puffed up by their messages; and he was just the same as he was before the kings wrote to him. And he called his monks and said, "Wonder not if a king writes to us, for he is but a man: but wonder rather that God has written His law to man, and spoken to us by His own Son." So he declined to receive their letters, saying he did not know how to write an answer to such things; but being admonished by the monks that the kings were Christians, and that they must not be scandalized by being despised, he permitted the letters to be read, and wrote an answer; accepting them because they worshipped Christ, and counselling them, for their salvation, not to think the present life great, but rather to remember judgment to come; and to know that Christ was the only true and eternal king; and he begged them to be merciful to men, and to think of justice and the poor. And they, when they received the answer, rejoiced. Thus was he kindly towards all, and all looked on him as their father. He then betook himself again into the inner mountain, and continued his accustomed training. But often, when he was sitting and walking with those who came unto him, he was astounded, as is written in Daniel. And after the space of an hour, he told what had befallen to the brethren who were with him, and they perceived that he had seen some vision. Often he saw in the mountain what was happening in Egypt, and once he told what he had seen, to Serapion the Bishop, who saw him occupied with a vision. For as he sat, he fell as it were into an ecstasy, and groaned much at what he saw. Then, after an hour, turning to those who were with him, he fell into a trembling, and rose up and prayed, and bending his knees, remained so a long while; and then the old man rose up and wept. The bystanders, therefore, trembling and altogether terrified, asked him to tell them what had happened, and they tormented him so much, that he was forced to speak. And he groaning greatly--"Ah! my children," he said, "it were better to be dead than to live and behold the things that I have seen shall come to pass." And when they asked him again, he said with tears, that "Wrath will seize on the Church, and she will be given over to men like unto brutes, which have no understanding; for I saw the table of the Lord's house, and mules standing all around it in a ring and kicking inwards, as a herd does when it leaps in confusion; and ye all perceived how I groaned, for I heard a voice saying, 'My sanctuary shall be defiled.'"
This the old man saw, and after two years there befell the present inroad of the Arians,[70] and the plunder of the churches, when they carried off the holy vessels by violence, and made the heathen carry them: and when too they forced the heathens from the prisons to join them, and in their presence did on the Holy Table what they would.[71] Then we all perceived that the kicks of those mules foreshadowed to Antony what the Arians are now doing, without understanding, as brute beasts. But when Antony saw this sight, he exhorted those about him, saying, "Lose not heart, children; for as the Lord has been angry, so will He again be appeased, and the Church shall soon receive again her own order and shine forth as she is wont; and ye shall see the persecuted restored to their place, and impiety retreating again into its own dens, and the pious faith speaking boldly everywhere with all freedom. Only defile not yourselves with the Arians, for this teaching is not of the Apostle, but of their father the devil; barren and irrational like the deeds of those mules."
All the magistrates asked him to come down from the mountain, that they might see him, because it was impossible for them to go in thither to him. And when he declined, they insisted, and even sent to him prisoners under the charge of soldiers, that at least on their account he might come down. So being forced by necessity, and seeing them lamenting, he came to the outer mountain. And his labour this time too was profitable to many, and his coming for their good. To the magistrates, he was of use, counselling them to prefer justice to all things, and to fear God, and to know that with what judgment they judged they should be judged in turn. But he loved best of all his life in the mountain. Once again, when he was compelled in the same way to leave it, by those who were in want, and by the general of the soldiers, who entreated him earnestly, he came down, and having spoken to them somewhat of the things which conduced to salvation, he was pressed also by those who were in need. But being asked by the general to lengthen his stay, he refused, and persuaded him by a graceful parable, saying, "Fishes, if they lie long on the dry land, die; so monks who stay with you lose their strength. As the fishes then hasten to the sea, so must we to the mountain, lest if we delay we should forget what is within."
Another general, named Balacius, bitterly persecuted us Christians on account of his affection for those abominable Arians. His cruelty was so great that he even beat nuns, and stripped and scourged monks. Antony sent him a letter to this effect:--"I see wrath coming upon thee. Cease, therefore, to persecute the Christians, lest the wrath lay hold upon thee, for it is near at hand." But Balacius, laughing, threw the letter on the ground, and spat on it; and insulted those who brought it, bidding them tell Antony, "Since thou carest for monks, I will soon come after thee likewise." And not five days had passed, when the wrath laid hold on him. For Balacius himself, and Nestorius, the Eparch of Egypt, went out to the first station from Alexandria, which is called Chaereas's. Both of them were riding on horses belonging to Balacius, and the most gentle in all his stud: but before they had got to the place, the horses began playing with each other, as is their wont, and suddenly the more gentle of the two, on which Nestorius was riding, attacked Balacius and pulled him off with his teeth, and so tore his thigh that he was carried back to the city, and died in three days.
But the rest who came to Antony he so instructed that they gave up at once their lawsuits, and blessed those who had retired from this life. And those who had been unjustly used he so protected, that you would think he, and not they, was the sufferer. And he was able to be of use to all; so that many who were serving in the army, and many wealthy men, laid aside the burdens of life and became thenceforth monks; and altogether he was like a physician given by God to Egypt. For who met him grieving, and did not go away rejoicing? Who came mourning over his dead, and did not forthwith lay aside his grief? Who came wrathful, and was not converted to friendship? What poor man came wearied out, and, when he saw and heard him, did not despise wealth and comfort himself in his poverty? What monk, who had grown remiss, was not strengthened by coming to him? What young man coming to the mountain and looking upon Antony, did not forthwith renounce pleasure and love temperance? Who came to him tempted by devils, and did not get rest? Who came troubled by doubts, and did not get peace of mind? For this was the great thing in Antony's asceticism, that (as I have said before), having the gift of discerning spirits, he understood their movements, and knew in what direction each of them turned his endeavours and his attacks. And not only he was not deceived by them himself, but he taught those who were troubled in mind how they might turn aside the plots of devils, teaching them the weakness and the craft of their enemies. How many maidens, too, who had been already betrothed, and only saw Antony from afar, remained unmarried for Christ's sake! Some, too, came from foreign parts to him, and all, having gained some benefit, went back from him as from a father. He was visiting, according to his wont, the monks in the outer mountain, and having learned from Providence concerning his own end, he said to the brethren, "This visit to you is my last, and I wonder if we shall see each other again in this life. It is time for me to set sail, for I am near a hundred and five years old." And when they heard that, they wept, and kissed the old man. And he, as if he were setting out from a foreign city to his own, spoke joyfully, and exhorted them not to grow idle in their labours, or cowardly in their training, but to live as those who died daily. And when the brethren tried to force him to stay with them and make his end there, he would not endure it, on many accounts, as he showed by his silence; and especially on this:--The Egyptians are wont to wrap in linen the corpses of good persons, and especially of the holy martyrs, but not to bury them underground, but to lay them upon benches and keep them in their houses;[72] thinking that by this they honour the departed. Now Antony had often asked the bishops to exhort the people about this, and, in like manner, he himself rebuked the laity and terrified the women; saying that it was a thing neither lawful, nor in any way holy; for that the bodies of the patriarchs and prophets are to this day preserved in sepulchres, and that the very body of our Lord was laid in a sepulchre, and a stone placed over it to hide it, till He rose the third day. And thus saying, he showed that those broke the law who did not bury the corpses of the dead, even if they were saints; for what is greater or more holy than the Lord's body? Many, then, when they heard him, buried their dead thenceforth underground; and blessed the Lord that they had been taught rightly. Being then aware of this, and afraid lest they should do the same by his body, he hurried himself, and bade farewell to the monks in the outer mountain; and coming to the inner mountain, where he was wont to abide, after a few months he grew sick, and calling those who were by--and there were two of them who had remained there within fifteen years, he said to them, "I indeed go the way of the fathers, as it is written, for I perceive that I am called by the Lord. Promise to bury me secretly, so that no one shall know the place, save you alone, for I shall receive my body incorruptible from my Saviour at the resurrection of the dead. And distribute my garments thus. To Athanasius, the bishop, give one of my sheepskins, and the cloak under me, which was new when he gave it me, and has grown old by me; and to Serapion, the bishop, give the other sheepskin; and do you have the hair-cloth garment. And for the rest, children, farewell, for Antony is going, and is with you no more."
Saying this, when they had embraced him, he stretched out his feet, and, as if he saw friends coming to him, and grew joyful on their account (for, as he lay, his countenance was bright), he departed and was gathered to his fathers. And they forthwith, as he had commanded them, preparing the body and wrapping it up, hid it under ground: and no one knows to this day where it is hidden, save those two servants only.
In art, S. Antony appears (1), with a hog which has a bell attached to its neck. Sometimes, however, S. Antony holds the bell. He was regarded as the Patron of the Hospitallers; and when ordinances were passed forbidding the poor from allowing their swine to run loose about the streets, as they were often in the way of horses, an exception was made in favour of the pigs of the hospitallers, on consideration of their wearing a bell round their necks. But it is possible that this did not originate the symbol, but that rather, on account of the hog being the symbol of S. Antony, the Antonine Hospitallers were allowed to preserve theirs, and that the hog represents the flesh which S. Antony controlled, and the bell is a common symbol of hermits; (2), he is represented with his peculiar cross. The cross of S. Antony is a crutch, or the Egyptian cross, like the letter T.
S. SABINE, B. OF PIACENZA.
(END OF 4TH CENT.)
[Authorities: Roman Martyrology and the Dialogues of S. Gregory the Great, lib. III., c. 10.]
S. Sabine or Savine, was of Roman origin; he was made Bishop of Piacenza in Italy, and was present at the great Council of Nicaea, and also at that of Aquileija. S. Gregory relates of him, that on one occasion the river Po had overflowed its banks, and was devastating the church lands. Then Sabine said to his deacon, "Go and say to the river, 'The Bishop commands thee to abate thy rage, and return into thy bed.'" But the deacon refused to go, thinking he was sent on a fool's errand. Therefore Sabine said to his notary, "Write on a strip of parchment these words, Sabine, servant of the Lord Jesus Christ to the river Po, greeting:--I command thee, O river, to return into thy bed, and do no more injury to the lands of the church, in the name of Jesus Christ, our common Lord." And when the notary had thus written, the Bishop said, "Go, cast this into the river." And he did so; then the flood abated, and the Po returned within its banks, as aforetime. After having governed his diocese forty-five years, he died on December 11th, and was buried in the church of the Twelve Apostles, but now known as the church of S. Savine, on Jan. 17th.
S. MILDGYTHA, V. (ABOUT A.D. 730.)
[Mildgytha, Mildwitha, Milgith or Milwith, as she is variously called, is commemorated in the English Kalendars.]
Nothing more is known of S. Mildgytha than that she was the youngest sister of S. Mildred and S. Milburgh, and daughter of S. Ermenburga and Merewald, Prince of Mercia, who was the son of the terrible Penda, the great enemy of Christianity in Mid-England. Mildgytha, like her sisters, took the veil, and died a nun at Canterbury.
[Illustration: The Chair of S. Peter in the Vatican.]
[Illustration: S. PETER'S COMMISSION, "FEED MY FLOCK."]
[Illustration: THE APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION. Jan. 18.]
FOOTNOTES:
[61] Vita, ex duobus veteribus MSS., Bolland. II. p. 83
[62] He is said to have been born at Coma, near Heracleia, in Middle Egypt, A. D. 251.
[63] Seemingly the Greek language and literature.
[64] A.D. 301. Galerius Valerius Maximinus (his real name was Daza) had been a shepherd-lad in Illyria, like his uncle Galerius Valerius Maximianus; and rose, like him, through the various grades of the army to be co-Emperor of Rome, over Syria, Egypt, and Asia Minor; a furious persecutor of the Christians, and a brutal and profligate tyrant. Such were the "kings of the world" from whom those old monks fled.
[65] The lonely alluvial flats at the mouths of the Nile. "Below the cliffs, beside the sea," as one describes them.
[66] Now the monastery of Deir Antonios, over the Wady el Arabah, between the Nile and the Red Sea, where Antony's monks endure to this day.
[67] Meletius, Bishop of Lycopolis, was the author of an obscure schism calling itself the "Church of the Martyrs," which refused to communicate with the rest of the Eastern Church.
[68] Arius (whose most famous and successful opponent was Athanasius, the writer of this biography) maintained that the Son of God was not co-equal and co-eternal with the Father, but created by Him out of nothing, and before the world. His opinions were condemned in the famous Council of Nicaea, A.D. 325.
[69] _I.e._ those were still heathens.
[70] Probably that of A.D. 341, when Gregory of Cappadocia, nominated by the Arian Bishops, who had assembled at the Council of Antioch, expelled Athanasius from the see of Alexandria, and great violence was committed by his followers and by Philagrius the Prefect. Athanasius meanwhile fled to Rome.
[71] _I.e._ celebrated there their own Communion.
[72] Evidently the primaeval custom of embalming the dead, and keeping mummies in the house, still lingered among the Egyptians.
January 18.
S. PETER'S CHAIR, _at Rome_, A.D. 43. S. PRISCA, _V. M., at Rome, about_ A.D. 50. SS. PAUL AND THIRTY-SIX COMPANIONS, _MM., in Egypt_. SS. ARCHELAA, THECLA, AND SUSANNA, _V., MM., at Salerno, in Italy_, A.D. 285. S. VOLUSIAN,_ B. C. of Tours, in France, circ._ A.D. 400. SS. LIBERATA AND FAUSTINA, _VV., at Como, in Italy, circ._ A.D. 580. S. LEOBARD, _H., Marmoutier, France, circ._ A.D. 583. S. DEICOLUS, _Ab. of Lure, in Burgundy, beginning of 7th cent._ S. FACE, C., _at Cremona, in Italy_, A.D. 1272.
S. PETER'S CHAIR.
(A.D. 43.)
[All ancient Latin Martyrologies. The commemoration having, however, died out, it was restored by Pope Paul IV. The feast of the Chair of S. Peter is found in a copy of the ancient Martyrology, passing under the name of S. Jerome, made in the time of S. Willibrod, in 720.]
It was an ancient custom observed by churches to keep an annual feast of the consecration of their bishops, and especially of the founding of the episcopate in them. The feast of S. Peter's Chair is the commemoration of the institution of the patriarchal see of Rome by S. Peter, the Prince of the Apostles. "This day," says S. Augustine (Serm. xv. de Sanctis), "has received the name of the Chair from our predecessor, because S. Peter, the first of the Apostles, is said on this to have taken the throne of his episcopate. Rightly, therefore, do the churches venerate the natal day of that chair which the Apostle received for the good of the churches."
The ancient wooden seat of S. Peter is preserved in the Vatican. That S. Peter founded the church at Rome by his preaching is expressly asserted by Caius, an ecclesiastical writer born about A.D. 202,[73] who relates that he and S. Paul suffered there. The same is affirmed by Dionysius, Bishop of Corinth, in the second age.[74] S. Irenaeus, who lived in the same age, calls the Church of Rome "the greatest and most ancient church, founded by the two glorious Apostles, Peter and Paul."[75] Eusebius says, "Peter, that powerful and great Apostle, like a noble commander of God, fortified with divine armour, bore the precious merchandise of the revealed light from the east to those in the west, and came to Rome, announcing the light itself, and salutary doctrine of the soul, the proclamation of the kingdom of God."[76] And he adds that his first epistle was said to have been composed at Rome, and that he shows this fact, by calling the city by an unusual trope, Babylon; thus, "The Church of Babylon, elected together with you, saluteth you." (1 Pet. v. 13.[77])
S. PRISCA, V. M., AT ROME.
(ABOUT A.D. 50.)
[Roman Martyrology. She is often confounded with S. Priscilla mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles, the wife of Aquila, but called Prisca in the second epistle of Paul to Timothy. What adds to the confusion is, that S. Prisca is said in her Acts to have suffered under Claudius, but whether Claudius, who reigned from 41-54, or the second Claudius, who reigned from 263 to 270, is not stated; but it seems probable that it was under the first Claudius.[78] The Acts of S. Prisca are a forgery, and deserve no confidence. The following account is taken from the Martyrologies.]
S. Prisca, a maiden of consular birth, being accused of Christianity, at the age of thirteen, was ordered by the Emperor Claudius to sacrifice to idols. On her steadfastly refusing, she was beaten with the hand and cast into prison. On the morrow she was again urged to sacrifice, but when she remained invincible, she was beaten with rods, and then taken back to prison. The third day she was exposed to a lion, which however crouched at her feet, doing her no injury. Then, having been tortured on the little horse, with hooks and pincers, she was led outside of the city, and was decapitated.
An eagle is said to have defended her body from dogs, till Christians came and buried it.
SS. PAUL AND THIRTY-SIX COMPANIONS, MM. IN EGYPT.
(DATE UNCERTAIN.)
[From the ancient Acts in Bollandus and Ruinart.]
In Egypt thirty-seven Christian soldiers entered into a zealous confederacy to spread the Gospel throughout the country. Their leader was one Paul. They divided themselves into four companies. Paul and nine others went eastwards. Recumbus, with eight more, went to the north; Theonas, with the like number, to the south; and Popias, with the remainder, to the west. The Governor of Egypt, alarmed at the report he heard of this confederacy, sent troops to apprehend them, and when they were brought before him he ordered them to instant execution; those who went to the east and south, to be burnt; those who went to the north to be beheaded, and those who travelled west to be crucified. They suffered on the 18th January, but in what year is not mentioned.
SS. ARCHELAA, THECLA, AND SUSANNA, VV., MM. AT SALERNO.
(ABOUT A.D. 285.)
[The Acts of these martyrs constitute the lections for this day in the Salerno Breviary.]
Archelaa, a virgin consecrated to God, during the persecution of Diocletian, took refuge with two maidens, Thecla and Susanna, in a private house outside the walls of Nola, in Campania, hoping to remain unnoticed till the storm was passed. But Leontius, Governor of Salerno, having heard that they were Christians, ordered them to be brought before him. Archelaa was exposed to lions, but was unhurt; then the inhuman judge ordered boiling oil and pitch to be poured over her naked body. In her agony, she spread her hands to heaven, and cried: "Look, O Lord, on us, and be mindful of thy servants. Extinguish the fire which consumes me, and cool my tortured body, refreshing me after the wounds the wicked one has dealt me!" Then a sudden sunbeam shot from between the clouds upon her, and a voice was heard, "O Martyr, fear not! A crown is laid up for thee in heaven. Fear not, I am with thee, and I will give thee refreshment and succour." Then Leontius ordered Archelaa, Thecla, and Susanna to have their heads smitten off with the executioner's sword.
S. LEOBARD, H., AT MARMOUTIER.
(ABOUT A.D. 583.)
[Gallican Martyrologies. Authority: the life of S. Leobard, written by his friend, S. Gregory of Tours.]
Leobard was the son of noble parents in Auvergne. The youth loved study and prayer. On reaching his majority, his father urged him to marry, but the young man, having no wish to take to himself a wife, refused. The father, however, pressed him so strongly, that at last he consented to be betrothed. "Then," says S. Gregory, "the ring, the kiss, and the shoe were given, and the betrothal feast was kept." But Leobard lost his father shortly after, and taking the betrothal gifts, he rode to his brother's house, to make them over to him. He found his brother so drunk that he did not even invite him to stay the night with him, so Leobard tied up his horse, and crept into a hay loft and slept there. But in the middle of the night he woke, and his mind turned to the importance of saving his soul, and of striving to be like Christ. Then he resolved to renounce the world wholly; but first to seek counsel at the tomb of S. Martin at Tours. From Tours he went to Marmoutier, and joined himself to a hermit named Alaric, who spent his time in making parchment and writing out Holy Scripture. Leobard lived in a cave, which he dug out of the rock, enlarging it and improving it as he saw fitting; and here he spent twenty-two years in prayer and study and writing, and in labour with his hands. He was frequently visited by S. Gregory of Tours, who was his personal friend. On a Sunday, being very ill, he said to him who ministered to him in his sickness, "Prepare me some food." "It is ready, sir," answered the servant shortly after. "Go forth," said the hermit, "and see if the people are returning from mass." And this he said because he knew that his hour was come, and he desired to be alone with God when he migrated. So the servant went out and looked towards the church, and waited, and presently he returned to say that he saw the congregation drifting homewards, then he saw his master lying dead upon the ground, and he, too, was going home.
S. DEICOLUS, AB. OF LURE.
(BEGINNING OF 7TH CENT.)
[Deicolus, in Irish _Deichul_, in French _Déel_, _Dèlé_, _Dielf_, _Dieu_, or _Diel_, is commemorated on this day in the Roman Martyrology and in the Anglican Kalendars. His translation is observed on Feb. 15th or Nov. 21st. His life was written by an anonymous author about the year 700.]
Deicolus quitted Ireland, his native country, with S. Columbanus, and lived with him, first in the kingdom of the East Angles, and afterwards at Luxeuil, the great monastery he founded in France. When S. Columbanus was expelled by the fierce Queen Brunehaut and her son Thierri, King of Burgundy, Deicolus followed him, but his strength failing him, he was unable to continue in the companionship of the energetic and active Columbanus; therefore, falling at the feet of his superior, he besought his permission to retire to some solitude where he could serve God in tranquillity. Then Columbanus, compassionating the exhaustion of his companion, said in a fatherly tone, "God Almighty, out of love to whom thou didst leave thy country, and hast ever obeyed me, make us together to rejoice in the presence of His Majesty." And when they had long clasped each other, and had shed many tears, then the abbot blessed his follower with these words, "The Lord give thee blessing out of Zion, and make thee to see Jerusalem in prosperity all thy life long." Then he hastily tore himself away weeping, and Deicolus remained alone in Burgundy. And after he had knelt down and commended himself to God, he turned and went through the wild tangled thicket and waste lands, seeking where he might settle. But the country was a wilderness without habitation. Then, by chance, he lighted on a swineherd, who was feeding pigs on acorns in the forest; who was much surprised to see a stranger. But Deicolus said, "Fear not, my brother, I am a monk. And now I beseech thee, show me a commodious spot where I may settle." Then the swineherd mused and said, "There is no such place in this wilderness, save a little lake we call Luthra, with fresh springs." And when Deicolus urged him to conduct him thither, the swineherd said, "I cannot do so, for I shall lose my hogs if I leave them without a keeper." But Deicolus took his staff, and planted it in the ground, and said, "Be without fear, my staff shall be thy substitute, and the swine will not stray till thou returnest." Then the pigwarden believed the word of the man of God, and he left his swine, and guided Deicolus to the place called Luthra; and there was a little chapel, dedicated to S. Martin, built by a gentleman named Weifhardt, where service was occasionally performed by his chaplain.[79]
Now Deicolus was pleased with the place, and he dwelt in the forest, and every day he visited the little chapel and opened the door and went in, and there he prayed. But the priest who served that chapel was very wroth, and he spoke to the people, saying, "There is a man, a sort of hermit, who haunts the woods, and he intrudes on this chapel, and uses it, as if it were his own private property. If he be caught here by me, I swear that I will beat him well."
Then the people choked the windows and door with brambles and thorns, to prevent the ingress of the hermit. Nevertheless, regardless of the impediment, he came as usual. So the priest complained to Weifhardt, who flew into a rage, and ordered his servants to scour the woods for Deicolus, and when they had caught him, savagely to maltreat him. All which they obeyed. But shortly after, the gentleman fell sick of a most painful disorder, and when his wife, Berthilda, thought that he must die, she considered that perhaps the disease was sent in punishment for the injury done to the hermit. Therefore she bade her servants find him and bring to the sick-bed. Now when Deicolus heard that Weifhardt was grievously tormented, mindful of the command of Christ, to return good for evil, he hasted and went to the castle of the gentleman, and entered the room. And as the day was hot, and he had walked fast, he plucked off his mantle, for he was heated. Then the servants ran to take it from him, but Deicolus exclaimed, "On him who serves God the elements attend, and he needeth not the assistance of man." Then, seeing a sunbeam shot through the window, he cast his mantle upon it, and it rested on the sunbeam.[80]
And when he had prayed, the Lord healed the gentleman; and Berthilda gave Deicolus the farm of Luthra, and the little chapel, and the wood adjoining. Then the hermit walked round the land given him, and he rejoiced and cried, "This shall be thy rest for ever; here shalt thou dwell, for thou hast a delight therein."
Now it happened one day, as he sat reading in his cell, that King Clothaire II. was hunting in the forest, and his dogs pursued a wild boar, and when the beast was hard pressed, it rushed into the oratory of Deicolus, covered with foam. Thereupon the hermit extended his hand, and laid it on the boar, and said, "Believe me, because thou hast taken refuge in the love of the brethren, thy life shall be spared to-day." Then the hunters came up, with the hounds, and they found the boar lying panting before the altar, and the man of God standing at the door to protect the beast. So the King asked Deicolus who he was, and whence he came, and when the hermit had told him that he was the disciple of Columbanus, who had promised to him in old times that he should reign over three kingdoms, which now had come to pass, he gave to Deicolus the game in the wood and the fish in the waters, and some vineyards. So Deicolus gathered brethren, and built a monastery. And after a time the abbot Deicolus became desirous of visiting Rome, so he went with some of his brethren, and obtained a charter from the Pope, conferring privileges on his monastery. After his return he remained some years governing his monks, ever cheerful and of amiable disposition; the joy and peace of his soul beamed in his countenance. S. Columbanus once said to him in his youth, "Deicolus, why art thou always smiling?" He answered in simplicity, "Because no one can take my God from me."
The year of his death is not known with certainty. It was on the 18th January that he heard God's call to depart. Then he took the Holy Sacrament, and after having communicated himself, he kissed all the brethren, and when he had kissed the last he fell asleep.
[Illustration: Baptism and Confirmation, from a Painting in the Catacombs.]
FOOTNOTES:
[73] Euseb. Hist. Eccl., lib. II. c. 25.
[74] Euseb. lib. II. c. 25.
[75] Lib. III. c. 3.
[76] Euseb. lib. II. c. 14.
[77] Ibid. c. 15.
[78] That Claudius I. did persecute the Church appears from Acts xviii. 2. Why Alban Butler should give S. Prisca the date 275, after the death of the second Claudius, when all notices of her are unanimous in saying she suffered under Claudius I., I am at a loss to conjecture.
[79] Lure is in the diocese of Besançon, among the Vosges mountains, between Vesoul and Belfort.
[80] A similar story is told of S. Goar (July 6th), S. Florence (Nov. 7th), S. Amabilis (Oct. 19th), S. Cuthman (Feb. 8th), S. David, abbot in Sweden (July 15th), S. Hildevert, B. of Meaux (May 27th), S. Robert of Chaise-Dieu, S. Cunegunda, S. Odo of Urgel, S. Leonore, S. Lucarus of Brixen, S. Bridget, B. Utho of Metten, and the Blessed Alruna of Altaich. I give it for what it is worth. The story is traditional, not having been consigned to writing for a hundred years after the death of S. Deicolus.
January 19.
S. GERMANICUS, _M., at Smyrna, in Asia Minor_, A.D. 161. SS. MARIS, MARTHA, AUDIFAX, AND HABAKKUK, _MM., near Rome_, A.D. 270. S. BASSIAN, _B. of Lodi, in Italy, circ._ A.D. 409. S. CATELLUS, _B. of Castellamare, in Italy_, A.D. 617. S. LAUNOMAR, _P., Ab. of Corbion, in France_, A.D. 593. S. REMIGIUS, _B. of Rouen, circ._ A.D. 771. SS. BLAITHMAIC, _Ab._, AND COMPANIONS, _Monks and MM., at Iona, in Scotland_, A.D. 824. S. CANUTE, _K. M., in Denmark_, A.D. 1086. _See_ July 10. S. WULSTAN, _B. of Worcester_, A.D. 1095. S. HENRY, _B. M., at Upsala, in Sweden_, A.D. 1150.
S. GERMANICUS, M.
(A.D. 161.)
[Roman Martyrology, and those of Usuardus, Ado, Notker and that attributed to Bede, also the later ones of Maurolycus, Bellinus and Galesinius, sometimes also on Feb. 18. Authority, the contemporary Epistle of the Church of Smyrna to the Church of Pontus, describing the martyrdom of SS. Germanicus, Polycarp, and others; quoted by Eusebius, lib. IV. c. 15.]
The Epistle of the Church of Smyrna, narrating its sufferings under the Emperors Marcus Antoninus and Lucius Aurelius, says:--"Germanicus, a noble youth, was particularly pre-eminent as a martyr, for, strengthened by divine grace, he overcame the natural dread of death implanted in us; although the pro-consul was desirous of persuading him, and urged him from consideration of his youth, that, as he was so young and blooming, he should take compassion on himself. He, however, hesitated not, but eagerly irritated the wild beast let loose upon him, that he might be the sooner freed from this unjust and lawless generation."
The Acts of this martyr have been lost.
SS. MARIS, MARTHA, AUDIFAX AND HABAKKUK, MM.
(A.D. 270.)
[Modern Roman Martyrology, but the ancient Roman Martyrology commemorated them on Jan. 20th, so did that attributed to S. Jerome, and many others. Authority, the authentic Acts.]
In the time of the Emperor Claudius II., there came a man from Persia, named Maris, with his wife Martha, and his two sons, Audifax and Habakkuk, to Rome, where they sought out the Christians who were in prison, and ministered to them.
At this time Claudius had given orders for the suppression of Christianity. Two hundred and sixty Christians were condemned to work in the sand-pits on the Salarian way; but were afterwards brought into the amphitheatre, and were killed with arrows, and their bodies thrown on a pyre. Maris and his sons withdrew the bodies from the fire, and with the assistance of a priest, named John, they buried many of them in the catacomb on the Salarian way. And in the evening, passing under a house, they heard singing, and they knew that what they heard was a Christian canticle. Then they struck at the door, and those who were within feared to open, thinking it was the soldiers come to take them; but the bishop, who was with the congregation, went boldly to the door and opened it; then they knew that these were Christians who stood without; so they fell on their necks and kissed them.
Now it fell out that Maris and his wife and sons were in the house of Asterius, a new convert, on a certain occasion, with Valentine the priest, when the soldiers entered the house and took all within before the Emperor, who remanded them to Muscianus, the prefect, to be by him sentenced according to their deserts.
Muscianus ordered Maris and his two sons to be beaten, and then to be placed on the little horse and tortured with iron hooks and lighted torches, but Martha to stand by, and see her husband and children tormented. As they remained constant, he commanded their hands to be struck off. Then Martha stooped and dipped her finger in their blood, and signed her brow therewith. Exasperated to the last degree, the judge ordered Maris and the two sons to be decapitated in a sand-pit, and Martha to be drowned in a well, all which was carried into execution.[81] A pious matron, named Felicitas, rescued the bodies, and buried them in her farm.
S. BASSIAN, B. OF LODI.
(ABOUT A.D. 409.)
[Roman and many other Martyrologies. Double feast with octave at Lodi. Authorities, his life by an anonymous author, of uncertain date, also the lections for this day in the Lodi Breviary. S. Ambrose, in his 60th letter, speaks of S. Bassian.]
Bassian was the son of Sergius, praefect of Syracuse, a heathen. As a child he is said to have scrawled the sign of the cross in the dust, and was rebuked for so doing by his nurse. This set him wondering, and his mind turned to the religion of the Crucified, so that when sent to Rome, at the age of twelve, to be educated in the liberal arts, he sought out those who reverenced that sign which his nurse had forbidden him to scribble. A priest, named Gordian, instructed the lad in the Christian faith, and finally baptized him. As soon as his father heard of his conversion, he sent orders to have him brought home at once. Then Bassian, fearing the result, should he be re-conducted to Syracuse, ran away to Ravenna. On his way occurred one of those simple and touching incidents which abound in the lives of the saints, and which in spite of repetition, must be related. A stag with her two fawns bounded into the road, the hunters were in pursuit, the stag was not willing to desert her little ones, and they were too young to make good their escape. Seeing the distress of the mother, Bassian called to her, and she came to him with her fawns, and licked his feet, as he caressed her dappled hide. Soon after the hunters came up, and one more impetuous than the rest, attempted to take the stag. Then Bassian threw his arms round her neck, and called on God to protect her. Instantly the man, whose anger had flamed up at the resistance offered him, fell in an apoplectic fit; and when he recovered, withdrew in fear, without injuring the stag.
In the reign of Valerian, Bassian was elected Bishop of Lodi, and ruled the diocese with zeal and discretion. He built in his Cathedral city the church of the Twelve Apostles, and S. Ambrose assisted in its dedication. Bassian was with S. Ambrose when he died.
S. LAUNOMAR, AB. OF CORBION.
(A.D. 593.)
[S. Launomar, called in French _Laumer_ or _Lomer_, is commemorated in the Gallican Martyrologies. His life was written by one who apparently knew him, as we may conclude from certain passages therein.]
S. Laumer as a boy kept his father's sheep near Chartres; afterwards, having learned his letters, he heard the call of God, and gave himself up to his service. He was ordained priest, and entering a monastery, was appointed steward. However, such a life did not suit him, and he retired into the forest, escaping from the monastery one stormy night, when all the brethren were asleep, taking in his hand nothing save his staff. He took refuge in the depths of the forest, where he hoped none would find him, but his sanctity becoming known, disciples flocked to him. Two miracles occur in his forest life very similar to those related of other saints. One night as he prayed, the Prince of the power of the Air, hoping to frighten him, by leaving him in the dark, thrice extinguished his light, and thrice was it rekindled. One day he saw a hind pursued by wolves, he ordered the wolves to desist from pursuing the poor animal, which came and crouched at his feet, whilst he patted it. Then he gave the hind his blessing and dismissed it. When the number of his disciples increased, so that he felt his solitude dissolved, Laumer fled away again, and hid himself in the wood, where afterwards rose the monastery of Corbion, near Dreux. But a city set on a hill cannot be hid, his cell of green leaves and wattles soon became the centre of a colony of monks, and a nobleman whose land this was, gave it to him, that he might build thereon a monastery. One instance of the gentleness of S. Laumer deserves not to be passed over. During the night, some robbers stole a cow belonging to the monks. The brethren were in despair. The robbers however, had lost their way in the tangled forest, as they drove the cow away, and they wandered all night and the next day, unable to discover the road; when, as evening settled in, they saw the forest lighten, and they came out, driving the cow, upon the clearing of the monastery, and S. Laumer himself stood before them. They at once fell at his feet, asking his pardon, and imploring him to direct them aright; but he raised them, and said, "I thank you, kind friends, for finding and bringing back to me my strayed cow; you must be very tired and hungry, follow me." Then he led them into his hut, and set before them such things as he had, and they ate and were refreshed, and he set them on their right road, but of course, without the cow.
SS. BLAITHMAC AND COMP. MONKS, M.M.
(A.D. 824)
[Irish Martyrologies. Authority:--The Acts of S. Blaithmac written in verse by his contemporary Walafrid Strabo, and the Irish Annals.]
S. Blaithmac was a native of Ireland, son of Flann, perhaps one of the southern Niells, princes of Meath, the names of Flann and Blaithmac having been common in that family. He was heir to a principality, but he abandoned his prospects in this world to become a monk, and afterwards an abbot. Blaithmac had an ardent desire to visit foreign parts, but he was prevented by his friends and companions from leaving Ireland. At length he passed over to Iona, which was shortly after invaded by a party of Northmen. As he was anxious to receive the crown of martyrdom, he determined to remain there whatever might happen, and by his example induced some others to stay with him, advising those who feared death to take refuge on the mainland. While he was celebrating mass the Danes burst into the church, and having slaughtered the monks, demanded of the abbot where was the precious shrine of S. Columba. This had been carried off and concealed underground, where the abbot knew not. Accordingly he answered that he was ignorant where it was, and added that even if he had known, he would not have pointed out the spot to them. They then put him to death. The Ulster Annals give his martyrdom in 825-828. The Irish annals generally agree in fixing his death at 823 (A.D. 824). Mabillon was wrong in supposing it took place in 793. Blaithmac is derived from Blaith, a flower; hence his latinized name is Florigenius or Florus.
S. WULSTAN, B. OF WORCESTER.
(A.D. 1095.)
[Anglican and German and Roman Martyrologies. Authorities: his life by Florence of Worcester (D. 1118),[82] and William of Malmesbury, written 47 years after the death of S. Wulstan; another in Roger of Wendover, and numerous notices in other old English historians. He is called variously Wulstan and Wulfstan.]
S. Wulstan was born in Warwickshire of pious parents. His father's name was Ealstan, and his mother's Wulfgeova. Both his parents were so devoted to the religious life, that, by mutual consent, they retired into monastic houses. Inspired by such examples, but chiefly by his mother's persuasion, Wulfstan quitted the world whilst yet young, and took the monastic habit in the same monastery in Worcester where his father had devoted himself to the service of God. He was there ordained deacon, and then priest, by the bishop. Observing a very strict course of life, he soon became remarkable for his vigils, fasting and prayers. In consequence of his discipline of himself, he was first appointed master of the novices, and afterwards, on account of his acquaintance with the ecclesiastical services, precentor and treasurer of the church. Being now intrusted with the custody of the church, he embraced the opportunities it afforded him for being almost perpetually in the sacred edifice, spending whole nights before the altar in prayer; and when he was exhausted with fatigue, he lay on one of the church benches, and placed his prayer-book beneath his head as a pillow.
After some time, on the death of the prior, Bishop Aldred appointed Wulstan to succeed him. As prior, he preached every Lord's Day to the people, with so great unction, that they were moved to tears. One of the monks grumbled, and said that Wulfstan forgot his place,--it was the office of the bishop to preach, and that of the monk to hold his tongue. Hearing this, Wulfstan said, "My brother, the Word of God is not bound."
Although very abstemious and moderate in his diet, he had not refrained from meat, till one day that roast goose was being prepared for dinner, the fragrance filled the church, and Wulstan, who was at the altar celebrating mass, was so distracted with the delicious odour, for he was very hungry, as it was the late choral mass, that he could not collect his thoughts. Then, filled with shame, before he left the altar he vowed never to touch meat again, and he kept this vow to his dying day.
On the elevation of Aldred, Bishop of Worcester, to the archbishopric of York, by unanimous consent of the clergy and laity in the election of a successor, Wulstan was chosen; the king having granted them permission to elect whom they pleased.
It chanced that the legates from the Pope were present at the election, but neither they nor the clergy and people could persuade Wulstan to accept the charge, of which he declared himself to be unworthy. At last, being sharply reproved for his obstinate willfulness by Wulfsi, a hermit, and being strongly urged by S. Edward the Confessor, then king, he yielded, and was consecrated on the Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, 1062.
As bishop, Wulstan maintained the same severity towards himself; every day he sang the late high mass; it being usual for the priests to take the choral mass by weeks, in turns, it being very trying, as the celebrant had to remain fasting till a late hour. Wulstan not only sang the high mass daily, but also all the canonical hours, and when he rode on journeys, he had his book open before him on the pommel of his saddle, and he chanted aloud the psalms of David.
As the old church and monastic buildings reared by S. Oswald were being demolished, to make way for more splendid edifices, Wulstan stood one day, and looked at the roofless church, and the walls that were being torn down, and his eyes filled with tears. "Why should you weep," said a monk, standing by; "you should rather laugh, to see the meanness of the first house swept away, to make room for a glorious second one." "No," answered Wulstan, "I see nothing to rejoice over in the demolition of the work of our Saints. True, they knew not how to rear a stately building; but under a mean roof, they offered the adorable sacrifice to God with great devotion, and set saintly examples to their flock; and we--we collect and carve the stones of the material temple, and neglect the edification of that which is spiritual--the souls of men."
Below him in church sat a curly-headed choir boy. One day the bishop bent down, and laying his hand on the glossy curls, said, "All these will fall off one day!" Then the boy in alarm, turned round and said, "Oh, save my curls for me!" "My child, do not fear, as long as I live you shall retain your abundant hair." And so he did, for many long years, till Wulstan died, and then, says the chronicler who records this strange little incident, his hair came off as the bishop had foretold.[83]
When William the Conqueror established himself in England, he not only gave the lands to his Norman nobles, but also the bishoprics to his Norman clergy. "Wulstan is a fool, he cannot speak French!" said William, and he ordered Lanfranc, his Norman Archbishop of Canterbury, to depose the plain Saxon Bishop of Worcester, on the charge of ignorance. A conclave was held in Westminster Abbey in 1074, to decide a dispute between Robert, Archbishop of York, and Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury, as to the question whether the diocese of Worcester belonged to the northern or the southern province, and at the same time to deprive Wulstan. When called in question as to his slender attainments in learning, he rose and said, "We have not sung Sext yet. Let us chant the office first, and I will answer afterwards."
But those around him remonstrated, saying, "Let us do our business first, and we can sing the service afterwards; we shall become objects of ridicule to the king and nobles, if we keep them waiting till we have done our office."
"No!" exclaimed Wulstan; "the duty to God must be done first, and then we will consider the petty disputes of men." Having sung the service, he directly proceeded to the council chamber. To his dependants, who were desirous of withholding him, and who could not be persuaded that their cause was not in danger, he said, "Know for certain, that I here see the holy archbishops, Dunstan of Canterbury and Oswald of York, defending me this day by their prayers, and they will darken the understandings of my gainsayers." Then he gave his benediction to a monk who could speak Norman French, but imperfectly at best, and ordered him to state his case for him.[84]
There stood the grave long-bearded Saxon bishop arraigned for ignorance before the Norman king, and his smooth-shaven[85] Norman prelates. Wulstan, the representative of the people, Lanfranc of the nobles; Wulstan, the bishop of the conquered, and Lanfranc of the conquerors. When the poor Saxon peasants had come to him at Worcester, and had complained that these Norman invaders trampled down their corn, and robbed them of their cattle, and ground them down with taxes; "They are God's scourge, these Normans, punishing us for our sins, my children," said Wulstan. And now he was to be deprived of his office by these invaders, that a Norman might occupy his stool, and shepherd with his crook the Saxon bondsmen. The council decided, in accordance with the royal pleasure, that Wulstan was too ignorant to deserve to retain his see, and that therefore he must resign his pastoral staff and ring. The ring, the token that he was wedded to his diocese before God, that he said he would never resign, in life or in death. "I received this ring without coveting it, and I will bear it with me to my grave."[86] But the staff, the token of jurisdiction, that he could be deprived of, so rising from his place, with unruffled composure, and placid countenance, holding his staff, he said, "Truly, my Lord Archbishop, truly I know that I am unworthy of this honour, nor fit to bear this burden, nor sufficient to endure the labour. I knew this when the clergy elected me, and when the bishops urged me, and when my own master, King Edward, invited me. He, with the authority of the apostolic see, laid this burden on my shoulders, and ordered me to be invested with the episcopate, by the token of this staff. Now thou desirest of me this pastoral staff, which thou gavest me not; thou demandest of me the surrender of the office thou laidest not on me. I, indeed, am well aware of my ignorance, and yielding to the sentence of this holy conclave, I resign my staff--not to thee, but to him who gave it me." Saying this he went forth from the chapter house to the tomb of S. Edward the Confessor, and standing before the stone, he cried, "Thou knowest, O my Master! how reluctantly I received this burden, how often I fled away from it; how, when sought, that it might be imposed on me, I secreted myself. I confess that I am a fool, but thou didst constrain me. There lacked not the election of the brethren, the entreaty of the people, the will of the bishops, the favour of the nobles; but none of these things weighed with me like thy authority; it was thy will that bent mine. And now we have a new king, a new law, a new archbishop, who found new rights and declare new sentences. They convince thee of error, who commanded, and me of presumption, who obeyed. Therefore, not to them who demand, but to thee who gavest; not to them, fallible, walking in darkness, but to thee who hast been led forth into the clear light of very truth, and hast escaped out of this region of error and ignorance, to thee I resign my staff, to thee I surrender the cure of those thou didst commend to me, to thee I commit them in confidence, knowing well thy merits."
Having said this, he slowly raised his hand a little, and said, "My lord and king, accept this, and surrender it to whom thou choosest!" Then he struck the staff into the sepulchral stone, and laying aside his pontifical habit, he seated himself, as a monk, among the monks.
Was there ever a grander incident in English Church history? Was there ever a nobler speech uttered by an English bishop?
Then all, surprised, saw that the staff stood in the stone; and one ran and told Lanfranc, but he believed it not, and bade Gundulf, Bishop of Rochester, to whom he had promised the bishopric of Worcester, to go and bring back the staff. So Gundulf went, but the staff was immovably imbedded in the stone.
Then the archbishop and the king went to the tomb, and sought to wrench the staff from where it stood, but they were unable. Lanfranc at once turned, and coming straight down to where the monk sat, he bowed to him, and said, "Verily God resisteth the proud and giveth grace unto the humble. Thy simplicity was scorned by us, brother, but thy righteousness is made clear as the light. Our wisdom has been brought to naught, and thy ignorance has prevailed. Take then again that charge which we unadvisedly deprived thee of, but which we, by our authority and the judgment of God, commit to thee once more."
But Wulstan hesitated; however, being urged vehemently by those who stood by, he went to the tomb again, and said:--"Now, my lord and king, to whose judgment I commended myself, and to whom I resigned my staff, show me what is thy pleasure. Thou hast preserved thine honour, thou hast made manifest my innocence. If thine old sentence stands, restore to me my staff; if not, yield it to whom thou wilt!" Then he put forth his hand, and touched the staff, and he removed it at once with ease.[87]
To Lanfranc and Wulstan, acting conjointly, is due the cessation of the slave traffic in England. It was the custom of the English to sell slaves to the Irish, and this was subject to a tax which passed into the royal exchequer. "The credit of this action," says Malmesbury,[88] "I know not whether to attribute to Lanfranc, or to Wulstan, who would scarcely have induced the king, reluctant from the profit it produced to him, to this measure, had not Lanfranc commended it, and Wulstan, powerful through the sanctity of his character, commended it by episcopal authority."
[Illustration: S. WULSTAN, BISHOP OF WORCESTER. From a Design by A. Welby Pugin. Jan. 19.]
Having taken the oath of allegiance to William, Wulstan remained faithful. When, in the same year, 1074, some of the Saxon earls rose against the Conqueror, Wulstan and the abbot of Evesham, supported by the sheriff of Worcester and Walter de Lacy, prevented their junction, by raising their vassals and occupying the ford of the Severn.[89]
In the Barons' revolt, 1088, "Bernard du Neuf-Marché, Roger de Lacy, who had lately wrested Hereford from the king, and Ralph de Mortimer, with the vassals of the Earl of Shrewsbury, having assembled a numerous army of English, Normans and Welsh, burst into the province of Worcester, declaring that they would burn the city of Worcester, plunder the Church of God and S. Mary, and take summary vengeance on the inhabitants for their loyalty to the king. On hearing this, the reverend father Wulstan, Bishop of Worcester, a man of deep piety and dove-like simplicity, beloved alike by God and the people he governed, faithful to the king as his earthly lord, was in great tribulation; but soon rallying, by God's mercy, prepared to stand manfully by his people and city. While they armed themselves to repel the enemy, he poured forth supplications in the impending danger, exhorting his people not to despair. Meanwhile, the Normans, taking counsel, entreated the bishop to remove from the church into the castle, saying that his presence there would give them more security, if they were in great peril, for they loved him much. Such was his extraordinary kindness of heart, that from duty to the king, and regard for them, he assented to their request.
"Thereupon, the bishop's retainers made ready, and the garrison and the whole body of citizens assembled, declaring that they would encounter the enemy on the other side of the Severn, if the bishop would give them leave. Taking their arms, and being arrayed for battle, they met the bishop, as he was going to the castle, and besought him to grant their desire, to which he freely assented. 'Go,' said he, 'My sons, go in peace, go in confidence, with God's blessing and mine. Trusting in God, I promise you that no sword shall hurt you this day. Be loyal, and do valiantly for the safety of the people and the city.'" The victory was complete. The rebels were routed, and the king's liege-men and the bishop's retainers returned home in triumph, without the loss of a single man.[90]
He died in the year 1095, on January the 19th, and was buried with his ring on his finger. "God suffered no man to remove from his finger the ring with which he had received episcopal consecration," says Florence of Worcester; "that the holy man might not appear to forfeit his engagement to his people, to whom he had often protested that he would not part with it during his life, nor even on the day of his burial."
[Illustration: SS. Fabian and Sebastian. Jan. 20.]
FOOTNOTES:
[81] At Santa Ninfa, about thirteen miles from Rome.
[82] Florence knew S. Wulstan personally, as appears from his account of his vigils. He says, "He sometimes went four days and nights without sleep,--a thing we could hardly have believed, if we had not heard it from his own mouth."
[83] S. Wulstan sometimes joked; but the specimen recorded by Malmesbury is not striking for wit, nor for its reverence, wherefore I give it in Latin. Being asked why he wore lamb's wool garments in winter, instead of cat's skin like the other clergy he answered, "Nunquam audivi cantari Cattus Dei, sed Agnus Dei; ideo non catto, sed agno volo calefieri."
[84] So far William of Malmesbury, who abruptly closes, saying that he will no longer torture the patience of his readers. What follows is from Roger of Wendover.
[85] Dr. Rock: Church of our Fathers, II. p. 99, plate.
[86] Roger of Wendover, and Capgrave.
[87] This most striking incident is not mentioned by Florence of Worcester, or William of Malmesbury, but occurs in Roger of Wendover and Matthew of Westminster.
[88] Chronicle, lib. III.
[89] Florence of Worcester.
[90] Florence of Worcester.
January 20.
S. FABIAN, _Pope and M., at Rome_, A.D. 250. S. SEBASTIAN, _M., at Rome_, A.D. 303. S. EUTHYMIUS THE GREAT, _Ab. in Palestine_, A.D. 473. S. FECHIN, _Ab., at Fore, in Ireland_, A.D. 665. S. MAUR, _B. of Cesena, in Italy, middle of 7th cent._ S. BENEDICT, _H., near Fiesole, in Italy_.
S. FABIAN, POPE AND M., AT ROME.
(A.D. 250.)
[Roman Martyrology. Authorities: Eusebius, lib. vi. c. 29 and 39; the Liber de Romanis Pontificibus; S. Jerome, lib. de Eccles. Script. c. 54; a letter of S. Cyprian (55) to Cornelius, &c.]
Saint Fabian succeeded Anteros in the see of Rome. It is said that Fabian had come to Rome out of the country, and, by divine grace, he was singled out in a very remarkable manner to be bishop. For, when all the brethren had assembled in the church for the purpose of ordaining him that should succeed in the episcopate, though there were many eminent and illustrious men present, yet no one thought of any but Fabian. They relate that a dove, suddenly fluttering down, rested upon his head, bringing up before their minds the scene when the Holy Spirit of old came down on the Saviour. Thereupon the whole body exclaimed with one voice, as if moved by the Spirit of God, "He is worthy!"[91] and without delay they took him and placed him upon the episcopal throne.[92]
S. Fabian governed the Church of Rome for sixteen years. He is said by some to have converted and baptized the Emperor Philip. "Philip, after a reign of seven years," says Eusebius, "was succeeded by Decius, who, in consequence of his hatred to Philip, raised a persecution against the Church, in which Fabian suffered martyrdom, and was succeeded, as Bishop of Rome, by Cornelius."[93]
Relics, in the churches of S. Martin de la Monte, S. Praxedes, a head and an arm in that of S. Sebastian, in Rome.
In art, he appears with the pontifical tiara and a dove.
S. SEBASTIAN, M., AT ROME.
(A.D. 303.)
[All the ancient Latin Martyrologies. The Greeks commemorate him on December 18th. The original Acts are not in our possession. What is regarded as the Acts appears to be a panegyric, falsely attributed to S. Ambrose, on S. Sebastian's Day. The incidents are no doubt taken from the original Acts, but the long sermons and theological instructions put into the mouths of S. Sebastian and Tranquillinus, are certainly oratorical compositions of the author who passes for S. Ambrose.]
S. Sebastian was born at Narbonne, in Gaul, but his parents were of Milan, in Italy, and he was brought up in that city. He was a fervent soldier of Christ at the same time that he served in the army of the Emperor. He was so greatly regarded by the Emperors Diocletian and Maximian, that he was elevated to the command of the first cohort, for he was a man prudent, upright in word and act, faithful in business, fervent in spirit. He was enabled, by his rank and office, to be of service to those who were imprisoned for the faith of Christ. He relieved their sufferings, and urged them to constancy.
Two brothers, Marcus and Marcellianus, had been accused of being Christians, and were expecting execution in prison, when their friends, admitted to see them, implored them with tears to save their lives by apostasy. They seemed to waver; they promised to deliberate. Sebastian heard of this, and rushed to save them. He was too well known to be refused admittance, and he entered their gloomy prison as an angel of light.
Tranquillinus, the father of the two youths, had obtained from Agrestius Chromatius,[94] prefect of the city, a respite of thirty days for them, to try their constancy; and, to second his efforts, they had been placed in the house of Nicostratus, the keeper of the records (_primiscrinius_).
Sebastian's was a bold and perilous office. Besides the two Christian captives, there were gathered in the place sixteen heathen prisoners; there were the parents of the unfortunate youths weeping over them, to allure them from their threatened fate; and there was the magistrate, Nicostratus, with his wife Zoë, drawn thither by the compassionate wish of seeing the youths snatched from their fate. Could Sebastian hope that of this crowd not one would be found whom a sense of official duty, or a hope of pardon, or hatred of Christianity, might impel to betray him, if he avowed himself a Christian?
The room was illumined only by an opening in the roof, and Sebastian, anxious to be seen by all, stood in the ray which shot through it; strong and brilliant where it beat, but leaving the rest of the apartment dark. It broke against the gold and jewels of his rich tribune's armour, and as he moved, scattered itself in brilliant reflections into the darkest recesses of the gloom; while it beamed with serene steadiness on his uncovered head.[95]
"O most happy soldiers of Christ, valiant warriors in the fight! are ye now, after having undergone so much that ye touch the palm, are ye now, I ask, about to withdraw from the fight and lay aside the crown, overcome by these blandishments? Let them see in you the fortitude of Christian soldiers, sheathed rather in fortitude than in armour of iron. Can it be that you will cast away the rewards of victory at the instigation of a woman? Can it be that half-conquering already, you will bow your necks to be trampled on by the deadly foe?" Words of reproach and threatening and promise poured from his lips.[96]
The scene that followed baffles description. All were moved; all wept. Marcus and Marcellianus were ashamed of their late hesitation. Tranquillinus and his wife were convinced; the prisoners joined in the tumult of these new affections; and Sebastian saw himself surrounded by a group of men and women smitten by grace, softened by its influences, and subdued by its power; yet all was lost if one remained behind. He saw the danger, not to himself, but to the Church, if a sudden discovery were made, and to those souls fluttering in uncertain faith.
Zoë knelt before Sebastian with a beseeching look and outstretched arm, but she spoke not a word, for, six years before, her tongue had been paralysed in a severe sickness, and she had not spoken since. Sebastian looked at her earnestly, and read in her signs, and the expression of her countenance, that she believed in her heart. Then he asked wherefore she spoke not, and it was told him that she was dumb. Then, raising his hand and signing her mouth with a cross, he said, "If I am the true servant of Christ, and those things are true which I have spoken, and thou O, woman, hast heard, may the Lord Jesus Christ, in whom I believe, restore the use of thy tongue, and open thy mouth, as he opened the mouth of his prophet Zachariah."
Then suddenly the woman cried out:--"Blessed art thou, and blessed is the word of thy mouth, and blessed are they that believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of the living God." And when Nicostratus saw the grace of God revealed by the healing of his wife, he fell at the feet of Sebastian, and offered to break the chains off the hands and feet of the confessors, and let them go; but to this they would not consent. Then Nicostratus transferred them all, with Tranquillinus and his wife, to the full liberty of his house, after having obtained leave from Claudius the keeper of the prisons (_Commentariensis_.) Sebastian lost no time in putting them under the care of the priest Polycarp, of the title, or parish of S. Pastor, who diligently instructed them, night and day. In the meantime, Claudius, the gaoler, came to the house of Nicostratus, and said, "The prefect is much disturbed at my having allowed the prisoners to be in your house; and therefore he requires you to appear before him and explain the reason."
Nicostratus at once went to the prefect, and told him that he had taken the Christian prisoners into his own house, with the purpose of moving them the more easily to apostasy. "You did well," said Chromatius, and he dismissed him. On his way home, the keeper of the rolls told Claudius the truth; and when he related how Sebastian had healed his wife, Claudius exclaimed in an agony of eagerness:--"Send him to my house, I have two lads, sons of my first wife, one dropsical, the other a poor wretched cripple. If he cured your wife, he can heal my sons." Then running home, he brought his two boys, one in each arm, to the house of Nicostratus, and introduced them into the company of the neophytes, and casting the boys in the midst, implored the disciples to recover his poor children, and declaring that he believed with all his heart. Then Polycarp, the priest, took the names of the whole company, they were sixty-eight in all, and he baptized them. Now when the two boys rose from the baptismal water, they were healed of their infirmities; and Tranquillinus, who had suffered excruciating torments from the gout, also felt that he was made whole.
Chromatius, the prefect, was afterwards converted, and having resigned his office, retired into privacy.
The care which Sebastian took of the Christian prisoners, and the efforts he made to stimulate their courage, could not long remain secret; and he was denounced to the Emperor Diocletian, who sent for him, and in a rage, exclaimed, "What! I have had thee about my person, and thou hast conspired against my safety!"
S. Sebastian answered, "I pray daily for thy safety and for the prosperity of the state, to the God of heaven, for I reckon no succour can be got from gods of stone."
Then Diocletian ordered him to be taken out into a field, and be shot to death with arrows. Therefore the soldiers placed him as their mark, and left him for dead, bristling with arrows. But a certain woman, named Irene, the widow of the martyr Castulus, finding that he still lived, took him to her lodgings, at the head of the great staircase of the palace, and there nursed him till he was convalescent. And one day, as he began to walk, the Emperor passed. Then he started out to the head of the stairs. He had heard the familiar trumpet notes, which told him of the Emperor's approach, and he had risen, and crept to greet him.
[Illustration: S. SEBASTIAN. From a Drawing by Lucas Schraudolf. Jan. 20.]
"Diocletian!" he cried out, in a hollow but distinct voice; "False are the words of thy idol priests, my sovereign, who say that we Christians are adversaries to the state; who cease not to pray for thy welfare and that of the realm."
"What!" exclaimed the Emperor; "Art thou Sebastian?" "I am Sebastian, raised as from death to witness against thee for thy cruel persecution of the servants of Christ."
Then the Emperor, in a rage, ordered him to be taken into the court-yard of the palace, and to be beaten to death with clubs, and his body to be cast into the sewer.
And when all this had been done, a devout woman, named Lucina, by night rescued the body from the place where it had been cast, and buried it reverently in her own garden.
A church was afterwards built over his relics by Pope Damasus.
Patron of Chiemsee, Mannheim, Oetting, Palma, Rome, Soissons; of makers of military laces, of archers, makers of fencing foils.
Relics, at Soissons, the head at Eternach, in Luxemburg, portions at Mantua, at Malaga, Seville, Toulouse, Munich, Paris, Tournai, in the Cathedral; Antwerp, in the church of the Jesuits; and at Brussels, in the Court Chapel.
In art, can always be recognized as a young man, transfixed with arrows.
S. EUTHYMIUS THE GREAT, AB.
(A.D. 473.)
[Greek and Latin, and Syriac Martyrologies. Authority, his life by Cyrillus, monk of his monastery, in 543, sixty years after the death of Euthymius; he derived much of his information from an old monk who had been the disciple of the Saint.]
There was a man named Paul, with his wife Dionysia, at Melitene in Armenia, good Christians, loving one another, but childless. Then, with one consent, they entered into the church of the Martyr Polyeuctus, and abode there many days instant in prayer, that they might be given a son.
And after this had continued some time, in a vision of the night, the martyr appeared to them, and said, "Your prayer is heard, now therefore depart in peace; and when the child is born, let him be named Euthymius, or the 'Well disposed.'"
Now it fell out, that shortly after the child's birth, Paul died. Then Dionysia, the widow, took her babe, and went to her brother Eudoxius, the chaplain or confessor to the Bishop of Melitene, and gave the little boy to him, as Hannah presented Samuel to Eli, that he should minister before the Lord.
After that, Dionysia was ordained deaconess, and in due course Euthymius received the sacred orders of lector, and sub-deacon, and finally was made priest, and appointed to the oversight of all the monasteries in the diocese.
Euthymius often visited the church of S. Polyeuctus, and loving solitude, was wont to spend whole nights in prayer on a neighbouring mountain. But the love of being alone with God grew upon him, so that he could not rest, and at the age of twenty-nine, he secretly deserted his native place, and went to Jerusalem, where he visited the holy places; and then retired into the desert, near the Laura of Paran,[97] he found a cell in every way convenient, and there he abode. Now there was a monk near his cell, named Theoctistus, and him Euthymius loved greatly, for he was a good man, and full of the Holy Ghost. "The love of the same things," says his biographer; "and society in labour, united them so closely in the bond of charity, and to such an extent were their spirits blended in affection, that each was, as it were, planted in the heart of the other."
After five years spent in Paran, Euthymius resolved, with his friend Theoctistus, to fly into a solitude, more remote. So they went away into the barren mountains, near the Dead Sea; and there, searching for a place where they might dwell, they discovered a ravine, down which a torrent poured, and in the face of the rock was a cave. Then they entered into it and there they abode, living on vegetables, and drinking the water of the brook. Now it fell out, one day, that some shepherds came that way, and ascending to the cavern looked in, and were frightened when they saw two men, very haggard, with long beards. But Euthymius bade them be of good cheer, for they were hermits who dwelt there on account of their sins. Then the shepherds noised it abroad, and many disciples came to them, and they built a monastery, and Euthymius appointed Theoctistus to rule over it; and then he retired, loving solitude, into a remote hermitage, whence he issued forth only on the Sabbath (Saturday) and the Sunday. He enjoined on the monks to be diligent in work, and never to allow their hands to be idle. "For," said he, "if men in the world labour to support themselves, their wives, families and children, how much rather we, who have the poor depending upon us."
Having cured Terebon, the son of Aspebetes, of paralysis, which afflicted one side of his body, Aspebetes, chief of the Arabs in Palestine, desired baptism, and took the name of Peter. Such multitudes of Arabs followed his example, that Juvenal, patriarch of Jerusalem, ordained him bishop of the wandering tribes, and he assisted at the council of Ephesus against Nestorius, in 431.
He built S. Euthymius a Laura on the right hand of the road from Jerusalem to Jericho, in the year 420. Euthymius could never be prevailed upon to depart from his rule of strict solitude; but he governed his monks by superiors to whom he gave directions on Sundays.
"Do not suppose," said he to his monks, "that you come into the desert to leave temptation behind you." And then he related to them the following story. There was in Egypt a man afflicted with a very violent temper. So he ran away from his home into a monastery, where he thought he would be free from incentives to anger. But there he was frequently irritated by the other monks who, unintentionally, gave him annoyance. So he determined to escape wholly from the society of men, and then said he, I cannot give way, for I shall never be tempted. So he took with him only an earthenware bowl, out of which to drink, and he hid himself in a remote desert.
Now, one day, he was fetching water from the spring, and he upset the bowl, and the water fell; then he dipped the vessel again, and as he was going, his foot tripped, and again the water was spilt; he dipped it once more, but his hand shook, and he overturned the basin a third time. Then, flaming into a furious passion, he dashed the bowl against a stone, and shivered it to fragments. And when his anger cooled down, he looked at his shattered bowl, and said, "Oh fool that I am! how can I escape the temptation which is in my nature! If I have not men to be angry with I rage against an earthen pot!"
There was a man in the Laura, named Auxentius, whom the steward told to attend upon the mules, for "he was apt at mule-grooming." But Auxentius indignantly refused, saying, he came to the monastery to be a monk, and not an ostler. And when he constantly refused, on the next Lord's Day, the steward complained to Euthymius, who sent for the man. Then Euthymius said, "My son, it is necessary that some one of the brethren should attend to the stables. Why shouldst not thou do this?"
"Because," answered Auxentius, "I don't like it."
"Alas," exclaimed the abbot; "I see thou art not imitating Him who said, I came not to do mine own will, I came not to be ministered to, but to minister."
When the monk still refused, Euthymius said sadly, "Well, go thy way, and see if self-will will make thee happy."
And presently the man fell ill, and in his sickness his conscience smote him, and he sent for the abbot, and he said, "I was wrong, I will look to the mules."
Then Euthymius healed him, and Auxentius did as was required of him.
S. Euthymius showed great zeal against the Nestorian and Eutychian heretics. The turbulent Empress Eudocia, after the death of her husband, Theodosius, retired into Palestine, and there continued to favour them with her protection. Aroused by domestic affliction, the captivity of her daughter and grand-daughters, and the plunder of Rome, she sent to ask advice of S. Simeon Stylites. He answered that her misfortunes were the consequence of her sins, and especially of her having persecuted the orthodox faith; and ordered her to follow the direction of Euthymius. By the advice of S. Euthymius, she renounced Eutychianism, and embraced the Catholic communion. In 459, she sent word to Euthymius that she was coming to see him, and that she designed settling on his Laura sufficient revenues for its subsistence. He returned her answer that she need not do so, and that she must prepare for death. She obeyed, and died shortly after. One of the last disciples of our Saint was the young S. Sabas, whom he dearly loved. In the year 473, on the 13th January, Martyrius and Elias, two monks, to whom S. Euthymius had foretold that they should become patriarchs of Jerusalem, came with several others to visit him, and to conduct him to his Lent retreat in a solitary place. He said that he would stay with them all that week, and leave them on the Saturday following, meaning, by death. Three days after, he gave orders that a general vigil should be observed on the eve of S. Anthony's Day; on this he made a discourse to his spiritual children. He appointed Elias to be his successor, and foretold that Domitian, a beloved disciple, who had long ministered to him, should follow him out of this world, on the seventh day, which happened accordingly. Euthymius died on Saturday, the 20th of January, being ninety-five years old, of which he had spent sixty-eight in his beloved deserts.
S. FECHIN, AB. OF FORE.
(A.D. 665.)
[Authority, a life written in the 12th century, from tradition. Like so many of these Irish lives which were handed down from generation to generation, it contains many improbabilities.]
S. Fechin was abbot of Foure, in West Meath, where he governed three hundred monks. He is said to have pitied the monks engaged in grinding their corn in querns, he therefore brought water from a marsh to the monastery, by cutting a tunnel through the rock, and then established a water mill. Of this Giraldus Cambrensis relates the following:--There is a mill at Foure, which S. Fechin made most miraculously with his own hands, in the side of a certain rock. No women are allowed to enter either this mill or the church of the saint; and the mill is held in as much reverence by the natives as any of the churches dedicated to him.[98] The Saint finding a poor leper, full of sores one day, took him to the Queen, and bade her minister to him as to Christ. She bravely overcame her repugnance, and tended him with gentle care.[99] Fechin was the son of Coelcharna, descendant of Eochad Fionn, brother to the famous king Conn of the Hundred Battles, and his mother Lassair was of the royal blood of Munster. When fit to be sent to school he was placed under S. Nathy of Achonry. Having finished his studies he was ordained priest, and retired to a solitary place at Fore in Westmeath, there to live as a hermit. But he was followed by many disciples, and Fore became a monastery of three hundred monks. He also established a religious house in the island of Immagh, near the coast of Galway. The inhabitants were then pagans, but Fechin and his monks converted them. His influence was very great with the kings and princes of his age. He died of a dreadful pestilence which swept Ireland in A.D. 665.
[Illustration: The Peacock as a Christian Emblem.]
FOOTNOTES:
[91] This was the common acclamation at the election of bishops, of which we have many examples in Philostorgius, lib. ix. c. 10. And in the relation of things done at the election of Eradins (recorded in S. Augustine's Epistles), we read that they cried out twenty times, "He is worthy and just!" and five times, "He is deserving, he is worthy!"
[92] Eusebius. lib. vi. c. 29.
[93] Ibid. c. 39.
[94] This name presents a difficulty, as it does not appear in the lists of the prefects of the city. Bollandus suggests, not very plausibly, that on account of his secession from the state religion, his name was expunged.
[95] This is H. E. Cardinal Wiseman's elegant description of the scene, which accords exactly with the Acts. This incident is not due to his imagination, but occurs in the Acts in these words:--"Igitur, cum haec Beatissimus Sebastianus, indutus chlamyde, succinctus baltheo, ex suo ore proferret, subito per unam fere horam splendore nimio de coelo veniente illuminatus est."
[96] In the version of the Acts by S. Ambrose, the whole lengthy exhortation is given. This can hardly, however, be original, but is the composition of the author who passes for S. Ambrose.
[97] A Laura was a colony of eremites dwelling in separate hovels or caves, and differed in this particular from a monastery, where all dwelt under one roof.
[98] Topography of Ireland, c. 52.
[99] Here occurs a very favourite incident in the lives of these Irish saints; it shall be given in Latin. The same is told of S. Mochua and others. "Leprosus ad Reginam dixit: Nares meas in ore tuo suge, et phlegma inde extrahe. At illa viriliter agens, sicut imperavit fecit, et phlegma in linteum posuit; iterum quoque ei mandavit, ut similiter faceret, et id quod extraheret, S. Fechino reservaret." When the Queen looked into the handkerchief, she found two clots of solid gold, one of which she retained, the other she gave to S. Fechin. The incident I give as characteristic, rather than edifying.
January 21.
SS. FRUCTUOSUS, _B.M._, AUGURIUS, AND EULOGIUS, _DD., MM., at Tarragona, in Spain_, A.D. 259. S. PATROCLUS, _M., at Troyes, in France, circ._ A.D. 272. S. AGNES, _V.M., at Rome, circ._ A.D. 303. S. EPIPHANIUS, _B. of Pavia, in Italy_, A.D. 496. S. MEINRAD, _H. M., at Einsiedeln, in Switzerland_, A.D. 861.
SS. FRUCTUOSUS, B. M., AUGURIUS AND EULOGIUS, DD., MM.
(A.D. 259.)
[Roman Martyrology, those of Usuardus, Bede, Notker, Ado, &c. The perfectly genuine Acts, which are extant, were read in the Church on this day, as S. Augustine testifies in his sermon for their commemoration.]
Valerian and Gallienus being emperors,[100] Aemilian and Bassus consuls, on January 16th, being the Lord's-day, Fructuosus, the Bishop, Augurius and Eulogius, the deacons, were taken. Fructuosus was in bed, but hearing the tramp of the officers, he rose at once and went out barefoot.[101] To whom the soldiers said, "Come, the governor wants thee and thy deacons." Fructuosus said, "Let us go, but please, let me put on my shoes." The soldiers said, "As thou desirest, shoe thyself." As soon as they were come, they were put into prison. Fructuosus, certain and glorying in the crown of the Lord, to which he was called, prayed without ceasing. There were also with him some of the brethren, praying him to have them in remembrance. Next day, he baptized in the prison our brother Rogatian. And they were six days in prison, and then were brought forth. It was on the 21st January, and a Friday, that they were heard. Aemilian, the governor, said, "Let Fructuosus, the Bishop, Augurius and Eulogius be brought forward." According to custom it was said, "They are here." Aemilian, the governor, said to Fructuosus, the Bishop, "Hast thou heard what the Emperors have ordered!" Fructuosus, the Bishop, said, "I do not know what their orders are; I am a Christian." Aemilian said, "They have ordered that the gods be worshipped." Fructuosus said, "I worship one God, who made heaven and earth, the sea and all that therein is." Aemilian said, "Do you know that there are many gods?" The Bishop said, "No, I do not." "Then thou soon shalt," said the governor. Fructuosus, the Bishop, looked up to the Lord, and began to pray within himself. Aemilian said, "Who will be heard, who feared, who adored, if the gods and the countenance of the Emperor are despised?" Then he said to Augurius, the deacon, "Don't listen to the words of Fructuosus." Augurius answered, "I worship the Almighty God." Aemilian, the governor, said to Eulogius, the deacon, "Dost thou not worship Fructuosus?" "By no means," said Eulogius, "but I worship the same God as does Fructuosus." Aemilian said to Fructuosus, "Art thou a Bishop?" Fructuosus answered, "I am." "You were one," said the Governor, and he ordered them to be burnt alive.
And when Fructuosus, the Bishop, and his deacons, were led into the amphitheatre, the people began to mourn for Fructuosus, for he was greatly beloved, not by the brethren only, but also by the heathen. For he was a vessel of election and a teacher of the people. And when some, in brotherly charity, offered them a spiced cup to drink, he said, "The hour of breaking fast is not yet come." For it was the fourth hour, though indeed they had solemnly celebrated the station (fast) on the fourth day (Wednesday) in the prison. Therefore joyously on the sixth day (Friday) they hastened to conclude this station (fast) with prophets and martyrs in Paradise. And when they had come to the amphitheatre, one, named Augustalis, a lector, ran to him, with tears, beseeching him to suffer him to unloose his shoes. But the blessed martyr said, "Stand aside, I can put off my own shoes." And when he had done so, our brother and fellow-soldier, Felix, went up to him, and took his right hand, asking him to remember him.[102] To him S. Fructuosus replied in a clear voice, so that all heard, "It behoves me to hold in mind the whole Catholic Church, extending from east to west." Then, as he was in the gate of the amphitheatre, ready to advance to his unfading crown, rather than to his pains, as the officers saw, and the brethren heard, and the Holy Spirit urged and spake, Fructuosus the Bishop, exclaimed, "A pastor will not be lacking to you, nor will the love and promises of the Lord fail, now or hereafter. This which ye behold is the infirmity of one hour." And when the bands wherewith their hands were tied had been burnt through, rejoicing, they cast themselves on their knees, sure of the resurrection, and having formed the sign of victory,[103] they poured forth their souls, praying to the Lord.
The brethren, sad as if bereft of a shepherd, endured their solitude; not that they lamented Fructuosus, but rather they desired to be mindful of the faith and passion of each. When night came, they hastened to the amphitheatre with wine, with which to extinguish the charred bodies, which being done, they collected the ashes of the martyrs, and each carried away a portion. But neither in this did the marvellous works of the Lord fail; that the faith of the believers might be stimulated, and an example might be given to the little ones. After his passion, Fructuosus appeared to the brethren, and exhorted them to restore, without delay, what each had carried off of the ashes, out of love, that they might be laid altogether in one place.[104]
Fructuosus in Spanish _Frutos_, in French _Fruteux_.
Patron of Taragona.
Relics, in the Benedictine monastery, near the Porto Fino, at Genoa; some portions, however, in the church of S. Montana, at Barcelona.
S. PATROCLUS, M.
(ABOUT A.D. 272.)
[From the Acts published by Bollandus, an early recension of the original Acts.]
When the Emperor Aurelian was in Gaul, he came to Troyes, and hearing that there was a Christian there, named Patroclus, he ordered him to be brought before him, when the following examination was had of him:--
_Aurelian_--"What is thy name?" He answered, "I am called Patroclus."
_Aurelian_--"What is thy religion, or, what God dost thou worship?"
_Patroclus_--"I adore the living and true God, who inhabits heaven, and regards the humble, and knows all things or ever they are done."
_Aurelian_--"Give up this nonsense, and adore and serve our Gods, from whom you will derive honour and riches."
_Patroclus_--"I will adore only the true God, who made all things visible and invisible."
_Aurelian_--"Dispute of those things which you say are true."
_Patroclus_--"Those things which I declare are true and probable; but I know why falsehood hates the truth."
_Aurelian_--"I will burn you alive if you will not sacrifice to the gods."
_Patroclus_--"I offer the sacrifice of praise, and myself as a living victim to God who has deigned to call me to martyrdom."
Then Aurelian commanded--"Put fetters on his feet, and hot manacles on his hands, and cudgel him on the back, and then shut him up in a privy cell, until I make up my mind what is to be done with him."
Then Patroclus was given into custody to one Elegius until the third day. And when he was brought forth again to be examined, Aurelian greeted him with, "Well, despiser, hast thou thought better of it, and art thou ready to sacrifice?"
_Patroclus_--"The Lord delivereth the souls of his servants, and will not forsake them that hope in Him. If thou desirest anything out of my treasures, I will freely give it thee, for, believe me, thou art poor."
_Aurelian_--"I, poor!"
_Patroclus_--"Thou hast earthly wealth, but art poor in faith of our Lord Jesus Christ."
_Aurelian_--"Enough of this. Our gods are mighty."
_Patroclus_--"Who are they?"
_Aurelian_--"First Apollo, the chief;[105] then Jove, the great god; and Diana, the mother of the gods."[106]
_Patroclus_--"Why, how can they be almighty, when Apollo kept sheep for Admetus, and Jove died of a pain in his belly; and as for your Diana, every one knows she is the noon-tide demon."
Then Aurelian, inflamed with rage, ordered Patroclus to be taken to a marshy place, and to be there executed. But when the soldiers led him to the bank of the Seine, which had overflowed, Patroclus escaped from them across the river, and took refuge on a hill dedicated to idol worship. Here a woman saw him, and she went straightway and told the soldiers. Then they came upon him, and smote off his head.
[Illustration: S. AGNES. From the Vienna Missal. Jan. 21.]
S. Patroclus in France is called _S. Parre_. He is one of the Patrons of Troyes.
S. AGNES, V. M.
(ABOUT A.D. 303.)
[Roman Martyrology, modern Anglican Kalendar, and Greek Menaea. The Greeks commemorate her on Jan. 14th, 21st, and July 5th. Her Acts, attributed to S. Ambrose, are a rhetorical recension of her genuine Acts. S. Ambrose refers to S. Agnes in lib. I. De Virginibus, and in his Commentary on Ps. civ., and in lib. I. c. 4 of his offices. There is also a hymn of Prudentius, relating the Acts of this famous martyr. The Acts are sufficiently elegant to be really by S. Ambrose, and are far superior in style to those of S. Sebastian, falsely attributed to him.]
S. Jerome says that the tongues and pens of all nations are employed in the praises of this Saint, who overcame both the cruelty of the tyrant, and the tenderness of her age, and crowned the glory of chastity with that of martyrdom.[107] S. Augustine observes that her name signifies chaste in Greek, and a lamb in Latin. She has been always looked upon in the Church as a special patroness of purity. We learn from S. Ambrose and S. Augustine, that she was only thirteen years old at the time of her death. She suffered in the persecution of Diocletian. Her riches and beauty excited one of the young nobles of Rome, the son of the prefect of the city, to attempt to gain her hand in marriage. To him she answered, "I am already engaged to one--to him alone I keep my troth."[108] And when he asked further, her answer was, "He has already pledged me to Him by his betrothal ring, and has adorned me with precious jewels. He has placed a sign upon my brow that I should have no other lover but he. He has showed me incomparable treasures, which he has promised to give me if I persevere. Honey and milk have I drawn from His lips, and I have partaken of His body, and with His blood has he adorned my cheeks. His mother is a virgin, and His father knew not woman. Him the angels serve, His beauty sun and moon admire; by His fragrance the dead are raised, by His touch the sick are healed. His wealth never fails, and His abundance never grows less. For Him alone do I keep myself. To Him alone in true confidence do I commit myself. Whom loving I am chaste, whom touching I am clean, whom receiving I am a virgin."
The youth repulsed, and filled with jealousy against the unknown lover, complained to the father of Agnes, who was much disturbed, doubting whether she were mad, or had given her heart to some one without his knowing it. By degrees it transpired that Agnes was a Christian. Thereupon Symphronius,[109] the governor, sent for her parents, and they, alarmed for her safety, urged her to submit, and marry the young man. She, however, constantly refused, declaring that she desired to remain a virgin. "Very well," said the Governor; "then become a vestal virgin, and serve the goddess in celibacy."
"Do you think," answered Agnes, "that if I have refused your living son, of flesh and blood, that I shall dedicate myself to gods of senseless stone?"
"Be not headstrong," said Symphronius; "you are only a child, remember, though forward for your age."
"I may be a child," replied Agnes; "but faith dwells not in years, but in the heart."
"I will tell you how I shall deal with you," cried Symphronius. "You shall be stripped, and driven naked into a house of ill-fame, to be subjected to insult and outrage." Then the clothes were taken off the slender body of the girl, and she was forced out into the street. In shame she loosened the band that confined her abundant hair, and let it flow over her body, and cover her. "You may expose my virtue to insult," said she to the prefect, "but I have the angel of God as my defence. For the only-begotten Son of God, whom you know not, will be to me an impenetrable wall, and a guardian never sleeping, and an unflagging protector."
And so it was. For when she was placed in the brothel, the room was filled with light, and an angel brought her a robe, white as snow, to cover her nakedness. And also, when the governor's son burst in at the door in tumultuous exultation, the angel smote him, that he fell senseless on the ground.[110] Thereupon there was an uproar, and the people said, she had slain him by her enchantments. But when he was come to himself he was ashamed, and the governor feared. Therefore he committed the sentencing of Agnes to the deputy, Aspasius, who ordered that she should be immediately executed. And all the people rushed after her, crying, "Away with the witch, away with her!"
Then a fire was kindled, and Agnes was placed upon the pyre. But she, lifting up her hands in the midst of the fire, prayed, "O Father Almighty, who alone art to be worshipped, feared, and adored, I give Thee thanks for that through thy holy Son, I have escaped the threats of the profane tyrant, and with unstained footstep have passed over the filthy slough of lust; and now, behold, I come to Thee, whom I have loved, have sought, and have always longed for. Thy name I bless, I glorify, world without end."[111] And she continued, "So now I am bedewed with the Holy Ghost from on high; the furnace grows cold about me, the flame is divided asunder, and its heat is rolled back on them that quickened it. I bless Thee, O Father of my Lord Jesus Christ, who permittest me, intrepid, to come to Thee through the fires. Lo! what I have believed, that now I see; what I have hoped for, that now I hold; what I have desired, that now I embrace. I confess Thee with my lips, and with my heart, I altogether desire Thee. I come to Thee one and true God, who with our Lord Jesus Christ, thy Son, and with the Holy Ghost, livest and reignest through ages of ages. _Amen._" And when she had finished praying, the fire became wholly extinct; then Aspasius, the deputy, ordered a sword to be thrust into her throat. "But," said he suddenly, "why is she not bound?" The executioner turned over a quantity of manacles, and selected the smallest pair he could find, and placed them round her wrists. Agnes with a smile, shook her hands, and they fell, like S. Paul's viper, clattering at her feet.[112] Then she calmly knelt down, and with her own hands drew forward her hair, so as to expose her neck to the blow.[113] A pause ensued, for the executioner was trembling with emotion, and could not wield his sword.[114]
As the child knelt alone, in her white robe, with her head inclined, her arms crossed modestly upon her bosom, and her locks hanging to the ground, and veiling her features, she might not inaptly have been compared to some rare plant, of which the slender stalk, white as a lily, bent with the luxuriance of its golden blossom. "And thus, bathed in her rosy blood," said the author of the Acts, "Christ betrothed to Himself his bride and martyr."
Then her parents, having no sorrow, but all joy, took her body, and placed it in a tomb on their farm, not far from the city, on the Numentan road. But there being a great crowd of Christians following, the pagan mob and soldiers pursued them, and drove them away with stones and weapons. But Emerentiana, who was the foster-sister of Agnes, a holy virgin, though only a catechumen, stood intrepid and motionless by the tomb, and there she was stoned to death.
After her death Agnes appeared in glory to her parents.
From the heavenly regions Girt with heavenly legions, Eight days past, her home she sought; And a lamb, the whitest, Loveliest, purest, brightest, In her loving arms she brought.
"These thou seest, my mother These, and many another, Are my blest companions now."
Relics, in the church of S. Agnes, at Rome; portions at Utrecht; a few small particles at Rouen, in the church of S. Ouen; at Melun; in the Cathedral at Cologne; in the Court Chapel at Brussels; and in the Jesuit Church at Antwerp.
In art, she appears (1) with a lamb, or (2) with an angel protecting her, or (3) standing on a flaming pyre, or (4) with a sword.
S. MEINRAD, H. M.
(A.D. 861.)
[Authority, an ancient anonymous and perfectly authentic life in the library of the monastery at Einsiedeln.]
About the year of grace 797, was born Meinrad, Count of Hohenzollern. He was born in that part of Swabia, then called Sulichgau, which comprised the valleys of Steinlach and Sturzel, and the towns of Rottenburg and Sülchen.
Berthold, the father of Meinrad, had married the daughter of the Count of Sülchen, and lived with his wife in the strong castle of Sülchen on the Nekar.
Meinrad lived at home till he was ten or eleven years old. At that time the island of Reichenau possessed a Benedictine monastery of great reputation. This island is situated in the arm of the lake of Constance, called the Zeller-see, and very fertile. The monks superintended two schools in this island, connected with their monastery, one for the boys who were in training to be monks, the other for the sons of nobles, who desired to live in the world. At the time that Meinrad entered the school, his kinsman, Hatto of Sülchen, was abbot.
At this period the great lesson that the monks had to teach the Germans was, the dignity of labour. The Germans were a turbulent people, loving war, harrying their neighbour's lands, hunting and fighting, despising heartily the work of tilling the land, and tending cattle. The monks began to labour with their hands, and by degrees they broke through the prejudices of the time, and converted the Germans into an agricultural people. In 818, when Meinrad was aged 21, the first vines were planted in Reichenau, to become, to this day, the principal source of revenue to those to whom it belongs. The position of Reichenau, on the main road to Italy, gave it a special importance. Many foreign bishops, who, halting there on their journeys, had carried away with them a pleasant memory of that quiet isle in the blue lake, returned to it to spend their last years in peace. Thus the Bishop Egino retired to Reichenau, and built there, in 799, the church of Our Lady, at the western extremity of the island, which still exists. At the time of the consecration of this church, Meinrad was in the monastery school; this was in 816. Seven hundred monks, a hundred novices, and four hundred scholars assisted at the ceremony, and sang the grand psalms and _Coelestis urbs_ with wondrous effect.
The time came for Meinrad to leave school and decide on his career. The voice of his heart called him to the service of God, and he prepared for Holy Orders. In 821 he was ordained deacon, and shortly afterwards priest. He was fond of study; but the book that most charmed his imagination was the account of the Fathers of the Desert, by Cassian. The forms of these venerable hermits in their caves seemed to appear to him and beckon him on. The voice which had called him to the priesthood said to him, "Friend, go up higher," and he took vows as a monk in the abbey of Reichenau, to his great-uncle Erlebald, now superior, on the resignation of Hatto in 822. He was then aged twenty-five.
At the upper extremity of the Lake of Zürich was the little cloister of Bollingen, dependant on that of Reichenau. It contained a prior and twelve brethren, who had established themselves in this wild neighbourhood, lost, as it were, among the mountains, to become the teachers of a neighbourhood buried in darkness. They established a school for the gentry and also for the serfs, in which they taught the boys what was suitable for their different stations in life. Being in want of a master for this school, they sent to the abbot of Reichenau for one. His choice fell on Meinrad, who was at once despatched to the humble priory, situated on the confines of civilization, to which the mountains and dense forests seemed to say, "Thus far and no further shalt thou go."
In his new situation, Meinrad drew upon himself general esteem and affection. His prudence in the direction of souls, his learning, and his modesty, endeared him to all.
Nevertheless, from the moment of his entering into the priory, Meinrad had felt a yearning in his heart for a life more secluded, in which he could pray and meditate without distraction. About two leagues off, beyond the lake, rose Mount Etzel, covered with dense forest. Often from the window of his cell did his eyes rest, with an invincible longing, on the blue mountain. The desire became, at length, so uncontrollable, that he resolved to visit the Etzel, and seek among its rocks for some place where he might pass his days in repose. One day, accordingly, he took with him one of his pupils, and, entering a boat, rowed to the foot of the desired mount. A few hours after he was at the summit, and his heart beat with a sweet joy at the sight of a place to which his yearning soul had long turned. Behind him was a pathless forest of pines, inhabited by wolves, but he feared them not. He descended the hill by the side of Rapperschwyl, and arrived at the village, called afterwards Altendorf. He rested at the house of a pious widow, who received him hospitably. To her Meinrad confided his design, and asked her to minister to his necessities on the Etzel, should he retire thither. She readily promised to do so. Having thanked her, he returned full of joy to Bollingen. He asked the prior to give him his benediction and permission to accomplish his project. He, with regret, permitted him to respond to the call of grace, and Meinrad at once tore himself from his companions and pupils, and crossed the lake to the beloved mountain. This was in June, 828, when Meinrad was aged thirty-one. He took nothing with him save his missal, a book of instructions on the Gospels, the rule of S. Benedict, and the works of Cassian. Burdened with these volumes, he climbed the Etzel, and stood on a commanding point. At his feet and before him lay the blue lake of Zürich, its waters sleeping in sunshine; behind him was the gloomy horror of the forest. Beyond, the Alpine peaks wreathed in glaciers, glittering in the light, and around him a solemn silence, broken only by the distant scream of a magpie, or the creaking of the pines in the breeze.
The first care of the new solitary was to provide himself with shelter against rain and storm. He collected broken boughs, and interlaced them between four pines that served as corner posts to his hovel, and roofed it in with fern. This was his first house; but shortly after, the widow, having heard that he had retired to the Etzel, built him a hut of pine logs, and a little chapel, in which he might offer the Holy Sacrifice. She attended to all his necessities, as she had promised, and Meinrad was now at the summit of happiness.
Strange must have been those first evenings and nights in loneliness. There is a sense of mystery which oppresses the spirit when alone among the fragrant trees, that stand stiff and entranced, awaiting the coming on of night. To persons unaccustomed to the woods, few moments of greater solemnity could occur than those following the set of sun. A shadow falls over the forest, and in the deep winding tunnels that radiate among the grey, moss-hung trunks, the blackness of night condenses apace.
Mysterious noises are heard; the rustling of large birds settling themselves for the night, the click of falling cones, the cry of the wild cat, or the howl of the wolf. The gold light, that all day has flickered through the boughs and diapered the spine strewn soil, has wholly disappeared, save that for a moment it lies a flake of fire on the distant snowy peak. Patches of ash-grey sky, seen through the interstices of the branches, diffuse no light. Perhaps an evening breeze whispers secrets among the pine-tops and pipes between the trunks, or hums an indistinct tune, pervading the whole air, among the green needle-like leaves of the firs. And then, when night has settled in, the moon shoots its fantastic silver among the moving branches, and draws weird pictures over the brambles and uneven soil. Branches snap with a report like a pistol, and voices of unseen birds and beasts sound ghost-like among the dark aisles of the labyrinth of firs.
It is well to picture these surroundings, when we call up before us the figures of the old hermits. Their trials were not only of hunger, and thirst, and cold; there was the trial of nerve as well.
In the forest cell, Meinrad disciplined his body by rigorous fasts, and his soul by constant prayer. By degrees, his cabin became a resort of pilgrims, who arrived seeking ease to their troubled consciences, or illumination to their dark understandings. Always united to God, always penetrated with the sense of His presence, he strove to know the will of God, and to submit his own will wholly to that.
Seven years passed, and the number of those who visited him increased every day. Then, finding his solitude no more a solitude, he resolved to leave the Etzel, and bury himself in some nook far from the habitations of men.
Behind the Etzel extended a vast forest untrodden by man, whose savage and gloomy loneliness attracted Meinrad. Whilst he was musing on his projected flight, some of his old pupils at Bollingen came, as was their wont occasionally, to visit their former master. Meinrad descended the mountain with them to the point where the river Sihl, after numerous windings in the forest, flows gently through an agreeable valley, and empties itself into the lake. The pines on its banks were reflected in the glassy water, and in its crystal depths could be seen multitudes of trout. The young monks desiring to have a day's fishing, Meinrad crossed the river, and entered the forest. He walked on silent and meditating, looking around him, in hopes of discovering some place suitable for the purpose that occupied his mind. After a walk of an hour and a half, in a southerly direction, he reached the foot of a range of hills which formed a semi-circle as far as the Alb. In this basin, enclosed within the arms of the mountain, wound a little stream over a bed of moss, from a spring beneath the roots of two large pines. To the south lay the valley of the Alb, blocked by the rugged snow-topped crags of the Mythen. This was just such a solitude as Meinrad had desired. He fell on his knees, and thanked God for having brought him to so pleasant a spot, and drinking for the first time from the fountain, he returned to his companions, who, having caught a bag full of fish, went back with him to his hermitage, and as evening fell, returned to Bollingen.
Meinrad now prepared to leave the Etzel. He went to Altendorf to thank the widow who had provided for him, and then he departed, taking with him one monk of Bollingen and a peasant, to carry such things as would be necessary in the wilderness. As they descended the hill towards the river, the brother saw a nest of ravens on a branch; he climbed the tree, and taking the nest, brought it along with the two young birds it contained to Meinrad, who kept them, to be the companions of his solitude.
A few paces above the spring, where there was a gentle rise, he decided should be the site of his habitation, and there accordingly he erected a simple hut of logs. Providence did not desert him. The abbess Hedwig, head of a small community of women at Zürich, undertook to minister to his necessities, in place of the widow of Altendorf; and from time to time she sent him food, and such things as be needed.
He was now left in complete solitude, and often the temptation came upon him, as he lay shivering with cold in the winter nights, and the snow drifted about his cabin, to give up this sort of life, and return to the community at Bollingen or Reichenau. But he resisted these thoughts, as temptations of the evil one, with redoubled prayer and fasting. In this place he spent several years in perfect retirement, till a carpenter of Wollerau, coming there one day in quest of some wood, discovered his cell. After that, he was visited by hunters, and then, by degrees, a current of pilgrims flowed towards his abode, as had been the case on the Etzel. What added to this was the present of a statue of the Blessed Virgin and Child, made to Meinrad by Hildegard, daughter of Louis the German, who had been appointed by her father abbess of Zürich, in 853. This image speedily acquired the credit of being miraculous, and thus began that incessant pilgrimage which has continued for over a thousand years to the venerated shrine where it is preserved.
Meinrad had spent twenty-five years in solitude; and his love for this mortified and retired life had grown stronger in his heart as he grew older. He was glad when winter, the frost, and the snow came to block the paths, and diminish the concourse of pilgrims; yet in spite of the rigour of the climate at that season, and the want of roads through the forest, he still saw many visitors, who came to confide to him their troubles, as children to a father, and to ask counsel of his prudence. There were also days in which he was alone, and, shut up in his log-hut, heard only the hissing of the wind among the trees, and the howling of the wolves, pressed by hunger in the forest; all was sad around the hermitage, the flowers, the grass, the little spring slept under the snow, spread like a white pall over dead nature. The two ravens, perched on a branch of pine which overhung the cabin door, uttered their plaintive croak. Meinrad alone was happy. He celebrated the Divine Mysteries, and holding in his hands the eternal Victim, offered himself, in conjunction with the sacrifice of Calvary; desiring earnestly that he might be found worthy to die the death of a martyr. His prayer was heard.
During the last years of Meinrad's life, pilgrims laid presents at the door of Meinrad, and before the image of Mary. Those that served to adorn the chapel he kept, the rest he gave away to the poor. Two men, one from the Grisons, named Peter, the other a Swabian, named Richard, suspecting that he had a store of money collected from the pilgrims, resolved on robbing him. They met in a tavern at Endigen, where now stands Rapperschwyl, where they spent the night. Next day, January 21st, 861, long before daybreak, they took the road to the Etzel and entered the forest. For a while they lost their way, for the paths were covered with snow. However, at length they discovered the hermitage. The ravens screamed at their approach, and fluttered with every token of alarm about the hut, so that, as the murderers afterwards confessed, they were somewhat startled at the evident tokens of alarm in the birds. The assassins reached the chapel door. S. Meinrad had said his morning prayers, and had celebrated mass. The murderers watched him through a crack in the door, and when he had concluded the sacrifice, and had turned from the altar, they knocked. Meinrad opened, and received them cheerfully. "My friends," said he; "had you arrived a little earlier, you might have assisted at the sacrifice. Enter and pray God and His Saints to bless you; then come with me and I will give you such refreshments as my poor cell affords." So saying he left them in the chapel, and went to prepare food in his own hut.
The murderers rushed after him, and he turned and said, smiling, "I know your intention. When I am dead, place one of these tapers at my head, and the other at my feet, and escape as quickly as you can, so as not to be overtaken."
He gave to one his cloak and to the other his tunic; and they beat him about the head with their sticks, till he fell dead at their feet. Then they threw his body on the bed of dried leaves whereon he was wont to sleep, and cast a rush mat over it. They then searched the hut for money, but found none. Before leaving, they remembered the request of Meinrad, and placed one of the tapers at his head, the other they took to the chapel, to light it at the ever-burning lamp. When they returned, to their astonishment, they saw that the candle at the head of the body was alight. Filled with a vague fear, they set down the other candle and took to flight. But the two faithful ravens pursued them, screaming harshly, and dashing against the heads of the murderers with their beaks and claws, as though desirous of avenging their master's death. Frightened more and more, and continually pursued and exposed to the attack of the enraged birds, the murderers ran towards Wollerau, where they met the carpenter who had discovered the retreat of Meinrad. This man, recognizing the tame ravens of the hermit, and suspecting mischief, hastily bade his brother not allow the two men to escape out of his sight, and then ran to the hermitage, where he found the body of the Saint. The candle at his feet had set fire to the mat, but the flame had expired as soon as it had reached the corpse. The carpenter at once returned to Wollerau, where he spread the news of the murder, and having bade his wife and some friends take care of the body of S. Meinrad, he went in pursuit of the assassins on the Zürich road. He soon overtook them. The ravens were fluttering with shrill screams at the windows of a house. He entered and denounced the murderers. They were taken, and delivered over to justice. By their confession all the circumstances of the martyrdom were made known.
Relics, at Einsiedeln, where, in 1861, the thousandth anniversary of the Saint's death was celebrated with great pomp.
FOOTNOTES:
[100] This account is a translation of the Acts; it is a very fair specimen of the original documents as written by the Church notaries at the time. The style being too simple to please the taste of later ages, too many of them were re-written in florid diction, and long speeches were put in the martyrs' mouths.
[101] One reading is _insolutus_, another _in soleis_.
[102] That is, to intercede for him when he, the martyr, stood in the presence of Christ in Paradise.
[103] That is, extending their arms, so that they formed the symbol of the Cross.
[104] Slightly abbreviated from the Acts.
[105] Aurelian was a special votary of the sun.
[106] There is some blunder here.
[107] S. Hieron, Ep. 6.
[108] S. August. Serm. 274.
[109] Here a difficulty occurs. There is no such name in the lists of the prefects of the city. According to this account, he transferred to the deputy, Aspasius, the duty of sentencing her. In some accounts he is called Aspasius Paternus. A Paternus was prefect of the city in 264 and 265; an Ovinius Paternus in 281. Aspasius Paternus, pro-consul of Africa, in or about 260, is mentioned by S. Cyprian. It is probable that Symphronius was not prefect of the city, but a powerful senator, and that Aspasius is the same as Ovinius Paternus. Transcribers made havoc of the names in the Acts.
[110] Antiphon to Ps. cix. _Dixit Dominus_, for S. Agnes' Day, and Greek Menaea.
[111] This is appointed as the antiphon to the Magnificat for S. Agnes' Day.
[112] Prudentius.
[113] Ibid.
[114] S. Ambrose lib. I. _De Virgin._ c. 2.
January 22.
S. VINCENT, _D. M., at Saragossa, in Spain_, A.D. 304. SS. VINCENT, ORONTIUS, VICTOR, AND AQUILINA, _MM., at Gerunda, in Spain_, A.D. 304. S. BLAESILLA, _W., at Rome_, A.D. 383. S. GAUDENTIUS, _B. of Novara, in Italy, circ._ A.D. 418. SS. ANASTASIUS AND LXX. COMPANIONS, _MM., in Assyria_, A.D. 628. S. DOMINIC, _Ab. of Sora, in Italy_, A.D. 1031. S. BRITHWALD, _B. of Wilton, in England_, A.D. 1045. B. WALTER VAN BIERBEEKE, _Monk, at Hemmerode, in Belgium, circ._ A.D. 1220.
S. VINCENT, D. AND M.
(A.D. 304.)
[All Western Martyrologies, and by the Greeks on the same day, and Nov. 11th. The Acts, very ancient, quoted by Metaphrastes, are a very early recension of the original Acts by the notaries of the Church. Also, a hymn of Prudentius.]
This most illustrious martyr of the Spanish Church was born at Saragossa in Arragon, the mother of martyrs, as Prudentius calls it. His parents are mentioned in his Acts, which are at least older than S. Augustine (August 28), in whose time they were publicly read in the church of Hippo. The name of his father was Eutychius; and his mother, Enola, was a native of Osca, or Huesca, which sometimes claims the honour of his birth. He was trained in the discipline of the Christian faith by Valerius, Bishop of Saragossa, and was in due time ordained to the office of deacon. The Bishop was a man of venerable piety, but laboured under an impediment in his speech. He therefore devoted himself to prayer and contemplation, and intrusted the care of teaching to S. Vincent, whom he also appointed his principal or archdeacon. Dacian was then Governor of Spain under Diocletian and Maximian, and had already distinguished himself by his cruelty against the Christians. The imperial edict for the seizure of the clergy had just been published in the end of the year 303, in which the laity were not included until the following year. Valerius and his deacons were accordingly loaded with chains and carried to Valencia, where the Governor then was. The pains of hunger were added to their sufferings, in the hope of subduing their fortitude. When they were brought before Dacian he first tried the effect of mild language and promises of reward if they would obey the orders of the Emperors and sacrifice to the gods. He reminded Valerius of the influence which his episcopal dignity gave him; and to Vincent he represented the honour of his family, and the sweet joys of youth which still lay before him. But the confessors of Christ were not to be thus moved. Valerius, being unable from his infirmity to reply to the artful persuasions of the tempter, Vincent made a noble profession of the faith in the name of them both.
The Bishop was condemned to exile, where he seems afterwards to have finished his course by martyrdom; and Vincent was remanded to prison, thence to pass by a more painful but a speedier way to his crown. His body was stretched upon the rack and cruelly torn with iron hooks, but no torture could shake his resolution or disturb the calm which sat upon his countenance. He defied the utmost efforts of his tormentors; and, when they began to grow weary, Dacian ordered them to be beaten, suspecting that they spared the martyr. But the Governor himself was at last moved to a faint pity by the miserable spectacle, and entreated Vincent to purchase his deliverance by at least giving up the Christian books. Vincent, still continuing firm, was taken from the rack and led to a more terrible torture called the _Question_. It was an iron frame with bars running across it, sharp as scythes, and underneath a fire was kindled, which made the whole frame red hot. To this fearful agony the martyr walked with a willing step, and even went before the executioners. And, as he lay bound upon the bed of torture, his eyes were fixed on heaven, his lips moved as if in prayer, and a peaceful smile would sometimes pass across his countenance. No cruelty was spared that diabolical ingenuity could invent, but the love of Christ surpassed the wrath of man and won the day. When the malice of his enemies could do no more, he was carried back to prison, and laid in a dark dungeon strewn with broken potsherds, which allowed his wounded body no rest. His feet, too, were fastened in the stocks. But God was mindful of His servant, and sent His angels to comfort him, bestowing a foretaste of his reward while his trial was as yet unfinished. His cell was illuminated with the light of heaven, his bonds were loosed, and the floor of his prison seemed to be strewn with flowers. The martyr and his celestial visitants sang hymns together, and the unwonted sound astonished the jailer. He looked into the cell, and, overpowered by what he saw and heard, confessed the power of God and the truth of the Christian faith. When Dacian heard of it he shed tears of rage; but, finding it was useless to continue his cruelty, he gave orders that some repose should be allowed to the martyr. His motives for this act of clemency are variously represented; perhaps he only meant to recruit the strength of Vincent that he might endure further tortures; or perhaps he feared that, if he expired under them, the Christian faith might be exalted in the eyes of the people by his constancy. But, whatever was the policy of Dacian, God overruled it to obtain for His blessed servant an easy departure. The scattered remnant of Christians gathered round him, and tended him with anxious care. They provided a soft bed, on which he was no sooner laid than he yielded up his soul to the Lord, on January 22, A.D. 304. The rage of the Governor followed his poor remains. His body was cast out into a field to become the prey of wild beasts and birds; but was defended by a raven. Then, to add further indignities to it, it was taken out in a boat and thrown into the sea with a mill-stone about the neck. During the night it was washed ashore, and at last was privately buried by some good Christians in a humble chapel near Valencia. When the fury of the persecution had ceased, it was removed with great honour, and buried under the altar of the principal church.
S. GAUDENTIUS, B. OF NOVARA.
(ABOUT A.D. 418.)
[From his life by an anonymous writer in, or about, 760; quite trustworthy.]
Gaudentius was a native of Ivrea (Eporoedia), under the shadows of the Alps; he was brought up as a Christian, and exhibited early indications of piety. On reaching man's estate he went to Novara, was ordained priest, and became so distinguished for his sanctity, that S. Ambrose visited him. When Constantius, the Arian Emperor, exiled S. Eusebius, the Catholic Bishop of Vercelli, Gaudentius went into exile with him; on his return he was elected to the episcopal throne of Novara.
S. ANASTASIUS THE PERSIAN, AND LXX. COMPANIONS, MM. IN ASSYRIA.
(A.D. 628.)
[Commemorated by Greeks and Westerns. His Acts are genuine, having been written either by the monk commissioned to attend him during his passion, or from his dictation. These Acts were referred to in the 7th General Council, 180 years after his death.]
There lived in Rages, in Persia, at the time when the true Cross fell into the hands of Chosroës, King of Persia, A.D. 614, a young man, named Magundat, the son of a Magian of rank. The capture of the Cross was famed all through Persia, and Magundat was led by curiosity to enquire about it of some Christians. Thus he learned the history of the Passion of Jesus Christ, and the doctrine of the Redemption. It left a deep impression on his mind. He was soon after called to serve in the army that marched under Sarbar through the north of Asia Minor to Chalcedon, but on his retreat, Magundat left the army, and visited Hierapolis in Syria. In that city he lodged with a Persian Christian, a silversmith, with whom he often went to the Christian Church. There he contemplated the pictures of saints glorified on golden grounds, and martyrs in their agonies, and asked about them. His curiosity was satisfied, and being greatly moved by what he heard, he felt a desire to visit those holy places where Christ had been born and where he had died, as he had seen painted on the walls of the Church of the Martyrs in Hierapolis. Therefore he went to Jerusalem, and he lodged there also in the house of a smith, who was a Christian; and to him he opened his heart, and related how he had been led to desire baptism, and a right to the Resurrection of the Just. He was, therefore, placed under instruction, and was afterwards baptized by Modestus, "vicar of the Apostolic seat," as he is called in the Acts, who governed Jerusalem, Zachary the patriarch being in captivity. He prepared himself for the Holy Sacrament with great devotion, and spent the octave after it--which persons baptized passed in white garments--in continuous prayer. At his baptism he took the name of Anastasius, thereby meaning, in Greek, his resurrection to a new life.
After his baptism, the more perfectly to keep inviolably his baptismal vows and obligations, he resolved on becoming a monk in a monastery five miles from Jerusalem. Justin, the abbot, made him first learn the Greek tongue and the psalter; then cutting off his hair, gave him the monastic habit, in the year 620.
Anastasius was always most earnest in all spiritual duties, especially in assisting at the celebration of the Divine Mysteries. His favourite reading was the lives of the saints; and when he read the triumphs of the martyrs, his eyes overflowed with tears, and he longed to be found worthy to share their glory. Being tormented with the memory of the superstitious and magical rites, which his father had taught him, he was delivered from that troublesome temptation by discovering it to his director, and by his advice and prayers. After seven years spent in great perfection in this monastery, his desire of martyrdom daily increasing, and having been assured by a revelation that his prayers for that grace were heard, he left that house, and visited the places of devotion in Palestine, at Diospolis, Gerizim, and Our Lady's church at Caesarea, where he stayed two days. This city, with the greatest part of Syria, was then subject to the Persians. The Saint, seeing certain Persian soothsayers of the garrison occupied in their abominable superstitions in the streets, boldly spoke to them, remonstrating against the impiety of such practices. The Persian magistrates apprehended him as a suspected spy; but he informed them that he had once enjoyed the dignity of Magian amongst them, but had renounced it to become a humble follower of Christ. Upon this confession he was thrown into a dungeon, where he lay three days without eating or drinking, till the return of Marzabanes, the governor, to the city. When interrogated by him, he confessed his conversion to the faith. Marzabanes commanded him to be chained by the foot to another criminal, and his neck and one foot to be also linked together by a heavy chain, and condemned him, in this condition, to carry stones. The Persians, especially those of his own province, and his former acquaintance, upbraided him with having disgraced his country, kicked and beat him, plucked his beard, and loaded him with burdens above his strength.
The Governor sent for him a second time, but could not induce him to pronounce the impious words which the Magians used in their superstitions; "For," said he, "the wilful calling of them to remembrance defiles the heart." The judge then threatened he would write immediately to the king, if he did not comply. "Write what you please," said the Saint, "I am a Christian: I repeat it again, I am a Christian." Marzabanes commanded him to be forthwith beaten with knotty clubs. The executioners were preparing to bind him fast to the ground; but the Saint told them it was unnecessary, for he had courage enough to lie down under the punishment without moving, and he regarded it as his greatest happiness to suffer for Christ. He only begged leave to put off his monk's habit, lest it should be treated with that contempt which only his body deserved. He therefore laid it aside respectfully, and then stretched himself on the ground, and, without being bound, remained all the time of the cruel torment, bearing it without changing his posture.
The Governor again threatened him to acquaint the king with his obstinacy. "Whom ought we rather to fear," said Anastasius, "a mortal man, or God, who made all things out of nothing?" The judge pressed him to sacrifice to fire, and to the sun and moon. The Saint answered, he could never acknowledge as gods creatures which God had made only for the use of man; upon which he was remanded to prison.
His old abbot, hearing of his sufferings, sent two monks to assist him, and ordered prayers to be offered daily for him. The confessor, after carrying stones all the day, spent the greatest part of the night in prayer, to the surprise of his companions; one of whom, a Jew, saw and showed him to others at prayer in the night, shining in brightness and glory like a blessed spirit, and angels praying with him. As the confessor was chained to a man condemned for a public crime, he prayed always with his neck bowed downwards, keeping his chained foot near his companion, not to disturb him.
Marzabanes, in the meantime, having informed Chosroës, and received his orders, acquainted the martyr by a messenger, without seeing him, that the king would be satisfied if he would by word of mouth abjure the Christian faith: after which he might choose whether he would be an officer in the king's service, or still remain a Christian and a monk; adding he might in his heart always adhere to Christ, provided he would but for once renounce Him in words privately, in his presence, "in which there could be no harm, nor any great injury to his Christ," as he said. Anastasius answered firmly, that he would never even seem to dissemble, or to deny his God. Then the Governor told him that he had orders to send him bound into Persia to the king. "There is no need of binding me," said the Saint: "I go willingly and cheerfully to suffer for Christ." The Governor put on him and on two other prisoners the mark, and gave orders that they should set out after five days. In the meantime, on the feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, the 14th of September, at the request of the Commerciarius, or tax-gatherer for the king, who was a Christian of distinction, Anastasius had leave to go to the church and assist at the Divine Sacrifice. His presence and exhortations encouraged the faithful, excited the lukewarm to fervour, and moved all to tears. He dined that day with the Commerciarius, and then returned with joy to his prison. On the day appointed, the martyr left Caesarea in Palestine, with two other Christian prisoners, under a strict guard, and was followed by one of the monks whom the abbot had sent to assist and encourage him. The Acts of his martyrdom were written by this monk, or at least from what he related by word of mouth. The Saint received great marks of honour, much against his inclination, from the Christians, wherever he came. This made him fear lest human applause should rob him of his crown, by infecting his heart with pride. He wrote from Hierapolis, and again from the river Tigris to his abbot, begging the prayers of his brethren.
Having reached Barsaloe in Assyria, six miles from Discartha or Dastagerde, near the Euphrates, where the king then was, the prisoners were thrown into a dungeon, till his pleasure was known. An officer came from Chosroës to interrogate the Saint, who made answer, touching his magnificent promises: "My religious habit and poor clothes show that I despise from my heart the gaudy pomp of the world. The honours and riches of a king, who must shortly die himself, are no temptation to me." Next day the officer returned to the prison, and endeavoured to intimidate him by threats and reproaches. But the Saint said calmly, "My lord judge, do not give yourself so much trouble about me. By the grace of Christ I am not to be moved: so execute your pleasure without more ado." The officer caused him to be unmercifully beaten with staves, after the Persian manner, insulting him all the time, and often repeating, that because he rejected the king's bounty, he should be treated in that manner every day, as long as he lived. This punishment was inflicted on him three days; on the third, the judge commanded him to be laid on his back, and a heavy beam pressed down by the weight of two men on his legs, crushing the flesh to the very bone. The martyr's tranquility and patience astonished the officer, who went again to acquaint the king with his behaviour. In his absence the jailer, a Christian, gave every one free access to the martyr. The Christians immediately filled the prison; every one sought to kiss his feet or chains, and kept as relics whatever had been sanctified by their touch. The Saint, with confusion and indignation, strove to hinder them, and expressed his dissatisfaction at their proceedings. The officer, returning from the king, caused him to be beaten again, which the confessor bore rather as a statue than as flesh and blood. Then he was hung up for two hours by one hand, with a great weight at his feet, and tampered with by threats and promises. The judge, despairing to overcome him, went back to the king for his last orders, which were, that Anastasius and all the Christian captives should be put to death. He returned speedily to put these orders into execution, and caused the two companions of Anastasius, with threescore and eight other Christians, to be strangled one after another, on the banks of the river, before his face, the judge all the time pressing them to return to the Persian worship, and to escape so disgraceful a death. Anastasius, with his eyes lifted up to heaven, gave thanks to God for bringing his life to so happy a conclusion; and said he expected that he should have met with a more cruel death, by the torture of all his members; but seeing that God granted him one so easy, he embraced it with joy. He was accordingly strangled, and when dead, his head was struck off. This was in the year 628, the seventeenth of the Emperor Heraclius. His body, along with the rest of the dead, was exposed to be devoured by dogs, but it was the only one they left untouched.
It was afterwards redeemed by the Christians, who laid it in the monastery of S. Sergius, a mile from his place of triumph, in the city of Barsaloe, called afterwards from that monastery, Sergiopolis. The monk that attended him brought back his _colobium_, or linen sleeveless tunic. The Saint's body was afterwards brought into Palestine, thence it was removed to Constantinople, and finally to Rome.
Relics, in the church of SS. Vincent and Anastasius at Rome, also in the chapel of the Santa Scala, near S. John Lateran, at Rome.
In art, he figures with a hatchet. Often his head alone, on a plate; to be distinguished from that of S. John Baptist, by the cowl that accompanies it.
B. WALTER OF BIERBEEKE, MONK AT HEMMERODE.
(ABOUT A.D. 1220.)
[Authority, life in Caesarius of Heisterbach's "Dialogus Miraculorum," Distinctio VII. c. xxxviii. ed. Strange. Caesarius knew Walter, and some of the things he relates from what Walter told him, or from some of the brethren who where eye-witnesses to the events he describes. At the same time allowance must be made for the great credulity of Caesarius.]
Walter of Bierbeeke, in Brabant, was a knight of noble blood, having been related to Henry, Duke of Louvain. He fought against the Saracens in the Holy Land, and was a brave and upright chevalier. He was also a man of deep piety, and of a fervent devotion to the Blessed Virgin. Like Sir Galahad he might have said:--
"---- all my heart is drawn above, My knees are bowed in crypt and shrine; I never felt the kiss of love, Nor maiden's hand in mine. More beauteous aspects on me beam, Me mightier transports move and thrill; So keep I fair through faith and prayer A virgin heart in work and will."
The great German writer, Fouqué, seems to have had this Brabantine hero in his mind's eye, when he wrote his "Aslauga's Knight." Like Froda, in that exquisite story, Walter of Bierbeeke had fixed his heart on a heavenly mistress, whose pure image haunted his dreams.
A story told by Caesarius, illustrative of this, must not be omitted, though we may doubt its truth. Walter rode with a brilliant company of knights to a tournament. On his way he passed a little chapel, and the bell was tinkling for mass. It was a feast of Our Lady, and the good knight, leaping from his horse, entered the chapel to hear the mass of the Blessed Virgin. "You will be late for the tournament!" shouted his companions. "My duty is first to Her," answered Walter, pointing to the image of the Mother of God. Now when the mass was said, and the beginning of the Gospel of S. John was read, then the knight rose from his knees, remounted his horse, and rode towards the town.
As he neared the lists, he asked of some hurrying from it how matters fared. "The tournament is well nigh over," was the answer, "Walter of Bierbeeke has borne down all competitors. He has done marvellously." But the knight understood not. He asked others, and the same answer was given. Then he rode into the lists, but met with no distinguished success. And when all was over, many knights came to him and said, "Deal graciously by us." "What mean you?" he asked. "We were captured and disarmed by thee in the lists, and we must ransom ourselves." "But I was not there."
"Nay, but it was thou," they replied; "for we saw thy cognizance on helm and shield, and heard thy cry, and knew thy voice." Then Walter knew that his heavenly Mistress had sent an angel to fight for him, whilst he worshipped at her humble shrine.
And after that, many a token did she show, that she had accepted Walter as her knight. Then his love to her waxed daily stronger, and he said, "I have been her knight, now will I be her slave." So he went into a little chapel, dedicated to his dear Lady, and put a rope round his neck, and offered himself at the altar to be her serf, and to pay to her a yearly tax.
"And because out of honour to the heavenly queen he so humbled himself," says Caesarius; "therefore she, on the other hand, glorified him, whom she loved, in many ways."
After a while he wearied of wearing coat of mail, and he cast his weapons and harness aside, and donned the Cistercian habit in the monastery of Hemmerode. There he was not allowed to live in such retirement as he loved; being unskilled in Latin, he was made to serve as a lay-brother instead of being in constant attendance in choir. Several pretty stories are told of his cloister life. At dinner, as is usual in monasteries, a monk read aloud from a Latin book. The abbot noticed Walter during the meal, every day, to seem very intent on what was being read; smiles came out on his face, and sometimes tears trickled down his cheeks. At last the abbot sent for him, and asked him, "What art thou attending to? Thou understandest not the Latin book." "No, not that book," said Walter; "but I have another book open before my mind's eye, full of sacred pictures, and I look at the first, and there I see Gabriel announcing to Mary that Christ is coming. Then I turn over the leaf, and I see the stable of Bethlehem, and the adoring shepherds; and I see the Magi come; and the next picture is the Presentation in the Temple; and so my book goes on, and I come at last to Calvary and the grave. And that is a picture book of which I never weary."
Once he was sent in a boat laden with wine to Zealand. And a storm arose so that the vessel was in great danger, and she drave before the wind all night. Thinking that they must all perish, Walter made his confession to his servant, there being no priest on board, and then he descended into the hold, after midnight, and placing his little ivory statue of the Blessed Virgin before him, he knelt down and prayed, expecting death. As he prayed he slept. Then, in a dream, he saw the monastery of Hemmerode, and in it was an old monk, Arnold by name, harping, and singing psalms, and praying for those who "go down to the sea in ships and exercise their business in great waters." Then Walter awoke, and went to the mariners and said, "Be of good cheer, we shall not perish, Arnold at Hemmerode is not asleep to-night, but is harping on his harp and singing to God for us."
Now when they had come safe to land, Walter returned to his monastery, and told the abbot of his dream. Then the abbot sent for the monk Arnold, and he said to him, "What wast thou doing on the vigil of S. Nicholas?" For it was on that night that the vessel had been in danger.
"I could not sleep at all that night," answered the monk, "so I prayed to, and praised God."
"But thou wast harping on a harp," said the abbot.
"Nay, my lord," answered the monk Arnold; "this is what I do. I play with my fingers on an imaginary harp, under my habit, making music in my soul; and this I do whenever my devotion flags."
Now Walter went with his superior, the abbot Eustace, to the monastery of Villars, which was of the same Cistercian order. And in the evening the abbot of Villars called all the monks before the abbot Eustace of Hemmerode. And he said, "Are they all here?" He answered, "All are here but two little French boys, who have communicated to-day, and on such days as they communicate they love to remain in silence by themselves."
Now on the morrow, when the convent had gone to nones, and the elder of these boys was waiting the sound of the bell, leaning on his spade before the church door, he read the little nones of Our Lady, and reading, he fell asleep. Then he thought he saw the Blessed Virgin, with a great company enter the church, and she looked not towards him. And he cried, "Oh wretched me! she calls me not!" Then the Mother of God turning, looked at him, and signing to a monk, bade him go and call the boy, and this the monk did, coming to him, and saying, "The Mistress calleth thee."
When he woke, he told his fellow the dream; and when they went within, he saw Walter, and he whispered to his companion, "If that monk had a grey habit instead of a white one, I would say that it was he who summoned me."
Now on the morrow, when Walter and the abbot Eustace were about to depart, they stood in the door, and Walter wore his grey travelling habit. Then the boy exclaimed, "Yes, that certainly is he." A few days after, the blessed Walter of Bierbeeke died at Hemmerode, and strange to say, within a day or two, the little French boy was called away also.
[Illustration: Decoration]
January 23.
S. PARMENAS, _one of the first Seven Deacons, end of 1st cent._ S. MESSALINA, _V. M., at Foligno, in Italy_, A.D. 250. S. ASCLAS, _M., at Antinoë, in Egypt, circ._ A.D. 304. S. EMERENTIANA, _V. M., at Rome_, A.D. 304. (_See p. 321._) S. CLEMENT, _B. of Ancyra_, AND COMPANIONS, _MM., beginning of 4th cent._ S. AMASIUS, _B. C. of Teano, near Capua, circ._ A.D. 356. S. EUSEBIUS, _Ab. in Syria, 4th cent._ S. MAUSIMAS, _P. in Syria, circ._ A.D. 400. S. URBAN, _B. of Langres, 5th cent._ S. JOHN THE ALMSGIVER, _Patr. of Alexandria_, A.D. 616. S. ILDEPHONSUS, _B. of Toledo_, A.D. 667. S. BOISILUS, _of Melrose, circ._ A.D. 664. S. MAIMBOD, _M., at Besançon._ S. BERNARD, _Ab. of Vienne, in France, 9th cent._ S. RAYMOND, _of Pennaforte, C. in Spain_, A.D. 1275. S. MARGARET, _V., at Ravenna_, A.D. 1505.
S. ASCLAS, M.
(ABOUT A.D. 304)
[S. Asclas was martyred on Jan. 21st, but his body was found on Jan. 23rd, and on this latter day he is usually commemorated. His Acts, in a fragmentary condition, are genuine.]
Asclas, a native of Antinoë, was brought before the Roman governor, Arrianus, when he visited Hermopolis, in the Thebaid, or Upper Egypt. After a close interrogation, which is faithfully recorded in the Acts of this martyr, the Governor exclaimed, "Come, now! sacrifice to the gods, and consult thy safety. I have various instruments at hand, as thou seest." "Try, now," said the martyr, boldly. "Try, now, which will prevail, thou and thy instruments, or I and my Christ." The Governor ordered him to be swung from the little horse, and his flesh to be torn off in ribands. This was done. Then Arrianus said sullenly, "I see he is as obdurate as ever." An orator, standing by, remarked, "The approach of death has robbed him of his wits." Asclas turned his head, and said, "No, I am robbed neither of my wits nor of my God."
Now this had taken place on the further side of the river, near Antinoë; and as there were not sufficient conveniences for continuing the torture, the Governor said, "We will return to Hermopolis." So he ordered Asclas into one boat; and when he had been taken over the Nile, then Arrianus entered his boat, and began to cross. Thereupon Asclas cried out, "O Lord, for whose sake I have suffered, may Thy name be glorified now, even by unwilling lips. Retain the vessel in the midst of the river, till Arrianus confesses Thy power." Then suddenly the boat stood, as though it had grounded on a sand-bank, and it could not be moved, till the Governor wrote on a piece of parchment: "The Lord of Asclas, He is God, and there is none other god save He." And when he had sent this to the martyr, the boat floated, and was propelled to the shore. Then the Governor, inflamed with rage, thinking that the captive had used magical arts, tortured him by applying fire to his sides and belly, till his body was one great sore. And after that he cast him, with a stone attached to his neck, into the Nile.
S. CLEMENT, B. OF ANCYRA, AND HIS COMPANIONS, MM.
(BEGINNING OF 4TH CENT.)
[Commemorated by the Greeks. The Greek Acts of these martyrs are not genuine.]
S. Clement, Bishop of Ancyra, was the son of a heathen father and a Christian mother. When Clement was ten years old, his mother died. Before her death, she summoned him to her side, and urged him not to desert Christ, whatever sufferings he might be called on to endure for His sake. Being possessed of private means, on coming of age, he adopted a number of poor boys, and educated them in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. He was at length ordained Bishop of Ancyra, his native city. In the persecution of Diocletian, he was taken and brought before the governor. He was treated with great barbarity, being torn with hooks, and his teeth and jaw broken with a large stone. As he lay among other prisoners that night in the jail, a bright light filled it, and the prisoners saw a man enter in dazzling garments, who held in his hand the Holy Eucharist, and therewith he communicated the bishop. But whether he were mortal priest, or an angel of God, no man knows. Along with Clement, one Agathangelus and many others, men, women, and boys suffered for Christ, whose names are written in the Book of Life.
S. JOHN THE ALMSGIVER, PATRIARCH OF ALEXANDRIA.
(A.D. 616.)
[S. John died on Nov. 11th. But as that is the feast of S. Mennas, among the Greeks, they commemorate him on Nov. 12th; and as the 11th is the feast of S. Martin among the Latins, the commemoration of S. John is transferred in some Martyrologies to Jan. 23rd, in others to Feb. 3rd, and in others again to July 13th. Authority, his life by Leontius, Bishop of Cyprus, and S. John Damascene, Orat. 3; also a life in Metaphrastes. Leontius wrote from the account of the priests of Alexandria, who had been under S. John.]
John the Eleemosynary, or the Almsgiver, was a very wealthy native of Amathus in Cyprus, and a widower. Having buried all his children, he employed his whole fortune in relieving the necessities of the poor.
On his election to the metropolitan see of Alexandria, he at once ordered a list to be made of his masters. When asked what he meant, he replied that he desired to know how many poor there were demanding his services in the great city, for, like his Lord, he had come to minister to their needs.
As many as 7,500 were found without a livelihood. John at once undertook to relieve them. Finding that their poor little savings were wasted by the fraud of tradesmen, who used unequal balances and unjust measures, he at once began an attack on such dealings, and thereby stirred up no small hostility against himself on the part of the petty shopkeepers.
Twice in the week he drew his chair outside the church door, and placed two benches before it, that he might hear the complaints of the oppressed, and remedy them, as far as lay in his power. One day he was found softly crying. "Why these tears?" he was asked. "None seek my assistance this day," he replied. "Thou shouldst rather rejoice that there is no need," said his interlocutor. Then he raised his eyes to heaven, with a joyous smile, and thanked God. He built hospitals for the sick and visited them, "not as captives, but as brothers," says Leontius. He was discreet in his charities. To women and girls he gave twice as much as to men, because they are less able to earn a living. But he would not allow anything to be given to those who were dressy and adorned with trinkets. But it was not the poor alone that he assisted. A merchantman, having been twice ruined by shipwrecks, had as often relief from the good patriarch, who the third time gave him a ship belonging to the church, laden with corn. This vessel was driven by a storm to Britain, where raged a famine. He was therefore able to sell the corn at a good price, and brought back a load of British silver.[115] A nobleman having been greatly reduced, the patriarch ordered his treasurer to give him fifteen pounds of gold. The treasurer thinking this too much, reduced the gift to five. Almost directly after, a wealthy lady sent him an order for five hundred pounds. The patriarch, who had expected more from that quarter, asked her to come to him. "May it please your Holiness," said she; "I wrote the order last night for fifteen hundred pounds, but this morning I saw that the 10 on the cheque had disappeared." S. John at once concluded that this was God's doing. He turned to the treasurer and asked how much had been given the poor nobleman. On the hesitation of this man, he sent for the gentleman, and found that his liberal orders had not been complied with. "What is sown to the Lord, the Lord restores an hundred fold," said the patriarch. "I knew that five pounds alone could have been given, when He returned me only five hundred."
Nicetas Patricius, sub-praetor of Africa, saw the lavish charity of the patriarch with a jealous eye. The state exchequer was without funds, and he thought to appropriate the wealth of the patriarch to such purposes as the state required. Accordingly, one day he visited John the Almsgiver, with his attendants, and peremptorily demanded his money. "Here is my strong box," said the patriarch; "but the money belongs to the church, not to the state. If you choose to take it, you may do so, but I will not give it you, for it is not mine to give."
Nicetas, without more ado, ordered his servants to shoulder the money chest, and take it away. As he opened the door to leave, he saw some domestics bringing up a number of pots labelled "VIRGIN HONEY." "Hah!" said the sub-praetor, "I wish you would give me a taste of your honey!" "You shall have some," said the Patriarch. Now when the pots were opened, it was found that they contained a contribution in money sent to the Bishop; as indeed those who brought them announced.[116] When John saw the amount thus supplied to his pillaged treasury, he ordered one of his servants to take a pot, labelled as it was, to Nicetas, and to put it on his table, saying, "All those pots you met coming upstairs, as you went out, were full of the same sort of honey." And John wrote a note, which he attached to the pot, to this effect: "I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee, said the Lord; and His word is true, and no lie. Think not that mortal man can restrain the everlasting God. Farewell."
Now, Nicetas was sitting at table with friends at supper, when it was announced that the patriarch's honey awaited him. He ordered it at once to be set on the table, and said, "That patriarch is out of temper with me, that I can see, or he would have sent me more than one miserable little pot." But when he opened the jar, behold! it was full of money. Then he felt compunction for what he had done, and he ordered his servants to haste, and return to the patriarch his cash-box, and all the contents of the honey-pot.
Nicetas, after this, became friendly to the patriarch, who, as a token of response, stood godfather to his children. On one occasion this friendship was clouded, and threatened dissolution. The governor had imposed a tax, which fell with peculiar severity on the poor. John complained, and back-biters were not slow to excite Nicetas against John, by representing him as fomenting general discontent. The governor rushed to the patriarch's lodgings, and exploded into a storm of angry words, which left our Saint agitated and distressed. As evening drew on, he wrote on a scroll the words, "_The sun is setting_," and sent it to Nicetas, who, recalling the maxim of S. Paul, "Let not the sun go down upon your wrath," was moved to regret his violence, and he sped with the same celerity as before, but with different purpose, to the residence of the patriarch, to ask his pardon, and heal their friendship.
The good prelate could ill bear to be at discord with another, though the fault was none of his.
On one occasion he had excommunicated, for a few days, two clerks, who had attacked each other with their fists. One bore the sentence in a right spirit of compunction, but the other with resentment. Next Sunday, the patriarch was at the altar celebrating. As the deacon was about to remove the veil covering the sacred vessels, John remembered all at once the hostility of the clerk, and the words of our Lord: "If thou bringest thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath ought against thee, leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift." (Matt. v. 25, 24.) Then, bidding the deacon recite the general prayer over and over again till his return, he left the altar, and, entering the vestry, sent a minister to bring the clerk who was not in charity with him. And when this man came, the patriarch fell before him on his knees, and bowed his white head, and said, "Pardon me, my brother!" Then the clerk, full of shame to see the patriarch, an aged man, in all his splendid vestments, at his feet, flung himself down, weeping, confessed his wrong, and asked forgiveness. Then the patriarch embraced him, and returning to the altar, finished the sacrifice.
Having in vain exhorted a certain nobleman to forgive one with whom he was at variance, he invited him to his private chapel, to assist at his mass. Now as they were reciting the Lord's Prayer, the patriarch kept silence after he had said, "Give us this day our daily bread;" and the server, at a signal from him, ceased also; but the nobleman continued, "And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us,"--and then noticed that he had made that one petition alone, so he paused. Then the patriarch turned round at the altar and said, "What hast thou now asked?--to be forgiven by God as thou forgivest others." The nobleman was pricked at the heart, and fell down and promised to forget the wrong that had been done him.
Observing that as soon as the Gospel was read at Mass, a portion of the congregation retired and stood outside the church, talking among themselves, the patriarch went forth and seated himself amongst them, saying, "Where the sheep are, there the shepherd must also be," and they with shame came into church. Thus he broke through a pernicious custom.
The patriarch, one day, took a bishop named Troilus, then visiting Alexandria, to see his poor in a certain quarter, where he had erected for their accommodation a number of domed huts, supplied with beds, mattrasses, and blankets for the winter. Now Troilus had seen a handsome chased silver drinking cup in the town, and had set his heart upon it; it cost thirty pounds, and he had brought this sum with him, intending to buy the cup on his return, and when he had shaken himself free from the charitable patriarch. "I see," said John, "you have some money with you--many pounds, if I mistake not; distribute it among these my poor."
Troilus was unable to refuse; and so, most reluctantly, his gold went into the pocket of the beggars instead of into that of the silversmith. He was so greatly put out about this that he fretted himself into a fever. The patriarch, not seeing him, or hearing of him, for some days, sent a servant to invite him to dinner; but the Bishop declined, saying that he suffered from a bad cold and fever. Then S. John hastened to his house to sympathize with the sick man, but soon discovering that there was more of temper than malady in the case, he guessed the cause, and said, "By the way, I borrowed of you thirty pounds the other day, for my poor; if you are so disposed, I will at once repay the sum."
Then--says the writer of the life of S. John--when the Bishop saw the money in the hand of the patriarch, all at once his fever vanished, his cold flew away, and his colour and vigour came back; so that any one might have seen what was the real cause of his indisposition. "And now, if you are well enough, you will dine with me," said the patriarch. "I am ready," answered Bishop Troilus, jumping off his bed, on which he had cast himself in his fever of vexation.
Now it fell out that after dinner the Bishop dropped asleep with his head on the table, and in a dream he saw himself in a wondrous land of rare beauty; and there he beheld a glorious house of unearthly beauty, over the door of which was inscribed, "THE ETERNAL MANSION AND PLACE OF REPOSE OF TROILUS, THE BISHOP." Having read this, he was glad. But there came by a certain One, with many attendants in robes of white, and He looked up and read the title, and said: "Not so, change the superscription." Then the attendants removed the writing, and replaced it with this, "THE ETERNAL MANSION AND PLACE OF REPOSE OF JOHN, ARCHBISHOP OF ALEXANDRIA, PURCHASED FOR THIRTY POUNDS."
One of his domestic servants having fallen into great difficulties, the patriarch privately helped him, by giving him two pounds. "I do not know how I can sufficiently thank your excellence and angelic holiness," said the servant. "No thanks," said the patriarch, "Humble John"--so he was wont to call himself--"has not yet shed his blood for you, as his Master taught him."
There was a certain man, named Theopentus, greatly given to charity, who died leaving an only son. And on his death-bed, he called the boy, and said to him, "I have ten pounds, and that is all that remains to me; shall I give it to you or to the Virgin Mother of God?" And when the boy said, "It shall be her's;" then the father said, "Go and spend it among the poor."
Now when the patriarch heard of this, and that the orphan was left destitute, and was in great want; knowing that it would hurt him to offer him charity, he devised an innocent deception. He bade a scribe draw up a false pedigree, making himself and the deceased to be cousins, and he bade him show it to the youth, and bring him to the residence of the patriarch. And when this was done, the holy man ran to the lad and kissed him, and said, "How is this! that the child of my dear kinsman is in poverty. I must provide for thee, my dear son." So he made him an allowance, and married and settled him comfortably in Alexandria.
When the Persians devastated the Holy Land and sacked Jerusalem, S. John entertained all who fled into Egypt, and nursed the wounded. He also sent to Jerusalem, for the use of the poor there, a large sum of money, and a thousand sacks of corn, as many of pulse, one thousand barrels of wine, and one thousand Egyptian workmen to assist in rebuilding the churches. He moreover despatched two bishops and an abbot to ransom the captives.
S. John lived a simple life, his apparel, the furniture of his house, his diet, were all of the meanest. A person of distinction in the city, being informed that he had only an old tattered blanket on his bed, sent him a very handsome one. "Humble John" wore it over him for one night, but sold it next day, and gave the price to the poor; for, during the night, he thought of some poor wretches who had no blankets at all. The friend, being informed of this, bought the blanket, and sent it to him again. It met with the same fate as before, and he again and again re-purchased it. "We shall see who will be tired first," said the patriarch; "he of buying, or I of selling, the blanket."
There was one class of men to whom it was peculiarly difficult to offer assistance, and that was the slaves, placed at the almost complete disposal of their masters. But the watchful care of S. John did not forget them. To the masters he spoke noble words: "These men are made in the image of God. What constitutes you different from them? You and your slaves have legs and arms, and eyes and mouths, and a soul alike. S. Paul said, 'Whosoever is baptised into Christ hath put on Christ--ye are all one in Christ.' In Christ master and slave are equal. Christ took on Him the form of a servant, teaching us to respect our servants. God regardeth the humble, we are taught; He says not, the lofty ones, but those who are least esteemed. For the sake of the poor slave were the heavens made, for him the earth, for him the stars, for him the sun, for him the sea and all that therein is. For him Christ abased Himself to wash His servants' feet, for him He suffered, for him He died. Shall we purchase with money such an one, so honoured, redeemed with such precious blood? You ill-treat a servant, as though he were not of like nature with you, yet is he highly honoured by God."
A monk arrived in Alexandria with a young Jewess in his company, whom he had converted and baptized; this caused great scandal, and by order of the patriarch, he was severely beaten. The monk bore his chastisement meekly, without exculpating himself. Next day it was made so evident that the monk was without the least blame, that the patriarch sent for him to ask his forgiveness, and ever after he was most careful not to judge rashly. "My sons," said he, when he heard people blame others; "be not hasty to judge and condemn. We see often the sin of fornication, but we see not the hidden repentance. We see the crime of a theft, but we see not the sighs and tears of contrition. We severely blame the fornicator, the thief, or the perjurer, but God receives his hidden confessions, and bitter sorrow, and holds it as very precious."
[Illustration: THE VIRGIN APPEARING TO S. ILDEPHONSUS. After a Painting by Murillo in the Museum at Madrid. Jan. 23.]
Nicetas, the governor, persuaded the Saint to accompany him to Constantinople, to pay a visit to the Emperor. S. John was admonished from heaven, whilst he was on his way, at Rhodes, that his death drew near; so he said to Nicetas, "You invite me to the king of the earth; but the King of heaven calls me to Himself." He therefore sailed to his native island of Cyprus, and soon after died at Amanthus, the home of his boyhood and married life, and where he had laid his wife and children, and there he fell asleep in Christ at the age of sixty-four, after having ruled the patriarchal see of Alexandria ten years.
S. RAYMUND, OF PENNAFORTE, O.S.D.
(A.D. 1275.)
[Roman Martyrology. Authorities: The bull of his canonization, by Clement VIII., in 1601, and a life by Leander Albertus.]
S. Raymund was born in 1175, at Pennaforte, a castle in Catalonia. At the age of thirty he went to Bologna, in Italy, to perfect himself in the study of canon and civil law. In 1219 the Bishop of Barcelona, who had been at Rome, took Raymund home with him and made him archdeacon of Barcelona. In 1222 he took the religious habit of S. Dominic, eight months after the founder had died. James, King of Arragon, had married Eleonora of Castile within the prohibited degrees, without a dispensation. A legate of Pope Gregory IX., in a council of bishops held at Tarragona, declared the marriage null. Acting on the mind of the prince, by his great sanctity and earnestness, Raymund persuaded him to introduce the inquisition into the kingdom to suppress the Waldenses and Albigenses, who had made many converts to their pernicious doctrines. The object of S. Raymund doubtless was that it should serve as a check to the diffusion of heresy, and be a protection to simple souls against the poison which the ministers of Antichrist strove to infuse into them. The inquisitors were to be the dogs protecting the sheep from the wolves. S. Raymund laboured diligently, by exhortation and example, to convert the Moors and heretics, and his efforts were attended with extraordinary success.
Pope Gregory IX., having called S. Raymund to Rome, made him his confessor. In 1235 he was named to the archbishopric of Tarragona, but, by his tears, he persuaded the Pope not to enforce his acceptance of the responsible charge. In 1238 he was chosen general of the Dominican order. He made the visitation of the order on foot, and reduced the constitution to a more complete system than heretofore. Being in Majorca with the king, he discovered that King James was living in adultery with a lady of his court. As the king would not dissolve the sinful union, the Saint implored leave to depart; the king refused, and forbade any shipper taking him into his vessel. Thereupon Raymund boldly spread his cloak on the water, and standing on it, was wafted across to Barcelona. This miracle so alarmed the king, that he became a sincere penitent. Raymund died on Jan. 6th, 1275, at the age of a hundred.
FOOTNOTES:
[115] From the mines in the Cassiterides, Devon and Cornwall.
[116] We see here an instance of the manner in which some stories of miracles were formed. Leontius, who heard the story from the clergy acquainted with all the circumstances, says that the bearer of the pots told the Patriarch that they contained money; but that, for greater security, they were labelled honey. But Metaphrastes, in telling the story, says that, miraculously, the honey was converted into gold.
January 24.
S. TIMOTHY, _B. M. at Ephesus_, A.D. 97. SS. BABYLUS, _B._, and COMPANIONS, _MM., at Antioch, 3rd cent._ S. FELICIAN, _B. M. of Foligni, in Italy_, A.D. 250. S. MACEDONIUS, _H., in Syria, beginning of 5th cent._ S. EUSEBIA, _V., at Mylasa, in Caria (Asia Minor), 5th cent._ S. CADOC, _Ab., in Wales, and M., 6th cent._ S. ZOSIMUS, _B. of Babylon, in Egypt, 6th cent._
S. TIMOTHY, B. OF EPHESUS.
(A.D. 97.)
[By almost all the ancient Latin Martyrologies, S. Timothy is commemorated on this day, but by the Greeks on Jan. 22. The Martyrology called by the name of S. Jerome on Sept. 27. That of Wandelbert on May 16, possibly because of some translation of relics. Authorities: the Epistles of S. Paul, and the Acts of S. Timothy, by Polycrates, Bishop of Ephesus (210), which, however, we have not in their original form, but in a recension of the 5th or 6th century; other Acts of S. Timothy, also in Greek, and a life in Metaphrastes.]
Saint Timothy, the beloved disciple of S. Paul, was born at Lystra in Lycaonia. His father was a Gentile, but his mother, Eunice, was a Jewess. She, with Lois, his grandmother, embraced Christianity, and S. Paul commends their faith. S. Timothy had made the writings of the Old Testament his study from infancy.[117] S. Paul took the young man as the companion of his labours,[118] but first he had him circumcised at Lystra, as a condescension to the prejudices of the Jews. He would not suffer S. Titus, born of Gentile parents, to be brought under the law, but Timothy, on account of his Jewish mother, to avoid scandal to the Jews, he submitted to circumcision.
When S. Paul was compelled to quit Beraea, he left Timothy behind him to confirm the new converts. But on his arrival at Athens S. Paul sent for him, and sent him to Thessalonica where the Christians were suffering persecution. Thence he returned to S. Paul, who was then at Corinth, to give an account of his mission.[119] From Corinth S. Paul went to Jerusalem, and thence to Ephesus. Here he formed the resolution of returning into Greece, and he sent Timothy and Erastus before him through Macedonia, to apprize the faithful in those parts of his intention of visiting them. Timothy had a special charge to go afterwards to Corinth, to correct certain abuses there. S. Paul awaited his return, in Asia, and then went with him into Macedonia and Achaia.
During the subsequent imprisonment of S. Paul, Timothy appears to have been with him. He was ordained Bishop of Ephesus, probably in the year 64. S. Paul wrote his first Epistle to Timothy from Macedonia, in 64; and his second in 65, from Rome, while there in chains, to press him to come to Rome, that he might see him again before he died.
S. Timothy was afterwards associated with S. John; and in the Apocalypse he is the Angel, or Bishop, of the Church of Ephesus, to whom Christ sends His message by S. John.[120] During the great annual feast of the Catagogii, which consisted of processions bearing idols, with women lewdly dancing before them, and ending in bloodshed, S. Timothy moved by righteous zeal, rushed into the portico of the temple, and exhorted the frenzied revellers to decency; but this so enraged them, that they fell upon him with sticks and stones, and killed him.
[Illustration: S. TIMOTHY. From a Window of the Eleventh Century at Neuweiler. Jan. 24.]
SS. BABYLUS, B., AND COMPANIONS, MM.
(3RD CENT.)
[Latin Martyrologies Jan. 24; Greek Menaea Sept. 4. Authorities: Eusebius, Sozomen, Philostorgius; and his Acts, written by Leontius, patriarch of Antioch, A.D. 348, which exist only in a fragmentary condition; also S. Chrysostom: Contra Gentiles de S. Babyla, and Hom. de S. Babyla; the latter written in 387.]
On the death of Zebinus, patriarch of Antioch, in the year 237, S. Babylus was elected to the patriarchal throne. The Emperor Philip, passing through Antioch in 244, and being, as is supposed, a catechumen, desired to visit the church. Babylus, informed of his approach, went to meet him at the gate, and forbade his ingress, because he was stained with the blood of his predecessor, Gordian, who had associated him in the empire, and whom he had basely murdered.
According to S. Chrysostom, who relates this anecdote, the Emperor withdrew in confusion. But according to the Acts it was not the Emperor Philip, but the governor, Numerian, who attempted to enter the church, but was repulsed as being an idolator and stained with murder, by the dauntless Bishop; and Nicephorus Callistus, and Philostorgius say the same. Certain it is that S. Babylus suffered under this governor Numerian, son of Carus, who was afterwards, for eight months, emperor, conjointly with his brother Carinus. Babylus, and three little boys, aged respectively twelve, nine, and seven, orphans, whom he brought up in his house, were so cruelly handled by the torturers before the governor, that the boys died, and Babylus expired shortly after in prison. In order to put a stop to the abominations of the famous temple and oracle of Daphne, the zealous Emperor Gallus, brother of Julian, buried the body of S. Babylus opposite the temple gate. From that day the oracle ceased to speak. The apostate Emperor Julian ordered its removal, in hopes of restoring liberty to the demon who uttered the oracles, and the Christians translated the sacred relics to the city, "singing psalms along the road," says Sozomen. "The best singers went first, and the multitude chanted in chorus, and this was the burden of their song: _Confounded are all they that worship carved images, and delight in vain gods._"[121]
S. MACEDONIUS, H.
(BEGINNING OF 5TH CENT.)
[Greek Menaea. Authorities: Theodoret in his Philotheus, c. 13, and his Ecclesiastical Hist. lib. v. c. 20; Nicephorus Callistus, lib. xii. 44. Theodoret's mother was under the direction of S. Macedonius.]
S. Macedonius lived a life of great austerity on barley and water. For forty-five years he inhabited a dry ditch, after that he spent twenty-five in a rude cabin.
A sedition having broken out in Antioch, and the people having overthrown the statue of the Empress Flacilla, Theodosius, the Emperor, in a fit of rage, ordered the city to be set on fire and reduced to the condition of a village. Blood would also have been infallibly shed, had not S. Ambrose obtained from Theodosius, shortly before, the passing of the law that no sentence against a city should take effect till thirty days had expired. The Emperor sent his chamberlain, Eleutherius, to Antioch to execute his severe sentence against the city and its inhabitants. As he entered the streets lined with trembling citizens, a ragged hermit, it was Macedonius, plucked him by the cloak and said: "Go to the Emperor, and say to him from me, You are not only an Emperor, but a man; and you ought not only to remember what is due to an empire, but also to human nature. Man was made in the image and likeness of God. Do not then order the image of God to be destroyed. You pass this cruel sentence, because an image of bronze has been overthrown. And for that will you slay living men, the hair of whose head you cannot make to grow?" When this speech was reported to the Emperor, he regretted his angry sentence, and sent to withdraw it.
S. CADOC, AB.
(BETWEEN A.D. 522 AND 590.)
[English and Gallican Martyrologies. Through a strange confusion, S. Cadoc of Wales has been identified with S. Sophias of Beneventum in Italy; because S. Cadoc appears in the Martyrologies as S. Cadoc, at Benavenna (Weedon), and S. Sophias or Sophius Bishop of Beneventum being commemorated the same day, the life given by Bollandus, with hesitation, is a confused jumble of these two saints into one. The best account of S. Cadoc is in Rees "Lives of the Cambro-British Saints;" and in La Ville-marqué's La Légende Celtique. There is also a poem composed in honour of S. Cadoc, by Richard ap Rhys of Llancarvan, between 1450 and 1480, published in the Iolo MSS., p. 301, and the sentences, proverbs and aphorisms of S. Cadoc are to be found in Myvrian Archaeology, iii. p. 10. The following epitome of his life is from M. de Montalembert's Monks of the West, with additions from M. de Ville-marqué and corrections from Rees.]
Immediately after the period occupied in the annals of Wales by King Arthur and the monk-bishop David, appears S. Cadoc, a personage regarding whom it is difficult to make a distinction between history and legend, but whose life has left a profound impression upon the Keltic races. His father Gwynllyw Filwr, surnamed the Warrior, one of the petty kings of South Wales, having heard much of the beauty of the daughter of a neighbouring chief, had her carried off by a band of three hundred vassals, from the midst of her sisters, and from the door of her own chamber, in her father's castle. The father hastened to the rescue of his daughter with all his vassals and allies, and soon overtook Gwynllyw, who rode with the young princess at the croup, going softly not to fatigue her. It was not an encounter favourable for the lover: two hundred of his followers perished, but he, himself, succeeded in escaping safely with the lady. Of this rude warrior and this beautiful princess was to be born the saint who has been called the Doctor of the Welsh, and who founded the great monastic establishment of Llancarvan. The very night of his birth, the soldiers, or, to speak more justly, the robber-followers of the king, his father, who had been sent to pillage the neighbours right and left, stole the milch cow of a holy Irish monk, who had no sustenance, he nor his twelve disciples, except the abundant milk of this cow. When informed of this nocturnal theft, the monk got up, put on his shoes in all haste, and hurried to reclaim his cow from the king, who was still asleep. The latter took advantage of the occasion to have his new-born son baptized by the pious solitary, and made him promise to undertake the education and future vocation of the infant. The Irishman gave him the name of Cadoc, (Cattwg,) which means warlike; and then, having recovered his cow, went back to his cell to await the king's son, who was sent to him at the age of seven, having already learned to hunt and fight. The young prince passed twelve years with the Irish monk, whom he served, lighting his fire and cooking his food, and who taught him the rudiments of Latin grammar. Preferring the life of a recluse to the throne of his father, he went to Ireland for three years, to carry on his education at Lismore, a celebrated monastery school, after which he returned to Wales, and continued his studies under a famous Roman rhetorician, newly arrived from Italy. This doctor had more pupils than money; famine reigned in his school. One day poor Cadoc, who fasted continually, was learning his lesson in his cell, seated before a little table, and leaning his head on his hands, when suddenly a white mouse, coming out of a hole in the wall, jumped on the table, and put down a grain of corn; then Cadoc rising, followed the mouse into a cellar, one of those old Keltic subterranean granaries, remains of which are found to this day in Wales and Cornwall. There Cadoc found a large heap of corn, which served to feed the master and his pupils for many days.
Having early decided to embrace monastic life, he hid himself in a wood, where, after making a narrow escape from assassination by an armed swineherd of a neighbouring chief, he saw, near a forgotten fountain, where a white swan floated, an enormous wild boar, white with age, coming out of his den, and make three bounds, one after another, stopping each time, and turning round to stare furiously at the stranger who had disturbed him in his resting place. Cadoc marked with three branches the three bounds of the wild boar, which afterwards became the site of the church, dormitories, and refectory of the great abbey of Llancarvan. The abbey took its name, "The Church of the Stags," from the legend that two deers from the neighbouring wood came one day to replace two idle and disobedient monks who had refused to perform the necessary labour for the construction of the monastery, saying, "Are we oxen, that we should be yoked to carts, and compelled to drag timber?"
The rushes were torn up, the briars and thorns were cut down, and S. Cadoc dug deep trenches to drain the morass formed about the fountain he had discovered. One day, when the chapel he was building was nearly completed, a monk came that way, bearing on his back a leather pouch containing tools for working metal, and some specimens of his handicraft. His name was Gildas. He was the son of a chief in Westmoreland, and his brother, Aneurin, was one day famous among the bards of Britain.[122] Gildas opened his bag and produced a bell. Its form was that of a tall square cap, and it was made of a mixture of silver and copper, not molten, but hammered.
Cadoc took the bell and sounded it, and the note was so sweet that he greatly desired the bell, and asked Gildas to give it him. "No," said the bell-maker; "I have destined it for the altar of S. Peter at Rome." But when Gildas offered the bell to the Pope, the holy father was unable to sound it; then Gildas knew he must give it to the Welsh monk; so he returned to Britain, and offered it to Cadoc, and when he held it, the bell rang sweetly as heretofore.
Llancarvan became a great workshop, where numerous monks, subject to a very severe rule, bowed their bodies under the yoke of continual fatigue, clearing the forests, and cultivating the fields when cleared; it was besides, a great literary and religious school, in which the study of the Holy Scriptures held the van, and was followed by that of the ancient authors, and their more modern commentators. Cadoc loved to sum up, chiefly under the form of sentences in verse and poetical aphorisms, the instructions given to his pupils of the Llancarvan cloister. A great number of such utterances have been preserved. We instance a few. "Truth is the elder daughter of God. Without light nothing is good. Without light there is no piety. Without light there is no religion. Without light there is no faith. The sight of God, that is light." "Without knowledge, no power. Without knowledge, no wisdom. Without knowledge, no freedom. Without knowledge, no beauty. Without knowledge, no nobility. Without knowledge, no victory. Without knowledge, no honour. Without knowledge, no God." "The best of attitudes is humility. The best of occupations is work. The best of sentiments, pity. The best of cares, justice. The best of pains, peacemaking. The best of sorrows, contrition. The best of characters, generosity." When one of his disciples asked him to define love, he answered, "Love, it is Heaven." "And hate?" asked his disciple. "Hate is hell." "And conscience?" "It is the eye of God in the soul of man." "The best of patriots," said S. Cadoc, "is he who tills the soil."
When a chief at the head of a band of robbers, came to pillage Llancarvan, S. Cadoc went against him with his monks armed with their harps, chanting and striking the strings. Then the chief recoiled, and left them unmolested. Another chief, enraged at Cadoc receiving his son into his monastery, came with a force to reclaim the youth and destroy the cloister. Cadoc went to meet him, bathed in sunshine, and found the chief and his men groping in darkness. He gave them light, and they returned ashamed to their homes.
Cadoc had the happiness of assisting in the conversion of his father. In the depths of his cloister he groaned over the rapines and sins of the old robber from whom he derived his life. Accordingly he sent to his father's house three of his monks, to preach repentance. His mother, the beautiful Gwladys, was the first to be touched, and it was not long before she persuaded her husband to agree with her. They called their son to make to him a public confession of their sins, and then, father and son chanted together the psalm, "Exaudiat te Dominus"--"The Lord hear thee in the day of trouble." When this was ended, the king and queen retired into solitude, establishing themselves in two cabins on the bank of a river, where they worked for their livelihood, and were often visited by their son.
The invasion of the Saxons obliged S. Cadoc to fly, first to the island of Flat-holmes in the Bristol Channel, and then into Brittany, where he founded a new monastery, on a little desert island of the archipelago of Morbihan, which is still shown from the peninsula of Rhuys; and to make his school accessible to the children of the district, who had to cross to the isle and back again in a boat, he threw a stone bridge four hundred and fifty feet long across this arm of the sea. In this modest retreat the Welsh prince resumed his monastic life, adapting it especially to his ancient scholarly habits. He made his scholars learn Virgil by heart: and one day, while walking with his friend and companion, the famous historian Gildas, with his Virgil under his arm, the abbot began to weep at the thought that the poet, whom he loved so much, might be even then perhaps in hell. At the moment when Gildas reprimanded him severely for that "perhaps," protesting that without any doubt Virgil must be damned, a sudden gust of wind tossed Cadoc's book into the sea. He was much moved by this accident, and, returning to his cell, said to himself, "I will not eat a mouthful of bread, nor drink a drop of water, till I know truly what fate God has allotted to one who sang upon earth as the angels sing in heaven." After this, he fell asleep, and soon after, dreaming, he heard a soft voice addressing him, "Pray for me, pray for me," said the voice, "never be weary of praying; I shall yet sing eternally the mercy of the Lord."
The next morning a fisherman brought him a salmon, and the Saint found in the fish the book which the wind had snatched out of his hands.
After a sojourn of several years in Brittany, Cadoc left his new community flourishing under the government of another pastor, and to put in practice that maxim which he loved to repeat to his followers:--"Wouldst thou find glory? march to the grave." He returned to Britain, not to find again the ancient peace and prosperity of his beloved retreat of Llancarvan, but to establish himself in the very centre of the Saxon settlements, and console the numerous Christians who had survived the massacres of the Conquest, and lived under the yoke of a foreign and heathen race. He settled at Weedon, in the county of Northampton;[123] and it was there that he awaited his martyrdom. One morning, when vested in the ornaments of his priestly office, as he was celebrating the Divine Sacrifice, a furious band of Saxon cavalry, chasing the Christians before them, entered pell-mell into the church, and crowded towards the altar. The Saint continued the sacrifice as calmly as he had begun it. A Saxon chief, urging on his horse, and brandishing his lance, went up to him and struck him to the heart. Cadoc fell on his knees; and his last desire, his last thought, were still for his dear countrymen. "Lord," he said, while dying, "invisible King, Saviour Jesus, grant me one grace,--protect the Christians of my country!"
[Illustration: S. Paul, after a Bronze in Christian Museum in the Vatican.]
FOOTNOTES:
[117] 2 Tim. iii. 14.
[118] 1 Thess. iii. 2; 1 Cor. iv. 17.
[119] Acts xviii.
[120] Rev. ii. 1, 7.
[121] Hist. Eccl. v. c. 19: also Socrates, Eccl. Hist. iii. 19.
[122] The Gododdin, a poem descriptive of the massacre of the British chiefs at Stonehenge by Hengest, was composed by Aneurin whilst in prison.
[123] The ancient name of Weedon having been Benavenna, this has helped to cause the confusion which arose between S. Cadoc and S. Sophias of Benevento in Italy.
January 25.
CONVERSION OF S. PAUL. S. ARTEMAS, _M., at Puteoli_. SS. JUVENTINE AND MAXIMUS, _MM., at Antioch_, A.D. 362. S. PUBLIUS, _Ab. of Zeugma, in Syria, 4th cent._ S. APOLLO, _Ab. in Egypt, circ._ A.D. 395. S. MARES, _Ab. in Syria, 5th cent._ S. PRAEJECTUS, _B._, AND COMPANIONS, _at Clermont_, A.D. 674. S. POPPO, _Ab. of Stavelot, in Belgium_, A.D. 1048. B. HENRY OF SUSO, _O.S.D., at Ulm, in Germany_, A.D. 1365.
THE CONVERSION OF S. PAUL.
[The circumstances of the Conversion of S. Paul are so fully recorded in the Acts of the Holy Apostles, chaps. xix., xxii., xxvi., as not to need repetition here, being familiar to all. Among the Greeks, S. Ananias, who baptized S. Paul, is commemorated on this day.]
S. ARTEMAS, M.
[Commemorated at Puteoli and Naples under the name of Artemas, but in the ancient Martyrology attributed to S. Jerome, he is called Antimasius, a mistake of copyists for Artimasius or Artemas. The Acts are those preserved by the Church of Puteoli, and seem to be founded on others of great antiquity; they exist only in a fragmentary condition, and give no clue to the date of the martyrdom.]
Artemas was a pious Christian boy in Puteoli, in the south of Italy. He was sent to school to one Cathageta, a heathen. Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh, and the boy, filled with faith, spoke of his belief to some of his fellow-scholars. It was soon known among the boys that Artemas was a Christian, and it came to the master's ears. Cathageta lectured and browbeat the little scholar, and threatened him with the rod. "You may whip," said the brave boy; "but you will only whip my faith deeper into me." Then the master, in a rage, shouted to the boys to punish him, and the cruel tiger-cubs, educated to bloodshed by the atrocities of the arena, fell upon him with their iron pens, used for scratching on wax tablets, and stabbed him to death.
[Illustration: THE CONVERSION OF S. PAUL. After the Cartoon by Raphael. Jan. 25.]
SS. JUVENTINE AND MAXIMUS, MM., AT ANTIOCH.
(A.D. 362.)
[Authorities: the 40th Homily of S. John Chrysostom; Theodoret, Hist. Eccl. lib. iii. c. 15; Nicephorus Callistus, lib. x. c. 12.]
Theodoret says:--"The Emperor Julian continued to oppose religion with greater and greater boldness, while he assumed the specious appearance of clemency, in order to lay snares to entrap men, and seduce them into irreligion. He cast things offered to idols into the fountains of the city of Antioch, so that no one could drink of the streams without partaking of the hateful sacrifices. He defiled in the same way everything that was sold in the market-place; for he had water which had been offered to idols sprinkled on the bread, meat, fruit, herbs, and all other articles of food. The Christians lamented these abominations, yet partook of the food according to the precept of the Apostle. (1 Cor. x. 25.) Two of the Emperor's guards, who were his shield-bearers and companions in arms, vehemently deplored, at a certain convivial meeting, the perpetration of such odious deeds. One of those who had been present acquainted the Emperor with this speech. The Emperor sent for these two men, and asked what it was that they had said. This question they answered thus, in the warmth of their zeal: 'O Emperor, having been brought up in the true religion, and having been accustomed to the admirable laws of Constantine, we cannot but be deeply grieved at witnessing the very food contaminated by being mixed with idol offerings. We lamented this privately, and now, publicly, we express our regret. This is the only cause of sorrow which we experience under your government.' On hearing these words the Emperor threw off the mask of clemency. Such excruciating tortures were, by his orders, inflicted on these two men, that they expired under them. The Church of Antioch honoured them as defenders of religion, and interred them in a magnificent tomb; and even to this day an annual festival is celebrated in their honour. Their names were Juventius (Juventinus) and Maximus."
S. APOLLO, AB. IN THE THEBAID.
(ABOUT A.D. 395.)
[Commemorated on this day by Greeks and Latins alike, though some Latin Martyrologies note him on the 18th April. Authorities: his life by Palladius in the Hist. Lausiaca; and Sozomen, lib. iii. c. 14, who calls him Apollonius. Palladius is an excellent authority, for during his residence among the hermits of the Thebaid, he was personally acquainted with Apollo.]
This illustrious hermit began his discipline of himself by a solitary life in the desert, at the age of fifteen. He spent forty years by himself, and then, called by God to guide the souls of others, he became head of a congregation of monks in Upper Egypt. In the reign of Julian the Apostate, hearing that his brother, who was in the army, was imprisoned for his religion, he went at the head of his monks to visit him. The tribune entering the prison shortly after, and seeing so many monks within, ordered the gates to be closed, and vowed he would enlist them all as soldiers. But in the night an angel came, bearing a lamp, and opened the doors of the prison and led them forth, and they escaped with great joy to their beloved desert. About fifty monks obeyed him; but he did not confine his sympathies to them. Hearing that the country people were about to fight one another about some trifling subject of contention, Apollo rushed from his rocks, and flinging himself amongst them, conjured them not to shed one another's blood. One party promised to retire, but the other, headed by a redoubted robber, confident in his powers, held out. Then Apollo turned to the chief and said, "My son, lay down thine arms, and I will pray God to pardon thy many offences." The man cast away his weapons, and threw himself at the feet of the abbot. On another occasion he heard that a village procession of a famous wooden idol was about to take place; he went down, and kneeling, prayed God to prevent it. Then the image became immovable, so that neither priest nor people could take it from its place in the temple. The priests said, "A Christian has done this." "Yes," said Apollo, "I have done it by my prayers," and he exhorted the people to forsake the worship of such vain gods.
One Easter day the community had only some old stale loaves and a few dried olives, and they lamented that on so great a day they must fast, as in Lent. "Be of good cheer," said the abbot, "let each ask for what he likes best, and on such a day the loving God will give it him." But they would not ask, thinking themselves unworthy of such a favour. But he said, "Fear not, I will pray." Then they all knelt down, and Apollo asked, and they said Amen. Now as this response came, behold there arrived men and asses bringing a present to the monks, and it consisted of fresh loaves, pomegranates, citrons, honey in the comb, nuts, and a pitcher of fresh milk, grapes and figs, and large luscious dates (_nicolai_).
The monks of Apollo communicated every day, and some ate nothing from communion to communion, living only on this heavenly food. These were some of the pieces of advice Apollo gave to his monks:--"It behoves us to be ever joyous, for we ought not to be sad about our salvation. The Gentiles are sad, the Jews weep, and sinners mourn, all those whose affections are fixed on earthly things have cause to be agitated in mind, but not we." And it was so, that the monks were always cheerful and gay, and if any appeared sad, the abbot knew the cause must be sin, and he sent for him. "Let the monks communicate every day, for those who withdraw from the Sacraments, from them God withdraws Himself. But he who approaches them assiduously receives the Saviour. That is a salutary saying, 'He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood dwelleth in Me, and I in him.' Daily, therefore, let the monks prepare themselves, and daily let them receive it." "Let asceticism," he added, "be secret. I do not like those who put chains on their necks,--they do it to be seen of men; let them rather fast in their cells, where no one will know anything about it."
S. MARES, AB. IN SYRIA.
(5TH CENT.)
[From the Philotheus of Theodoret, cap. 20.]
S. Mares spent thirty-seven years in a small damp cell, constant in prayer. Theodoret says that towards his end, "I went to his door, and he bade me open. He was aged ninety, and wore common goat's hair garments. All his food was bread and salt. As, for long, he had desired to see the Holy Sacrifice offered, but was not able, he asked that the oblation of the Divine Gift might be made there. I willingly obeyed, and having ordered the sacred vessels to be brought from the village, and using for an altar the hands of the deacons, I offered the mystic, divine, and salutary Sacrifice. But he was filled with all spiritual delight, and thought that he saw heaven, and declared he had never had such joy. I was greatly pleased with him, and I should be doing him and myself a wrong, if after his death I did not praise him."
S. PRAEJECTUS, B., AND OTHERS, MM., AT CLERMONT.
(A.D. 674.)
[S. Praejectus, in French _S. Priest_, _Priets_, _Prie_, or _Prix_, is commemorated in the Gallican, Belgic, Sarum, and other Martyrologies. Authority: his life by two contemporary writers.]
S. Praejectus, Bishop of Clermont in Auvergne, severely rebuked one Hector, a noble of Marseilles, for having ravished a young lady of Auvergne, and seized on her estates. His remonstrances having been disregarded, he hastened to King Childeric II. to lay his complaint before him, and the king gave orders for the execution of Hector. On the return of the Saint to his see, some friends of Hector waylaid him at a place called Volvic, near Clermont, and murdered him.
S. POPPO, AB. OF STAVELOT.
(A.D. 1048.)
[Modern Roman Martyrology. The name occurs in no ancient Martyrologies; it owes its insertion to Baronius. His life was written by Everhelm, abbot of Hautmont, his contemporary, in 1069.]
The blessed Poppo, born in Flanders in 978, as a youth served in arms. He made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and, on his return, engaged himself to the daughter of his friend Frumhold. When the time of his marriage drew nigh, Poppo mounted his horse one night, together with some retainers, to ride to fetch his bride. He had not gone far before a dazzling flash of light illumined him within, in his soul, and bathed his body in a blaze of glory. As it faded away, he spurred on his horse, and then noticed that a flame burnt on the point of his spear; it was as though he rode bearing a tall church taper in his hand. Astounded at this marvel, he reined in his steed, and turning to his companions said, "God calls me to another life."
Then he left home and went, with the light still illuminating his soul, and served in a hospital for the sick. One day a miserable leper was brought in so covered with sores that he could not be placed with the other inmates. Thinking that the poor creature was cold in the night, Poppo went to him with his own coverlid, and laid it over him. Next morning the leper was whole, the charity of Poppo had healed him. Richard, abbot of Verdun, appointed Poppo to rule the abbey of S. Vedast, which had fallen into scandalous disorder. When the Emperor Henry II. was in the Betawe, between the two branches of the Rhine, Poppo, having to visit him about some affairs concerning his monastery, found the prince enjoying a favourite pastime of his; a naked man was smeared with honey and exposed to bears; and the sport consisted in the bears trying to lick the man, and he eluding their embraces. As this sport not unfrequently ended in the man being injured, and sometimes killed, Poppo rebuked the king, and brought him to a sense of the impropriety of encouraging such coarse and dangerous amusements. That this sport was popular, appears from Hincmar, Archbishop of Rheims, being obliged to forbid his clergy and monks attending either it or bear-bating.
On another occasion, when Poppo was on his way to the Emperor, then at Strasburg, as he passed through the Ellisgau, with some of his monks, they saw a wolf carry off a man by the neck into a marsh. Poppo at once called his monks to the rescue. They were unable, on account of the loose texture of the swamp, to go direct to where the man lay, but they surrounded the marsh, and following the bloody traces, recovered the man, who was much mangled; they bound up his wounds, and he finally recovered. What became of the wolf they saw not, and hoped, and hoping believed, he was smothered in the marsh.
Poppo was afterwards created abbot of Stavelot, where the monks had fallen into grave disorders. His efforts to reform them so irritated some of the worst, that they attempted to poison him, but failed. Having thoroughly reformed the monastery, he rebuilt and beautified the church, and died on the feast of the Conversion of S. Paul, after having received extreme unction from the hands of the abbot Everhelm, who is his biographer.
[Illustration: Alpha and Omega; the first and the Last.]
January 26.
S. POLYCARP, _B. M. of Smyrna_, A.D. 167. S. SIMEON THE OLD, _Ab. in Syria, end of 4th cent._ S. PAULA, _W., at Bethlehem_, A.D. 404. S. XENOPHON, HIS WIFE AND SONS, _5th cent._ S. BATHILD, _Q., in France, circ._ A.D. 670. S. THEORITGITHA, _V., at Barking, in Essex, 7th cent._ S. GOBERT, _C., at Foss, in Belgium_. S. ALBERIC, _Ab. of Citeaux, beginning of 12th cent._ B. HASEKA, _R., in Westphalia_, A.D. 1261.
S. POLYCARP, B. M. OF SMYRNA.
(A.D. 167.)
[Roman Martyrology. Authorities: His Acts, written by the Church of Smyrna immediately after his martyrdom, Eusebius, &c.]
Saint Polycarp was converted to Christianity in the year 80, when quite young, and he had the privilege of accompanying those who had seen Jesus Christ. S. John, whose special disciple he was, consecrated him Bishop of Smyrna in the year 96. He is supposed to be the Angel or Bishop of the Church of Smyrna, to whom alone, in the messages recorded in the Apocalypse, did Jesus Christ address praise unmixed with blame.[124] "I know thy works, and tribulation, and poverty, (but thou art rich), and I know the blasphemy of them which say they are Jews, and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan. Fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer; behold, the devil shall cast some of you into prison, that ye may be tried; and ye shall have tribulation ten days; be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life."
In the year 158, S. Polycarp visited Rome. The cause of his visit is not exactly declared; but he had a conference with Pope Anicetus concerning the time of celebrating the Paschal Feast; and the disputes upon this subject were carried on so warmly, in the second century, that perhaps we are to seek no other reason for Polycarp undertaking so long a journey. The first day of the week, or Sunday, appears to have been held sacred, on account of our Lord's Resurrection, from the very beginning of the Church. The eastern and western Christians agreed in keeping a solemn fast for some time preceding the feast of the Resurrection. There was, however, one important difference between them. The Asiatic Christians kept a feast on the true Passover, as well as observing the great Easter festival. The western Christians kept the Paschal feast on Easter Day. By separating the Passover feast from the feast of the Resurrection, the Easterns had a burst of festivity interrupting discordantly the hush of the great fast, which caused great offence to the western sense of propriety. Both parties laid claims to apostolic authority for their respective customs. The eastern Christians asserted that SS. John and Philip had sanctioned their custom; while the brethren at Rome defended themselves by the authority of SS. Peter and Paul. This being the case, and neither of the parties being willing to concede, a conference between an Asiatic Bishop and the Bishop of Rome seemed a very desirable measure. Polycarp had been personally known to S. John, and had been appointed by him to his bishopric. Anicetus was, singularly enough, the seventh Bishop of Rome since the beginning of the century, but Polycarp had occupied the see of Smyrna during the whole of that time. S. Irenaeus, who relates the conference between Anicetus and Polycarp, states that neither could convince the other. The meeting was, however, conducted and terminated in perfect amity. The two bishops were firm, and wedded to their respective customs; but the bond of peace was not broken between them; and as proof of their mutual goodwill, they received together the supersubstantial food, the Pope allowing Polycarp, out of respect for his age and character, to celebrate.
In the sixth year of the reign of Marcus Aurelius, an exhibition of games in Smyrna kept the city in excitement for some days, and the Christians were made to fight with wild beasts for the amusement of the populace. Polycarp himself was advised to withdraw from the storm, and he concealed himself for some time at a short distance from the city. His retreat was betrayed by a boy, who was threatened with the rack unless he discovered him. Herod, the magistrate, whose office it was to prevent misdemeanours, sent horsemen 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, and continued it 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 that were come to seize him, repented having 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 sacrificing, to escape death?" 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, they 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: "Polycarp, be courageous, and play the man." He was led directly to the tribunal of the pro-consul, who exhorted him to respect his own age, to swear by the genius of the Emperor, and blaspheme Christ. Polycarp replied, "I have served Him these fourscore and six years, and He never did me any harm, but much good. How can I then blaspheme my King and my Saviour? If you require of me to swear by the genius of Caesar, 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 pro-consul 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 pro-consul said, "If you despise 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 prepared for the wicked. Why do you delay? Bring against me what you please." Whilst he said this his countenance shone with a certain heavenly grace, insomuch that the pro-consul was struck with admiration. However, he ordered a crier to make public proclamation three times, "Polycarp has confessed himself a Christian." At this proclamation the whole multitude of Jews and Gentiles gave a great shout. They unanimously demanded that he should be burnt alive. Their request was no sooner granted than 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. The wood and other combustibles were heaped around him. The executioners would have attached him to the stake; but he said to them, "Suffer me to be as I am. He who gives me grace to endure 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 a 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. Grant me to be received this day as a pleasing sacrifice, such an 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 scarce said Amen, when fire was set to the pile, and increased to a mighty flame. "But behold a wonder seen by us," say the authors of these Acts. "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, like purified gold or silver, appearing bright through the flames; and his body sending forth such a fragrance, that we seemed to smell precious spices." The heathen were 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. 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 pro-consul 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 these Acts, "that we can never forsake Christ, nor adore any other, though we love the martyrs, as his disciples and imitators, for the great love they bore their King and Master." The centurion then cast the body into the midst of the fire, and burnt it to ashes. "We afterwards took up the bones," say the writers of the Acts, "more precious than the richest jewels or gold, and deposited them decently in a place at which, may God grant us to assemble with joy, to celebrate the birthday of the martyr."
His tomb is still shown near Smyrna.
S. SIMEON THE OLD, AB.
(END OF 4TH CENT.)
[Greek Menaea. Authority, Theodoret, in his Philotheus, c. 6.]
Simeon the Old dwelt a life of solitude in a cave, feeding on vegetables. One day some travellers arrived at his cell, having lost their way and asked the old hermit to direct them to a certain fort for which they were bound. The hermit called two lions from the desert, and gave them to the travellers as guides. This incident was related to Theodoret by one who was present on the occasion. When a large number of disciples assembled under his direction, the aged Simeon went away to mount Amanus, near Antioch, and there built a monastery. But afterwards, being desirous of ending his days on Sinai, he went into the desert of that mountain. And there he saw one day two hands raised from the mouth of a cave. Thinking it might be a snare of the devil, he approached with caution. At the sound of his footsteps the supplicating hands were drawn in, and he saw no man; then he cried to the dweller of the cave to come forth, and there issued out of it an old hermit dressed in palm leaves, who said that he and a brother hermit had come to establish themselves on Sinai, and they had promised each other never to separate. Now before they reached the holy mount the brother hermit died; so the survivor buried his corpse, and, faithful to his promise, tarried by his grave till the Lord should call him; and every day a lion brought him a bunch of dates. Now when Simeon had partaken of his dates, and they had sung together the matin office, he went on, and reaching Sinai with his monks, established on the mountain two monasteries, one at the summit, and the other at the foot.
S. PAULA, W., AT BETHLEHEM.
(A.D. 404.)
[Roman Martyrology. S. Paula died on Jan. 26th, after sunset, consequently some commemorate her on Jan. 27th. Authority: her life written by S. Jerome, her director, in a letter to her daughter Eustochium.]
[Illustration: S. PAULA. Jan. 26.]
[Illustration: S. PRISCA. From a Window at Winchester. Jan. 18.]
[Illustration: S. PAUL. After Vischer. Jan. 18.]
The blessed Paula was born at Rome in the year 347. Her father was Rogatus, of noble Grecian origin. Her mother, Blesilla, reckoned the Gracchi, the Scipios and Paulus Aemilius among her ancestors. This illustrious birth was made more honourable by her union with Toxotius, of the Julian race, and very wealthy. Her virtues endeared her to the people of Rome, and her modesty, gravity, and prudence caused her to be generally respected. Her husband died when she was aged twenty-three, and grief for his loss nearly brought her to the grave as well. Toxotius left behind him four daughters, Blesilla, Paulina, Eustochium, Julia, and Ruffina; the youngest child was a boy, and he bore the name of his father.
The heart-broken widow at length found repose in submission to the will of God. Filled with a sense of the vanity of all earthly things, she strove to detach her affections daily from all save God. After the death of her husband she would not sit down to table with any man, not even with the bishops, whose advice she sought, and who were most hospitably entertained in her house. By degrees she accustomed herself to plain food, and inexpensive clothing. Instead of a downy couch, she made her bed on the hard floor. "Hitherto all my care has been how I might please my husband," said she, "now I will care for naught save how I may best serve Jesus Christ."
She was now called on to bewail the death of her eldest daughter Blesilla, who died shortly after her husband, to whom she had been married only for a short time. S. Jerome wrote on this occasion to S. Paula from Bethlehem. After having tenderly recalled the pale and gentle face, bowed with exhaustion after fever on the slender neck, the angelic form, of the departed daughter, S. Jerome adds; "But what am I doing? I would dry the tears of a mother and mingle mine with hers. I do not conceal my emotion. I write weeping. But Jesus wept over Lazarus, because He loved him. It is difficult to console another when one is also overwhelmed with grief, and when the broken heart can find no words. O Paula, I take Jesus Christ to witness, whose Majesty Blesilla now sees; I take the holy angels to witness, whose companion she now is; that I suffer the same anguish of heart as you, for I, having been her spiritual father, had learned to love her dearly."
Paula saw also her second daughter Paulina die, who had been married to Tammachius, a man of noble consular birth, as illustrious for his piety as for his descent, "the first of monks in the first of cities," S. Jerome called him in after years, when he had embraced the monastic life in Rome. She also survived her fourth daughter Ruffina, married to the patrician Aletheus, but this affliction fell upon her when she was no longer in Rome.
Her daughters had grown up, and her son Toxotius, having been secured a careful bringing up, by his sister Ruffina, S. Paula felt that she might now follow at liberty the bent of her desire. The stirring life in Rome gave her no rest. Her noble birth and great wealth made her in great request, and the time, which she desired to devote to God alone, was broken up by the petty business and formalities of social life, which could not be dispensed with in the great city. She therefore resolved to abandon Rome, her palace, her crowds of servants, her numerous acquaintances, many friends, and dear children.
She desired to visit the holy scenes consecrated by Christ, and then to settle quietly down near her old confessor and director Jerome, then inhabiting a cell at Bethlehem. It was no light matter parting with her relations and children, but she had this consolation, Eustochium, her unmarried daughter, accompanied her, one in heart with her mother, desirous of consecrating her virginity, as Paula desired to dedicate her widowhood, to Jesus Christ.
When they left Rome, the kinsmen accompanied them to the port. It was a heart-breaking scene. Paula took her place on the deck of the vessel that was to bear her away for ever. The anchor was drawn up, the moorings cast loose, and the rowers bowed to their task. Then the grief of Toxotius became incontrollable; he stretched forth his arms to her, sobbing, "Mother, mother! do not leave me." The grief of the others was silent, manifesting itself in copious tears. But Paula, raising her dry eyes to heaven, turned her face from the shore, and conquered by a superhuman effort the agony caused by the rending of so many dear ties. On reaching Jerusalem she found that a palace had been furnished for her reception by the governor, with every comfort and even luxury. She, however, chose the meanest chamber therein, in which to lodge, and spent her time in visiting the holy sites. She prayed long and earnestly before the true Cross, kissed the stones on which the body of Jesus had lain, and watered with her tears the dust of the Dolorous Way along which He had borne His Cross.
She then journeyed to Bethlehem, and adored Christ in the cave of the Nativity. Overwhelmed with awe she exclaimed, "Oh, how dare I, a poor sinner, kiss the crib where the Lord wailed as a little babe? How dare I offer my prayer, where the Virgin brought the Word into the world in the substance of our flesh! Let the home of my Redeemer be henceforth my resting place, here will I dwell where He walked the earth as man."
Having settled at Bethlehem into a poor little house, she engaged workpeople to erect on the road to Jerusalem a spacious hospital for pilgrims and sick persons, and also a monastery for S. Jerome and his monks. She then erected three convents for women, with one church in which all the inmates of the three houses assembled for the divine office. There they met to sing prime, tierce, sext, nones, vespers, compline, and the midnight lauds; thus they daily sang the whole psalter, which every sister was required to learn by heart. On Sundays they went to the neighbouring church where the Divine Sacrifice was offered, and where they communicated.
All the sisters worked with their hands, and made clothes for themselves and for the poor. No man was ever suffered to set foot within their doors. Paula governed them with great charity and discretion, animating them by her own example. Neither she nor her daughter, Eustochium, refused to perform the most menial offices in the sisterhood. If any of the sisters proved talkative she was separated from the rest, and made to walk last and to eat alone.
She was gladdened to hear in her retreat of the marriage of her son Toxotius to a pious maiden, named Leta, to whom S. Jerome addressed the first treatise on the education of women which the Christian spirit had inspired, and which prepared for cloistral life the young Paula, her daughter, devoted to the Lord from the cradle, and a nun, like her grandmother and her aunt. He offered with the candour of genius, to educate the child himself, and "old as I am," said he, "I shall accustom myself to infantine lispings, more honoured in this than was Aristotle, for I shall instruct not a king of Macedon, destined to perish by poison of Babylon, but a servant and spouse of Christ, to be presented to Him in the heavens."
But Toxotius and his wife seem to have thought that an aged monk, immersed in study, would not prove so suitable for the nurture of the little maiden as a woman, and they therefore sent her to S. Paula, her grandmother. S. Paula lived to the age of fifty-six years and eight months, of which she had spent in her widowhood five at Rome, and almost twenty at Bethlehem. In her last illness she repeated almost incessantly the verses of the psalms, which express the ardour of the soul to see Jerusalem which is above, and there to be united to her God. When she was no longer able to speak, she formed the sign of the Cross on her lips, and expired in perfect peace, on Jan. 26th, A.D. 404. Her body, borne by bishops, attended by acolytes holding lighted tapers, was buried on the 28th of the same month, in the church of the Holy Manger at Bethlehem.
S. XENOPHON, HIS WIFE, AND SONS.
(5TH CENT.)
[Commemorated by the Greeks on this day, and introduced into the Roman Martyrology by Clement the VIII. Authority: a life in Simeon Metaphrastes of uncertain date.]
In the Court of Constantine the Great at Byzantium was a senator named Xenophon, a devout Christian, whose wife's name was Mary. They had two sons whom they loved as the apples of their eyes, John and Arcadius. These sons were destined for the law, and after they had finished their education in Greek at home, Xenophon sent them in a ship destined for Berytus, to be there instructed in law, that being then a great legal school. At the time of their departure, Xenophon was sick nigh unto death, and he bade them farewell from his bed. The young men had not been many days at sea before a violent tempest burst upon them, and the vessel was speedily reduced to a wreck. The brothers cast their arms round each other's necks and kissing, bade one another farewell. Then the wreck broke up on a reef, and in the havoc of the waves rending the fragile ship, they lost sight of one another. However, it fell out that both reached the land on broken pieces of the vessel, but they were cast up so far apart that each supposed that he alone was saved. John came ashore not far from a monastery, into which he was hospitably received, and where he was well cared for till he had recovered the exhaustion consequent on battling with the waves for life. In the monastery John found a calm and cheerfulness such as he had not experienced in the world; it seemed to him a peaceful refuge for the storm-tossed soul as well as for the shipwrecked body, and he resolved to remain there as a monk.
Arcadius had also come ashore; he made his way to Jerusalem, in great trouble of mind, having lost in the vessel all the money his father had given him wherewith to prosecute his studies, and above all, his brother. Now alone and poor, he knew not whither to go, and what to do. Then one day he came to a monastery governed by an aged abbot, who comforted him, and urged him to despise the world, and seek rest in God. Arcadius remembered how, as a little boy, he had heard his father descant on the peace of the cloister and the happiness of monastic life. He therefore gladly assumed the habit, and bent his head for the tonsure.
Now at Byzantium, Xenophon had recovered of his malady, and he and his wife often communed together of their absent sons. Not hearing any news of them, he sent a servant to Berytus to make enquiries. The servant returned one day when Xenophon was at court, so that the mother, Mary, was the first to hear of the loss of the vessel. The servant said that it was feared at Berytus that all on board had perished. "The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord," said she.
Evening came, and with it returned her husband from the court, with a crowd of servants and torch-bearers. He found supper spread, and his wife awaiting him. He sat down, but noticing that she was grieved in spirit, and that her eyes were full of tears, he asked the reason. She changed the subject, and after a while, so as gently to break the news to him, she said that the servant was on his way home. Xenophon started from the table in agitation, and asked where he was. "How do you know that he is here? he may have been delayed through sickness on the way," said Mary, restraining her grief with an effort. "But the letters, where are the letters?" asked her husband, white with emotion. "Surely you can delay reading them till tomorrow," said the wife; "eat your supper now, at least, with a glad mind." Then her tears streamed down her cheeks. Xenophon looked steadily at her, and asked in a low voice, "Is it well with the boys?" Then she told him all. And Xenophon said, "The Lord's name be praised who has given me such a prudent and self-constrained wife," and instead of giving way, went to Mary and kissed her and comforted her, for now that the need for control was removed, all her mother's heart gave way in a passion of tears and sobs.
Xenophon and his wife had no rest. Were their children dead or alive? That they must know; so they resolved to go together to Palestine to find them alive or dead. On arriving at Jerusalem they visited the holy places, and prayed everywhere that if it were the Lord's will, they might see again once more the faces of their sons. One day in the street they saw a servant they had given to the youths now wearing the monastic habit; Xenophon fell down reverently before him, and when the man, full of shame, implored him not to do so, "It is not you I reverence, but your habit," said the nobleman. Then the man told him how the ship had been wrecked, and how nearly all had perished, but he, escaping to land, had taken the monastic profession upon him.
Three years had passed since John and Arcadius had sailed from Byzantium, and the parents began to despair of hearing any tidings of them, when one day they visited the monastery of the abbot who had received Arcadius. The old man having heard their story, knew at once that one of their sons was with him, and from what he had learned, he conjectured that the other was alive in another house. He therefore bade them be of good cheer, assuring them that their sons lived, and he bade them meet him on a certain day upon Mount Calvary, by which time he would be supplied with further information.
Now it fell out that John was then in Jerusalem visiting the scenes of the Passion. The aged abbot sent for him and spake with him, and soon learned that his suspicions were correct, and that he was the brother of his monk. Arcadius at this moment arrived. The abbot said to John, "Brother, what is thy history, I pray thee relate it to me." So John began, "I am the son of wealthy parents in Byzantium, who sent me with my brother to Berytus, to study law; I loved my brother as my own soul. He was dearer to me than my life. On our voyage a storm fell on us, and the vessel was wrecked, then my brother Arcadius and I"--hereat Arcadius trembled, and extended his hands, and fell at the feet of the abbot, and stammered forth, "It is my brother, my brother!" And when John heard his voice, he knew him; but they knew each other not before, for they were both cowled, and greatly altered through fasting. And the brothers lifted up their voices and wept, and embraced each other with exceeding joy. Then the abbot said, "My sons, I bid you be silent and restrain yourselves. Your parents come this way, and too great joy falling too suddenly upon them may be more than they can bear, therefore I say unto you, refrain yourselves awhile." Hardly had he done speaking, and the two monks had fallen behind, before Xenophon came up Calvary, leading Mary.
They were much aged by care. They came on with their wistful eyes fixed on the old abbot; and scarce regarded the monks who followed him, for their thoughts were on what he had to tell them. They cried, "Where are our dear sons, father?" Then the abbot said, "Rejoice, my children, rejoice and praise the Lord! your sons are found. Now go and prepare a feast, and I will come shortly with my two disciples whom you see here, and when we have eaten, I will bring your sons to your arms."
Now when Xenophon and Mary heard this, they were filled with joy, and they hasted and made ready a feast, and the abbot came, he and his two disciples, and they sat down and did eat. But all the while, as Arcadius and John heard the dear voices of father and mother, they shook with suppressed emotion, and turned their heads aside, and bowed them on their breasts, that the tears might trickle unseen. And as they ate, the conversation turned to the holy lives of the ascetics in the monasteries and lauras of Palestine. "Oh" said Xenophon; "how peaceful and glad of heart are all there; methinks there the word of the prophet is fulfilled, that the desert should bloom as a rose. Right glad should I be, were my dear boys to seek such blessed places of heavenly consolation, and lying down in those green pastures, there find rest." "But if they were to do this, thou wouldst be deprived of their society," said the abbot.
"That matters not," said Xenophon; "If I could but see their faces again, and know that they had set their hearts on God alone, I should be comforted."
"And now," said the abbot; "let one of these monks speak, and say why he has entered on the monastic life." Thereupon Arcadius began with faltering voice: "I and my brother here present were born at Byzantium, of good Christian parents, and the name of the one was Xenophon, and the name of the other was Mary."
Upon this the father and mother uttered a cry, and ran, and they were locked in the embrace of their children.
The abbot stood by and saw with joy their tears and kisses; and after a while he said, "Give glory to God!" so they raised their hands and eyes to heaven, and praised Him who had brought them together again.
But now that Xenophon and his wife had found their children, they felt that there was nothing more for which they cared on earth, and they also went into solitude, and served God in fasting and prayers night and day. Thus the whole family laboured with one heart for one end, the salvation of their souls and the glory of God; and though separated in body, they were united in heart, and now they dwell together in the Paradise of God.
S. BATHILD, Q.
(ABOUT A.D. 670.)
[Roman and other Martyrologies. In some, however, on Jan. 27th; at Paris on Jan. 30th. Authorities: her life by two contemporary writers. The first is in plain unpolished style. Its date appears from allusions such as this:--"The venerable Theudofred, who is now bishop, was then abbot." "The illustrious offspring of Bathild, now reigning, &c." The writer of the other expressly states that he had seen and known the virtues of her whom he describes.]
Archimbold, mayor of the palace, in the reign of Dagobert, King of France, bought a slender fair-haired English slave girl. The name of this girl was Bathild, given her probably because of her work, for the name signifies "the damsel of the lady's bower."[125] In service she grew up to woman's estate, and was very beautiful, but, withal, adorned with a meek and quiet spirit.
She is thus described by one of her biographers:--"Her pious and admirable conversation attracted the admiration of the prince, and all his ministers. For she was of a benignant spirit and sober manners, prudent and shy, never scheming evil, never light in talk, or pert in speech; but in all her actions upright. She was of Saxon race, in shape graceful and pleasing, with a bright face and a staid gait, and as such, she found favour with the prince, so that he constituted her his cup-bearer, and as such, dealing honestly, she stood often by him ministering to him. But so far from being lifted up by her position, she showed the utmost humility to her fellow-servants, cheerfully obeying them, ministering reverently to her elders, often taking their shoes off for them, scraping and cleaning them, and bringing them their washing water, and mending their clothes also. All this she did without a murmur, with gentle and pious alacrity."
Now it fell out that Archimbold lost his wife, and he looked about for one to fill her place. Then his glance rested on the fair-haired, blue-eyed Saxon maid, so kindly and so obliging. But when he announced that it was his intention to make her his wife, she was so alarmed that she hid herself among the under maids of the kitchen, dishevelled her light hair, begrimed her face, and worked in rags, so that the mayor supposed she had gone clean away, and after a while forgot her, and possibly thinking that such a match might have been after all a mistake, he married some one else. Then Bathild shook her tatters off, braided her flaxen hair, washed her sunny face, and shone forth in her accustomed place. But she had fled the mayor to catch the king. How Clovis became attached to her is not recorded; possibly he had long noticed the meek maiden at the mayor's elbow filling his wine goblet, and her disappearance had made him aware of the strength of his passion. Certain it is that shortly after, he asked her to be his lawful wife, and to sit at his side on the throne of France. There was no escaping a king; and at the age of nineteen, in 649, she was married accordingly to Clovis II. As queen she exercised a most salutary influence over the mind of her husband, and persuaded him to enact many salutary laws. She became a nursing mother to the Church in France, and exerted herself to the utmost of her power to relieve the necessities of the poor, and ameliorate the condition of the serfs. She bore her husband three sons, who all successively wore the crown, Clothaire III., Childeric II., and Thierry I. After six years of married life, in 655, Bathild was left a widow, when her eldest son was only five years old. She then became regent of the kingdom. The gentle queen remembered her sorrows as a slave, and resolved to become the benefactress of the slave. Slavery was universally and firmly established in France. To root out such an institution at once was impossible; it could only be done with caution, lest it should alarm and rouse to opposition the great slave owners. She had sufficient penetration to discover the great cause of slavery in France. The old Gallic population was crushed beneath an enormous tax, to pay which mothers were obliged to sell their children, and which reduced into bondage those unfortunates who could not pay. This impost she abolished, and thereby cut off the source of slavery. She also forbade the retention or purchase of Christian slaves; but, to save vested interests, this law did not emancipate those already in bonds, but was of future operation only. She employed, moreover, all the money she could spare in the purchase out of bondage of such children as mothers had sold, out of dire necessity. She also sent ambassadors to all the European courts, to announce that the sale of French subjects was strictly forbidden, and that any slave who should set foot on French soil would be held from that moment to be free.
Bathild also founded a large number of religious houses. France was then overspread with forests; vast districts were pathless wildernesses, uninhabited by men. Old cities which had thriven under the Roman empire had fallen into ruins, and the wolf made his lair in the deserted chambers. How was all this desolation to be remedied, this waste land to be reclaimed? A number of men must be gathered together at certain spots, and these must become civilizing centres, diffusing knowledge amongst the people, and cultivating the soil. Such were the monasteries. They were dotted about in the wildest parts of the vast woods, and little by little the trees were cleared away about them, and pastures and corn land usurped their place, and with the advance of agriculture, civilization spread. Bathild founded Corbie, Chelles, and Jumièges, besides others of less note. Towards the close of her days, when her son Clothaire was of an age to govern, she retired into the monastery of Chelles, where she finished her days in peace, dying at the age of fifty, in 680.
S. THEORITGITHA, V., AT BARKING.
(7TH CENT.)
[Anglican Martyrologies, but new Anglo-Roman Martyrology, Jan. 23. Authority: Bede's Eccl. Hist. lib. 4. c. 9.]
Theoritgitha was a holy sister in the convent of Barking on the Thames, under the rule of the abbess Ethelberga. "She had always endeavoured to serve God in all humility and sincerity," says Bede, "and she took care to assist this same mother in keeping up regular discipline, by instructing and reproving the younger ones." She suffered nine years from a cruel distemper, which purified her soul. She saw in a vision a sign of the approaching death of S. Ethelberga.
[Illustration: Decoration]
FOOTNOTES:
[124] Rev. ii. 9.
[125] _Bath-hildr_ in Norse, meaning the maiden (_hildr_) of the _Bath-stofa_, the female apartment in a Norse, Saxon or Frankish house. She is sometimes called Bathildes, sometimes Baltidis.
January 27.
S. JULIAN, _B., of Mans, in France_. S. JULIAN, _M., at Atina, in Italy, circ._ A.D. 133. S. DEVOTA, _M., in Corsica, circ._ A.D. 303. S. PETER THE EGYPTIAN, _H., in Syria, circ._ A.D. 400. S. CHRYSOSTOM, _B. D., at Constantinople_, A.D. 407. S. DOMITIAN, _Monk and Deacon in Judea_, A.D. 473. S. MARIUS, _Ab. of La-val-benoit, near Sisteron, in France, 6th cent._ S. LUPUS, _B., of Chalons-sur-Saone, in France, beginning of 7th cent._ S. VITALIAN, _Pope of Rome_, A.D. 671. S. EMERIUS, _Ab., and his mother_, S. CANDIDA, _at Banoles, in Spain, end of 8th cent._ S. GAMELBERT, _P., in Bavaria, end of 8th cent._ S. SULPICIUS, _B., of S. Ghislain in Belgium_. S. THEODORIC II., _B, of Orleans_, A.D. 1022. S. GILDWIN, _Can. of Dol, in Brittany_, A.D. 1077. S. JOHN, _B. of French Flanders_, A.D. 1130.
S. JULIAN, B. OF MANS.
(DATE UNCERTAIN.)
[Called the Apostle of Celtic Gaul; he is commemorated on this day in the Roman Martyrology. In the Paris Martyrology on the 28th Jan., others on the 31st; that of Cologne on 26th Jan. In the Roman Martyrology he is said to have been sent by S. Peter into Gaul; but as Bollandus has shown, this is an error. His life was written by one Brother Lethald in, or about, A.D. 990.]
Saint Julian was the first to carry the light of the Gospel into that portion of France of which Le Mans is the capital. There he laboured with great success, destroyed the idol which the people worshipped, and persuaded great numbers to be baptized. His life, written several hundreds of years after his death, is of small authority, and contains little of interest. His relics were given to Paderborn in Westphalia, in 1143.
S. DEVOTA, V. M., IN CORSICA.
(ABOUT A.D. 303.)
[Deivota seems to have been the correct form of her name, but she is usually called Devota. Authority: her Acts.]
Deivota, or Devota was brought up from childhood in the Christian faith; when she was quite young, she was taken into the house of Eutyches, a senator, and probably a relation.
Eutyches was not a Christian, but he was a kindly disposed man, who disliked persecution. On the publication of the edict of Diocletian against Christianity, he sacrificed along with the other senators; but the governor, being told that he sheltered in his house a little Christian maiden, ordered him to be poisoned, and Devota to be executed with great barbarity. Her feet were tied together, and she was dragged over rough ground till her limbs were dislocated, and she was cut and bruised over her entire person. When, after this, she was stretched on the rack, she besought Jesus Christ to release her. Her prayer was heard, and with a gentle sigh she expired. At the same moment a white dove was seen fluttering over her; it expanded its pure wings, and mounting, was lost in the deep blue of the sky. During the night a devout priest, named Benenatus, a deacon, Apollinarius, and a believing boatman, Gratian by name, removed her body, and placing it amidst spices in the little skiff, rowed out to sea. Then a white dove appeared, skimming over the water, then waiting, and hovering before them, then darting forward; and they, remembering the apparition at her death, followed the guidance of the dove, and reached Monaco, where they laid her.
S. JOHN CHRYSOSTOM, B. D.
(A.D. 407.)
[Authorities: Socrates, Sozomen, life by Palladius, and his own writings, &c.]
John Chrysostom was the son of Secundus, a military officer, born about 347, at Antioch, and on his father's death, soon afterwards, he became indebted for a careful and Christian training to his pious mother, Anthusa. He studied rhetoric under the accomplished pagan teacher Libanius, who afterwards, on being asked to name his own successor, replied, "John would be the fittest, if the Christians had not stolen him."
He was baptized by Meletius, patriarch of Antioch; his chief friend was S. Basil, and Anthusa's earnest pleadings were required to counteract Basil's proposal that they should both retire into monastic life. Chrysostom, as we may most conveniently call him, could not resist his mother's appeal; he continued to live at home, but in the practice of monastic asceticism and the diligent reading of Scripture. He studied theology under Diodore, the companion of Flavian, who had been the champions of orthodoxy against Arianism, first as laymen, and afterwards as priests, in Antioch. Meletius, who had baptized John Chrysostom, was himself a confessor. It was probably about 372-374 that Chrysostom and Basil were spoken of as likely to be made bishops; and Chrysostom, by a singular artifice--the justification of which forms the least pleasing portion of his treatise "On the Priesthood,"--procured Basil's consecration while evading the burden himself.
For several years he carried out the plan which, during his mother's lifetime he had abandoned, living first in cenobitic "tabernacles," and afterwards as a hermit in a cave, until his health, never robust, gave way, and he was obliged to return to Antioch, where he entered the ministry.
Early in 387, an increase of taxes provoked the people of Antioch to sedition. They threw down the brazen statues of the Emperor Theodosius, and his deceased wife, the pious and charitable Flacilla. Flavian, who had been elected and consecrated patriarch, on the death of Meletius, set forth a little before Lent, to appease the emperor, and met the officers of the empire, sent from court to avenge the insult. His absence was well supplied by Chrysostom, who had recently received priest's orders, and who began to turn this trouble to account by a course of "Sermons on the Statues," as they are called. In these he endeavoured to allay the people's terror, and to convince them of their besetting sins--of which swearing was the chief--and so far succeeded, that the churches were thronged all day. The people of Antioch were pardoned by the emperor at the intercession of the patriarch.
S. Chrysostom had been five years deacon, and twelve years priest, when Nectarius, bishop of Constantinople died, in 397, after an episcopate which had relaxed the general tone of the clergy. "Then," says the biographer of S. Chrysostom, "there came together some who were not wanted, priests unworthy of the priesthood, besetting the palace gates, resorting to bribery, falling on their knees even, before the people." Disgusted by this scandalous eagerness for an office which saints were wont to dread, the faithful entreated Arcadius, the Emperor, to look out for one who could administer it worthily. Eutropius, the emperor's chamberlain, had learned by visiting Antioch to admire the character of Chrysostom. He made Arcadius write to the military commander at Antioch, desiring him to send the priest John to Constantinople, without causing any public excitement. The commander sent a message to Chrysostom, asking him to meet him "at the Church of the Martyrs, near the Roman Gate." Chrysostom complied; was placed in a public conveyance, and hurried away from the scene of his early life and priestly labours. Several bishops were summoned for the consecration. Theophilus of Alexandria had come to Constantinople to solicit the appointment for his priest Isidore. He was required to consecrate Chrysostom, but endeavoured to withdraw, reading the decision and earnestness of Chrysostom in his face, and disliking him, for he was a thoroughly worldly, self-seeking prelate. Eutropius showed him some papers, however, saying, "Choose between consecrating John, and undergoing a trial on the charges made against you in these documents." Theophilus could make no reply. He consecrated Chrysostom on Feb. 26th, A.D. 398; but he never forgave him for having been the cause of this severe mortification.
Over a city in which intrigue and adulation were practised as the royal road to honour, John Chrysostom, straight forward and outspoken, was set as patriarch. He came to be chief shepherd over a clergy given up to ease and sycophancy, flattering the rich and powerful, fawning on the emperor for place, and betraying their charge, the poor.
Chrysostom set to work at once as a reformer of abuses. He forbad the clergy frequenting the banquets of great men; he struggled against the practice of entertaining "spiritual sisters." Several clergy were deprived; Chrysostom drew upon himself the bitter dislike of many members of their body. He examined the accounts of the church-stewards, cut off superfluous expenses, and ordered the sum thus saved to be applied to the maintenance of hospitals. He scrutinized the lives of the widows receiving pension from the Church; he earnestly besought contributions to a fund for the poor; he exhorted the faithful to attend the nocturnal services, but to leave their wives at home with the children. He rebuked the rich for their pride and selfishness. So great was the charm of his "golden tongued" eloquence, and of the unmistakeable nobleness and sincerity of his character, that "the city put on a new aspect of piety;" and the worship of the Catholics became more real, and their lives more earnest and pure.
Among those of the higher classes in Constantinople who were offended by the uncompromising character of their new archbishop, was Eutropius, the chamberlain, who had raised him to the see. He desired to see the Church respectable and subservient, the patriarch pious and obedient, to the state. The Church, in his view, was a portion of the state organization, the clergy the moral police, always to be under the direction of the crown. But under Chrysostom's government it was becoming unmanageable and independent. To curtail its liberties, he procured a law to annul the right of asylum in the churches, which had been growing up during the century. But he was soon driven himself, by a revolution in the emperor's counsels, to clasp the altar as the safeguard of his life. Chrysostom violated the new law in defence of its author; and while Eutropius lay cowering in the sanctuary, bade the people take home this new lesson on the vanity of vanities. "The altar," said he, "is more awful than ever, now that it holds the lion chained." He called on his hearers to beg the emperor's clemency, or rather, to ask the God of mercy to save Eutropius from threatened death, and enable him to put away his many crimes. He bravely withstood the court in the cause of Christian humanity; but Eutropius himself quitted the church, and was condemned to exile.
At this time the Origenist controversy was raging with great acrimony. It is difficult to pronounce an opinion upon it. Origen had unquestionably published some heretical opinions, but some were also attributed to him which he did not hold. Theophilus of Alexandria had leaned strongly towards the Origenists, but he was not a man of principle, and he adopted that view which suited his purposes at the time. Finding it would answer his ends better to oppose Origenism, he denounced it in his Paschal letters, in 401. The monks and hermits of Egypt had been regarded with an evil eye by heathens, Arians, and insincere Christians. All the learned, the philosophers, and men of letters, among the pagans, were emulous in their protest. The impassioned activity of the monks against idolatry, their efforts, more and more successful, to extirpate it from the heart of the rural population, naturally exasperated the last defenders of the idols. The Arians were still more implacable than the Pagans. The tendency of these enemies of the Divinity of Christ was in everything to abuse, degrade, and restrain the spirit of Christianity. How should the monastic life, which was its most magnificent development escape their fury? The war between them and the monks was therefore long and cruel. The persecution which Paganism had scarcely time to light up to its own advantage under Julian, was pitiless under the Arian Constantius, and more skilful, without being more successful, under the Arian Valens. In the time of Constantius, entire monasteries, with the monks they contained, were burnt in Egypt, and in the frightful persecution under the Arian patriarch Lucius, raised in Alexandria, a troop of imperial soldiers ravaged the solitude of Nitria, and massacred its inhabitants. And now Lucius was succeeded by the worldly, ambitious, and utterly unspiritual Theophilus, who hated the poor monks of the desert as a living reproach upon his own self-seeking, and his aim to accommodate Christianity to worldliness. He soon quarrelled with S. Isidore the hospitaller, who had suffered under the Arian Lucius, and whom he now drove from Alexandria, hating him, as those holding to mammon always will hate those who hold to Christ. Isidore fled to Nitria. Theophilus brought the charge of Origenism against the monks there. The chief Nitrian monks were Dioscorus, Bishop of Nitria, Ammonius, Eusebius, and Euthymius; they were known as the "Tall Brothers." Theophilus ordered them to be expelled; when they came to remonstrate, his eyes flashed, his face became livid, he threw his episcopal pall round the neck of Ammonius, struck him on the face with open palm and clenched fist, and cried, "Heretic, anathematize Origen!" They returned to Nitria; the patriarch, in a synod, condemned them unheard, and proceeded by night to attack their monasteries, at the head of a drunken band. Dioscorus was dragged from his throne; the cells of the other three were burned, together with copies of both Testaments, and even the reserved portions of the Holy Eucharist. It was said that a boy perished in the flames. The brothers, with many of their companions, fled to Scythopolis in Palestine, hoping to support themselves in a place famous for palms, by their occupation of weaving palm-baskets. The enmity of Theophilus hunted them out of this refuge; they reached Constantinople, and fell at Chrysostom's feet, "Who is it," asked he with tears, "that has injured you?" They answered, "Pope Theophilus; prevail upon him, father, to let us live in Egypt, for we have never done aught against him or against our Saviour's law."
He lodged them in the church called Anastasia; allowed them to attend the service, but prudently, to avoid, if possible, a breach with their persecutor, debarred them from the communion. They had been condemned by their own patriarch, and it was not for him to admit them to communion without a fair investigation and authoritative exculpation. He wrote to Theophilus, in the tone of a "son and brother," praying him to be reconciled to the fugitives; but Theophilus, who disclaimed his right to interfere, defamed them as sorcerers and heretics. The Tall Brothers now appealed to the emperor and empress, who ordered Theophilus to be summoned, and the accusations against the brothers made by him to be examined. The accusations were soon proved to be groundless. Theophilus, who openly said he was "going to court in order to depose John," arrived in Constantinople in June, 402, with a load of gifts for the emperor, the empress, and the court, from Egypt and India. He at once assumed a tone of contumelious hostility towards S. Chrysostom. He would not visit or speak to him; he even abstained from entering the church.
While Chrysostom declined to hear judicially the complaints of the Tall Brothers, Theophilus was concocting a scheme for his deposition. All the courtiers among the bishops, and the worldly among the clergy desired it, for their tempers rebelled against godly discipline, and the example of his own self-denial was a standing protest against their self-indulgence. Acacius, Bishop of Berrhoea, had been provided with so homely a lodging by Chrysostom that he joined the malcontents, venting his spleen in the curious menace, "I will cook a dish for him!" Eudoxia, the empress, who had heard of a sermon in which Chrysostom had lashed the pride of women, took the side of his enemies, who determined to hold a council at a suburb of Chalcedon, called "The Oak." The bishops who attended were thirty-six. Twenty-nine charges were advanced against the patriarch. Some were of open violence; that he had beaten and chained a monk, had struck a man in church so as to draw blood, and then had offered the sacrifice. Others were of evil speaking; he had said his clergy "were not worth three-pence;" he had accused three deacons of having stolen his pall. He was also charged with misconduct in his office; he sold church furniture, had been careless in conferring orders; he was unsociable, gave women private interviews, was irreverent in church, and ate wafers while sitting on his throne. Some of these charges were gross exaggerations of that plain-spoken severity which knew no respect of persons. Others were inventions more or less malignant. One of the basest was the charge about disposing of church ornaments. Like other saints, he had done so for the sake of the suffering poor.
While these charges were being read at the Oak, he sat in his palace with forty bishops, and consoled them by quoting texts of Scripture. "I am now ready to be offered. Do not weep and break my heart! To me to live is Christ, and to die is gain."
Now entered two young bishops from the council at the Oak citing "John" to appear, with other clergy. The forty bishops sent a deputation to remonstrate with Theophilus. Chrysostom, for himself, sent word that he objected to Theophilus and three others as disqualified, by avowed hostility, to be his judges. A bishop, named Isaac, produced a new list of charges, three of which were remarkable. He had used strong language about fervour of rapturous devotion. He had been emphatic in his assurances of Divine long-suffering. This was denounced as an encouragement of sinners in their sins; but it was forgotten that he had warned men against presuming thereon. "He had eaten before administering baptism," that is the Paschal baptism which was followed immediately by a celebration of the Holy Eucharist, and which therefore implied non-fasting performance of the sacrifice; and "he had given the Eucharist to persons who were not fasting;" two charges which he vehemently denied. "If I have done this, may my name be effaced from the roll of bishops," he said. The council pronounced him contumacious, and deposed him, requesting the emperor, Arcadius, also to punish him for insolence towards Eudoxia. This was in 403.
Appealing in vain to a more just tribunal, Chrysostom was dragged from his church, and hurried by night into Bithynia. That night an earthquake shook the palace; Eudoxia, frightened at the omen, wrote to the exile, entreating him to return. He was escorted to the city by a joyous multitude, bearing tapers and chanting psalms, who forced him, in spite of the irregularity of such a proceeding, to ascend his throne, before the sentence of the council of the Oak could be annulled. This was, however, speedily done by a synod of sixty bishops; the hostile assembly could not stand its ground, and Theophilus, after meanly forcing the two surviving brothers, on the ground of their monastic obedience, to ask his pardon, consulted his safety by flight to Alexandria.
New troubles soon began. In September of the same year 403, a silver statue of the Empress Eudoxia was erected near the cathedral, and the Manichean governor of the city encouraged wild and heathenish dancing in its honour, which interrupted the church service. Chrysostom spoke strongly on the subject, and was said to have begun a sermon with the words, "Again Herodias rages, again she demands the head of John." The foes of the archbishop seized the opportunity. His old enemy Theophilus sent three bishops to Constantinople. The feeble Emperor Arcadius was persuaded to order that Chrysostom should be refused the use of the churches. Easter-eve came, April 16. Arcadius said to the chief adversaries of Chrysostom, "See to it, that you are not giving me wrong counsel." "On our heads," they answered, "be the deposition of John!" One of the forty faithful bishops bade the haughty empress fear God, and have pity on her own children. As the churches were closed to S. John Chrysostom, he held the solemn services of the day in the Baths of Constantine. Thither the people thronged, abandoning the churches. The courtier bishops complained, and it was resolved to break up this assembly. A band of soldiers was sent together with four hundred barbarian recruits to clear the bath, about 9 p.m. They pressed onwards to the font, dispersed the catechumens, for on that day it was customary to baptize great numbers, struck the priests on the head until their blood was mingled with the baptismal water, rushed up to the altar where the sacred Body and Blood were reserved for communicating the newly baptized, and overthrew them, so that as S. Chrysostom says in his letter to Pope Innocent of Rome, "the most holy Blood of Christ, as might be expected in so great a tumult, was spilled on the clothes of the soldiers." Thus were the Arian horrors renewed. On Easter-day, Arcadius, riding out of the city, saw some three thousand newly baptized in their white robes. "Who are those persons?" he asked. "They are heretics," was the answer; and a new onslaught was made upon them. During the paschal season, those who would not disown S. Chrysostom were cast into prison. Within the churches, instead of the joyful worship of the season, were heard the sounds of torture, and the terrible oaths by which men were commanded to anathematize the archbishop. His life was twice attempted; his people guarded his house; he wrote an account of what had happened to the Bishops of Rome, Milan and Aquileia. Pope Innocent, who had already heard Theophilus' version of the story, continued his communion for the present to both parties, but summoned Theophilus to attend a council.
Towards the end of Whitsun-week, Arcadius was prevailed upon to send another mandate to Chrysostom--"Commend your affairs to God, and depart." Chrysostom was persuaded to depart secretly; he called his friends to prayer; kissed them, bade farewell in the baptistry to the deaconesses, and desired them to submit to a new bishop, if he were ordained without having solicited the see. "The Church cannot be without a bishop." Whilst the people waited for him to mount his horse at the great western door, he went out at the eastern; repeating to himself the words of Job, "Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked I return thither!"
This was his final expulsion, June 20th, 404; he crossed over to Bithynia, while a fire broke out which consumed the cathedral and the palace of the senate. Some ascribed it to incendiaries; others called it a sign of divine wrath. Several of Chrysostom's friends, the "Joannites," as they were called, were cruelly treated, as if guilty of the fire.[126]
The place of his exile was Cucusus, in Armenia; and there, after a journey, the pain of which was only alleviated by marks of sympathy and reverence, he arrived in the middle of September. The bishop of Cucusus offered to resign his see in his favour; and Dioscorus, a man of rank, entreated him as a favour to occupy his own house, which he fitted up for the exile's convenience, with a liberality against which Chrysostom writes, "I am continually exclaiming." Very soon after he reached Cucusus, the Empress Eudoxia bore a dead child and expired.
Pope Innocent wrote to the exile, exhorting him to patience by Scriptural examples. "A good man can be exercised, but he cannot be overcome, while the Divine Scriptures fortify his mind. Venerable brother, let your conscience comfort you." He also wrote to the clergy and laity of Constantinople, declaring his intention of holding a General Council for the composing of these miserable quarrels.
The saintly exile in Cucusus, while suffering from illness and intense cold, and in constant peril from freebooters, continued to discharge the office of a good shepherd. He wrote letter after letter to the faithful lady Olympias in Constantinople, exhorting her to remember that the only trial really terrible was sin. He lamented that faithful bishops were suffering for adherence to his communion; he exhorted them and their clergy to be of good courage. His pastoral thoughtfulness extended far beyond a merely general care for his brethren's welfare. We find him rebuking two priests of Constantinople, one of whom had only preached five times between his expulsion and October, while the other had not preached once; setting on foot a mission to the pagans of Phoenicia; anxious to have a good bishop consecrated for the Goths; drawing tighter the old ties which bound him to the clergy of Antioch, and employing part of his friend's contributions in the redemption of captives, and the relief of the poor.
Pope Innocent now boldly espoused his cause, as that of a confessor for righteousness' sake. He assembled a synod, and persuaded Honorius, Emperor of the West, who had already remonstrated with Arcadius, Emperor of the East, to write in a more peremptory tone, demanding a council at Thessalonica, and pointing out Theophilus of Alexandria as the reputed author of the present evils.
Towards the end of the year, the furious incursions of the Isaurian robbers, filling the country with rapine and bloodshed, compelled S. Chrysostom to take shelter in the castle of Arabiscus. The winter was again a time of discomfort; he could not obtain a sufficiency of medicines; and the snow-drifts prevented him from receiving his friend's letters. About this time the western delegates sent from Rome with four eastern bishops who had gone thither to plead the cause of Chrysostom, were intercepted on their way to Constantinople, and confined in a fortress, their credentials were violently wrung from them, and instead of being allowed to see Arcadius, the westerns were sent back to Italy, the easterns banished to the frontiers of the empire. On their way they were cruelly harassed, robbed of their money, wearied by prolonged days' journeys, and compelled to lodge in the lowest haunts of profligacy. One of them consoled his brethren by observing that their presence recalled the wretched women to thoughts of God, which might result in their salvation, and His glory. That the persecution was in great measure a systematic revenge on Chrysostom as the representative of clerical strictness, is evidenced by such a fact as that a venerable man named Hilary was scourged, not by a judge, but by the clergy. Chrysostom wrote to thank his western friends for their sympathy, and sent a second letter to Pope Innocent, assuring him that "in the third year of exile, amid famine, pestilence, war, sieges, indescribable solitude, and daily peril from Isaurian swords, he was greatly consoled and delighted by Innocent's genuine, stedfast, and abundant charity."
The winter of 406-7 was severe, but Chrysostom preserved his health by never stirring out of a close and well-warmed chamber. In the summer his enemies, dreading his influence on the people of Antioch, who went to visit him, procured an order for his removal to Pityus on the shores of the Black Sea, the last fortress of the empire. His guards were ordered to exhaust him by long journeys. Through scorching heat and drenching rains, he was hurried on, and never allowed the refreshment of the bath; one only of the guards being disposed to show him furtive kindnesses. For three months this painful journey lasted; at length they halted at the Church of S. Basiliscus, a short distance from Comana, in Pontus. That night, the sufferer had a foreboding that his release was at hand. The martyr Basiliscus appeared to him and said, "Courage, brother John, tomorrow we shall be together." In the morning, Sept 14, 407, he begged to be allowed to stay in the church until eleven o'clock in the forenoon. It could not be; he was forced to proceed, but after travelling about four miles, he was so evidently dying, that they returned to the church. There he asked for white garments, and exchanged for them those which he wore. He was still fasting; he received the Holy Communion, doubtless from the priest of the church, offered up his last prayer, added his usual thanksgiving, "Glory to God for all things," and sealed it with a final, Amen. "Then he stretched out his feet, which had run so beauteously for the salvation of the penitent, and the rebuke of the habitual sinners," and calmly expired, in about the sixtieth year of his age, and in the tenth of his episcopate. He was buried beside the martyr Basiliscus, the funeral being attended by a throng of virgins and monks from Syria, Cilicia, Pontus, and Armenia. No comment on his glorious life could be so expressive as the doxology with which it closed, and which, gathering into one view all its contrasts, recognised not only in success and honour, but in cruel outrage, and homeless desolation, the gracious presence of a never-changing Love.[127]
S. LUPUS, B. OF CHALONS.
(7TH CENT.)
[Called in France _Loup_, _Leul_, or _Leu_. He was canonized by Pope John VIII, in 879; he is commemorated on this day at Châlons; also there on April 30th, the day of his canonization. His life is by an anonymous writer, who says that he wrote it from the remembrance of those who had read the Acts of S. Lupus which had been destroyed by fire.]
S. Lupus, Bishop of Cabilinum, or Châlons sur Saone, flourished about the year 610. He was the son of honourable parents, and he commended himself to the people by his abundant charity, his self-denial, and his tenderness to the sick. Châlons being ill-provided with drinking water, and the soil dry and sandy, he miraculously provided it with an abundant spring which flows to the present day. The story is thus told. He stood one day with his ivory pastoral staff in hand watching the hay makers; the sun was hot, and the labourers were exhausted. Moved with compassion, and knowing that the turbid waters of the river were unfit to drink, he struck his staff into the sand, and a limpid spring bubbled up. When dying he sent for the governor of Châlons, and begged him to pardon the unfortunate wretches who languished in the prison under sentence of death. The governor roughly refused. After Lupus was dead, his funeral passed the city prison, and the bier was set down at that place. The prisoners stretched their hands through the bars of their windows crying piteously. Instantly their chains fell off, the doors flew open, and they were set at liberty.
S. THEODORIC II, B. C. OF ORLEANS.
(A.D. 1022.)
[Called in France _Thierry_. Authority: an ancient life in Bollandus.]
S. Thierry was born at Château Thierry, so called from an ancestor of the saint, whose family was noble and wealthy. He was taken to court and gained the confidence of King Robert the Good. On the death of Bishop Arnulf of Orleans, Thierry was elected, with the consent of the king, to fill the vacant see. His appointment was opposed by a priest named Adalric who had desired the throne for himself, and who had the indecency to burst into the church with a band of armed men, and thrust up to the very altar, uttering violent menaces, when Thierry was being consecrated, in the hopes of terrifying the consecrating bishops from what they were doing. Afterwards the priest at the head of a party of ruffians waylaid the Bishop by night, in a lane, and throwing him from his horse, ran him through, as they believed, with a sword. The weapon providentially cut through his garments without wounding him; and when the would-be assassins had fled, he rose and regained the city. Adalric, fearing the consequences, threw himself on the compassion of the Bishop, and asked his pardon, which Thierry frankly accorded him. Thierry died on a journey at Tonnerre, where his kinsman Count Milo built the church of S. Michael over his body. He was succeeded on the throne of Orleans by the priest Adalric.
S. JOHN, B. OF FRENCH FLANDERS.
(A.D. 1130.)
This saint was forced into the episcopate by Pope Urban against his desire. He was a most meek and gentle-spirited man, full of thought for others, but severe upon himself, as was evidenced by one little fact noticed by his biographer. He was wont to rise very early to his prayers, and when he did so, he took the greatest care not to disturb others in the room and house. When he was dying, crowds of people came to see his loved face for the last time, and he gave them his benediction, and died in so doing.
FOOTNOTES:
[126] See concerning the fire and subsequent persecution in the account of SS. Eutropius and Tygris, Jan. 12th; p. 163.
[127] This life is, for the most part, taken from the Rev. Canon Bright's "Hist. of the Church from A.D. 313 to A.D. 451." London, 1863.
January 28.
SS. THYRSUS, LEUCIUS AND OTHERS, _MM., in Asia_, A.D. 250. SS. EMILIAN, _B._, HILARIAN, _Mk._, AND OTHERS, _MM., at Trevi, in Umbria_, A.D. 303. S. VALERIUS, _B. of Saragossa, beginning of 4th cent._ S. PALLADIUS, _H., in Syria, end of 4th cent._ S. CYRIL, _Pat. of Alexandria_, A.D. 444. S. JOHN, _Ab. of Reomay, circ._ A.D. 545. S. JAMES, _H., in Palestine, 6th cent._ S. PAULINUS, _Patr. of Aquileia_, A.D. 804. B. CHARLEMAGNE, _Emp._, A.D. 814. S. RICHARD, _Ab. of Valcelles, in France, 12th cent._ S. JULIAN, _B. of Cuenca, in Spain_, A.D. 1207. B. MARGARET, _of Hungary, V.O.S.D._; A.D. 1271. B. GENTILE, _W., Ravenna_, A.D. 1530.
SS. THYRSUS, LEUCIUS, CALLINICUS, AND OTHERS, MM.
(A.D. 250.)
[Roman Kalendar on Jan. 28th; Greek Menaea on Dec. 14th; Mart. attributed to S. Jerome on Jan. 20th. The martyrs not having all suffered the same day or in the same places, has led to considerable variety in the days of their commemoration. Their Acts are extant in three forms, agreeing together in most particulars, and evidently amplifications by different hands of the original Acts. They are not to be implicitly relied upon.]
In the reign of the Emperor Decius, Combritius, the governor of Bithynia, made the circuit of the province, to carry into execution the severe imperial edict against the Christians. Being a man of a naturally cruel disposition he subjected those brought before him to the most exquisite torments his ingenuity could devise. Thyrsus had his eyelids pierced, and rings put through them, and molten lead was poured down his back. His arms and legs were broken. He died in prison. Leucius was hung up, and torn with iron hooks, and then decapitated; Callinicus and several others suffered in this persecution by various deaths.
S. VALERIUS, B. OF SARAGOSSA.
(BEGINNING OF 4TH CENT.)
[Roman Martyrology, but in others on Jan. 19th, 22th, 23rd, or 29th.]
Of this saint little is known, except that he associated with him S. Vincent, to speak for him, he having an impediment in his speech. When Dacian persecuted the Church, S. Valerius was taken to Valentia and there imprisoned. When brought forth and interrogated, his nervousness prevented him from articulating a word, therefore Vincent, the deacon, spoke for him. Vincent was ordered to execution, but Valerius was banished.
S. PALLADIUS, H. IN SYRIA.
(END OF 4TH CENT.)
[This Palladius is not to be confounded with the author of the Historia Lausiaca. He is mentioned by Theodoret, who relates of him all that is known.]
Palladius was a friend of Simeon the Ancient; they often met to encourage one another in the practice of self-denial and prayer. One incident in the life of this hermit has been alone transmitted to us. Not far from his cell was a frequented market. A merchant who had been at it was waylaid, robbed and murdered by a man who, after having done the deed, cast the body by the door of the hermit's cell. Next day a crowd assembled, instigated by the murderer, and with threatening looks and words, they broke open the hermit's door, and drew him forth, charging him with the murder. Then Palladius raised his hands and eyes to heaven and prayed. And when his prayer was concluded, he turned to the corpse and said, "Young man, designate the murderer!" Thereupon the dead man partly rose, raised his hand and pointed at him who had killed him; and when he was apprehended, articles belonging to the deceased were discovered upon him.
S. CYRIL, PATR. OF ALEXANDRIA.
(A.D. 444.)
[Roman Martyrology. The Greeks celebrate the memory of S. Cyril on June 9th, and commemorate him together with S. Athanasius on June 18th. Authorities: Socrates, Sozomen, Marius Mercator, the Acts of the council of Ephesus, and his own letters and treatises &c.]
This great champion of the faith has been attacked by modern writers as passionate and intolerant; it is true that he was guilty of several errors in administrating his patriarchate, and that his impetuosity gave the impulse which led to serious violation of justice. But we must remember that no man, not the greatest of saints, is without imperfection of character, and that the greatest of saints are they who, having serious natural defects, have mastered them by their faith and self-control. S. Cyril began his patriarchate under disadvantageous circumstances. He was the nephew of Theophilus, patriarch of Alexandria, Chrysostom's worst enemy, a man devoid of principle, wholly given up to pride of station; on October 15th, 412, he closed his episcopate of twenty-seven years; a melancholy instance of great powers rendered baneful to the Church by a worldly spirit and a violent temper. He was succeeded by his nephew Cyril. The evil of his uncle's example hung about him for some time, obscuring the nobleness which was to shine out afterwards. He desired above all things the ascendancy of the Church; as to the means of obtaining which, he had fewer scruples than became a minister of Him who rebuked the attack on Malchus. He closed the Novatian church, took away its sacred ornaments, and deprived its Bishop of his property. The Jews of Alexandria--a powerful body during many centuries--had procured the disgrace and punishment of Hierax, an admirer of Cyril's sermons. Cyril, naturally indignant, menaced the chief of their community; the Jews' revenge was to raise a cry at midnight, "The Church of S. Alexander is on fire!" and to massacre those Christians who rushed out to save their church. Cyril appears to have made up his mind that the Christians must right them, without expecting justice from the praefect Orestes, and he organized at daybreak a force which attacked the synagogues, expelled the Jews from Alexandria, and treated their property as rightful spoil. Orestes, exasperated at this hasty and lawless vengeance, would not listen to the explanations which Cyril offered; and the archbishop, after vainly holding out the Gospels to enforce his attempts at a reconciliation, gave up all hopes of peace. Five hundred monks of Nitria, inflamed by a furious partisanship, entered the city and reviled the praefect as a pagan. "I am a Christian," he exclaimed; "Atticus of Constantinople baptized me." A monk named Ammonius disproved his own Christianity by throwing a stone at the praefect, which inflicted a ghastly wound. He was seized, and expired under tortures; but Cyril so miserably forgot himself as to call this ruffian an "admirable" martyr, a proceeding of which he was afterwards heartily ashamed. Then followed a darker tragedy. Hypatia, a learned lady, and teacher of philosophy, and a heathen, who had great influence in the city in opposing Christianity, was supposed to have embittered Orestes against Cyril; and some fiery zealots, headed by a reader of the church, named Peter, dragged her from her house and tore her to pieces, limb from limb. Cyril was no party to this hideous deed,[128] but it was the work of men whose passions he had originally called out. Had there been no onslaught on the synagogues, there would have been no murder of Hypatia. The people of Alexandria were singularly fiery and given to civil contensions. Gibbon says of them, "The most trifling occasion, a transient scarcity of flesh or lentils, the neglect of an accustomed salutation, a mistake of precedency in the public baths, or even a religious dispute, were at any time sufficient to kindle a sedition among that vast multitude, whose resentments were furious and implacable."[129] A ferocious civil war which lasted twelve years, and raged within the city, till a considerable portion had been reduced to ruins in the reign of Valerian, had originated in a dispute between a soldier and a townsman about a pair of shoes.
Cyril had inherited all his uncle's violent prejudice against S. John Chrysostom. Pope Innocent had not been able to procure the vindication of his memory at Constantinople. But soon after his death, Atticus his successor, a good man, but weak and timid, and a declared enemy to Chrysostom, who had resisted the Pope's exhortation, yielded to the popular feeling, and to the advice of the Emperor Theodosius, who thought that "for peace and unity there would be no harm in writing a dead man's name on a diptych," _i.e._, on the table of names of the departed prayed for at the Mass. Atticus excused himself for this compliance in a letter to Cyril, in which he observed that, in these Eucharistic commemorations, laymen as well as bishops were included. The nephew of Theophilus was not likely to be thus appeased; and he extracted from the messengers of Atticus the confession that Chrysostom was now commemorated as a Bishop. In his view, Chrysostom was simply a man who had forfeited the episcopate; and he called upon Atticus to "expunge from the sacerdotal catalogue the name of one who was no minister," distinctly intimating that unless he resolved to uphold the authority of the Council of the Oak,[130] he would forfeit the communion of the patriarchate of Alexandria.
But as time passed, Cyril thought better of this, and regretted his violence and prejudice. Isidore of Pelusium, a pious abbot, wrote to him, "Put an end to these dissensions, lest you incur the judgment of God," and urged him not to make a perpetual schism in the Church by refusing to commemorate Chrysostom. He placed the name of Chrysostom on his diptychs, and immediately was received into communion with Rome from which he had been estranged by his adherence to the prejudices of his uncle.
Atticus, patriarch of Constantinople, was succeeded in 426, by Sisinius, who died on Christmas Eve, 427. Nestorius, a Syrian bred in Antioch, of high reputation and great powers as a speaker, ascetic and studious in his habits, was consecrated to the see on April 10th, 428. His first sermon indicated a feverish polemical zeal. "Give me," he exclaimed, addressing the Emperor, "give me the earth clear of heretics, and I will give you heaven in return! Help me to overthrow the heretics, and I will help you to overthrow the Persians." He began his episcopate by attacking an Arian meeting-house; the Arians set fire to it in their despair; the flames caught other buildings, and the new patriarch received the ominous name of "the Incendiary." The early violence of Cyril ought neither to be extenuated nor exaggerated; but there was somewhat less of provocation for the persecuting zeal of Nestorius. Shortly before Christmas, 428, a priest named Anastasius, whom the new archbishop had brought from Antioch, was preaching in S. Sophia. In the sermon he said, "Let no one call Mary the Mother of God; for she was a human creature, of whom God could not be born." Nestorius was present and approved; and on Christmas Day he himself began a short course of sermons, in which he called the title heathenish, and spoke of Mary's Son as a mere man, the instrument employed, and the vesture worn by God. Eusebius, a lawyer in the city, stood up in full church, and proclaimed that the Eternal Word Himself was born after the flesh. Nestorius denounced this doctrine; "It was not the Word that was born," said he; "It was only the _man_ Jesus."
Soon after, on a festival in honour of the Virgin, probably the Annunciation, a certain Bishop Proclus preached in the great church before Nestorius. After speaking of S. Mary in glowing language, as the bush burning and unconsumed, the cloud that bore the cherub-throne, Gideon's fleece filled with heavenly dew, he passed to the practical bearings of the Catholic doctrine. "If the Word had not dwelt in the womb, Flesh had never sat down on the holy throne. It was necessary, either that the doom of death should be executed on all, for all have sinned, or that such a price should be paid in exchange as could fully claim the release. Man could not save, for he was under the pressure of the debt of sin. An angel could not redeem humanity, for he had lacked such a ransom as was needed. One only course remained, that the sinless God should die for sinners. It was God who out of His compassion became Man. We do not proclaim a man deified, but we confess a God Incarnate. The Self-same was in the Father's bosom, and in the Virgin's womb; in a mother's arms, and on the wings of the wind. He was adored by angels, while He sat at meat with publicans. The servant buffeted Him, and creation shuddered. He was laid in the tomb, and he spread out the heavens as a curtain. O the mystery! I see the miracles, and I proclaim the Godhead; I see the sufferings and I declare the Manhood." Nestorius rose from his throne and rebuked the preacher. He said that to speak of God as virgin-born was erroneous, and in after sermons he argued that God who "held the circle of the earth" could not be wrapt in grave-clothes; that the Sustainer of all things could not rise from the dead. Christ, he said, was a sinless man, the image of the Godhead through His goodness; and that as a child was of the same nature as its mother, therefore that Christ could not be divine as Mary was not divine. He allowed to Christ _a_ divinity, but not _the_ divinity, placing Him rather as chiefest of saints than as God. It was Arianism under another form.
His sermons caused a great excitement at home as well as abroad. Men saw that the question was no strife of words; laymen who felt that Catholic truth was their inheritance, no less than that of the clergy, shrank from the communion of a bishop who made void the Incarnation. Clergy began to preach against him, "They are croaking frogs," said Nestorius, and he obtained an imperial order to silence them. A priest began to celebrate in private, an abbot and a monk told Nestorius to his face that he was in error, and were savagely beaten and imprisoned for so doing. A monk who dared to denounce him as a heretic was scourged and exiled. Among his supporters a bishop named Dorotheus was the chief. When he preached his heresy, the congregation uttering a cry of indignation, rushed out of church, but Nestorius proceeded with the service, and administered Communion to the preacher.
The careful circulation of the archbishop's sermons brought them into the hands of the Egyptian monks. Cyril strove to undo their effect by a letter addressed to the monks, about the end of April, 429. They would have done better, he said, by abstaining from the controversy; but it was necessary as things stood, to impress on them the positive truth. Since Christ was Emmanuel, since He who was in the form of God assumed the form of a servant, since the Son of Man was adorable, since the Lord of glory was crucified, it was impossible to divide the persons, and separate the manhood from the Godhead. To sum up all in one simple formula; "If our Lord Jesus Christ is God, how can His Mother, the holy Virgin, be _not_ Mother of God?" He guarded himself from misrepresentation by clearly confessing that it was from Mary that Christ derived His human nature, but that it was not from her that He derived His divine nature. He was God, from her He received His humanity, but to her He was not indebted for His Godhead.
About Midsummer he wrote his first letter to Nestorius, urging him not to produce scandal and a schism by asserting that God dwelt in Christ instead of proclaiming the Catholic doctrine that Christ was God. In February, 430, S. Cyril wrote his second letter to Nestorius--the great Epistle which received in subsequent councils a formal sanction from the Church. He set forth his faith in the clearest terms, insisting on a real, not a merely moral union of God and Man in Christ. Nestorius replied, showing a strange confusion of mind in the matter, which contrasts painfully with the bright, crisp, and lucid style of Cyril. He was ready to allow that Christ was an association of God with the man, Jesus; but he would not admit that God and man made one Christ.
Now it was that Cyril shone as a bright star in the firmament of the Church, proved a pillar in the house of God, sustaining the truth. For this God had raised him up, to maintain in the face of heresy, the Unity of the Person in our Blessed Lord. What S. Athanasius had done for the Church when assailed by Arianism, Cyril was called to perform when she was beaten by Nestorianism. "I care not for distress, or insult, or bitterest revilings," said he in a letter to his clergy, "Only let the faith be kept safe."
[Illustration: S. CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA. After the Picture by Dominiquin in the Church of Grotto Ferrata, Rome. Jan. 28.]
Early in August a council met at Rome. Pope Celestine quoted a stanza from the Christmas hymn of S. Ambrose:--
"Redeemer of Earth's tribes forlorn. Come, show Thyself the Virgin-born; Let every age the marvel greet-- No common birth for God were meet."
"Thus," he added, "Our brother Cyril's meaning, when he calls Mary, the mother of God, entirely agrees with _Talis decet partus Deum_." He cited S. Hilary and S. Damasus as teaching the same doctrine of One Christ; and the council pronounced Nestorius guilty of heresy. On August 11th, he wrote to Cyril, accepting his doctrinal statements, and giving him an important commission. "Join the authority of our see to your own, and freely occupying our place, execute this sentence with strictness and rigour; so that, unless in ten days time from this monition, he condemns in writing his unholy doctrine, and assures us that he holds that faith concerning the birth of Christ our God, which is held by the Roman Church, and by your Holiness' Church, and by all who belong to our religion, your Holiness may provide for his Church, and let him know that he must needs be cut off from our body."
On the 19th of November, the emperor Theodosius, at the request of Nestorius and his opponents, summoned a general council to meet at Ephesus at the ensuing Pentecost. Besides the circular letter, Cyril received a private one, angry in tone, from the emperor, asking, "Why have you despised us, and raised all this agitation, as if a rash impetuosity were more befitting than accurate inquiry, or audacity and versatility more pleasing to us than good taste and simple dealing." In a council held at Alexandria, Nestorius was declared heretical, and was excommunicated.
On Sunday, December 7th, four bishops entered the cathedral of Constantinople, during the time of service, and presented to Nestorius the letters of Celestine and Cyril excommunicating him.
About four or five days before Whit-sunday, which in 431, fell on June 7th, Cyril reached Ephesus, accompanied by fifty bishops, and found that Nestorius had arrived with sixteen before him. The Roman legates, Arcadius and Projectus, bishops, with Philip, a priest, were on their way. Pope Celestine had already expressed to Cyril his opinion, that if Nestorius were minded to repent, he should by all means be received, notwithstanding the sentence already pronounced by Rome and Alexandria. The bishops of the patriarchate of Antioch had not yet arrived. The church of Africa devastated by the Vandals could send no prelate; but Capreolus of Carthage wrote, entreating the bishops to maintain the ancient doctrine.
Hostilities were, in one sense, commenced between the parties before the opening of the council. Memnon, bishop of Ephesus, excluded the Nestorians from the churches, so that they had no place wherein to celebrate Pentecost, or to say matins and vespers.
Acacius, bishop of Melitene, endeavoured to convert Nestorius. A bishop of the Nestorian party said to him, "The Son who suffered is one, God the Word is another." Acacius withdrew in horror; but another saying that fell from Nestorius impressed itself yet more indelibly upon every Catholic heart. On June 19th, some prelates were arguing with him on the divinity of Jesus. "For my part," said he, several times over, "I cannot say that a child of two or three months old was God." Thus he declared his disbelief in the foundation doctrine of Christianity.
On Sunday, June 21st, a fortnight had elapsed from the time fixed for the meeting of the council. The Bishops were weary of waiting; illness and even death, had appeared among them; and John, patriarch of Antioch had not arrived. The majority therefore sent a message to Nestorius, telling him that the council should begin, next day. On Monday, June 22nd, when 198 Bishops assembled in S. Mary's Church, he personally remonstrated against the council being opened till the Bishops of the patriarchate of Antioch had arrived. It was in vain; Cyril and the majority absolutely refused to delay. On the episcopal throne, in the centre of the assembly, were laid the Gospels; the Bishops sat on each side; Cyril, as highest in rank, and as holding the proxy of Coelestine, until the arrival of the Roman legates, presided in the assembly. It would have been better if some other bishop had discharged this office; but it appears that Cyril's part in the proceedings was mainly that of a producer of evidence, and that he called on the council to judge between himself and Nestorius. A second citation was then directed to Nestorius; but soldiers with clubs denied the deputies access to his presence, and he sent out word that he would attend when all the bishops had reached the city.
A third message was then dispatched to him; care being taken to treat him simply as an accused bishop, not as a condemned heretic. Again the rude sentinels thrust back the deputies. "If you stand here all night, you will get no satisfaction; Nestorius has ordered that no one from your council shall enter." They returned to S. Mary's. "Nestorius," said the Bishop of Jerusalem, "shows a bad conscience. Let us now proceed to compare all recent statements with the creed of Nicaea."
When the great confession had been read, then the second letter of Cyril to Nestorius, and extracts from the sermons of the accused, the fathers proceeded to depose and excommunicate Nestorius, in the name of "our Lord Jesus Christ whom he has blasphemed." The sentence was signed by all the bishops; the first signature being, "I, Cyril, Bishop of Alexandria, subscribed to the judgment of the council." It was now late in the summer evening. The bishops, on issuing from the church, were welcomed with loud applause by the people, who had thronged the streets all day. Torches and perfumes were burnt before them, as they proceeded to their several abodes; and thus ended the memorable first session of the council of Ephesus. It is interesting to think that while the bishops were going home that night, after a day of intense excitement, Paulinus of Nola was calmly giving up his soul. His last words, breathed forth in a low chant at the hour of vespers, were those of Psalm cxxxi. 17, (cxxxii.) _Paravi lucernam Christo meo_. "I have prepared a lamp for my Christ."
On Saturday, June 27th, John of Antioch arrived with fifteen Bishops. The council sent deputies to his lodging: he consented to see them, but permitted Count Irenaeus, a friend of Nestorius, to beat them cruelly. Dusty and travel-stained as he was, John proceeded to assemble a conclave of the partisans of Nestorius, numbering forty-three Bishops, and deposed Cyril of Alexandria, and Memnon of Ephesus.
Theodosius, the emperor, prejudiced in favour of Nestorius, and thinking, perhaps not without reason, that the prelates of Antioch should have been awaited before the opening of the council, wrote on June 29th, in severe terms, ordering that no bishop should leave Ephesus until the doctrinal question had been fairly scrutinized, and declaring the proceedings null.
And now the Roman legates arrived, and the second session was held in Memnon's house, July 10th. Celestine's letter to the council, dated May 8, expressed full confidence that the council would join with the legates in executing what Rome had already decided was good. The bishops answered by applause, "One Coelestine, one Cyril, one faith of the council, one faith of the world!"
Next day, in the third session, the council wrote to the emperor that the whole Church was against Nestorius; and in a fourth session John, patriarch of Antioch, who supported the heretic, was deposed and excommunicated. The emperor then sent his high-treasurer, Count John, to compose the differences in a summary manner. On his arrival he at once arrested Cyril, Memnon, and Nestorius, and soldiers were stationed at the doors of their bed-rooms, to keep them close prisoners.
The bishops of the council, in a letter to the clergy of Constantinople, described the distress which they were enduring. "We are killed with the heat, the air is unhealthy, there is a funeral nearly every day, the servants are all gone home sick; but if they make us die here, we will not alter what Christ has through us ordained." Many of the bishops were very ill; some had been obliged to sell all that they had, in order to pay their expenses. Cyril wrote also, but there was a difficulty in getting these letters carried to their destination. The Nestorians of Constantinople beset the ships and the roads, and would allow no ordinary messenger to enter the city. It was determined to give them into the care of a beggar, who might carry them in the hollow of a cane on which he leant. This ingenious device succeeded. The clergy of Constantinople received the sentence of deposition pronounced on their patriarch, and the letters of Cyril and the council. The clergy openly addressed the emperor on behalf of Cyril. There was a great stir among the monks, who were for the most part determined enemies of Nestorianism. The aged abbot Dalmatius had not left his monastery for nearly fifty years. The emperor had vainly striven to make him take a
## part in the processional services during earthquakes. But now he felt,
as he expressed it, that in a cause which so truly belonged to God he could not be inactive. He issued forth, at the head of a solemn train of monks and abbots, chanting in two choirs, which moved towards the palace; the abbots were at once admitted to the presence of Theodosius, and he having read the letter of the council, said, "If these things are so, let the Bishops come hither." "They are prevented," said Dalmatius. "No they are not," said the emperor. "They are under arrest," persisted the abbot. The conference ended to the satisfaction of the abbots; they came forth, and directed the multitude without to proceed to a large church at the extremity of the city. Again the procession swept onwards; monks, bearing wax tapers, led the psalmody, without which in those days no great religious movement was conceivable; and the inspiring, "O praise God in His holiness," was thundered forth as they approached their destination. The church was thronged with eager listeners; Dalmatius caused the letter of the council to be read, and then described the interview with Theodosius. Dalmatius might well write to the council, "I have not neglected your wishes." His interposition was a great event; he had proved too many for the Nestorians. By his simple devotion and impressive firmness, the old recluse had given force and unity to a great mass of public feeling, and broken the spell by which a party had bound the emperor.
It is unnecessary to follow the tangled threads of party strife much further. Theodosius confirmed the decree of the council, and on Sunday, Oct. 25th, 431, a new patriarch was consecrated to fill the room of Nestorius. John of Antioch had been led astray by party feeling, and in faith he had not been really heretical; his mind like that of other supporters of Nestorius was bewildered, and fearing lest Cyril should fall in the opposite error, that of Apollinaris, which lost one nature in the other, making of Christ but one nature, he had adopted the side of Nestorius. Now he was reconciled to Cyril, who gladly met him halfway, and by mutual explanation blew away the dust of strife, and found that their faith was identical. John sent Paul, Bishop of Emesa, to Alexandria with this confession, "We confess our Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, to be perfect God and perfect Man, of a reasonable soul and a body; before the ages begotten of the Father according to His Godhead, but for us and for our salvation, in the latter days, born of the Virgin Mary according to His Manhood; of one essence with the Father as to Godhead, of one essence with us as to Manhood. For there took place an union of two natures; wherefore we confess one Christ, one Son, one Lord. According to this notion of the union without confusion, we confess Holy Mary to be Mother of God, because God the Word was incarnate and made man, and from His very conception united to Himself the temple taken from her."
This formulary Cyril gladly accepted as orthodox, and then, and not till then, Paul of Emesa was permitted to attend the church service, and invited to preach, as a Catholic Bishop, on Christmas Day. The scene that ensued was a very striking one. He began with the angelic hymn, proceeded to Isaiah vii. 14, and then pronounced the momentous words, "Thus Mary, Mother of God, brings forth Emmanuel!" The church rang with joyful cries; "Lo, this is the faith! 'Tis God's gift, orthodox Cyril! This is what we wanted to hear!" Paul resumed, and presently enforced both sides of the great verity. "A combination of two perfect natures, I mean Godhead and Manhood, constitutes for us the one Son, the one Christ, the one Lord." Again the people shouted applause; "Welcome, orthodox Bishop, the worthy to the worthy!"
S. Cyril died in June, 444, after a pontificate of thirty-two years, during the last fifteen of which he may be said to have as truly lived for the truth of the unity of the two natures in Christ, as his mightiest predecessor, S. Athanasius, had lived for the truth of the Divinity of Christ. Doubtless, the fiery spirit, which Cyril could not always restrain, impelled him, during this great controversy, into some steps which show that he was not an Athanasius. But modern critics of his character have said more than enough on this point, and too little on points of a different kind. Historical justice can never demand that we should take the hardest possible view of his conduct at the opening of the council of Ephesus, and ignore the noble unselfishness, the patience in explaining over and over again his own statements, the readiness in welcoming substantial agreement on the part of others, in a word, the "power, and love, and command" which made him a true minister of peace in the reunion of 433. We need not dwell on other instances in which he showed a remarkable forbearance, as when he bore without irritation the schooling of S. Isidore; on his care for the due probation of aspirants to the priesthood, his depth and acuteness as a dogmatic theologian, his faith and thankfulness when treated as a deposed prisoner. The way _not_ to understand him is to substitute a haughty and heartless dogmatist for the ardent, anxious, often the deeply suffering man, who, against an opponent strong in sophistry, in court influence, and in church power, persevered in defending the simple truth of the Scriptural and Nicene mystery, that "the one Lord Jesus Christ was very God of very God, who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven, and was incarnate, and was made Man."[131]
[Illustration: S. CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA. After Cahier. Jan. 28.]
S. JAMES, THE PENITENT, H.
(6TH CENT.)
[Roman Martyrology and Greek Menaea, but by the Gallo-Belgic Martyrology on Jan. 29th. Authority: a life written apparently not long after the death of S. James. There are so many saints, and even hermit saints of this name, that some confusion would have arisen but for the remarkable peculiarity of the life of this man.]
The story of this hermit is a painful and very sad one; it is that of a great fall and bitter repentance. As a warning to all those who are living lives near to God, to be not high-minded but fear, the Church has placed it in her sacred Kalendar, but not only as a lesson to such, but also as an encouragement to the poor wretch who has fallen, to look up, not to despair, for great as may be his sin, greater is the mercy of God.
Near the city of Porphyrio in Samaria lived a hermit in a cave. He was not old, but in the bloom of manhood. Some wicked men, desirous of disgracing the anchorite, suborned a harlot to bewitch him. She therefore went to his cave one evening, and knocked at the door. He opened the door, and, seeing a woman, slammed it in her face. But she continued knocking and imploring to be admitted. Night fell, and the howl of the wolf and the snarl of the hyaena sounded dolefully without; then the hermit, fearing lest the woman should become prey to wild beasts, opened the door, and asked her who she was. She replied that she was a religious woman on her road from one convent to another, who sought shelter for the night. Then he admitted her to the outer chamber of his cave, where burnt his fire, and there he bade her rest, whilst he retired into the inner chamber, and closed the door. But, during the night, he heard her moaning and sobbing, then he looked through the little window in the door, and saw her rolling on the ground, as if in great pain. He asked what ailed her, and she answered that she had cramp of the heart, and implored him to relieve her, by signing her bosom and heart with holy oil. Then she tore open her garment, and exposed her breast; and he, entering, took oil and anointed her bosom; but fearing temptation, he prayed to God with great devotion, and at the same time placed his left hand in the fire, whilst with his right he continued doing as she demanded, till suddenly, she was aware that his left hand was so burned that the fingers were completely charred through. Then, horror-struck, and filled with compunction, she threw herself at his feet, and sobbing confessed her evil design. So he bade her go and sin no more, and the woman was converted from her evil life, and she went and lived the rest of her days in the exercise of penitence.
Now, after this, James was of good confidence that he had completely mastered the lust of the flesh, and he was less on his guard against the wiles of Satan than before. And people saw his maimed hand, and they praised his great continence, so his heart was lifted up within him, and he was filled with spiritual pride. After many years, when he was over sixty, there came to his cell a father bringing his daughter, a very beautiful girl, who was possessed with an evil spirit, and he besought the pious hermit to cast forth the demon. And when he had prayed, the evil spirit went out of her, but left her almost inanimate. Then the father, thinking her too much exhausted to be at once removed, or fearing another access of her disorder, left her in the cell of the God-fearing recluse. And when she was there some days, and he saw her beauty, he was overcome with a violent passion of love, and he lost all control over himself, and forgot God, and deceived the unfortunate girl, and in madness he savagely murdered her, and threw the body into a river.
And now, as the sun set on that day of passion and crime, and the dark night settled down on the wilderness, the horror of remorse came upon him, and he writhed in his cave in an agony of shame and despair, lying with his face on the ground. Then, at last, haggard and hopeless, he rushed forth, resolving to confess his crime and then to return into the world, as one unworthy to aspire to a close walk with God. And when he had come to the nearest monastery, he called the monks together, and casting himself at their feet, sobbed forth his story of shame. The good brothers raised him, and mingled their tears with his, and prayed God to have mercy on the poor sinner, and to pluck him as a brand from the burning. After that, finding no rest, he went forth, and lighted, as evening fell, on an old hermit sitting in his cave, who offered him a lodging, and spread for him such food as he had to offer. But James would eat nothing. Then the hermit said, "Dear Christian brother, give me some good advice, how I may escape evil thoughts." And when James heard that, he uttered a piercing cry, staggered to his feet and fell on the ground, burying his face in his hands. He told all his sin to the hermit, and said that now he was about to return into the world, being unworthy to wear the habit of a monk, and live a life demanding such holiness. "When I was young, then I controlled my passions, now that I am old, my passions have conquered me. I cannot raise my eyes," he said; "I despair of salvation. I cannot name the Saving Name; fire will fall from heaven to consume me, I am lost!"
Then the good old hermit cast his arms round his neck and kissed him, and said, "Brother, despair not of God's forbearance, but believe that there is a place for repentance. A broken and a contrite heart God will not despise. Great is God's mercy, ever following us, therefore despair not, brother!"
He ceased not from speaking, till the black cloud of despair was rolled away, and the fallen monk had the courage to hope. Then he led him on his way for many miles, earnestly dissuading him from going into the world; and so they parted, with many tears.
So James sought out a doleful cave which had been used as an old sepulchre, and he hid himself there, and spent in it ten years, bewailing his crime, only opening the door twice in the week, to collect a few olives on which to sustain life, and esteeming himself viler than the dust. And when ten years were accomplished, he felt that God was about to call him, therefore he went to the nearest city, and to the Bishop there, and besought him, when he was dead, to bury him in the old sepulchre in which he had undergone his penance, and in the soil he had moistened with his many tears. After that he returned to his cave, and there died, at the age of seventy-five.
S. PAULINUS, PATR. OF AQUILEIA.
(A.D. 804.)
[S. Paulinus died on Jan. 11th, but his festival is observed on Jan. 28th. Authorities: various histories of his time, and the writings of himself and Alcuin.]
S. Paulinus, born about 726, was one of the most illustrious of the patriarchs who sat in the throne of Aquileia, which he ascended, about the year 776. He assisted at the council of Aix-la-Chapelle in 782, of Ratisbon in 792, and of Frankfort in 794; and he held one himself, at Friuli, in 791 or 796. He combated a form of Nestorianism propagated by Felix, Bishop of Urgel, and Elipandus, Bishop of Toledo, with such success that their heresy made no headway in the West. In 802, S. Paulinus assembled a council at Altino. He died on the 11th Jan., 804.
[Illustration: CHARLEMAGNE AND S. LOUIS. After a Picture in the Palais de Justice, Paris, wrongly attributed to Van Eyck. Jan. 28.]
B. CHARLEMAGNE, EMP.
(A.D. 814.)
[Inserted in many French, German, and Belgian Martyrologies. He was canonized by the Anti-pope Paschal III. The life of this emperor, written by his secretary Eginhart, together with the numerous historical accounts of his transactions, supply abundant material for his life.]
The public life of the Emperor Charlemagne belongs to the domain of secular history, rather than to hagiology. We shall confine ourselves, in this notice, to those acts which have obtained for him a place in the Kalendar of the Church.
Charlemagne, son of King Pepin, was born in 742, and was crowned king of France in 768. In the early years of his reign he was guilty of grave moral faults, which he deeply deplored in his after life. He comes before us as a man penetrated with a strong sense of religious responsibility, and of faith in the divine mission of the Church. In the midst of his wars, the spread of the true faith, and the advancement of learning, were never absent from his mind. He was zealous in reforming the monasteries, and for the sake of uniformity, he introduced into them the rule of S. Benedict. For the discipline of the clergy, he procured the convention of many synods, in which were drawn up his famous Capitulars. He meditated assiduously on the Scriptures, assisted at the divine office, even that of midnight, if possible; had good books read to him at table, and took but one meal a day. He died at the age of seventy-two, at Aix-la-Chapelle, in 814, and was there buried. His tomb was opened in 1165. The body was found, not reclining in his coffin, as is the usual fashion of the dead, but seated on his throne as one alive, clothed in the imperial robes, bearing the sceptre in his hand, and on his knees a copy of the Gospels. On his fleshless brow was the crown, the imperial mantle covered his shoulders, the sword Joyeuse was by his side, and the pilgrim's pouch, which he had borne always while living, was still fastened to his girdle. His skull and throne and hunting horn are preserved in the sacristy at Aix.
[Illustration: Baptism of Vanquished Saxons by command of Charlemagne. From a Miniature of the 15th Century in the Burgundy Library at Brussels.]
FOOTNOTES:
[128] "That Cyril had any share in this atrocity," says Canon Robertson, i. 401, "appears to be an unsupported calumny."
[129] Decline and Fall, Ed. Bohn, i. p. 348.
[130] See p. 406.
[131] Chiefly from Bright's Church History.
January 29.
S. VALERIUS, _B. of Trèves, end of 1st. cent._ S. CONSTANTIUS, _B.M. at Perugia, between_ A.D. 161-8. SS. SABINIAN, _M._, AND SABINA, V., _at Troyes, in France, circ._ A.D. 275. SS. PAPIAS AND MAURUS, _MM., at Rome, circ._ A.D. 303. S. GILDAS THE WISE, _Ab. in Brittany, 6th cent._ S. SULPICIUS SEVERUS, _B. of Bourges_, A.D. 591. S. BACULUS, _B. of Sorrento, circ._ A.D. 679. S. PETER THOMASIUS, _Latin Patr. of Constantinople_, A.D. 1366. S. FRANCIS OF SALES, _B. of Geneva_, A.D. 1622.
S. VALERIUS, B. OF TREVES.
(END OF 1ST CENT.)
[There are many Saints of this name. This S. Valerius appears in very many of the most ancient Martyrologies. His Acts, together with those of SS. Eucher and Maternus, his companions, was written by a certain Goldscher, of uncertain date, but ancient; for it is quoted by Heriger, Ab. Lobie, who died 1007. Goldscher says that he collected the accounts he found of Valerius and his companions from various ancient chronicles.]
Eucher, Valerius, and Maternus, according to legend wholly unreliable, were three disciples of S. Peter, and were sent by him to preach the Gospel in Gaul. The first was consecrated by him bishop, the second, deacon, and Maternus, sub-deacon. S. Eucher fixed his see at Trèves, then an important city. After his death Valerius was elevated to the episcopate, and preached the word of God with so much zeal, that many were added to the Church. On his death, he was succeeded by S. Maternus.
SS. SABINIAN, M., AND SABINA, V.
(ABOUT A.D. 275.)
[Commemorated in some churches on Jan. 25th, in others on Jan. 29th, June 8th, Aug. 29th, Sept. 5th; sometimes together, and sometimes severally. Authorities: two ancient lives of S. Sabinian, and one of S. Sabina, published by Bollandus.]
SS. Sabinian and Sabina were brother and sister, natives of Samos. Sabinian's soul having been touched by Christian teaching, he left his native island, and coming to Gaul reached Troyes, where he fell in with Christians, and he was there baptized in the river Seine. It is said that his staff, which he had driven into the bank, as he went down into the water, on his return put forth leaves and flowered.
In the reign of Aurelian he was brought before the emperor, then at Vienne in Gaul, and was cruelly tormented, by being seated on a heated bench of iron, and a red-hot helmet was placed on his head. He was afterwards executed with the sword. His sister Sabina, who had followed him, arrived at Troyes after his martyrdom. She was there baptized, spent a holy life, and died a virgin.
S. GILDAS THE WISE, AB., IN BRITTANY.
(6TH CENT.)
[There are said to have been several British saints of this name. But that commemorated on this day is the famous author, whose writings are extant. It is probable that Gildas, having been born in Scotland, bred in Wales, and a monastic founder in Brittany, has been divided into three, and some of the incidents have attached themselves to S. Gildas the Scotchman, others to S. Gildas the Welshman, and others again to him of Brittany. Yet these are all easily reducible into a consecutive history, and belong, in fact, to one man. His life was written by Caradoc of Llancarvan, about 1150; another life is by an anonymous monk of Rhys.]
S. Gildas, surnamed the Wise, was born in North-Britain near the Clyde, in the kingdom of which Dumbarton was the capital. His father was of princely birth; his eldest son, Howel, was a great warrior, who, succeeding his father in the principality, was slain by King Arthur. Mailoc, another son, was brought up to the religious life. Two other brothers, and their sister, Peteona, in like manner left the world, and choosing a retired place in the furthest extremity of that country, built themselves separate oratories, where, by watching, fasting, and fervent prayer, they continually strove to reach their heavenly country. As to Gildas, we learn from his own writings, that he was born in the year of the famous victory, gained (as some say, by Ambrose; or, as others say, by Arthur,) over the Saxons at Mount Badon, near Bath, about A.D. 520. He was, when a child, committed by his parents to the care of S. Iltut, who brought him up in his monastery of Llan-Iltut in Glamorganshire, instructing him in the divine Scriptures, and in the liberal arts. These divine meditations wonderfully increased his faith and love of heavenly things, and influenced in such a manner the whole conduct of his life, that from his very youth he attained to great perfection and was favoured with the gift of miracles. From S. Iltut's school, where he had for companions S. Samson and S. Paul of Leon, both of whom were afterwards illustrious prelates, he went over into Ireland, for his further improvement in virtue and learning, among the disciples of S. Patrick. There he frequented the most celebrated masters of divine and human learning; and like the industrious bee, gathered honey from every flower--the honey of virtue and of knowledge. In the meantime, he failed not to chastise his body and bring it into subjection, lest, with all his learning and preaching to others, he himself might become a cast-away. Therefore he fasted much, and often watched whole nights, employing that silent time in prayer.
After Gildas was ordained priest, he preached the Gospel in the northern parts of Britain; where a great part of the inhabitants were heathen, and those calling themselves Christians were infected with the Pelagian heresy. God blessed his labours there with such success, that great numbers of heathen and heretics were by his means converted to Christ; and many miracles were wrought through him in the cure of the sick, in confirmation of his doctrine. The reputation of his success having reached Ireland, the king, Ainmeric, invited him over. Gildas accepted the call, and there, by his preaching and miracles, he mightily advanced the kingdom of God. He built churches and monasteries, established Christian discipline, regulated the liturgy, taught for some time in the famous school of Armagh, and was, in a word, another S. Patrick to that nation, by which he has been ever since gratefully honoured among their most illustrious Saints.
After these things, leaving Ireland and Britain, he sailed over into Armorica or Brittany, and there founded the monastery of Rhys. But as he was desirous of solitude and undisturbed contemplation, he made himself an oratory, at some distance from that monastery, under a rock upon the bank of the river Blavet, where he devoted his solitary hours to prayer.[132] The exact date of his death is uncertain.
S. SULPICIUS SEVERUS, B. OF BOURGES.
(A.D. 591.)
[There is great confusion caused by there having been so many archbishops of this name. There was a Sulpicius the Pious, Archbishop of Bourges about 644; commemorated on Jan. 17th. There was also Sulpicius Severus, the disciple of S. Martin, whose life Butler gives on this day, and who is the famous historian, but there seems to be no authority for numbering him with the Saints. Butler also says that there were four Sulpicii, Archbishops of Bourges, but this seems to be a mistake, for Bollandus gives only two, Sulpicius the Pious and Sulpicius Severus.]
Little of the acts of this Saint is known, and he is here mentioned solely to enable the reader to distinguish the Saint of this name from the historian, and also from his successor Sulpicius the Pious.
S. FRANCIS OF SALES, B.C. OF GENEVA.
(A.D. 1622.)
[Roman Martyrology. Beatified, A.D. 1661, canonized, A.D. 1665. Jan. 29th, is the day of the translation of his body to Annecy; he died on Holy Innocents' Day. Authorities: authentic lives by his nephew, Charles Augustus de Sales, also by F. Goulu, general of the Feuillans, also by Henry de Maupas du Tour, Bishop of Puys, and afterward of Evreux; also by Madame de Bussi-Rabutin, nun of the Visitation; also anecdotes of him collected by his friend Camus, Bishop of Belley; and finally, his own writings.[133]]
S. Francis of Sales was the eldest son of one of the principal nobles of Savoy,--John, Lord of Sales, of Boisy, of Balleyson, and of Ville-Roget, usually styled by the second of these titles. His mother Frances, daughter of the Lord of La Thuille and of Vallieres, came of no less noble stock. He had many brothers and sisters, of whom Louis, Lord of La Thuille, was the father of Charles Augustus, the pious biographer of the Saint. Francis was born, Aug. 21st, 1567.
He was sent in early childhood to the college of Annecy, where he was trained in all the accomplishments which in those days were considered essential to the rank of a young noble. He was five years at the college of Annecy. At the age of eleven, he entreated permission of his father to take the tonsure, having at that early age decided to adopt the ecclesiastical life. M. de Boisy by no means desired this, for his ambition was, that his eldest son should succeed him as the head of the family, and distinguish himself in political life; but, with that sort of management which men of great experience often prefer to violent measures, he permitted him to do as he pleased. The old lord knew that the tonsure did not bind his son finally to become an ecclesiastic; and he depended on the changes to which a young man's mind is subject, to dissipate this predilection.
In 1580, he was sent to pursue his studies in the University of Paris. At Paris one of the most critical events of his life took place, a terrible temptation to despair, which came on suddenly, and lasted for a considerable time, but from which he was released in a wonderful manner. He was about the age of seventeen, when the idea took possession of his mind, that he was not in a state of grace, and that the face of God was turned away from him. In his agony of mental distress he prayed, "Lord if I may not see Thee hereafter, yet, oh grant, that I may never blaspheme Thee!" He seems, if it were possible, to have suffered the very anguish of hell, without the loss of the love of God. During the six weeks this shadow lay upon him, he could hardly eat or sleep, he wasted to a skeleton and his friends became greatly alarmed for his health. At length, this great cross disappeared as suddenly as it came. He one day entered the church of S. Etienne des Grés and knelt down before an image of the Blessed Virgin. His eye was caught by a tablet on the wall, on which was inscribed the famous prayer of S. Bernard, called the _Memorare_. He repeated it with great emotion; and implored that, through the intercession of Mary, it might please God to restore his peace of mind. He also made a vow of perpetual chastity. The dark thoughts which had brooded over his soul for many weeks now sped away, and the sun of God's favour shone on it and warmed it once more. He came out of the church in that sweet and profound calmness of mind which he never afterwards lost. Considering what he was to become in after life, the guide and comforter of such a multitude of souls, it was necessary, in order to give him his tender overflowing sympathy, that he should have sounded the most unusual depths of human agony.
After having spent five years at Paris, he was sent to finish his education at the university of Padua, and there he remained till he was twenty-four years of age, when, in 1591, he took his degree of doctor of laws. Soon after his return home, his father sent him to Chambéry, to take the office of senator in the court, and the young Francis took the opportunity of conferring with the Bishop on the steps which it would be most advisable for him to take, in order to ensure the consent of his family to his embracing the ecclesiastical state, on which his heart had long been set. The Bishop advised him to wait a little, before declaring this intention; and, in the mean time he obtained a bull from Rome authorizing the appointment of Francis to the deanery of the cathedral, knowing that the attainment of this dignity would soften the feelings of the family towards the purposed steps. The hopes of Francis, however, seemed destined to be frustrated altogether by the extreme anxiety of his father, both that he should accept the post offered him, and also that he should marry a rich, amiable, and beautiful girl, the daughter of one of their oldest friends. But Francis, to the surprise and despair of his parents, refused both offers. Not long after, the suspense becoming intolerable to him, and his vocation day by day stronger, he resolved to reveal the cause to his father and mother, and taking with him his cousin, Louis of Sales, he implored their consent to his becoming a priest. M. de Boisy was stupified at his son's proposal, which took him completely by surprise, and at first flatly refused his consent. But after combating the resolution of Francis for a long time, he yielded to the entreaties of his wife, who warned him that, should he oppose so decided a vocation, it would be refusing him permission to follow the voice of God. Armed with his father's consent and blessing, Francis lost no time in hastening back to the Bishop of Geneva, from whom he received minor orders on June 8th, 1593. The Bishop, who had the highest opinion of his power, told him that he expected him to preach on the following Thursday, which was the Feast of Corpus Christi. When the morning came, Francis was seized with a sudden panic, and he cast himself on his bed when the bells were ringing for service. But, overcoming his bashfulness, he rose and went to the cathedral, where he preached on the Real Presence in the Holy Eucharist, a sermon which flowed from a heart which had long loved and adored that Presence. The Bishop was much moved by this discourse, and three leading Calvinist gentlemen who had come out of sheer curiosity to hear the new preacher were convinced, and shortly after were received into the Church of God.
On the 18th December of the same year, Francis was promoted to priests' orders, on which occasion his ecstatic devotion amazed the assistants.
At this time the Bishop received an appeal from the Duke of Savoy to send missionaries into the Chablais. This is a portion of Savoy to the south of the lake of Geneva, which had been forced into heresy by the canton of Berne in Switzerland. The circumstances were as follows. During the wars between the canton of Berne, supporting insurgent Geneva against the Duke of Savoy, Charles III, who was thus engaged in war with Francis I., King of France, the troops of Berne had invaded the province of Chablais, and has wrested it from him. Not content with this usurpation, the senate of Berne determined to undermine the Catholic religion in this canton, and for this purpose divided the conquered province into townships, of which the principal was fixed at Thonon, on the borders of the lake. There were two large churches in the town, those of S. Hippolytus, and S. Augustine. The authorities of Berne drove out the Catholic clergy, and sent two violent reformers, Farel and Lambertet to preach during Lent in 1536, and try to prevail on the people to disbelieve the majority of those truths which the Church had taught them. This they accordingly did, but when Lambertet began to preach in the pulpit of the church of S. Hippolytus, a scene of confusion ensued; he was absolutely refused a hearing, and one of the citizens forced him to come down from the pulpit. The government of Berne, to punish this tumult, sent six commissioners, who, on the 4th of June, destroyed and defaced the sacred images, burnt the crosses, forbade the exercise of the Catholic religion, and drove away all the priests and religious; and by edict forbade the exercise of any Catholic rite under a penalty of ten florins for each offence. In a few years, to all intents and purposes, Catholicism was banished from the land. Fifty-seven years had passed, and by means of rigid suppression of Catholicism, the people had grown up in heresy or total unbelief. Now, the Chablais was returned to the Duke of Savoy, and he wrote to the Bishop of Geneva, entreating him to send some holy priest to Thonon to inaugurate the work of leading the people out of the darkness of error into the clear light of the Gospel of Christ. The Bishop sent a virtuous priest, but the following year the castle of Thonon was betrayed and destroyed by the Bernese troops, and the poor priest, fearing for his life, and utterly despairing of effecting any conversions among the Protestants, quitted his post, and returned to report his failure to the Bishop at Annecy. But the Duke, no way disheartened by this state of things, rebuilt and fortified the castle of Allinges not far from Thonon, placed it in a garrison, and wrote again to the Bishop, imploring for fresh workers in the neglected spiritual vineyard.
The Bishop summoned a meeting of the Cathedral Chapter, and made a moving discourse before them on the subject of the Duke's letter, which he first read to the assembly. A profound and chilling silence followed the Bishop's appeal, but all turned to look at the young dean, whose face seemed radiant with joy and emotion. He rose, and said simply and earnestly, "My Lord, if you think me capable and worthy of this mission, I undertake it with joy. At thy word will I let down my net!" The Bishop gratefully accepted the generous offer, and prepared to do all for Francis that lay in his power to ensure his success.
Far different, however, was the scene in the castle of Sales, when the fatal news became known. M. de Boisy flew to Annecy, and overwhelmed Francis with entreaties and reproaches. "Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business," was the reply of the Saint; then throwing himself at his father's feet, he besought his consent and his blessing. M. de Boisy replied, "As to consenting to this mad undertaking, I cannot do it. It is of no use asking me;" and so saying, the poor old man left the palace, and returned in tears to his castle, there to be soothed, but not consoled, by the stronger faith of his wife.
[Illustration: François de Sales Euesque et Prince de Geneue]
On Sept. 9th, 1594, Francis, accompanied by his cousin, Louis, started on his evangelical mission. It was necessary to pass by the castle of Sales, when Frances had a fresh battle to fight with his family. "The Château of Sales," writes a contemporary of our Saint, "was at that time one of the most beautiful in Savoy, situated at the foot of mount Ferreo, and surrounded with lovely gardens and shrubberies. A fountain in the centre, and a lake on one side, added to its charms." Yet all this Francis seems to have left without a thought or even a regret. During their visit, the cousins determined to spend a couple of days in retreat. The evening of the second day, Francis went to take leave of his mother. Her conduct throughout had been admirable. This terrible
## parting over, Francis went back to the chapel, where, as a child, he had
so often knelt with that tender mother before the altar and repeated, evening after evening, his childish prayers, and there the noble sacrifice of his whole future life to God was consummated and accepted. His natural sorrow quenched in the Sacred Presence, Francis spent the rest of the night in prayer, for the success of his mission; and the next morning the cousins started at break of day, avoiding all further leave-takings; and without either servants or provisions; his father having expressly forbidden any assistance being given to them, hoping thereby to disgust them of their enterprise. So, in poverty, S. Francis left his ancestral home. Nine years afterwards, writing to the Pope, he says, "On arriving in the Chablais, nothing but heart-breaking sights met our eyes. Out of sixty-five parishes, excepting a few officers of the Duke's garrisons, there were scarcely fifty Catholics. The churches were desecrated or destroyed, and the cross everywhere broken down."
It would be impossible to give an idea of the fury of the Protestants of Thonon when they heard of the mission of the two cousins. The news flew to Geneva, where a public meeting was instantly held to declare that any one was at liberty to take the lives of the two Papists who had dared to undertake the mission; some of the Protestants present went so far as to swear that they themselves would be their assassins. M. de Boisy was alarmed when news reached him that the life of his son was menaced, and he sent his old and faithful servant, George Roland, with positive orders to bring Francis back; but the Saint was not to be moved; he, however, persuaded his cousin, Louis, to go back for a short while, in order to calm the anxiety of his family, whilst he himself remained to prosecute his great work. Louis obeyed, but soon returned, and the two earnest missioners laboured indefatigably together to advance the Gospel. Francis went on foot among the villages, his stick, his breviary, and his Bible being his sole companions; Louis being sent into other parts of the province.
One night, on the 12th December, being on an expedition of this kind, night came on suddenly; the earth was covered with snow, and he found himself alone in a large wood infested with wolves. Afraid of being devoured, he climbed up into a tree to pass the night; and then, lest he should fall asleep and drop from the branch, he tied himself with his leathern girdle to the stem. The next morning some peasants from a neighbouring village found him there, nearly frozen with cold, and unable to move. They carried him to their home, gently chafed his numbed limbs, and brought him back to warmth and consciousness. Their charity was not without its reward, for the Saint profited by the occasion to speak to them on things concerning their eternal salvation. His gentle, loving voice and manner effected even more than his words, and the zeal he had shown in braving every kind of peril and suffering for the sake of bringing back a few stray sheep to the fold, spoke more forcibly to their hearts than a thousand sermons. These poor peasants were moved and touched, and S. Francis numbered them among his first converts. M. de Boisy sent George Roland back to Francis at the beginning of the year 1595, and to the records of this faithful servant, who from that hour never left him, we are mainly indebted for the details of the most interesting personal adventures which befell the Saint. But God Himself interposed on several occasions to save His servant from dangers of which even George Roland knew nothing. There was one bigoted Protestant, who in the height of fanatical fury, swore that he would murder Francis and carry his head to Geneva. This man was afterwards converted, and declared on oath that he had thrice waylaid the Saint to accomplish his purpose, and that each time his gun missed fire, and that he had posted various other persons to kill him, but on each occasion God had rendered His apostle invisible. The instigator of this diabolical design was at last touched by the wonderful way in which providence shielded Francis from harm; he abjured his heresy, and became afterwards one of the Saint's most devoted followers.
At the beginning of the year 1595, Francis began a short, clear, and simple exposition of Catholic doctrine, written on loose sheets for distribution among Protestants, with an answer to the principal objections raised against the Faith. Every one read and discussed these fly-leaves--and the Protestants were beyond measure surprised at the way in which all their favourite arguments were disproved, while some among them were equally startled at finding how their prejudices regarding the Catholic faith melted away before the sunshine of God's truth.
The winter, always severe in Savoy, was this year one of unusual rigour. The roads were one sheet of ice, and Francis was obliged to put iron clamps on his shoes, in order to prevent himself from slipping. As he suffered terribly from broken chilblains, his heels became in such a state that the blood stained the snow as he walked along, penetrating through his stockings and gaiters. One night he arrived, with his cousin, Louis, at a village where all the doors were closed against him. In vain they knocked and entreated for admission; the inhabitants, who had been prejudiced against them, refused to give them shelter; they crept into the village oven, which was still warm, and there slept.
On the 17th July, he preached a wonderful sermon at Thonon on the mediation of Jesus Christ. He showed his hearers that the Catholic Church, so far from destroying this doctrine, as the Protestant asserted, based her whole system upon it. The Calvinist ministers were exasperated at the effect of the sermon, and held a public meeting, in which it was resolved to charge him with sorcery and magic. They even suborned a man to swear that he had seen Francis in communication with devils at a witch's festival. As he was walking through a wood at dusk immediately after this, two men rushed upon him with swords, uttering horrid imprecations. Francis met them with such composure, that they were overcome, and casting themselves at his feet, implored his pardon, alleging as their excuse the orders they had received from the Protestant clergy. The Saint forgave and blessed them, and pursued his road, unmolested. The Calvinists, more furious than ever, hired a body of assassins who came secretly, in the dead of the night to the house in which he lodged. Francis had not yet gone to bed. He was watching and praying in his room, when he heard the tramp of armed men in the street, and their whispered consultation at the door. He quietly slipped into a secret chamber, cleverly concealed by a panel in the wall which had been provided in case of any such emergency, and the assassins hunted through the house from garret to cellar without being able to find him. What promoted the Catholic faith far more than his sermons, was his daily life of never-failing charity. Madame de Boisy at last brought her husband to see and feel the beauty and reality of the mission in which their son was engaged. This was an untold relief to Francis; and from that time, father and mother worked together in forwarding to the utmost of their power the apostolic labours of their son. They gave shelter in the castle of Sales to such of the converts as were compelled to resort to flight in order to escape the fury of the heretics; and it is impossible to exaggerate the tender zeal with which Madame de Boisy looked after their temporal and spiritual wants. The Saint, in the meanwhile, continued without intermission his pastoral work. As he could not carry the Blessed Sacrament publicly through the streets of Thonon to the sick, he used to take a Host in a little silver pyx in the shape of a triangle, suspended by three little silver chains round his neck, and thus bear our Lord on his breast. Then wrapping himself up in a large cloak, he would walk along very gravely, looking on the ground, without speaking to any one, or raising his hat. This was the sign he had given to the faithful, who no sooner saw him passing in that manner than they left their occupations and silently followed, though at a little distance, so as not to excite hostile observation. It was an intense joy to him to carry the Blessed Sacrament in that way: his flock often remarked that his face on such occasions positively shone with the fire of his love. As prudence still forbade the public sacrifice of the Mass in Thonon, S. Francis used to celebrate it in the little village of Marin, on the other side of the river Drance, in the old church of S. Stephen.
On one occasion he went to preach in an old parish church near Allinges; it was S. Stephen's Day, 1595, and he summoned the inhabitants as usual by ringing a bell, but, as it was very bad weather, only seven people came. Some one said to him that it was not worth while his preaching to so small an audience. He replied, "One soul is as precious to me as a thousand;" and he began a most eloquent discourse on the Invocation of Saints, of which he explained the doctrine, and refuted the Protestant objections with great clearness. Among his seven hearers was a magistrate of Thonon who had lately joined the Church, but had been beset by the ministers, who had succeeded in shaking his feeble faith. After the sermon, he threw himself at the feet of S. Francis and exclaimed, "You have saved my soul this day!" He then declared that he had meditated abjuring his new Catholicism next Thursday; that having heard the bell ring, and seen only half-a-dozen poor peasants obey the summons, and come to the church, he had thought that, if S. Francis were to preach, it would be a proof that he loved souls, but if he did not preach, then he would be convinced that he sought applause. He went on to say that the pains taken by S. Francis to explain to those half-dozen peasants the doctrine of the Communion of Saints, had cleared away his difficulties, and had convinced him of the grand and unutterable truth of the Catholic Church, of which he would ever remain a member. Little by little the work advanced; Francis was given three energetic assistants; for some time the progress was very small, but the great mass of the people were like an avalanche, slowly undermined, to fall in a body at the foot of the Cross.
It would exceed our limits to detail the steps by which S. Francis advanced the cause. Let us turn to the crowning of his labour. In 1597, he celebrated the "Forty Hours" Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament at Thonon. The churches of S. Augustine and S. Hippolytus had been given up to the Catholics, and the Bishop arrived to consecrate them anew, and to administer the Sacraments of Confirmation and Ordination for the first time for sixty-three years. An enormous crowd assembled from all quarters. After the Blessed Sacrament had been carried in procession through the town, it was placed in an oratory erected for the purpose. Very soon a crowd came up, consisting of three hundred people, inhabitants of Bellevaux, all begging to be admitted into the Church. The inhabitants of S. Cergue arrived next, bearing with them a cross which had been concealed by them between two walls during the Calvinist persecution, and which cross remains in the hamlet to this day. Some of these poor people arrived barefoot bearing other emblems of the Passion of our Lord, the spear, the nails, the crown of thorns. Then came the people of Bonneville, with the nobility of the Chablais. One portion of the procession arrived later than the rest, and that was from the village of Ternier. They had been attacked by the fanatics of Geneva on their way. During the "Forty Hours" of Adoration, prayers, meditations, catechizings, and sermons succeeded each other without intermission. The personal love which all the people felt for S. Francis, together with his tender and touching exhortations, gave an additional impulse to the devotion of the spectators. Whole villages took the opportunity of returning to the faith of their fathers; and when the Exposition was over, the Bishop and S. Francis had several hard days' work in receiving such numberless abjurations and administering to them the rites of conditional baptism and confirmation.
On September 30th, the Duke of Savoy visited Thonon, and the Chablais ceased to be Protestant. Few heretics now remained, and the Duke ordered them to cross the lake to the land of Vaud, as the Calvinists before had expelled those who would not submit to the abolition of their religion. The spiritual conquest achieved by Francis has been commonly reckoned to have amounted to 72,000 souls.
In 1599, S. Francis was appointed coadjutor bishop of Geneva. The continual disputes between France and Savoy were at length adjusted by a treaty contracted at Lyons, by which the latter government yielded to the former the province of Gex to the north of the lake of Geneva, containing thirty-seven parishes, with about 30,000 inhabitants. S. Francis visited Paris in 1602, and persuaded Henry IV. to re-establish the exercise of the Catholic religion throughout Gex, wherever there were a sufficient number of Catholics; only the king stipulated that this should be done gradually, so as to avoid giving alarm to the Protestants.
Francis now returned to Savoy, where the failing health of the aged Bishop of Geneva made it necessary for him to be present. Some time previous to his death, he had the consolation of celebrating the jubilee at Thonon, by which the history of the conversion of the Chablais was wound up. Hundreds of thousands of pilgrims of all ranks, in companies preceded by cross and banner, poured from all the country round, making the Alpine valleys resound with their pious chants, as they thanked God for having brought them out of darkness into the glorious liberty of the children of God. More than a hundred confessors were engaged continually at the tribunal of penance; and altogether 62,000 communions were made in the church of Thonon. On Dec. 8th, 1702, Francis was consecrated bishop, and appointed to the see of Geneva, in the parish church of Thonon.
The first business which Francis undertook after he was settled at Annecy, the seat of the Bishops of Geneva, after their expulsion by the Calvinists from the city of Geneva, was to establish a confraternity of Christian Doctrine, and to make catechetical instruction his strongest point. He heard the classes himself every Sunday. A more interesting sight there could not be than to behold him, seated in front of the altar, teaching the little ones, the girls on one side, and the boys on the other. Twice in the year he made a festival for the children, and went through the city with them processionally, singing Litanies. The influence of his kindness over them was so great, that he never came forth, without the children running out from every nook and corner of the streets to ask his blessing or kiss his robe. When some friends complained of the troops of them who followed him, he said gently, "Suffer them to come, they are my own dear little people."
In 1603, when he was preaching the Lent course of sermons at Dijon, by invitation of the magistrates, he made the acquaintance of Jane Frances of Chantal, in combination with whom he afterwards founded the Order of the Visitation. In 1605 and 1606, he made a general visitation of his whole diocese, undergoing great fatigue, and often danger, in traversing the Alpine districts, which formed the greatest part of it, and everywhere preaching, catechizing, and hearing confessions. In 1618, Francis was chosen by the Duke of Savoy to accompany an embassy to Paris to negotiate the marriage of his son with the daughter of Henry IV., and sister of Louis XIII. The negotiations of the embassy lasted for nearly a year, during which Francis received incessant invitations to preach, which he did almost daily; the people never tiring of listening to him. The secret of his power lay in the exquisite charm of divine grace which radiated from him. The churches were so crowded, that it more than once happened that a ladder had to be brought for the preacher to enter by the window, the doors being completely blocked up. People ran to gaze at him, or to touch his robe as he passed in the streets. Cardinal de Retz, Bishop of Paris, had set his heart on having him as his coadjutor, and offered him a rich pension, the entire control of his diocese, and the appointment of his brother, John Francis, to succeed him at Geneva, if he would consent to come; but all was in vain.
By degrees the whole of the territory of Gex was catholicized, and Francis had the felicity of continually organizing fresh parishes which had submitted to the Gospel of Christ. Towards the close of 1622, he was invited to attend the Duke of Savoy at Avignon, where he was to meet Louis XIII. Francis had a presentiment that this journey would be his last; but he did not think it right to decline the invitation of his sovereign. Accordingly he made preparation, with the utmost calmness, as if to return no more. He made his will, and gave directions concerning his funeral, which he desired should be modest. On November 8th he bade farewell to his friends and started next day. At Lyons a trifling incident happened, which is worth relating, as an example of his sweet and gentle demeanour. As he was going on board the boat, the ferryman refused to receive him without his passport. When his attendants were angry at the delay, the bishop remarked, "Let him alone, he knows the duties of a boatman; we have forgotten that of a traveller." He had to wait an hour for the passport in a bitterly cold wind. When at last they got on board, he went and sat by the boatman, observing, "I wish to make friends with this good man, and to talk to him a little of our Blessed Lord."
At Avignon he held aloof from all the magnificence which the reunion of two courts in that splendid age so lavishly displayed, and spent his time in prayer, and in conference with religious persons. On his way home he remained at Lyons, very ill. Nevertheless he said his midnight Mass on Christmas morning and preached on the day with great fervour. He then heard confessions, and said his third Mass shortly before noon, after which he broke his fast. Then he gave the habit to two novices, preached, received a number of visitors, and waited on the Queen Marie de Medicis, who was to leave Lyons next day. Yet he was actually a dying man when he thus crowded such astonishing exertions into one day. Next day, the Feast of S. Stephen, he bade his last farewell to the nuns of the Visitation, the order he had founded. On the following morning he confessed, said Mass, and gave the Holy Communion to the nuns. The Superioress noticed his altered looks. Outside the church he was detained talking to some noblemen. It was cold and foggy, and he felt a chill. By the time he got home he was excessively fatigued and ill; but he sat down to write letters, and received several visitors. On their departure his servant came in, and began to tell him about a sermon he had heard, in which the preacher exhorted the Queen to love her servants. Francis said, "And you, do you love me?" The good servant could not speak for weeping, seeing how deadly ill he looked. The saint continued: "And I, too, love you well; but let us love God above all," As he said these words he sank back in a fit. Next day the physicians resorted to all the expedients used in the barbarous surgery of the age, blisters on the head, the application of a hot iron to the nape of the neck, and a red-hot ball pressed on the crown till it burnt to the bone. He gradually sank after these operations, and his lips moving in prayer, when unable to utter words, those in attendance knelt and recited the "Recommendation for a departing soul," during which his gentle spirit departed to its rest.
The body, after having been embalmed, was removed to Annecy, and reposes in the Church of the Visitation.
[Illustration: Decoration]
FOOTNOTES:
[132] He is said to have glazed the east window of his oratory with a pane of an hitherto unheard of size.
[133] The following life is epitomized from Mr. Ormsby's "Life of S. Francis of Sales," and "The Mission of S. Francis of Sales in the Chablais" by Lady Herbert. See also Addenda at end of this volume.
January 30.
S. SERENA, _M., at Metz_, A.D. 303. S. SABINA OR SAVINA, _W., in the Milanese, beginning 4th cent._ S. BARSAS, _B.C., of Edessa, circ._ A.D. 371. S. FELIX, _Pope_, A.D. 530. S. ALDEGUND, _V., at Maubeuge in France, circ._ A.D. 680. S. ADELELM, _Ab., Burgos, circ._ A.D. 1100. S. HYACINTHA, _V., at Viterbo_, A.D. 1640.
S. BARSAS, B.C. OF EDESSA.
(ABOUT A.D. 371.)
[Roman Martyrology. Authority: Theodoret, Hist. Eccles. lib. iv. c. 16.]
Barses or Barsas, Bishop of Edessa was banished by the Arian Emperor Valens to the Isle of Aradus; but when it was found that multitudes resorted to him, for he was filled with apostolic gifts, the emperor sent him to Oxyrynchus, a city of Egypt But as his fame still attracted attention, he was banished to a greater distance; and this old man, "who was worthy of heaven, was then conveyed to the fortress called Philae, situated on the frontier of the barbarian nations."
S. ALDEGUND, V.
(A.D. 680.)
[Roman and many ancient Martyrologies; by others on Jan. 27th, or Nov. 13th, but these were probably days of translation of relics. Authorities; a life by a contemporary quoted in an anonymous life compiled from already existing notices; another by one Hugbald, and another by a monk of S. Ghislain.]
[Illustration: S. ALDEGUND. After Cahier. Jan. 30.]
The blessed Aldegund was the daughter of Waldbert, Count of Hainault. Her whole heart was given to Christ whom she chose as her heavenly bridegroom. Her parents, moved by her example, renounced the world, and distributed their wealth among the poor. After their death, in the year 661, Aldegund took the veil, and retired into the forest of Maubeuge where she built a convent, and became the first abbess. When her fair fame was attacked by wicked slanders, so that she suffered agonies of grief, she struggled hard to submit to the hand of God, and at last, bowing completely to His will, she desired that He would try her with ever keener sufferings, to perfect her by affliction. She was shortly after attacked with cancer in the breast, from which she died on Jan. 30th, A.D. 680.
S. ADELELM, AB. OF BURGOS.
(ABOUT A.D. 1100.)
[Authority: his life by Rudolf the monk, who died 1137. S. Adelelm is called also _Elesmo_ or _Elmo_; and is not to be confounded with another Adelelm or Elmo, who is only beatified.]
S. Adelelm was a noble of Lyons in France, and served in the army, till God called him to a higher walk, then he renounced the world, and became a monk in the Abbey of Chaise-Dieu, after a visit to Rome. He was ordained priest by Ranco, Bishop of the Auvergne, but when he heard that the bishop had been suspended for having simonically obtained the see, he refused to execute the priestly office, till a successor was appointed. To see him, Adelelm started one stormy night. The way was dark, and the tempest raged with such fury that, but that it was necessary, he would not have started then. However, he took a candle, lighted it, and gave it to his comrade, and bade him lead the way. Notwithstanding the violence of the gale, the flame burnt steady, though not enclosed in a lantern, and illumined their road. From this, the electric lights seen at mastheads are called by sailors in the Mediterranean S. Elmo's lights. He was afterwards invited to Spain, and he was chosen abbot of his order in the monastery of Burgos, where he died.
S. HYACINTHA, V.
(A.D. 1640.)
[Roman Martyrology. Authority: the Bull of her Canonization.]
S. Hyacintha was the daughter of Mark Anthony Mariscotti, Count of Vignanello, and of Octavia Orsini; she was born in 1588, and received in baptism the name of Clarissa, which she exchanged for that of Hyacintha on entering the cloister.
In her earliest childhood she was remarkable for her piety, but as she grew older she became giddy and frivolous. In her 17th year she was, one day, playing with the rope of a well at Vignanello, when she slipped over the edge, and hung, entangled in the rope, which held her some minutes suspended above the horrible pit, till a servant, observing her peril, from the castle window, ran to her assistance, and rescued her. The shock of this accident seemed for a while to steady her. She shortly after fell in love, and a marriage was projected, but when, through family circumstances, it was broken off, Clarissa would hear of nothing but of taking the veil, and burying her broken heart in a convent. Her father refused at first, but yielding at length to her sentimental vehemence, which he mistook for real vocation, allowed her to take the veil in the convent of S. Bernardine at Viterbo.
In the convent her heart soon healed, and she became an annoyance to the whole sisterhood by her vanity and frivolity. After ten years, she fell ill, and sent for her confessor. He, knowing her character, and wearied with her shallowness, sharply rebuked her with, "Beware, Hyacintha, heaven is no place for giddy-pates!" His words startled her, and she cried out, "Am I then lost for ever."
"No," he answered, "not if you seek pardon for your sins of the just and merciful God, with sincere resolution of amendment, and cease to be a scandal and worry to the poor sisters of this house, by your emptiness and light talk, and worldly ways." Bursting into a flood of tears, she promised amendment, sent for all the sisters, and humbly asked their pardon, and prayers. Then she cast herself at her confessor's feet, and made a sincere confession. She now completely changed her life; she would not wear shoes, and only put on the meanest dress. She strove manfully to overcome the purposelessness of her life and the feebleness of her will; and as she gradually mastered herself and her vanity, there broke on that soul, so long entangled in a fog of petty cares and pleasures, the burning sun of the love of Jesus, filling her with reality, earnestness, and devotion. In after years her character was completely the reverse of what it had been, was full of dignity and meekness, and above all, had a _purpose_ in it. In a time of want, she founded two institutions, one for the secret relief of decayed gentlefolks, suffering, but too proud to ask alms, or display their misery; the other a hospital for old people. Both societies, known under the name of the Oblates of S. Mary, exist to this day at Viterbo.
The mercy of God rewarded this poor servant, and she was given singular privileges, a remarkable gift of prayer, and a discernment of spirits, that is, she could read the troubles of hearts. She died in the year 1640, calling on the sacred names of Jesus and Mary, in the 55th year of her age.
She was beatified by Benedict XIII., in 1726, and canonized by Pius VII., on May 24th, 1807.
This is one of those instances of the love and fore-thought of the Church in holding up to every class of mind and sort of temptation, an example of salvation in it. We have seen her fearlessness in exhibiting S. James the hermit to the fallen religious, here she shows to the thoughtless and giddy female mind, that for it Jesus thirsts in spite of its emptiness, and that for it there is sanctity if it will try to seek it.
[Illustration: Virgin in Crescent, after Albert Durer.]
January 31.
S.S. CYRUS, JOHN, ATHANASIA AND OTHERS, _MM. in Egypt_ A.D. 250. S. GEMINIAN, _B. of Modena, in Italy_. S. JULIUS _P._, AND JULIAN _D._, _at Novara, in Italy, beginning of 5th cent._ S. MARCELLA, _W., at Rome_, A.D. 410. S. PATROCLUS, _B.M. in France_. S. GAUD, _B., of Evreux in Normandy, circ._ A.D. 531. S. AIDAN OR MAIDOC, _B., of Ferns, in Ireland, beginning of 7th cent._ S. ADAMNAN, _P., of Coldingham, end of 7th cent._ S. ULPHIA, _V., at Amiens, 8th cent._ S. ATHANASIUS, _B., of Methone in the Peloponesus, 9th cent._ S. EUSEBIUS, _Monk of S. Gall in Switzerland_, A.D. 884. S. MARTIN, _P., of Soure near Coimbra, in Portugal_, A.D. 1147. S. SERAPION, _M., among the Moors_, A.D. 1240. S. PETER NOLASCO, _C., in Spain_, A.D. 1256.
S.S. CYRUS, JOHN AND OTHERS, MM., IN EGYPT.
(A.D. 250.)
[Commemorated by Greeks, Latins, and Copts on the same day. Authority: ancient Greek Acts.]
Cyrus, a physician of Alexandria, who, by the opportunities which his profession gave him, had converted many sick persons to the faith; and John, an Arabian, hearing that a lady, called Athanasia, and her three daughters, Theodosia, Theoctista and Eudoxia, of whom the eldest was only fifteen years of age, had suffered torments at Canope in Egypt for the name of Christ, went thither to console them. They were themselves apprehended and cruelly beaten; their sides were burnt with torches, and salt and vinegar were poured into their wounds in the presence of Anastasia and her daughters, who were also tortured after them. At length the four ladies, and a few days after, Cyrus and John, were beheaded, the two latter on this day.
S. MARCELLA, W.
(A.D. 410.)
[Roman Martyrology. Authority: the Letters of S. Jerome.]
Marcella, a young widow, whose name alone is enough to recall the best days of the Roman republic, and whose rare beauty, enhanced by the long and illustrious line of her ancestors, drew around her numerous suitors, rejected the suit of Cerealtis, the consul, and resolved to imitate the lives of the ascetics of the East. Afterwards, when S. Jerome came to Rome to renew the instructions and narratives of those holy men by adding to them the living commentary of his own life, Marcella, with her mother Albinia, and her sister Asella, placed herself at the head of that select number of illustrious matrons who took him as their guide and oracle. She astonished the holy doctor by her knowledge of the Divine Scriptures; she fatigued him by her thirst always to know more of them than he could teach her; she made him afraid to find in her a judge rather than a disciple. In her palace on Mount Aventine, she collected, under the presidency of Jerome, the most pious among the noble ladies, for mutual strength and enlightenment. After having thus first given to Rome the true model of a Christian widow, she passed the last thirty years of her life in her suburban villa transformed into a monastery. The Goths under Alaric plundered Rome in 410. S. Marcella was scourged by them to deliver up her treasures, which however she had long before distributed among the poor. All the while she was in anguish of soul for her dear spiritual child Principia, and falling at the feet of the cruel soldiers, she tearfully implored them to spare her insult. They conducted them both to the Church of S. Paul, to which Alaric had granted the right of sanctuary, and suffered the beautiful young nun Principia to remain unmolested. S. Marcella did not survive this long, but died peacefully in the arms of Principia, about the end of August, 410, but her name occurs in the Roman Martyrology on Jan. 31st.
[Illustration: S. MARCELLA. After an Engraving of the Seventeenth Century. Jan. 31.]
S. AIDAN OR MAIDOC, B., OF FERNS.
(ABOUT A.D. 632.)
[S. Aidan of Ferns is not to be confounded with the illustrious S. Aidan of Lindisfarne, the apostle of Northumbria, who is commemorated on Aug. 31st. The name seems to have been a very common one in Ireland, for Colgan asserts that there are in the ancient Irish Martyrologies as many as thirty-five Saints of this name. Authority: an ancient life from Kilkenny, but certainly not more ancient than the 12th cent.]
S. Maidoc or Aidan was the son of Setna, a noble of Connaught, by his wife Edna; who, having for a long time no heir, sought that blessing from God by alms-deeds and prayers; which was at last granted. This child of prayer was born in the island called Innis-Breagh-muigh, in a lake in the diocese of Kilmore, and from his childhood declined evil and followed that which is good. After having learnt the first rudiments of piety in his own country, he left home, and sailed into Britain, to place himself under the discipline of the great S. David of Menevia. With that holy man he remained many years, and was one of his favourite disciples. A remarkable instance of his prompt obedience is related. Being called by a superior from reading his book in the field near the monastery, to follow a pair of oxen at the plough, he made such haste to obey, that he left his book open in the field, a heavy shower of rain fell, but when he recovered the book it was not wet. S. David had seen him leave the volume open before the rain fell, and calling him to him, bade him prostrate himself as a punishment for having, as he supposed, by his carelessness, spoiled a valuable book. S. Maidoc at once obeyed, and S. David went about his work and forgat him. After some hours, when the office was being said, he observed that Maidoc was not present. Then he sent in quest of him, and he was found prostrate on the sea shore, where his master had bidden him lie, and he had not risen, because S. David had not removed his penance.
At length, with the blessing of his master, taking with him other religious of Menevia, he returned to Ireland, where he founded many churches and monasteries; of which the chief was Ferns to which he was consecrated first Bishop. The prodigies related of him, are like so many in the lives of the Irish Saints, quite incredible, as for instance, his having driven to Rome and back in twenty-four hours, his having fed six wolves with six sheep and then restored the sheep whole; his having brought a sea-cow out of the ocean to draw his plough, and having returned from a visit to S. David in Wales on the back of a sea-monster; his having called his bell, which he had left behind him Wales, and it came over the waves with promptitude.
All these are fables, which accumulated in process of time about the lives of the Irish Saints, before they were committed to writing.
S. ULPHIA V.
(8TH CENT.)
[From the life of S. Domitius, October 23rd; and from an ancient life of the Saint.]
[Illustration: S. ULPHIA. From Cahier. Jan 31.]
The blessed Ulphia was the daughter of noble parents in Gaul, she was singularly beautiful in face and graceful in person; consequently she was sought by many suitors, but, with her father's consent she vowed to observe perpetual chastity. At the age of twenty-five she received the veil from the hands of the Bishop of Amiens, and then she retired to S. Acheuil at some little distance from the city, where she ministered to S. Domitius, an aged hermit and canon of Amiens. The old man was wont to knock at the door of her little hut as he passed on his way to matins, and she rose and accompanied him. Now the place was marshy and many frogs inhabited the pools. One night they sang so shrilly that Ulphia could not sleep, but tossed on her couch, and drew her serge-habit about her ears, without being able to stop their voices from penetrating her brain and keeping her awake. After many hours she fell asleep. Shortly after, Domitius came by and rapped with his stick at the door. There was no answer, so he called, "Ulphia, my child, get up!" Then he rapped louder than before. Still there was no answer, so he called, "Ulphia, my child, the second watch of the night is past." As he received no answer, he supposed she had gone on before. But when he reached the church, he looked round, and he saw her not. And when matins was over, he returned in haste and fear, thinking something had befallen his dear child. But when he came to the cell, Ulphia stood in the door. Then she reproached him for not having called her. "I did call thee, I knocked loud," said the old man. "It was the frogs' doing!" exclaimed Ulphia, and she told him how they had kept her awake half the night. Then casting herself on the ground, she prayed to God to quiet the noisy frogs; and Domitius knelt beside her and said, Amen. After that the reptiles troubled her no more.
When she was dying she prayed, "Saviour! sanctify, confirm, keep, rule, strengthen, comfort me; and in the end bring me to Thy sempiternal joys." And when the two virgins who had watched by her had said Amen, she fell asleep, and they left her. At dawn, one of them looked in and saw that she was dead, and in dying she had crossed her hands upon her breast, her face was bright and her lips as though she smiled.
S. SERAPION, M.
(A.D. 1240.)
He was an Englishman, whom S. Peter Nolasco received into his Order at Barcelona. He made two journeys among the Moors for the ransoming of captives, in 1240. The first was to Murcia, in which he purchased the liberty of ninety-eight slaves; the second to Algiers, in which he redeemed eighty-seven, but remained himself a hostage for the full payment of the money. He boldly preached Christ to the Mahometans, and baptised several, for which he was cruelly tortured, scourged, cut and mangled, at length fastened to a cross, and was thereon stabbed and quartered alive in the same year, 1240.
[Illustration: S. PETER NOLASCO, FOUNDER OF THE ORDER OF OUR LADY OF MERCY FOR THE REDEMPTION OF CAPTIVES. From Cahier. Jan. 31.]
S. PETER NOLASCO, C.
(A.D. 1256.)
[Roman Martyrology. Authority: life by Franciscus Zumel.]
Peter Nolasco sprang from one of the first families of Languedoc. He was born in the year 1189, in the village of Mas des Saintes Pucelles. His pious parents took pains to give him a good education, and to cultivate the germs of virtue which appeared early in his soul. They saw with gladness his compassion for the poor, and his love of prayer. The child was wont to distribute his pocket-money in alms, and he went regularly to the matin office sung shortly after midnight. When he was aged 15, he lost his father, who left him heir to a large estate, but he remained with his mother, a pious woman, who laboured to strengthen and confirm in him those graces which grew and expanded daily. Being solicited to marry, he remained some little while in hesitation, but at last, rising one night he cast himself before his crucifix in prayer, and remained till day broke in the east, imploring God's guidance, and then feeling a clear call, he resolved to devote his patrimony to the honour and glory of God, and himself to celibacy. He followed Simon de Montfort, in the crusade against the Albigenses, an heretical, or rather heathen sect, holding two Gods, one good, the other evil, and who had devastated Navarre, burning churches and massacring priests and monks. The crusade was conducted with too much of worldly ambition, and without that compassionate love which should seek to win by gentleness rather than force by the sword. But the cruel massacres which took place were not the work of the crusaders, but of a mixed multitude of camp-followers, who obeyed no officers but such as they chose to appoint, as appears from the contemporary accounts of that war. However, Peter Nolasco was in no way responsible for the barbarities which sullied this terrible war. In the battle of Muset, the King of Aragon, who headed the Albigenses, was killed, and his son, aged six, fell into the hands of Simon de Montfort, who appointed Peter Nolasco, then aged twenty-five, to be his tutor, and sent both together into Spain. In the court of the King of Barcelona, where the Kings of Aragon resided, Peter led the life of a recluse. The Moors at that time were possessed of a considerable portion of Spain, and great numbers of Christians groaned under their tyranny in miserable slavery both there and in Africa. Whenever Peter saw a Christian slave, he was moved with sorrow; and he resolved to devote his life to the redemption of captives. He endeavoured to found a religious order for a constant supply of men and means whereby to carry on so charitable an undertaking. This design met with great obstacles in the execution; but the Blessed Virgin appearing to the king, S. Raymund of Pennaforte, and S. Peter Nolasco, the same night, in visions, encouraged the prosecution of this charitable scheme.
In the year 1223 S. Peter took the vows before the Bishop of Barcelona, and he became first general of the new order, which was entitled "the Order of Our Lady of Mercy for the redemption of captives." It was confirmed by Pope Gregory IX. in 1225. The habit is white, with a white scapular, and the arms of Aragon were worn on the breast, by desire of the king.
S. Peter, after his religious profession, renounced all his business at court, and no entreaties of the king could prevail on him to appear there again, except once, when called to reconcile two powerful nobles, who by their dissension had kindled a civil war.
He made several journeys along the coasts, and to Algiers to purchase captives; on one of these expeditions he underwent imprisonment for the faith. He died on Christmas day, 1286. Almost his last words were those of the Psalmist, which summed up the efforts of his life, "The Lord hath sent redemption unto His people; He hath commanded His covenant for ever."
ADDENDA
_Page 443, S. Francis of Sales, B.C._
When he wrote this biography the author had not access to the original materials, as the Acta Sanctorum for January did not include S. Francis. He was therefore obliged to have recourse to two modern biographies, those of Mr. Ormsby and Lady Herbert, based on the "Vie de S. François de Sales," by M. Hamon, that has gone through a good number of editions. In 1878 appeared an article, "Two Sides to a Saint--S. Francis de Sales," by the Rev. L. Woolsey Bacon, which was published in _Macmillan's Magazine_ for September; it was founded on the Lives of S. Francis by Marsollier and Loyau d'Amboise, and M. Gabriel, the Protestant historian of Geneva. Marsollier did not write till 1700, and he quoted Cotolandi, who composed his Notice of the Saint in 1687. D'Amboise is unworthy of consideration, as his work was mere romance. Hamon's Life is, on the other hand, based on the letters of the Saint, and on the sworn depositions of eye-witnesses at his canonization. These latter are of very little value, as any unpartial reader who wades through such documents can assure himself. Anyhow they may contain, and do contain, fact along with some romance. In "Bulls of Canonization" much fable is introduced that will not endure serious examination. Where biographers disagree and mutually vituperate one another as false witnesses, our only resource is to go to the original letters of the Saint. Canon Mackey has written four essays to clear the character of Francis of Sales (London: Burns and Oates. 1883), and again in _Christian Literature_, 1896, and it must be admitted that he shows a good reason for mistrusting the charges brought against the Saint. Mr. Bacon had, for instance, accused S. Francis of addressing a female friend as "my dearest girl of my heart," whereas the original is "Ma très chère fille de mon coeur." At the time S. Francis was a bishop of fifty-one, and although the expression is not at all to the taste of an Englishman, has no more meaning than the gushing and fulsome words which close a French letter, or than our "My dear So-and-So," and "Yours sincerely." Mr. Bacon also charges the Saint with having played fast and loose with the affections of the young lady to whom he was engaged. But the evidence goes no further than to show that at the time he was moved by conflicting considerations--submission to the will of his parents and his own strong reluctance to enter the marriage state. Mr. Bacon, moreover, accuses the Saint of having carried on the conversion of the Chablais under the cover of the soldiers of the Duke of Savoy. The circumstances seem to have been these. In 1536 the Bernese, taking advantage of a rupture between France and Savoy, treacherously and without declaring war entered the territory of the latter power and occupied Gex and a portion of the Chablais. They then wrecked the churches, drove out the priests, and forbade the exercise of the Catholic religion. In 1564 Savoy recovered the country, and engaged to allow therein the exercise of the Protestant religion. This agreement was faithfully observed for twenty-five years, but in 1589 the Genevese and Bernese combined to reoccupy the country. It was recovered by the Duke of Savoy, who considered, and justly, that by this violation of the treaty by the Bernese he was freed from his obligation to tolerate Protestantism. The mission of S. Francis lasted for four years from September 1597, and unquestionably he had the power of the Duke of Savoy at his back, and did not scruple to invoke it. But that was the way of proselytising at the time. Protestants and Catholics alike leaned on the arm of flesh, and each was equally ready to employ the sword against the other.
But certainly at first S. Francis was not supported by the Duke in the manner he had expected and desired, and also no doubt can exist that when the sword was used he employed his best endeavours to prevent its being wantonly and cruelly wielded. His letters show plainly that his success in convincing the people of the Chablais was almost _nil_ till their fears were excited, and they were afforded other reasons for renouncing Protestantism than conviction that Romanism was better.
The real difficulty S. Francis encountered at first was that the people would not listen to him. The attitude of the people he thus describes: "One party do not wish to hear; the other excuse themselves on the risk they would run if the truce were broken, should they have shown any approval of Catholicism; ... others again are persuaded of the faith, but we cannot induce them to confess it, not knowing what will be the end of the truce" (Letter 9). In Letter 32 he asked the Duke to allow a senator to call the citizens together, and in his magisterial robes invite them to listen to his sermons.
At last conviction was supposed to be obtained, and a profession of submission to the Catholic faith extorted, when the inhabitants who were contumacious were threatened with expulsion. But it must be remembered that the Protestant cantons of Switzerland were equally intolerant, and determined to expel recalcitrant Catholics.
END OF VOL. 1.
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Transcriber's notes:
- Difference in spelling of 'Ken-tiern' and 'Kentiern' is caused by usage of words. - Difference in spelling of 'Münster' and 'Munster' is caused by different meanings. - Ligatures '[ae]' converted - as used/possible in latin texts - to 'ae'. - Inserted 'S.' (for Saint) Theoritgitha in alphabetical list (toc) of Saints.