part 1

, Labbe, t. 2, Bibl. Novæ, p. 591. Branche, Vies des SS. d’Auvergne et Velay. Baillet, &c.

ST. DABIUS OR DAVIUS, C.

A zealous Irish priest who preached with wonderful fruit in his own country and in Albany in Scotland; is titular saint of the parish of Domnach Cluana in the county of Down, and of Kippau in the Highlands, where a famous church is dedicated to God under his invocation by the name of Movean. See Colgan in MSS.

JULY XXIII.

SAINT APOLLINARIS, MARTYR.

BISHOP OF RAVENNA.

See Pinius in the Acts of the Saints, Julij, t. 5, p. 329, and Farlat, Illyrici Sacra, t. 1, p. 259.

St. Apollinaris was the first bishop of Ravenna. Bede, in his true Martyrology, says that he sat twenty years, and was crowned with martyrdom in the reign of Vespasian. His acts say that he was a disciple of St. Peter, and made by him bishop of Ravenna. Though their authority deserves little regard, this circumstance must be allowed, being agreeable to the time, and supported by other authorities. St. Peter Chrysologus, the most illustrious among his successors, has left us a sermon in honor of our saint,[261] in which he often styles him a martyr; but adds, that though he frequently spilt portions of his blood for the faith, and ardently desired to lay down his life for Christ, yet God preserved him a long time to his Church, and did not suffer the persecutors to take away his life. So he seems to have only been a martyr by the torments he endured for Christ, which he survived at least some days. His body lay first at Classis, four miles from Ravenna, still a kind of suburb to that city, and its sea-port, till it was choked up by the sands. In the year 549 his relics were removed into a more secret vault in the same church, as an inscription still extant there testifies. See Mabillon.[262] St. Fortunatus exhorted his friends to make pilgrimages to his tomb, and St. Gregory the Great ordered parties in doubtful suits at law to be sworn before it. Pope Honorius built a church under his name in Rome about the year 630. It occurs in all Martyrologies, and the high veneration which the Church paid early to his memory is a sufficient testimony of his eminent sanctity and apostolic spirit.

The virtue of the saints was true and heroic, because humble, and proof against all trials. That of the heathen philosophers was lame, and generally false and counterfeit, whence Tertullian calls the latter, Traders in fame. “Where is now the similitude,” says he, “between a philosopher and a Christian? a disciple of Greece and of heaven? a trader in fame, and a saver of souls?[263] between a man of words, and a man of works?” And St. Jerom writes, “A philosopher is an animal of fame, one who basely drudges for the breath of the people.”[264] Lactantius severely rallies Cicero, because, though he was very sensible of the vanity of the worship then established, yet he would not have that truth told the people for fear of unhinging the religion of the state. “Now what is to be done with a man,” says our Christian philosopher, “who knows himself in an error, yet wilfully dashes upon a rock, that the people may do so too? who makes no use of his wisdom for the regulation of his life, but entangles himself to ensnare others, whom, as the wiser person, he was obliged to rescue from error? But O Cicero, if you have any regard for virtue, attempt rather to deliver the people out of ignorance. It is a noble enterprise, and worthy all your powers of eloquence. Never fear but your oratory will hold out in so good a cause, which never failed you in the defence of so many bad ones. But Socrates’s prison is the thing you dread; and therefore truth must want a patron; but certainly, as a wise man, you ought to despise death in competition with truth; and you had fallen much more honorably by speaking well of truth, than for speaking ill of Antony; nor will you ever rise to that height of glory by your Philippics, as you would have done by laboring to undeceive the world, and dispute the people into their senses.”[265] The philosophers did not love truth well enough to suffer for it. Plato dissembled, for fear of Socrates’s hemlock; but the Christian religion raised its professors above all considerations present, for the joy that was set before them.

ST. LIBORIUS, BISHOP OF MANS, C.

He was descended of a noble Gaulish family, and by his innocence and sanctity of life was recommended to the priesthood in the church of Mans. He loved retirement and prayer, never conversed with seculars but on spiritual accounts, and linked himself only with those among the clergy whose actions and words were such as might inspire him more and more with the spirit of his state. His distinguished learning and virtue fixed all eyes upon him, and in 348 he was chosen fourth bishop of Mans. Indefatigable in all the functions of his charge, he prayed and fasted much, and was most attentive in succoring the necessities of the poor, by that means to draw down the blessing of God upon himself and his flock. He built and endowed many new churches in his diocess, and having governed it forty-nine years, died about the year 397. His remains were translated to Paderborn in 836, and he is honored as patron of that city. See Tillemont, t. 10, p. 307. Fleury, l. 28, n. 61, p. 495.

JULY XXIV.

ST. LUPUS, BISHOP OF TROYES, C.

From his ancient accurate life, extant in Surius, and illustrated with notes by F. Bosch the Bollandist, Julij, t. 7, p. 19. See also Ceillier, t. 15, p. 40. Tillemont, t. 16, p. 127. Rivet, Hist. Littér. t. 2, p. 486. Calmet, Hist. de Lorraine, t. 1, l. 6, n. 44, p. 274, and Camuzat, Catal. Episc. Trecens. p. 153, et Antiquitates Tricassinæ, &c., 8vo., 1610.

A. D. 478.

St. Lupus, called in French St. Leu, was born of a noble family at Toul, and being learned and eloquent, pleaded at the bar for some years with great reputation. He married Pimeniola, a virtuous sister of St. Hilary of Arles. After six years spent in holy wedlock, fired with an ardent desire of serving God with greater perfection, they parted by mutual consent, and made a mutual vow of perpetual continency. Lupus betook himself to the famous abbey of Lerins, then governed by St. Honoratus. He lived there a year, and added many austerities to those prescribed by the rule, yet always regulated his fervor by the advice of St. Honoratus. He sold great part of his estate for the benefit of the poor, when he renounced the world. After the first year, when St. Honoratus was made bishop of Arles, he went to Macon in Burgundy to dispose of an estate he had left there, in charitable uses. He was preparing to return to Lerins when he was met by the deputies of the church of Troyes, which, upon the death of St. Ursus, in 426, had chosen him bishop, the eighth from St. Amator, founder of this see. His resistance was to no purpose, and he was consecrated by the prelates of the province of Sens. In this dignity he continued the same practices of humility, mortification, and as much as possible even of poverty. He never wore any other garments than a sackcloth and a single tunic, lay upon boards, and allotted every second night entire to watching in prayer. He often passed three days without taking any nourishment, and after so rigorous a fast allowed himself nothing but a little barley bread. Thus he lived above twenty years; laboring at the same time in all his pastoral functions with a zeal worthy an apostle.

About the latter end of the fourth century, Pelagius, a British monk, and Celestius a Scot, broached their heresy in Africa, Italy, and the East, denying the corruption of human nature by original sin, and the necessity of divine grace. One Agricola, a disciple of these heresiarchs, had spread this poison in Britain. The Catholics addressed themselves to their neighbors the bishops of Gaul, begging their assistance to check the growing evil. An assembly of bishops, probably held at Arles in 429, deputed St. Germanus of Auxerre and St. Lupus of Troyes, to go over into our island to oppose this mischief. The two holy pastors, burning with zeal for the glory of Christ, accepted the commission the more willingly as it seemed laborious and painful. They came over and entirely banished the heresy by their prayers, preaching, and miracles. St. Lupus, after his return, set himself with fresh vigor to reform the manners of his own flock. In this he displayed so great prudence and piety, that St. Sidonius Apollinaris calls him, “The father of fathers and bishop of bishops, the chief of the Gallican prelates, the rule of manners, the pillar of truth, the friend of God, and the intercessor to him for men.”[266] He spared no pains to save one lost sheep, and his labors were often crowned with a success which seemed miraculous. Among other instances it is recorded that a certain person of his diocess, named Gallus, had forsaken his wife and withdrawn to Clermont. St. Lupus could not see this soul perish, but wrote to St. Sidonius, then bishop of Clermont, a strong letter so prudently tempered with sweetness, that Gallus by reading it was at once terrified and persuaded, and immediately set out to return to his wife. Upon which St. Sidonius cried out, “What is more wonderful than a single reprimand, which both affrights a sinner into compunction, and makes him love his censor!” This letter of St. Lupus and several others are lost; but we have one by which he congratulated Sidonius upon his promotion to his see, having passed from a secular prefecture or government to the episcopacy, which charge he shows to be laborious, difficult and dangerous. He strongly exhorts him, above all things, to humility. This letter was written in 471, and is given us by D’Achery.[267]

God at that time afflicted the western empire with grievous calamities, and Attila with a numberless army of Huns overran Gaul, calling himself “The Scourge of God,” to punish the sins of the people. Rheims, Cambray, Besançon, Auxerre, and Langres had already felt the effects of his fury, and Troyes was the next place threatened. The holy bishop had recourse to God in behalf of his people by fervent prayer, which he continued for many days, prostrate on the ground, fasting and weeping without intermission. At length, putting on his bishop’s attire, full of confidence in God, he went out to meet the barbarian at the head of his army. Attila, though an infidel, seeing him, was moved to reverence the man of God, who came up to him boldly, followed by his clergy in procession, with a cross carried before them. He spoke to the king first, and asked him who he was? “I am,” said Attila, “the scourge of God.” “Let us respect whatever comes to us from God,” replied the bishop; “but if you are the scourge with which heaven chastises us, remember you are to do nothing but what that almighty hand, which governs and moves you, permits.” Attila, struck with these words, promised the prelate to spare the city. Thus the saint’s prayer was a better defence than the most impregnable ramparts. It protected a city which had neither arms, nor garrison, nor walls, against an army of at least four hundred thousand men, which, after plundering Thrace, Illyricum, and Greece, crossing the Rhine, had filled with blood and desolation the most flourishing countries of France. Attila, turning with his army from Troyes, was met on the plains of Chalons by Aëtius, the brave Roman general, and there defeated. In his retreat he sent for St. Lupus, and caused him to accompany him as far as the Rhine, imagining that the presence of so great a servant of God would be a safeguard to himself and his army; and sending him back, he recommended himself to his prayers. This action of the good bishop was misconstrued by the Roman generals, as if he had favored the escape of the barbarian, and he was obliged to leave Troyes for two years. He spent that time in religious retirement, in great austerity and continual contemplation. When his charity and patience had at length overcome the envy and malice of men, he went back to his church, which he governed fifty-two years, dying in the year 479. The chief part of his body is kept in a rich silver shrine; his skull and principal part of his head in another far more precious, in the figure of a bishop, formed of silver, adorned with jewels and diamonds said by some to be the richest in France. Both are in the abbatial church of regular canons of St. Austin, which bears the name of St. Lupus. He was first buried in the church of St. Martin in Areis, of the same Order, then out of the walls, though long since within them. Many churches in England bear his name. The family name of Sentlow among us is derived from St. Leu, as Camden remarks.

It was by omnipotent prayer that the saints performed such great wonders. By it Moses could ward off the destruction of many thousands, and by a kind of holy violence disarm the divine vengeance.[268] By it Elias called down fire and rain from heaven. By it Manasses in chains found mercy, and recovered his throne; Ezechias saw his health restored, and life prolonged; the Ninevites were preserved from destruction; Daniel was delivered from the lions, St. Peter from his chains, and St. Thecla from the fire. By it Judith and Esther saved God’s people. By the same have the servants of God so often commanded nature, defeated armies, removed mountains, cast out devils, cured the sick, raised the dead, drawn down divine blessings, and averted the most dreadful judgments from the world, which, as an ancient father says, subsists by the prayers of the saints.[269]

ST. FRANCIS SOLANO, C.

This saint was born at Montilia in Andalusia to 1549, performed his studies in the schools of the Jesuits, and in 1569 made his religious profession amongst the Franciscans in the place of his nativity. An extraordinary humility and contempt of himself and of worldly vanity and applause; self-denial, obedience, meekness, patience, and the love of silence, recollection, and prayer mental and vocal, formed his character. Whole nights he frequently passed without sleep on the steps of the altar, before the Blessed Sacrament, in meditation and devout prayer, with wonderful interior delight and devotion. Burning with holy zeal and charity, and an ardent desire of the salvation of souls, after he was promoted to the priesthood, he divided his time between silent retirement and the ministry of preaching. His sermons, though destitute of the ornaments of studied eloquence, powerfully withdrew men from vice, and kindled in their breasts an ardent desire of virtue. The saint was appointed master of novices, first in the convent of Arizava, two miles from Cordova, afterward in that of Monte. Then he was made guardian in the province of Granada. His whole life, says Alvarez de Paz, may be called a holy uninterrupted course of zealous action, yet was at the same time a continued most fervent prayer, abounding with heavenly illuminations and consolations. A perfect spirit of poverty emptied his heart of the love of all created things, that Christ alone might occupy and fill it; and he rejoiced in his nakedness and privation of earthly goods, that he might barely use them to serve the necessities of nature, without suffering them to enslave his heart, or to find any place in his affections, which he reserved pure and entire for spiritual goods. Interior humility and self-denial perfected the disengagement of his heart, and the extraordinary austerities of his penitential life subjected his senses, and rendered the liberty which his soul enjoyed complete; by which he was prepared for the spirit of prayer and the pure love of heavenly things. Earthly comforts used with moderation, and as supports of our weakness, may be sanctified by a good intention; but whilst they bolster up our weakness, they keep it alive and strengthen it; and if they are sought after, or made use of with eagerness and attachment, immoderately or frequently, they strongly nourish self love and sensuality, and produce a distrust of the solid food of devotion and divine love.

The mortified lives of all the saints who arrived at a familiarity with God in holy prayer, are but a comment upon, or sensible examples of, the indispensable gospel precept of dying to ourselves. By no other steps could St. Francis Solano have arrived at the perfection of spiritual life. A pestilence which raged at Granada afforded him an opportunity of exerting his heroic virtue in attending the infected; but a more noble theatre of action was opened to him by the mission into America, upon which he was sent. Peru and Tucuman were the countries in which he reaped the principal harvest; and the five last years of his life he preached chiefly at Lima, and induced the inhabitants of that great city, by sincere repentance, to appease the divine anger, which they had provoked by their sins. The reputation of his wonderful sanctity was enhanced by many miracles. Yet by humility he looked upon himself as the least among men, and he never appeared in public but when called abroad by zeal for the salvation of souls. Before his death he was purified by a lingering illness, and in his last moments repeated those words of the psalmist: _I have rejoiced in those things which have been said to me: We will go into the house of the Lord_. He departed this life on the 14th of June in 1610, the sixty-second of his age, and fortieth of his religious profession. F. Alvarez de Paz, an eye-witness, describes the stately and religious pomp of his funeral, at which the viceroy of Peru and the archbishop of Lima assisted, with extraordinary devotion. The saint was beatified by Clement X. and canonized by Benedict XIII. in 1726, and his principal festival was appointed on the 24th of July. See his life compiled by Didacus of Cordova; also by Alphonsus of Mondietta. See likewise the History of the Provinces of Peru, and the edifying account of our saint given by the pious and learned Jesuit F. Alvarez de Paz, l. 5, c. 14, t. 2, Op. p. 1752 and 1753; and Benedict XIV., De Canoniz. t. 1, Append. Also the Lives of Saints, published in High Dutch, by F. Maximilian Rasler, S. J.; and F. Charlevoix, Hist. de Paraguay, t. 1, l. 3, and 4.

SS. ROMANUS AND DAVID, MM.

PATRONS OF MUSCOVY.[270]

The history of the conversion of the Russians (now called Muscovites) to the faith of Christ, has been perplexed by the mistakes of many who have treated this point of history. The learned Jesuit F. Antony Possevin was betrayed into many falsities concerning this people.[271] And upon his authority some have pretended that the Muscovites received the faith from the Greek schismatics, and at the same time adhered to their schism; than which, nothing can be more notoriously false, as Henschenius and Papebrochius[272] show. F. Stilting, another learned Bollandist, has demonstrated by an express dissertation,[273] that the Muscovites were at first Catholics, and that even in the time of the Council of Florence the Catholics and schismatics in Russia made two equal halves. The Greek schism was formed by Cerularius several years after the conversion of the Russians. The schism indeed of Phocius was a short prelude to it.

Cedrenus, Zonaras, and some others relate, that an army of Russians besieged Constantinople in the time of the emperor Michael III., when Photius held that see; and that being obliged to raise the siege, they obtained certain Greek priests from Constantinople, who instructed them in the Christian faith. This first mission Baronius places in 853, Pagi in 861; but this must either be understood of some tribe of Russians in Bohemia, where St. Cyril then preached; or these authors must have confounded together things which happened at different times; for the emperor Constantine Porphyrogenetta, who lived near that time, and could not but be acquainted with this transaction, says both in his life of his grandfather, Basil the Macedonian, and in his book, On administering the Empire, that the Russians besieged the city in the time of Photius, but that they were converted to the faith by priests sent at their request from Constantinople in the time of Basil the Macedonian and the patriarch St. Ignatius, whom that prince restored upon his ascending the throne in 867; which also appears from Zonarus.

The first plant of the faith in this nation was the holy queen Helen, called before her baptism Olga. She was wife to the duke Ihor or Igor, who undertook an expedition against the city of Constantinople, as Simeon Metaphrastes, the monk George, Cedrenus, Zonaras, and Curopalates relate. Having been repulsed by the generals of the emperors Romanus and Constantine, he was slain by the Dreulans in his return. His widow, Olga, with great valor and conduct, revenged his death, vanquished the Dreulans, and governed the state several years with uncommon prudence and courage. When she was almost seventy years old, she resigned the government to her son Suatoslas, and going to Constantinople, was there baptized, taking the name of Helen.[274] Many place this event in 952, which date seems most agreeable to the Greek historians; but Kulcinius and Stilting infer from the chronology of the dukes of Russia, that she seems to have been baptized in 945. We are expressly assured by Constantine Porphyrogenetta that it happened in 946. She returned into her own country, and by her zealous endeavors brought many to the faith; but was never able to compass the conversion of her son, who was probably withheld by reasons of state. She died in 970 or 978. Her grandson, Uladimir, who succeeded Suatoslas, asked by a solemn embassy, and obtained in marriage, Anne, sister to the two emperors Basil and his colleague and brother Constantine. Nicholas Crysoberga, the orthodox patriarch of Constantinople, a person always zealous in maintaining the communion of the see of Rome, at that prince’s request, sent into Muscovy one Michael with other preachers, who baptized Uladimir, and married him to the princess about the year 988.[275] This duke founded near Kiow the great monastery of the Cryptæ in favor of the abbot St. Antony, and died, according to Kulcinius, in 1008. His two sons SS. Boris and Hliba or Cliba, called in Latin Romanus and David, were murdered by the usurper Suatopelch, their impious brother, in 1010. It was their zeal for the faith of Christ which gave occasion to their death. Jaroslas, another brother, defeated the usurper, and obtained the principality; his daughter Anne was married to Henry I., king of France, in 1044, and became the foundress of the church of St. Vincent at Senlis. Romanus and David are honored in Muscovy on the 24th of July. Their remains were translated into a church which was built in their honor at Vislegorod in 1072, the ceremony being performed with great pomp, by George the fifth archbishop of Kiow, and several other bishops, in presence of Izazlas, Suatoslas, and Usevolod, princes of Russia, and a great train of noblemen. The synod of Zamoski, in 1720, which was approved by the Congregation de Propagandâ Fide, and confirmed by pope Benedict XIII., reckons among the holidays of precept which are kept by the Catholic Russians in Lithuania and other provinces, the feast of these two martyrs, celebrated on the 24th of July; and that of the translation of their relics on the 2d of May.[276] The Catholic Russians in Lithuania and Poland keep no festival of any other Muscovite saints except of these two martyrs.[277] But the Muscovites honor several other saints of their own country; several among whom flourished, and doubtless were placed by them in their Calendar before their schism, as Papebroke and Jos. Assemani observe. Such are the queen Helen or Olga, on the 11th of July, who died, according to Kulcinius, in 978. Uladimir, her grandson, duke of the Russians, and son of Suatoslas on the 15th of July, who was baptized in 990, died in 1014, and was buried in our Lady’s church at Kiow.[278] Antony, abbot, a native of Russia, who embraced the monastic state upon Mount Athos, and returning to Kiow, became the patriarch of that Order in his own country, and on a mountain half a mile from the town founded, about the year 1020, the great Russian monastery of Pieczari or the Cryptæ, in which the archimandrite of all the Russian monks resides, and the archbishop of Kiow has an apartment. Antony died in 1073, on the 10th of July, on which his festival is kept in Muscovy.[279] This monastery is famous for the Cryptæ or vaults, in which the bodies of many saints and monks who lived above six hundred years ago, remain uncorrupted and fresh. Agapetus, disciple of Antony, at the Cryptæ, famous for miracles, honored on the 1st of June. Athanasius, monk at the Cryptæ, on the 2d of December; he was a native of Trapesond, who, by the liberality and protection of the emperor Nicephorus Phocas, founded the great monastery on Mount Athos in Macedonia. He is honored by the Greeks and Muscovites on the 5th of July.[280] The lives of these and several other ancient monks of this house were written by Polycarp, who died in 1182. The grand duke Alexander, surnamed Newski, who died in 1262, and is honored on the 30th of April. Sergius, an abbot, is honored by the Muscovites on the 25th of September. He died in 1292, and was never involved in the schism, as Papebroke, Kulcinius, and Jos. Assemani show. This Sergius was born at Roslow, founded the monastery of the Holy Trinity at Rudosno (sixty Italian miles from Moscow), the richest and most numerous in Muscovy, in which are sometimes two or three hundred monks. The body of Sergius is kept there incorrupt, and is much visited out of devotion from Moscow, sometimes by the czars. These and several others who are named in the Muscovite Calendar with the most eminent saints of the eastern and western churches, lived either before or when this nation was not engaged in the Greek schism. But to these saints the Muscovites add some few who died since their separation from the catholic communion, as Photius, archbishop of Kiow, whose principal merit consisted in the obstinacy with which he maintained the schism. See Kulcinius, Specimen Ecclesiæ Ruthenicæ; Papebroke in the beginning of May, Comm. in Ephem. Jos. Assemani, in Calend. Univ. ad 25 Sept. t. 5, p. 254, &c.

ST. CHRISTINA, V. M.

She suffered many torments, and a cruel death, for the faith in the persecution of Dioclesian, at Tyro, a city which stood formerly in an island in the lake of Bolsero in Tuscany, but has been long since swallowed up by the waters. Her relics are now at Palermo in Sicily. She is much honored both in the Latin and Greek church, and is named in the Martyrologies which bear the name of St. Jerom, that of Bede augmented by Florus, and others. See Ughelli, Italia Sacra, t. 5, and Pinius the Bollandist, t. 5, Julij, p. 495.

SS. WULFHAD AND RUFFIN, MM.

They were two brothers, the sons of Wulfere, the king of Mercia, second brother and successor of Peada. Having been privately baptized by St. Chad, bishop of Litchfield, about the year 670, they were both slain whilst they were at their prayers by their father’s order, who, out of political views, at that time favored idolatry, though he afterward did remarkable penance for this crime. His father Penda had persecuted the Christians, but his elder brother Peada had begun to establish the faith in his dominions. Florence of Worcester says, Wulfere was only baptized a little before his death, in 675, consequently after this murder; but Bede testifies that he was godfather to Edelwalch, king of the West Saxons, almost twenty years before. But either he relapsed (at least so far as to be for some time favorable to idolatry), or this murder was contrived by some Pagan courtiers, without his privity, as Bradshaw relates it. The queen Emmelinda, mother of the two young princes, caused their bodies to be buried at Stone, which place took its name from a great heap of stones which was raised over their tomb, according to the Saxon custom. She afterward employed these stones in building a church upon the spot, which became very famous for bearing the names of these martyrs who were patrons of the town, and of a priory of regular canons there. The procurator of this house, in a journey to Rome, prevailed on the pope to enrol these two royal martyrs among the saints, and left the head of St. Wulfhad, which he had carried with him, in the church of St. Laurence at Viterbo. (Leland, Collect. t. 1, p. 1, 2.) After this, Wulfere and his brother and successor Ethelred, abolished idols over all Mercia. See the acts of these royal martyrs in the History of Peterborough abbey, and Leland’s Itinerary, and Collect. t. 1, p. 1. Also Cuper the Bollandist, t. 5, Julij, p. 571.

ST. LEWINE.

Was a British virgin who suffered martyrdom under the Saxons before their conversion to the faith. Her body was honorably kept at Seaford near Lewes, in Sussex, till, in 1058, her remains, with those of St. Idaberga, virgin, and part of those of St. Oswald, were conveyed into Flanders, and are now deposited in St. Winock’s abbey at Berg. They have been honored by many miracles, especially at the time of this translation, as even the century-writers of Magdeburg mention. A history of these miracles written by Drogo, an eye-witness to several, is published by Solier the Bollandist, p. 608, t. 5, Jul. See also Alford in Annal. ad an. 687, n. 21.

ST. DECLAN.

FIRST BISHOP OF ARDMORE IN IRELAND.

Was baptized by St. Colman, and preached the faith in that country a little before the arrival of St. Patrick, who confirmed the episcopal see of Ardmore, in a synod at Cashel in 448.[281] Many miracles are ascribed to St. Declan, and he has ever been much honored in the viscounty of Dessee, anciently Nandesi. See Usher; Bosch the Bollandist, p. 590, and Colgan in MSS. ad 24 Julij.

ST. KINGA, OR CUNEGUNDES, V.

She was daughter of Bela IV. king of Hungary, and Mary, daughter to Theodorus Lascharis, emperor of Constantinople: was married 1239 to Boleslas the Chaste, sovereign of Lesser Poland, or of the palatinates of Cracow, Sandomire, and Lublin; but by mutual consent lived in perpetual chastity. Prayer, mortification, alms, and daily attendance on the poor in the hospitals, employed her time. Boleslas dying in 1279, she took the veil in the great monastery of Sandecz, which she had lately built for nuns of the Order of St. Clare. She died on the 24th of July in 1292. She was venerated with singular piety in the diocess of Cracow and several other parts of Poland, and her name was solemnly inscribed among the saints by Alexander VIII. in 1690. See her life by John Longinus commonly called Dlugos, with remarks by Bosch the Bollandist, t. 5, Julij, p. 661.

JULY XXV.

ST. JAMES THE GREAT, APOSTLE.

St. James, the brother of St. John Evangelist, son of Zebedee and Salome and nearly related to Christ, was called the Great to distinguish him from the other apostle of the same name who was bishop of Jerusalem, and is surnamed the Less, perhaps because he was lower in stature, or more probably because he was the younger. St. James the Great seems to have been born about twelve years before Christ, and was many years older than his brother St. John. Salome is otherwise called Mary, and was sister to the Blessed Virgin, which some take in the strict sense of the word; others understand by it only cousin-german, according to the Hebrew phrase, and think that the Blessed Virgin was an only daughter.

St. James was by birth a Galilean, and by profession a fisherman with his father and brother, living probably at Bethsaida, where St. Peter also dwelt at that time. Jesus walking by the lake of Genesareth saw St. Peter and St. Andrew fishing, and he called them to come after him, promising to make them fishers of men. Going on a little farther on the shore, he saw two other brothers, James and John, in a ship, with Zebedee their father, mending their nets, and he also called them; who forthwith left their nets and their father and followed him.[282] Probably by conversing with St. Peter their townsman, and by other means, they had before this call an entire conviction that Jesus was the Christ; and no sooner did they hear his invitation, and saw the marks of his divine will directing them to what was eminently conducive to his honor, but the same moment they quitted all things to comply with this summons. They held no consultation, made no demur, started no difficulties, thought of no consequences or dangers; and their sacrifice was most perfect and entire. Like Abraham, they preferred obedience to the divine command, before all the endearments of their nearest relations, and forsook all they had, and all their hopes and prospects in the world, to become the disciples of Jesus. Zebedee their father seems to have approved of their resolution, and their mother Salome devoted herself heartily to the service of our Lord, as the gospels frequently mention. All fervent souls ought to be in the like dispositions of perfect sacrifice with these apostles, without the least inordinate attachment to any thing on earth, being most ready to renounce everything if God’s greater glory should require it. With what boundless liberality does the Divine Spirit shower down his choicest treasures upon souls which thus perfectly open themselves to him! This the apostles, of whom we speak, happily experienced in themselves. But they for some time so followed Christ, and listened to his divine instructions, as still to return from time to time to their fishing trade for a maintenance. It was in the same first year of Christ’s preaching that Peter and Andrew, at the command of their divine Master, took a prodigious shoal of fishes by a miraculous draught. James and John were their partners, though in another boat, and were called in to assist in hauling up the nets. Astonished at this manifestation of Christ’s power, they entirely quitted their business, the more perfectly to attach themselves to him.[283]

In the year 31 St. James was present with his brothers St. John and St. Peter at the cure of St. Peter’s mother-in-law, and at the raising of the daughter of Jairus from the dead. This same year Jesus formed the college of his apostles, into which he adopted St. James and his brother St. John. He gave these two the surname of Boanerges, or Sons of Thunder, probably to denote their active zeal. When a town of the Samaritans refused to entertain Christ, they suggested that he should call down fire from heaven to consume it; but our Blessed Redeemer gave them to understand that meekness and patience were the arms by which they were to conquer.[284] Christ distinguished St. Peter, St. James, and St. John by many special favors above the rest of the apostles. They alone were admitted to be spectators first of his glorious transfiguration, and afterward of his agony and bloody sweat in the garden. The instructions and example of the Son of God had not fully enlightened the understandings of these apostles, nor purified their hearts, before the Holy Ghost had shed his beams upon them; and their virtue was still imperfect, as appeared in the following instance;--Mary Salome, the mother of James and John, relying upon their merit, and her relation to Christ, and imagining that he was going to erect a temporal monarchy, according to the notion of the carnal Jews concerning the Messias, presented to him a request that her two sons might sit, the one on his right hand and the other on his left, in his kingdom. By this example we are put in mind how often the fondness of parents renders them the spiritual murderers of their own children, and makes them blindly excuse, flatter, and encourage their secret vices and passions. At the same time we are taught how formidable an enemy ambition is, which could find admittance in the breasts of two apostles (though yet novices) before the descent of the Holy Ghost. They doubtless disguised their vice under the cloak of a reasonable desire, and a virtuous emulation of preferment, with a design of serving their Master by it. Only the children of light discover the deceit and snare of this enemy; only profound humility discerns and condemns the specious pretences of subtle pride and covetousness. The two sons of Zebedee seem to have spoken by the mouth of their mother; wherefore Christ directed his answer to them, telling them, they knew not what they asked; for in his kingdom preferments are attainable, not by the most forward and ambitious, but by the most humble, and most laborious, and the most patient. He therefore asked them if they were able to drink of his cup of suffering. The two apostles understanding the condition under which Christ offered them his kingdom, and glowing with ardor and courage to suffer, answered peremptorily they were able to do it. Our Lord told them, they should indeed have their portions of suffering; but for the honors of his kingdom, he could make no other disposal of them than according to his decrees in conjunction with his Father, in proportion to every one’s charity and patience in suffering.

The virtue of the most fervent novices in the service of God is very imperfect, so long as entire self-denial, and a great assiduity and spirit of prayer have not yet prepared their souls for, and called down upon them a plentiful effusion of the Holy Ghost, who fills their understanding with a clear and new heavenly light, and by the ardor of his charity consumes the rust of the affections, and fills them with his fervor. In this state even the moral virtues acquire an heroic and infused degree of perfection. Humility now gives the soul a much more clear and feeling knowledge of her own infirmities, baseness, and imperfections, with much stronger sentiments of a just contempt of herself; and the like is to be said of divine and fraternal charity, and all other virtues; so that she seems to herself translated into a region of new light, in which by continual heroic acts of these virtues, and especially of prayer and contemplation, she makes daily and wonderful advances. This perfection the apostles received in a more miraculous manner by the descent of the Holy Ghost upon them, when he not only engraved the law of love deeply in their hearts, but also bestowed on them the external graces and gifts of prophecy and miracles, and qualified them for the execution of the great commission they had received from Christ.

How St. James was employed in preaching and promoting the gospel after Christ’s ascension, we have no account from the writers of the first ages of Christianity. It appears that he left Judæa some time after the persecution that was raised at the martyrdom of St. Stephen in the year 30, and was returned again ten years after when he suffered martyrdom. The addition to St. Jerom’s catalogue of illustrious men tells us, that he preached the gospel to the twelve tribes of the Jews, in their dispersion up and down the world. Though the apostles, during the first twelve years, preached generally in the neighborhood of Judea, yet St. James might in that interval make a voyage to Spain, and preach some time in that country, as Baronius observes. F. Cuper adds, that his martyrdom happened above a year after the dispersion of the apostles, in which space he had the fairest opportunity of visiting Spain. That he preached there is constantly affirmed by the tradition of that church, mentioned by St. Isidore, the Breviary of Toledo, the Arabic books of Anastasius patriarch of Antioch, concerning the Passions of the martyrs and others. Cuper the Bollandist[285] traces this tradition very high, and confirms it from St. Jerom,[286] St. Isidore, the ancient Spanish office, &c., and from many corroborating circumstances. St. Epiphanius says, that St. James always lived a bachelor, in much temperance and mortification, never eating flesh nor fish; that he wore only one coat, and a linen cloak, and that he was holy and exemplary in all manner of conversation. He was the first among the apostles who had the honor to follow his divine master by martyrdom, which he suffered at Jerusalem, whither he was returned, in the eleventh year after our Lord’s ascension.

Agrippa, the grandson of Herod, by Aristobulus, was author of this persecution. Being brought up at Rome in the reign of Tiberius, he, basely flattering Caligula in his passions, gained the confidence of that monster, who was no sooner placed on the imperial throne than he gave Agrippa the title of king, with the tetrarchies of Philip and Lysanias, which were then vacant.[287] Claudius, in the year 41, enlarged his dominions, giving him also Jerusalem and all the rest of Judæa, Samaria, and whatever other provinces had been possessed by his grandfather Herod. He gave also to his younger brother Herod the little kingdom of Chalcis in Syria, near mount Labinus. Agrippa reigned with great state and magnificence. Being very fond of pleasing the Jewish nation, when he came from Cæsarea to Jerusalem to keep the Passover in the year 43, he began to persecute the Christians; and the first who fell a victim to his popular zeal was St. James the Great, whom he caused to be apprehended and beheaded there a little before Easter, in the year 43, about fourteen years after the death of Christ. Clement of Alexandria, and from him Eusebius,[288] relate that his accuser, observing the great courage and constancy of mind wherewith the apostle underwent his trial, was so affected with it, that he repented of what he had done, declared himself publicly a Christian, and was condemned to be beheaded with St. James. As they were both led together to execution, he begged pardon of the apostle by the way for having apprehended him. St. James, after pausing a little, turned to him, and embraced him, saying, _Peace be with you_. He then kissed him, and they were both beheaded together.[289] The body of the apostle was interred at Jerusalem; but not long after carried by his disciples into Spain, and deposited at Iria Flavia, now called El Padron, upon the borders of Gallicia. The sacred relics were discovered there in the beginning of the ninth century, in the reign of Alphonsus the Chaste, king of Leon. By the order of that prince they were translated to Compostella, four miles distant, to which place pope Leo III. transferred the episcopal see from Iria Flavia. This place was first called Ad S. Jacobum Apostolum, or Giacomo Postolo, which words have been contracted into the present name, Compostella. It is famous for the extraordinary concourse of pilgrims that resort thither to visit the body of St. James, which is kept with great respect in the stately cathedral. F. Cuper the Bollandist proves the truth of the tradition of the Spanish church concerning the body of St. James having been translated to Compostella, and gives authentic histories of many miracles wrought through his intercession, and of several apparitions by which he visibly protected the armies of a Christian against the Moors in that kingdom.[290] The military order of St. James, surnamed the Noble, was instituted by Ferdinand II. in 1175.

* * * * *

The Church, by the martyrdom of St. James, lost in her infancy one of her main pillars; but God was pleased that his name should be glorified by so illustrious a testimony, and that it should appear he was the immediate supporter and defender of his Church. For when it was deprived of its chief members and pastors, it remained no less firm than before; and even grew and gathered strength from the most violent persecutions. The apostle with confidence committed his tender flock to God, and commended to them his own work, whilst he rejoiced to go to his Redeemer, and to give his life for him. We all meet with trials. But can we fear or hesitate to drink a cup presented to us by the hand of God, and which our Lord and Captain, by free choice, and out of pure love, was pleased himself to drink first for our sake? He asks us whether we can drink of his cup, he encourages us by setting before our eyes the glory of heaven, and he invites us by his own divine example. Let us humbly implore his grace, without which we can do nothing, and take with joy this cup of salvation, which he presents us with his divine hand.

ST. CHRISTOPHER, M.

He suffered martyrdom under Decius in Lycia, and is honored on this day in the Martyrology which bears the name of St. Jerom, and in other western Calendars, but is commemorated by the Greeks and other Oriental nations on the 9th of May. The Mosarabic Breviary, attributed to St. Isidore, mentions the translation of his relics to Toledo, whence they were brought into France, and are at present shown enshrined at the abbey of St. Denys near Paris. He seems to have taken the name of Christopher upon the like motive that St. Ignatius would be called Theophorus, to express his ardent love for his Redeemer, by which he always carried him in his breast as his great and only good, his inestimable treasure, and the object of all his affections and desires. There seem to be no other grounds than this name for the vulgar notion of his great stature, the origin of which seems to have been merely allegorical, as Baronius observes, and as Vida has beautifully expressed in an epigram on this saint.[291] The enormous statues of St. Christopher, still to be seen in many Gothic cathedrals, expressed his allegorical wading through the sea of tribulations, by which the faithful meant to signify the many sufferings through which he arrived at eternal life. They are monuments of the devotion of our ancestors to this saint, whose intercession they implored especially against pestilential distempers. Saint Gregory the Great mentions a monastery in Sicily which bore the name of St. Christopher. See Pinius the Bollandist, t. 6, p. 125.

SAINTS THEA AND VALENTINA, VIRGINS, AND ST. PAUL, MM.

In the year 308 there were at the same time six emperors, successors of Dioclesian, namely, in the East Galerius, Lucinius, and Maximinus; in the West, Constantine, Maxentius, and his father, Maximian Herculeus, who had reassumed the purple. Firmilian, the successor of Urbanus in the government of Palestine, under Maximinus II., carried on the persecution with great cruelty. When fourscore and seventeen confessors, men, women, and children, out of an innumerable multitude of Christians who were banished a long while before to the porphyry quarries in Thebais, were brought before him, he commanded the sinews of the joint of their left feet to be burnt with a hot iron; and their right eyes to be put out, and the eye holes burnt with a hot iron to the very bottom of the orb. In this condition he sent them to work at the mines in Palestine about mount Libanus. Many others were brought before this inhuman judge from different towns of Palestine, and were tormented various ways.

Among the Christians taken at Gaza, whilst they were assembled to hear the holy scriptures read, was a holy virgin named Thea, whom the judge threatened with the prostitution of her chastity in the public stews. She, to whom her virtue was most dear, reproached him for such infamous injustices. Firmilian, enraged at her liberty of speech, caused her to be inhumanly scourged, then stretched on the rack, and her sides torn with iron hooks till the bare ribs appeared. Valentina, a pious Christian virgin of Cæsarea, who had also by vow consecrated her chastity to God, being present at this spectacle, cried out to the judge from the midst of the crowd, “How long will you thus torment my sister?” She was immediately apprehended, and being dragged by force to the altar, she threw herself upon it, and overturned it with her feet, together with the fire and sacrifice which stood ready upon it. Firmilian, provoked beyond bounds, commanded her sides to be more cruelly torn than any others. Being at length wearied with tormenting her, he ordered the two virgins to be tied together and burnt. This was executed on the 25th of July, 308. One Paul, an illustrious confessor, was beheaded for the faith on the same day, by an order of this judge. The fervor with which he prayed at the place of execution for the emperor, the judge who condemned him, and his executioner, drew tears from all that were present. Soon after, one hundred and thirty Egyptian confessors, by an order of Maximinus, had one eye pulled out, and one foot maimed, and were sent, some to the mines in Palestine, others to those in Cilicia. See Eusebius de Martyr. Palestinæ, c. 8; Tillemont, t. 5; Fleury, l. ix.; Orsi, t. 4.

ST. CUCUFAS, M. IN SPAIN.

At Barcelona he is called St. Cougat, at Ruel, near Paris, St. Quiquenfat, in some other parts of France St. Guinefort. He was a native of Scillite in Africa, and one of the first families of that country. To escape the persecution raised by Dioclesian, he retired with St. Felix into Mauritania, and afterward into Spain. He was no sooner landed at Barcelona but he was apprehended, and confessing his faith before Dacian, the cruel governor, was condemned by him, after suffering many torments, to lose his head, in 304. His companion, Felix, received a like crown soon after him in Gironne. The relics of St. Cucufas were brought into France in 777, and deposited in the abbey of St. Denys, near Paris, in 835, where they still remain with due honor. See Prudentius, hymn 4, the new Paris Breviary on this day, the Roman Martyrology, and Bosch the Bollandist, t. 6, Jul. p. 169. See also Chatelain, Notes sur le Martyr. Fevr. 16, p. 656.

ST. NISSEN, ABBOT.

Whom St. Patrick baptized, ordained deacon, and appointed abbot of Montgairt or Mountgarret, in the county of Wexford, on the borders of Kilkenny, of which place he is titular saint. See Colgan in MSS. ad 25 Julij.

JULY XXVI.

SAINT ANNE, MOTHER OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN.

See Cuper the Bollandist, t. 6, Julij, p. 233.

The Hebrew word Anne signifies gracious. St. Joachim and St. Anne, the parents of the Blessed Virgin Mary, are justly honored in the Church, and their virtue is highly extolled by St. John Damascen. The emperor Justinian I. built a church at Constantinople in honor of St. Anne, about the year 550.[292] Codinus mentions another built by Justinian II. in 705. Her body was brought from Palestine to Constantinople in 710, whence some portions of her relics have been dispersed in the West. F. Cuper the Bollandist has collected a great number of miracles wrought through her intercession.[293]

God has been pleased by sensible effects to testify how much he is honored by the devotion of the faithful to this saint, who was the great model of virtue to all engaged in the married state, and charged with the education of children. It was a sublime dignity and a great honor for this saint to give to a lost world the advocate of mercy, and to be parent of the mother of God. But it was a far greater happiness to be, under God, the greatest instrument of her virtue, and to be spiritually her mother by a holy education in perfect innocence and sanctity. St. Anne, being herself a vessel of grace, not by name only, but by the possession of that rich treasure, was chosen by God to form his most beloved spouse to perfect virtue; and her pious care of this illustrious daughter was the greatest means of her own sanctification and her glory in the church of God to the end of ages. It is a lesson to all parents whose principal duty is the holy education of their children. By this they glorify their Creator, perpetuate his honor on earth to future ages, and sanctify their own souls. St. Paul says, that it is by the education of their children that parents are to be saved.[294] Nor will he allow any one who has had children, ever to be admitted to serve the altar, whose sons do not, by their holy conduct, give proofs of a virtuous education. Nevertheless, we see parents solicitous about the corporal qualifications of their children, and earnest to procure them an establishment in the world; yet supinely careless in purchasing them virtue, in which alone their true happiness consists. This reflection drew tears from Crates, a heathen philosopher, who desired to mount on the highest place in his city and cry out, with all his strength: “Citizens, what is it you think of? You employ all your time in heaping up riches to leave to your children; yet take no care to cultivate their souls with virtue, as if an estate were more precious than themselves.”[295]

SAINT GERMANUS, BISHOP OF AUXERRE, C.

He was born at Auxerre about the year 380, of noble parents. Having laid the foundation of sound literature at home, he studied eloquence and the civil law at Rome, and pleaded with great reputation in the court of the Præfectus-prætorio. He married a lady of great quality named Eustachia, and being taken notice of by the emperor Honorius, was raised by him to several honorable employments, and at last to that of duke in his own province, which dignity gave him the command over all the troops in that country. Germanus being returned to Auxerre, was careful to shun gross vices, but his religion seemed confined to principles of integrity, and his virtues were merely human; for he was unacquainted with the true spirit of mortification, humility, and prayer. The young duke had a passion for hunting, and hung up the heads of the wild beasts which he killed on a great tree in the middle of the city, as trophies of his diversion. No one could presume to show him the meanness and folly of this favorite petty vanity, by which he seemed to authorize the superstitious custom of the Pagans who did the like to honor their gods. St. Amator, who was at that time the zealous bishop of Auxerre, made him strong remonstrances on the danger of countenancing such remains of idolatry, but without effect. At last, watching an opportunity, he caused this tree to be cut down while Germanus was absent, who, upon hearing this news, grievously threatened the bishop. St. Amator withdrew for a while to Autun; where he learned by a revelation that Germanus was designed by God to be his successor. He therefore procured privately the consent of Julius, the prefect of Gaul, that he might give the tonsure to Germanus; for, by the laws, no officer could quit his employment without such a permission. Julius giving leave, St. Amator returned to Auxerre, and causing the church doors to be shut when Germanus was come in, he gave him the tonsure, and ordained him deacon. By this instance, it appears, that immediately after the general persecutions, clerks were distinguished by the tonsure. This proof is the stronger, as the priest Constantius wrote this life in the same age. Germanus durst not make any opposition for fear of resisting the will of God. St. Amator died soon after on the 1st of May in 418, and St. Germanus was unanimously chosen by the clergy and people to succeed him, and consecrated by the bishops of the province on the 7th of July, notwithstanding the great reluctance he discovered.

Full of a deep sense of the obligations of his new dignity, he became at once another man. He renounced all the pomps and vanities of the world, lived with his wife no otherwise than if she had been his sister, distributed all his possessions to the poor and to the Church, and embraced a life of poverty and austerity. From the day he was ordained bishop to his death, that is, for thirty years together, he never touched wheaten bread, wine, vinegar, oil, pulse, or salt. He began every meal by putting a few ashes in his mouth to renew in his soul a spirit of penance, and took no other sustenance than barley bread, which grain he had threshed and ground himself, that he might, as a true penitent, live by his own labor. He never ate but in the evening, sometimes about the middle of the week, often only on the seventh day. His dress was the same in winter and summer, and consisted of a cowl and tunic which he never changed till they were worn to pieces. He always wore a hair-cloth next his skin. His bed was enclosed with two boards, strewed with ashes, without a bolster, and covered with a sack-cloth and one blanket. He always carried about him some relics of saints in a little box, tied to a leather string. He extended his hospitality to all sorts of persons, washed the feet of the poor, and served them with his own hands, at the same time that he himself fasted. He built a monastery over against Auxerre, on the other side of the river Yone, in honor of SS. Cosmas and Damian, which now goes by the name of St. Marian’s, from one of its first abbots. He found the sepulchres of several martyrs,

## particularly of a great multitude who had been put to death in the

persecution of Aurelian, with St. Priscus, otherwise called St. Bry, in a place called Coucy, where their bodies had been thrown into a cistern or pit out of which he took them, and built in their honor a church and monastery, called at this day _de Saints en Puy saye_. St. Germanus gave all his landed estates to the Church, consisting of several agreeable and spacious manors, lying all contiguous to one another.[296] Seven of these he gave to the cathedral church, namely Appoigny, where his father and mother had been buried in St. John’s church; little Varsy, where stood a palace; great Varsy, Toucy, Poeilly, Marcigny, and Perigni. Three he settled on the monastery of St. Cosmas, namely, Monceaux, Fontenay, and Merilles. He bestowed three others, called Garchy, Concou, and Molins, on the church which he built in honor of St. Maurice, which at this day bears the name of St. Germanus himself. In this manner he reduced himself to great poverty, and to perpetuate the divine honor, and the relief of the indigent, enriched the church of Auxerre which he found very poor. By many like examples, it appears, that the great endowments of several churches were originally owing to the liberality of their bishops, as Fleury observes.

Pelagius began to dispute against the necessity of divine grace at Rome, about the year 405. Being himself by birth a Briton, it is not to be wondered that he should have disciples in Britain. Among these one Agricola, the son of Severinus, who, after the birth of this son, was chosen bishop and became a Pelagian, spread the poison of this heresy in our island. The deacon Pelladius, whom pope Celestine had sent to the places infected with this heresy, and whom he afterward ordained bishop, and commissioned to go into Scotland, moved him to provide for the preservation of so many souls; and other Catholics in Britain had sent a deputation to the bishops in Gaul, entreating them to send over some able person to defend the faith and oppose the growing evil. Pope Celestine nominated St. Germanus of Auxerre to go thither in quality of his vicar in the year 429, as St. Prosper assures us.[297] The bishops of Gaul assembled in a numerous council for the same purpose, and agreed to entreat St. Lupus, who had then been only two years bishop of Troyes, to accompany St. Germanus in this important mission.[298] These two holy prelates, proceeding on their journey, came to Nanterre near Paris, where St. Germanus gave his blessing and good counsel to St. Genevieve, and foretold her future sanctity. She being at that time about fifteen years old, and desirous to consecrate herself a virgin to God, St. Germanus, after many solemn prayers in the church, received there her vow, and confirmed it by laying his right hand upon her head.[299]

St. Germanus and St. Lupus embarking in the winter season, were overtaken with a furious tempest, which St. Germanus appeased by casting some drops of blessed oil, according to Constantius, but according to Bede, of holy-water, into the sea, having first invoked the adorable Trinity. Being arrived in Britain they were met by a great multitude of people and the fame of their sanctity, doctrine, and miracles soon filled the whole country. They confirmed the Catholics in all parts, and converted the heretics, preaching often in the highways and fields where the churches were not able to contain the crowd that flocked to them. The Pelagians everywhere shunned them; but being at length ashamed thus to condemn themselves by their flight and silence, accepted a conference. The disputation was held at Verulam before an incredible number of people. The heretics, who made their appearance with a great train and in rich apparel, spoke first. When they had talked a long time, the bishops answered them with great eloquence, and so invincibly supported their arguments with quotations from scripture, that their adversaries were fairly reduced to silence. The people applauded their victory with joyful acclamations. Before the assembly broke up, a certain tribune and his wife presented their little daughter of ten years of age, who was blind, to the two holy bishops; and they bid them take her to the Pelagians. But the latter joined the parents in begging the saints to pray for her. The two bishops made a short prayer; then Germanus called upon the Blessed Trinity; and taking from his neck the little box of relics which he wore, laid it upon the eyes of the girl before the whole assembly, who immediately recovered her sight, to the great joy of her parents and of all the people. From that day no one opposed the doctrine of the holy bishops. The saints went from this conference to return thanks to God at the tomb of St. Alban, the most illustrious martyr in Britain. St. Germanus caused his sepulchre to be opened, and deposited in it his box of relics of apostles and martyrs, taking from the same place a little of the dust which still retained some marks of the blood of St. Alban. This he carried away with him, and, at his return, built at Auxerre a church in his honor, where he placed these relics.[300]

The Saxons from Germany on one side, and on the other the Picts, at that time harassed the Britons. Paul the deacon tells us, that an army of Picts and Scots invaded their territories whilst the two bishops were in the island; and bishop Usher takes notice, that the Saxons and English who inhabited Sleswic, and all the German coast from Denmark to the Rhine, made descents upon Britain from time to time before the arrival of Hengist and Horsa in 449. The Britons having assembled an army against these plunderers, invited the two holy bishops into their camp, hoping to be protected by their prayers and presence. The saints complied with their request, but employed their time in bringing the idolaters to the faith, and the Christians to a reformation of their manners. Many of the former demanded baptism, and the saints prepared them to receive it at Easter, for it was then Lent. They erected a church in the camp of green boughs twisted together, in which the catechumens received the sacrament of regeneration; and the whole army celebrated the festival with great devotion. After Easter, St. Germanus had recourse to a stratagem, by which, without bloodshed, he rescued his dear converts and the country out of the danger with which they were threatened. The enemy approaching, he put himself at the head of the Christians with so much skill and address as showed he had not forgotten his old profession of a general. He led his little army into a vale between two high mountains, and ordered his troops to send forth the same shout for which he would give them a sign. When the Saxon pirates came near them, he cried out thrice, _Alleluiah_, which was followed by the whole British army; and the sound was often repeated by the echo from the hills with as dreadful a noise as if the rocks had been rent asunder. The barbarians, in a sudden fright, judging from the shout that they were falling upon the swords of a mighty army, flung down their arms and ran away, leaving behind them all their baggage and a great booty. Many of them were drowned in crossing a river, by missing the fords.[301] Bishop Usher[302] says, this battle seems to have been fought near a town in Flintshire, called in the British tongue, Guid-cruc, but in English, Mould. The place retains to this day the name of Maes Garmon, or German’s field. The two holy bishops, after so many victories, returned home to their respective dioceses.[303]

St. Germanus found his people loaded with extraordinary imposts, and undertook a journey to Arles, to solicit Auxiliaris, prefect of Gaul, in their behalf. On the road, the people everywhere met him in crowds, with the women and children, to receive his blessing. When he drew near to Arles, the prefect Auxiliaris himself, contrary to custom, was come a good way to meet him, and conducted him to the capital. He admired his gracefulness, and the charity and authority which his countenance and conversation displayed, and found him to exceed his reputation. He made him great presents, and entreated him to cure his wife who had been long ill of a quartan ague. He obtained his request, and granted to St. Germanus the discharge from the taxes which he had asked for his people. The saint being returned home, applied himself earnestly to reform their manners; but used to retire from time to time to his monastery of SS. Cosmas and Damian. In 446 he was called again into Britain, to assist that church against the Pelagian heresy, which began a second time to raise its head there. He took for his companion St. Severus, who had been lately promoted to the archbishopric of Triers, and had formerly been a disciple of St. Lupus of Troyes. In Britain he sought out those who had been seduced by the heretics, and converted many of them; so that the obstinate sowers of those errors found no longer any retreat here, and quitted the island. A principal man of the country, called Elaphius, brought to him his son who was in the flower of his age, and had one ham contracted, and his leg withered. St. Germanus made him sit down, and touching his ham and leg, healed him in the presence of Many. St. Germanus considering that ignorance could not be banished, nor the reformation which he had established maintain its ground, without regular schools for the instruction of the clergy, instituted schools of learning, by which means, “These churches continued afterward pure in the faith, and free from heresy,” as Bede observes.[304] In South-Wales, having ordained St. Iltutus priest, and St. Dubricius archbishop of Landaff, he charged them with the care of several schools, which soon grew very famous for the numbers, learning, and eminent sanctity of those that were there educated. Two of these, under the immediate direction of the latter, were seated at Hentlan and Moch-ros, places lying on the river Wye, where he had one thousand scholars, for years together. The names of the most eminent among them are mentioned in the life of St. Dubricius, written (as some maintain) by St. Thelian’s own hand in the ancient Landaff register.[305] The schools of St. Iltutus at Llan-Iltut (now Lantwit) near Boverton, and at Llan-elty near Neath in Glamorganshire, were in like repute, and equally filled with the sons of the nobility from all parts of the island. Among his disciples we find St. Gildas, St. Leonorius bishop and confessor, St. Samson, St. Magloire, St. Malo, St. Paul afterward bishop of Leon, and Daniel, whom St. Dubricius made bishop of Bangor, where he likewise instituted a seminary for the Britons. Paulinus, another disciple of St. Germanus, did the like at Whiteland in Caermarthenshire, where St. David and St. Theliau studied. The seminaries of Llancarvan near Cowbridge, and the famous school of Bencor in Flintshire, were also noble monuments of St. Germanus’s zeal. This saint was on his road back when he met a deputation from the inhabitants of Armorica or Brittany who besought him to be their protector; for to punish them for a revolt, Aëtius, the Roman general in Gaul, had sent Eocarich, a Pagan and barbarous king of the Alemanni, to subdue them. St. Germanus boldly accosted the barbarian, stopping his horse by the bridle, at the head of his army. The German at first refused to hear him, but at length listened to his discourse, and by it was so much softened as to call off his troops, and agree not to ravage the province, on condition that he should obtain the pardon of the people from the emperor, or from his general Aëtius. In order to procure this the saint undertook a journey to Ravenna, where the emperor Valentinian III. then resided.

He wrought several miracles on the way, and at Milan delivered a man who was possessed by the devil. He entered the city of Ravenna by night to avoid honors and pomp; but the people being aware of his precaution, a great crowd waited for him, and saluted him with acclamations. He was received with great joy by the bishop St. Peter Chrysologus; by the young emperor Valentinian, and his mother Placidia. She sent to his house a great silver vessel filled with dainties, without any flesh, which she knew he would never touch. The saint sent her in return a barley loaf upon a wooden dish. The empress received it graciously, ordered the dish to be enchased with gold, and kept the loaf by which several miraculous cures were performed. The emperor confirmed his request; but the restless people by raising new disturbances destroyed the effect of the imperial clemency. The saint was continually attended at Ravenna by six bishops, and wrought there many miracles. The son of Volusian, chancellor or secretary to the patrician Sigisvultus, being dead and cold, the saint was called, and having put all the company out of the chamber, he prostrated himself near the corpse and prayed with tears. After some time the dead man began to stir, opened his eyes, and moved his fingers. St. Germanus raised him, he sat up, and, by degrees, was restored to perfect health. One day after matins, as the saint was talking with the bishops of religious matters, he said to them, “My brethren, I recommend my passage to your prayers. Methought I saw this night our Saviour, who gave me provision for a journey, and told me it was to go into my native country, and to receive eternal rest.” A few days after, he fell sick. All the city was alarmed. The empress went to see him, and he desired the favor of her to send back his corpse into his own country; to which she assented, though very unwillingly. He died at Ravenna on the seventh day of his illness, which was the last of July in 448, having held his see thirty years and twenty-five days. The empress Placidia took his reliquary, St. Peter Chrysologus his cowl and hair shirt, and the six other bishops divided his clothes among them. The eunuch Acholius, prefect of the emperor’s chamber, one of whose servants, when sick, the saint had cured, had his corpse embalmed; the empress clothed it with a rich habit and gave a coffin of cypress wood; the emperor furnished the carriages, the expense of the journey, and the officers to attend it. The funeral pomp was most magnificent; the number of lights was so great, that they shone as broad day. Everywhere as it passed, the people came to meet it, showing all manner of honors. Some levelled the ways and repaired the bridges, others bore the corpse, or at least sung psalms. The clergy of Auxerre went as far as the Alps to meet it. The sacred treasure was brought to that city fifty days after the saint’s death, and after having been exposed six days, was interred on the 1st of October in the oratory of St. Maurice, which he had founded, where stands at present the famous abbey which bears his name. His principal festival is kept on the 31st of this month. St. Germanus was the titular saint of many churches in England, and of the great abbey of Selby in Yorkshire, the abbot whereof was a parliamentary baron. A chapel near Verulam, in which St. Germanus had preached, was a place of great devotion to him among our ancestors, and was afterward dedicated under his name. From him the parliamentary borough of St. German’s in Cornwall is called. See his life written by the priest Constantius, who was nearly his contemporary, and is commended by St. Sidonius Apollinaris in the same age: also Bede, and Nennius the British historian, who wrote in 620. All these relate the miracles mentioned above. See also Leland’s Itinerary, Brown-Willis, Usher, Fleury, Tillemont, t. 15, Rivet, Hist. Littér., t. 2, p. 256, and Recueil des Lettres sur la Vérification des Reliques de St. Germain d’Auxerre, 1753, in 8vo.

JULY XXVII.

ST. PANTALEON, MARTYR.

See the Collections of F. Bosch the Bollandist, t. 6, Julij, p. 397.

A. D. 303.

He was physician to the emperor Galerius Maximianus, and a Christian, but fell by a temptation which is sometimes more dangerous than the severest trials of the fiercest torments; for bad example, if not shunned, insensibly weakens, and at length destroys the strongest virtue. Pantaleon being perpetually obsessed by it in an impious idolatrous court, and deceived by often hearing the false maxims of the world applauded, was unhappily seduced into an apostasy. But a zealous Christian called Hermolaus, by his prudent admonitions awakened his conscience to a sense of his guilt, and brought him again into the fold of the Church. The penitent ardently wished to expiate his crime by martyrdom; and to prepare himself for the conflict, when Dioclesian’s bloody persecution broke out at Nicomedia in 303, he distributed all his possessions among the poor. Not long after this action he was taken up, and in his house were also apprehended Hermolaus, Hermippus, and Hermocrates. After suffering many torments they were all condemned to lose their heads. St. Pantaleon suffered the day after the rest. He is ranked by the Greeks amongst the great martyrs. Procopius mentions a church in his honor at Constantinople, which being decayed was repaired by Justinian. His relics were translated to Constantinople, and there kept with great honor as St. John Damascen informs us.[306] The greatest part of them are now shown in the abbey of St. Denys near Paris, but his head at Lyons.

* * * * *

Physicians honor St. Pantaleon as their chief patron after St. Luke. Happy are they in that profession, who improve their study chiefly to glorify the supreme Creator, whose infinite power and wisdom are displayed in all his works; and who by the opportunities of charity which their art continually offers them, rejoice to afford comfort, and corporal, if not often also spiritual succor, to the most suffering and distressed part of their species, especially among the poor. All the healing powers of medicine are a gift of God;[307] and he himself who could have restored Ezechias to health by the least act of his omnipotent will, directed Isaiah to apply dry figs to the abscess into which his fever was terminating; than which poultice, no better remedy could have been used to promote suppuration.[308] St. Ambrose,[309] St. Basil,[310] and St. Bernard,[311] inveigh severely against too nice and anxious a care of health, as a mark of inordinate self-love and immortification; nor is anything generally more hurtful to it. But as man is not master of his own life or health, he is bound to take a moderate reasonable care not to throw them away.[312] To neglect the more simple and ordinary succors of medicine when absolutely necessary, is to transgress that law of charity which every one owes to himself.[313] The saints who condemned as contrary to their penitential state, far-sought or exquisite means, with St. Charles Borromæo, were scrupulously attentive to essential prescriptions of physicians in simple and ordinary remedies. But let the Christian in sickness seek in the first place the health of his soul by penance, and the exercise of all virtues. Let him also consider God as his chief physician, begging him, if it may be conducive to his divine honor, to restore the frame he created, and entreating our Redeemer to stretch out that hand upon him, with which in his mortal state he restored so many sick to their health. He who trusts more in the art of physicians than in the Lord, will deserve the reproach of Asa, king of Juda.[314] So hidden are often the causes of distempers, so precarious the power of remedies, and so uncertain the skill of the ablest physicians, that their endeavors frequently check nature instead of seconding its efforts, and thus hasten death. The divine blessing alone is the Christian’s sheet-anchor, perfect resignation to the divine will is the secure repose of his soul; and the fervent exercise of penance, patience, and devotion, is his gain in the time of sickness.

SS. MAXIMIAN, MALCHUS, MARTINIAN, DIONYSIUS, JOHN, SERAPION, AND CONSTANTINE, MM.

COMMONLY CALLED THE SEVEN SLEEPERS.

Having confessed the faith before the proconsul at Ephesus under Decius in 250, they were walled up together in a cave in which they had hid themselves, and there slept in the Lord. Some moderns, mistaking this expression, have imagined that they only lay asleep, till they were found in 479, under Theodosius the younger. The truth seems to be, that their relics were then discovered. They are much honored by the Greeks, Syrians, and all the Oriental nations. Their relics were conveyed to Marseilles in a large stone coffin, which is still shown there in St. Victor’s church. In the Musæum Victorium at Rome is a factitious plaster or stone (made of sulphur melted with fire and mortar), formed in imitation of a large precious stone, in which is cut a group of figures representing the Seven Sleepers with their names, and near Constantine and John are exhibited two clubs; near Maximian a knotty club; near Malchus and Martinian two axes; near Serapion a burning torch, and near Danesius (whom others call Dionysius) a great nail. That large nails (_clavi trabales_, or such as were used in joining great rafters or beams in buildings) were made use of as instruments of torture is evident from St. Paulinus[315] and Horace.[316] From this ancient monument some infer that these martyrs were put to death by various torments, and that their bodies were only buried in the aforesaid cave. In this group of figures, these martyrs are represented all as very young, and without beards. In ancient Martyrologies and other writings, they are frequently called boys.[317] The cave in which their bodies were found became a place famous for devout pilgrimages, and is still shown to travellers, as James Spon testifies.[318] See St. Gregory of Tours, l. 1, de Glor. Mart. c. 95, and Cuper the Bollandist, Julij, t. 6, p. 375. Also, Dissertatio de Sanctis Septem Dormientibus, Romæ, 1741 in 4to. in which the above said group of figures is explained, c. 5, &c.

SAINT CONGALL, ABBOT OF IABHNALLIVIN.

On the upper part of the lake Erne, of which parish he is titular patron. Before his death he committed the government of his monastery to his beloved disciple St. Fegnarnach. In that territory his festival is a holiday of precept, as Colgan assures us, on this 27th of July.

ST. LUICAN, C.

Is titular saint of the parish called Kill-luicain in Ireland.

JULY XXVIII.

SS. NAZARIUS AND CELSUS, MM.

From two sermons delivered on their festival, the one by St. Ennodius, the other passes under the name of St. Ambrose, and was written soon after his time, perhaps by St. Gaudentius of Brescia; also from Paulinus the deacon, in his life of St. Ambrose. See Tillemont, t. 2, and Pinius the Bollandist, t. 6, Julij, p. 503.

ABOUT THE YEAR 68.

St. Nazarius’s father was a heathen, and enjoyed a considerable post in the Roman army. His mother Perpetua was a zealous Christian, and was instructed by St. Peter, or his disciples, in the most perfect maxims of our holy faith. Nazarius embraced it with so much ardor, that he copied in his life all the great virtues he saw in his teachers; and out of zeal for the salvation of others left Rome, his native city, and preached the faith in many places with a fervor and disinterestedness becoming a disciple of the apostles. Arriving at Milan he was there beheaded for the faith, together with Celsus, a youth whom he carried with him to assist him in his travels. These martyrs suffered soon after Nero had raised the first persecution. Their bodies were buried separately in a garden without the city, where they were discovered and taken up by St. Ambrose in 395. In the tomb of St. Nazarius a vial of the saint’s blood was found as fresh and red as if it had been spilt that day. The faithful stained handkerchiefs with some drops, and also formed a certain paste with it; a portion of which St. Ambrose sent to St. Gaudentius bishop of Brescia. St. Ambrose conveyed the bodies of the two martyrs into the new church of the apostles, which he had just built. A woman was delivered of an evil spirit in their presence. St. Ambrose sent some of these relics to St. Paulinus of Nola, who received them with great respect, as a most valuable present, as he testifies.[319]

The martyrs died as the outcasts of the world, but are crowned by God with immortal honor. The glory of the world is false and transitory, and an empty bubble or shadow; but that of virtue is true, solid, and permanent, even in the eyes of men; for, to use the comparison of St. Basil,[320] as the more we look upon the sun the more we admire it, and by reviewing it never find it less bright or less beautiful; so the memory of the martyrs which we celebrate, after so many years, is only more fresh in our minds, and will be more flourishing in all ages to come.

ST. VICTOR, POPE, M.

He was a native of Africa, and succeeded St. Eleutherius in the pontificate, in the year 192, the nineteenth of Commodus. The practice of those virtues which had prepared him for that dignity, rendered him a true successor of the apostles. He vigorously opposed the rising heresies of that age. Theodotus of Byzantium, a tanner, having apostatized from the faith to save his life in a late persecution, afterward, to extenuate his guilt, pretended that he had denied only a man, not God; teaching that Christ was nothing more than a mere man, as the Socinians teach at this day; whereas the Arians allowed him to have been before the world, though himself a creature. Theodotus going to Rome, there drew many into his blasphemous error; for he was well versed in polite literature; but Victor checked his progress by excommunicating him with Ebion, Artemon, and another Theodotus who had taught the same blasphemy.[321] This other Theodotus, called Trapezita, or the banker, was author of the Melchisedecian heresy, pretending that Melchisedec was greater than Christ.

Montanus, a new convert in Mysia, near Phrygia, out of an unbounded desire of invading the first dignities of the Church, and filled with rage to see himself disappointed, began to preach against the Church; and having by pride and ambition given entrance to the devil, commenced false prophet, and sometimes losing his senses, began in an enthusiastic strain to utter extraordinary expressions. Prisca, or Priscilla, and Maximilla, two women of quality, but of debauched lives, left their husbands, and being filled with the same spirit, spoke like Montanus, void of sense, and after an extravagant and unusual manner, pretending they succeeded the prophets among the disciples of the apostles. Montanus placed himself above the apostles, saying, that he had received the Paraclete, or the Holy Ghost promised by Christ, to perfect his law. He denied that the Church had power to forgive the sins of idolatry, murder, and impurity, and hardly received any sinners on repentance. St. Paul had allowed second marriages, but Montanus forbade them as inconsistent with the perfect law of chastity; and he forbade Christians to flee in time of persecution. The Montanists were also called from their country Cataphryges, and Pepuzeni from Pepuzium, a little town in Phrygia, which was their capital, and which they called Jerusalem.[322] They boasted of their martyrs, as the Marcionites also did; which other heretics seldom pretend to, as St. Irenæus and Origen take notice; nor could these have any great number. Apollonius, a Catholic writer quoted by Eusebius, confounding the hypocrisy of the Montanists, reproached their pretended prophetesses with infamous debaucheries, and with receiving presents, saying, “Does a prophet color his hair, paint his eye-brows, play at dice, or lend out money on usury? I will demonstrate that they are guilty of these things.” The Catholics met to examine their pretended new prophecies, and convicted them of falsehood, because the true prophets were not beside themselves when they spoke; also the Montanists had lied in their predictions, and opposed the doctrine of the Church. Asterius Urbanus, a learned priest (for he calls St. Zoticus fellow-priest), confounded them by these arguments, in a great conference held at Ancyra about the year 188. Their prophecies and errors being condemned as impious, the followers of Montanus were driven out of the Church, and excommunicated. It was reported for certain, that Montanus and Maximilla, led away by the spirit that possessed them, afterward hanged themselves. These particulars are related by Eusebius.

Tertullian, who fell into this heresy about the time of the death of Pope Victor, says,[323] that this pope at first admitted to the communion of the Church these pretended prophets. And it was easy to be deceived in a matter of fact concerning persons at such a distance, and who appeared under the garb of hypocrisy. But he had no sooner answered their letters, in which he acknowledged them brethren, but Praxeas coming from the East, brought him an ample account of their tenets and practice: and Victor immediately recalled his letters of communion, and condemned these innovators. This Praxeas was a Phrygian, and being puffed up because he had suffered imprisonment for the faith, began to sow a new heresy at Rome, maintaining but one person in God, and attributing crucifixion to the Father as well as to the Son; whence his followers were called Patripassians. His errors being brought to light, he was also cut off from the communion of the Church.

About the same time Tatian fell from the Church. He was a Syrian, a Platonic philosopher, and a disciple of St. Justin, martyr, after whose death he taught some time at Rome. Afterward, returning into Syria in 171, he there broached his errors, which he durst not advance at Rome. He borrowed several of them from Marcion, Valentinus, and Saturninus, teaching two principles, and that the Creator is the evil principle or God. He added several new errors, as that Adam was damned. He condemned marriage as no less criminal than adultery, whence his followers were called Encratitæ, or the continent. They were likewise called Hydroparastatæ, or Aquarii, because, in consecrating the eucharist, they used only water, for they condemned all use of wine, and likewise the use of flesh-meat.[324] The ancients observe that Tatian’s fall was owing to pride, which often attends an opinion of knowledge;[325] and of this there cannot be a more dangerous symptom in a scholar than a fondness for novelty and singularity, especially if joined with obstinacy and opiniativeness.

St. Victor was watchful to cut off these scandals in their root, and every where to maintain the purity of the faith with unity. Up an this motive, he exerted his zeal in the dispute about the time of celebrating Easter. The churches of Lesser Asia kept it with the Jews on the fourteenth day of the first moon after the vernal equinox, on whatever day of the week it fell. The Roman church, and all the rest of the world, kept Easter always on a Sunday immediately following that fourteenth day. Pope Anicetus permitted these Asiatics to keep their own custom, even at Rome; but Pope Soter, his successor, obliged them to conform to the custom of places where they should be. Several councils held at Rome, in Palestine, in Pontus, in Gaul, at Corinth, and other places, unanimously determined the point according to the Roman custom. Yet Polycrates, bishop of Ephesus, wrote strenuously in defence of the Asiatic custom, which he said was derived from St. Philip who died at Hierapolis, from St. John Evangelist, St. Polycarp, bishop and martyr, Sagaris, bishop and martyr, who died at Laodicea, and others. Victor seeing the Asiatics fixed in their resolution, threatened to cut them off from the communion of the Church; from the words of Eusebius[326] some moderns infer with Baronius, Constant, and De Marca, that he excommunicated them in a letter, but immediately suspended or recalled the sentence: others with Thomassin, Natalis Alexander, and Graveson, think that he only threatened it; which opinion best agrees with the sequel. To reconcile the different passages of authors, F. John Philip Monti[327] thinks pope Victor, upon receiving the refractory answer of Polycrates, drew up a sentence of excommunication, but never sent or published the same, being overcome by the advice of St. Irenæus. The schism which Blastus, a priest, had lately formed at Rome, upon the difference of this rite, for which he had been degraded by pope Eleutherius, probably made St. Victor more severe in extirpating a practice which became daily more dangerous to the unity of the Church; but prudence and charity recommended a toleration some time longer, which he was prevailed upon to grant, by a letter of St. Irenæus, who wrote to him on that subject in his own name, and in that of his brethren in Gaul. St. Victor died soon after this, in the year 201, the ninth of Severus, after he had sat ten years. He is styled a martyr by some writers of the fifth age, and in an ancient pontifical written in 530. Though Severus only published the edicts for his persecution in 202, several Christians had suffered in his reign before that time, as Tillemont remarks.[328] F. Pagi thinks St. Victor did not die by the sword, because in some Martyrologies he is called only confessor, though his dignity and zeal exposed him to continual persecutions, for which alone he might deserve the title of martyr. See Eusebius Hist. l. 5, c. 23. Orsi, Berti Diss. Hist. t. 2, p. 88.

SAINT INNOCENT I., POPE AND CONFESSOR.

He was a native of Albano, near Rome; and, upon the death of pope Anastasius in 402, was unanimously chosen to fill the pontifical chair. He ascended it by compulsion, and considering himself in it with trembling, he never ceased to beg of God the spirit of his holy wisdom and prudence, which he stood the more in need of, as the times in which he lived were more difficult. Alaric the Goth, with an army of barbarians, threatened to carry desolation over all Italy. The pope exhorted the faithful to receive the scourges of heaven with submission and humility, and undertook several journeys to negotiate a reconciliation between the emperor Honorius and Alaric, but in vain. The Goths received a great overthrow from the Roman army commanded by Stilico, in 403. But Alaric led them a second time to attempt the plunder of Rome; and because Honorius refused to make him general of the imperial army, he took that city on the 24th of August, 410, and abandoned it to the fury of his soldiers, excepting the church of SS. Peter and Paul, to which he granted the privilege of a sanctuary. Pope Innocent was at that time absent with the emperor at Ravenna. The year following, Alaric being dead, his brother-in-law and successor Atulphus again plundered Rome.

After the departure of the barbarians, the good pope hastened thither, and by his presence brought comfort and joy to that afflicted people. He taught them to draw an advantage from their sufferings by making a good use of them, and so much were the Heathens edified at the patience, resignation, and virtue with which the Christians suffered the loss of their goods and whatever was dear, without any murmuring or complaint, that they came in crowds desiring to be instructed in the faith and baptized. The pope labored incessantly to form them a holy people, always occupied in good works. His letters, especially those to Exuperius, the most holy bishop of Toulouse, and Decentius, bishop of Gubbio, in answer to their several queries, contain many useful rules, and judicious decisions. In the former, he says, that communion or absolution is never to be denied to dying penitents, that we may not imitate the hardness of the Novatians. In that to Decentius he says, that only bishops, who have the sovereignty of the priesthood, can confer the Holy Ghost in confirmation, by anointing the foreheads of persons baptized; and that he cannot recite the words of the form for fear of discovering the mysteries or sacraments to the infidels. He uses the same precaution in speaking of the sacrifice; so inviolable was the secret with which, out of respect, the primitive Christians treated the sacraments. In the same epistle, this pope mentioning the extreme unction which is given to the sick, he says, it cannot be administered to penitents before their reconciliation, because it is a sacrament; and all sacraments are refused them in that state. This evinces that it was held to be no less properly a sacrament than the eucharist. He indeed allows the custom that then prevailed for the laity to use the holy oils out of devotion, but without the sacramental words, and not as a sacrament; for being consulted whether bishops could give that sacrament, which was usually administered by priests, he proves that bishops can do it, because priests can; consequently, he supposes as undoubted, that only priests, not laymen, can minister this holy sacrament.

When, in 416, the councils of Carthage and Milevum had condemned the Pelagian errors, and wrote to the pope against them, the synodal letters of both these councils having been drawn up by St. Austin, St. Innocent, in his answer to the bishops of the council of Milevum, says, that “all ecclesiastical matters throughout the world are, by divine right, to be referred to the apostolic see, that is, to St. Peter, the author of its name and honor.” He commends the bishops of this council for so doing: “Following,” says he, “the ancient rule which you know with me, has been always observed by the whole world.”[329] The confirmation given by pope Innocent to these two African councils being brought to Africa, St. Austin said,[330] “The decisions of the two councils have been already sent to the apostolic see; the rescripts are also come from thence. The cause is now finished; would to God that the error may at last be at end.” St. Innocent closed his life with exerting his zeal in defence of divine grace, dying in 417, having been pope fifteen years. See his letters, and the councils, Ceillier, t. 10, p. 104, and Cuper the Bollandist, t. 6, Jul. p. 548.

ST. SAMPSON, B. C.

He was a child of prayer, and was born about the year 496, of noble parentage, in that part of South Wales which is now called Glamorganshire, then in the country of the Demetes, upon the borders of the Wenetes, who inhabited the province called by the Britons Guent, now Monmouthshire. At seven years of age he was put under the care of St. Iltutus, a very learned abbot in Glamorganshire, and having made great progress in learning and virtue, was ordained priest by Saint Dubritius, bishop of Caërleon. In 512 he passed into a neighboring island; where he led an eremitical life, as did several others, under the direction of St. Piro, a holy priest. By an order of SS. Dubritius and Iltutus he paid a visit to his aged father who lay dangerously ill. The saint restored him by his prayers to his health, and converted him, and his whole numerous family, including his uncles, cousins, and brothers, whom he placed in several monasteries, but his father and an uncle in his own community of hermits. In 516 he made a voyage into Ireland, to animate himself to fervor by the example and instructions of many illustrious saints who flourished there, and after his return shut himself up in a cave in a wilderness. In 520 St. Dubritius called him to a synod at Caërleon, and in it ordained him bishop without being fixed in any

## particular see. St. Sampson continued his former austere manner of

life, abstaining wholly from flesh, sometimes eating only once in two or three days, and often passing the whole night in prayer standing, though sometimes when he watched the night, he took a little rest, leaning his head against a wall. To gain souls to God by the exercise of the ministry with which he saw himself intrusted, he passed over into Brittany in France, with his father and his cousin St. Magloire, and was followed by St. Maclou or Malo, another cousin. St. Sampson there converted many idolaters, raised a dead man to life, and wrought many other miracles. He founded a great abbey, which he called Dole,[331] and fixed there the episcopal see which was before subject to Quidalet, now St. Malo’s. This see of Dole long enjoyed a metropolitical jurisdiction over all the bishops of Brittany.[332] He subscribed to the second council of Paris, held in 557, in the manner following, “I Sampson, a sinner, bishop, have consented and subscribed.” He used to have a cross carried before him, as is the custom of archbishops at present. He died about the year 564. A considerable part of his relics was translated to Paris, with those of St. Magliore and St. Maclou, in the tenth century, for fear of the inroads of the Normans. See his life in Mabillon, Act. Bened. t. 1, p. 176, and Solier the Bollandist, t. 6, Jul. p. 568.

JULY XXIX.

ST. MARTHA, V.

She was sister to Mary and Lazarus, and lived with them at Bethania, a small town two miles distant from Jerusalem, a little beyond mount Olivet. Our Blessed Redeemer had made his residence usually in Galilee, till in the third year of his public ministry he preached chiefly in Judæa, during which interval he frequented the house of these three holy disciples. Martha seems to have been the eldest, and to have had the chief care and direction of the household. It appears from the history of the resurrection of Lazarus that their family was of principal note in the country. In the first visit, as it seems, with which Jesus honored them,[333] St. Luke tells us[334] that St. Martha showed great solicitude to entertain and serve him. She forgot the privilege of her rank and riches, and would not leave so great an honor to servants only, but was herself very busy in preparing everything for so great a guest and his holy company. Mary sat all the while at our Saviour’s feet, feeding her soul with his heavenly doctrine. In this she found such inexpressible sweetness, and so great spiritual advantage, that she forgot and contemned the whole world, and would suffer nothing to draw her from her entertainment with her God, or make her lose any one of those precious moments. At his sacred discourses her heart was inflamed, her pure soul seemed to melt in holy love, and in a total forgetfulness of all other things she said to herself, with the spouse in the Canticles, _My beloved to me, and I to him, who feedeth among the lilies_;[335] that is with chaste souls, or among the flowers of virtues. St. Austin observes that this house represents to us the whole family of God on earth. In it no one is idle, but his servants have their different employments, some in the contemplative life, as recluses; others in the active; as, first, those who labor for the salvation of souls in the exterior functions of the pastoral charge; secondly, those who, upon pure motives of charity, serve the poor or the sick; and, lastly, all who look upon their lawful profession in the world as the place for which God has destined them, and the employment which he has given them; and who faithfully pursue its occupations with a view purely to accomplish the divine will, and acquit themselves of every duty in the order in which God has placed them in this world. He is the greater saint, whatever his state of life may be, whose love of God and his neighbor is more pure, more ardent, and more perfect; for charity is the soul and form of Christian perfection.

But it has been disputed whether the contemplative or the active life be in itself the more perfect. St. Thomas answers this question,[336] proving from the example of Christ and his apostles, that the mixed life, which is made up of both, is the most excellent. This is the apostolic life, with the care of souls, if in it the external functions of instructing, assisting, and comforting others, which is the most noble object of charity, be supported by a constant perfect spirit of prayer and contemplation. In order to this, a long and fervent religious retirement ought to be the preparation which alone can form the perfect spirit of this state; and the same must be constantly nourished and improved by a vehement love and frequent practice of holy retirement, and a continued recollection, as Christ during his ministry often retired to the mountains to pray; for that pastor who suffers the spirit of prayer to languish in his soul, carries about a dead soul in a living body, to use the expression of St. Bonaventure.[337] The like interior must animate; and some degree of assiduity in the like exercises, as circumstances will allow, must support those who are engaged in worldly employs, and those who devote themselves to serve Christ’s most tender and afflicted members, the poor and the sick, as Martha served Christ himself.

With so great love and fervor did Martha wait on our Redeemer, that, as we cannot doubt, she thought that if the whole world were occupied in attending so great a guest, all would be too little. She wished that all men would employ their hands, feet, and hearts, all their faculties and senses, with their whole strength, in serving with her their gracious Creator, made for us our brother. Therefore, sweetly complaining to him, she desired him to bid her sister Mary to rise up and help her. Our meek and loving Lord was well pleased with the solicitude and earnestness, full of affection and devotion, wherewith Martha waited on him; yet he commended more the quiet repose with which Mary attended only to that which is of the greatest importance, the spiritual improvement of her soul. _Martha, Martha,_ said he, _thou art careful and troubled about many things; but one thing is necessary._ If precipitation or too great eagerness had any share in her service, this would have been an imperfection; which, nevertheless, does not appear. Christ only puts Martha in mind that though corporal duties ought not to be neglected, and if sanctified by a perfect intention of charity are most excellent virtues, yet spiritual functions, when they come in competition, are to be preferred. The former, indeed, become spiritual, when animated by a perfect spirit and recollection; but this is often much impaired by the distraction of the mind, and in the course of action. In our external employments, which we direct with a pure intention to fulfil the divine will, we imitate the angels when they are employed by God in being our guardians, or in other external functions with which God hath charged them; but as these blessed spirits in such employs never lose sight of God, so ought we in all our actions to continue, at least virtually, to adore and praise his holy name; but herein the eye of the soul is often carried off, or its attention much weakened, whereas, in heavenly contemplation, the heart is wholly taken up in God, and more perfectly united to him by adoration and love. This is the novitiate of heaven, where it is the uninterrupted occupation of the blessed. In this sense Christ so highly commends the choice of Mary, affirming that her happy employment would never be taken from her. He added, “_One thing is necessary_;” which words some explain as if he had said, “A little is enough, one dish suffices;” but the word _necessary_ determines the sense rather to be, as St. Austin, St. Bernard, Maldonatus, Grotius, and others, expound it, eternal salvation is our only affair.

Another instance which shows how dear this devout family was to our divine Saviour, is the raising of Lazarus to life. When he fell sick, the pious sisters sent to inform Christ, who was then absent in Galilee. They said no more in their message than this: _He whom thou lovest is sick._ They knew very well that this was enough; and that his tender bowels would be moved to compassion by the bare representation of their calamity. It was not to remove our corporal miseries that Christ came from heaven, and died and suffered so much; this was not the object which drew down this Almighty Physician among us. If, in his mortal life on earth, he healed the sick and raised the dead, by these miracles he would manifest, as by sensible tokens, the spiritual cures which he desired to work in our souls. We groan under the weight of innumerable and the most dreadful spiritual miseries. Our tender Redeemer knows their horrible depth and endless extent; but he would have us to conceive a just sense of them, to acknowledge them, and earnestly to implore his aid; for this he sheds the rays of his light upon our blind souls, and rouses us by his repeated graces. The first step towards a deliverance is, that we confess, with a feeling sense, our extreme baseness and ingratitude, and our weakness and total incapacity of doing anything of ourselves towards our recovery; but we have a physician infinitely tender and powerful. To him then we must continually lay open our distress, and with deep compunction display our miseries before his holy eyes, earnestly striving by this dumb eloquence to move him to pity; exposing to him that we whom he loveth still as the work of his hands, as the price of his blood, lie ingulfed in unspeakable miseries. Thus we must entreat him, with tears and loud cries of our hearts, to look down on his image in our souls, now disfigured and sullied with sin; on his kingdom left desolate by the tyranny of the devil and our passions: on the vineyard which himself had planted, adorned, and fenced, but which is laid waste by merciless robbers and enemies; and that he would stretch out his almighty hand to repair these breaches, and save us. So long as life lasts we can never be sure that we shall find mercy, or rest secure of the issue of our great trial upon which our eternity depends; so long, therefore, we ought never to cease, with most earnest cries, to implore the clemency of our Judge, laying open our spiritual miseries to him in these words of the two sisters,--“Behold he, whom thou lovest, is sinking under the weight of his evils,” and beg him to remember his ancient love and mercies towards us. We ought also in corporal distempers to address ourselves to God with the like words, begging with Martha our own or our brother’s corporal health, if this may be expedient to our souls, and conducive to the divine honor.

In all these petitions we ought to implore the joint supplications of the saints, as at the entreaties of the sisters Christ raised Lazarus. Having received their message, he wanted no other prompter than that of his own compassion and affection; an emblem of the paternal mercy with which he draws to himself, and receives penitent sinners. Had the prodigal son offered any plea of merits or deserts, he had never deserved to find favor; but he knew the goodness and tenderness of his father, who had with restless nights waited with impatience to see him return. The tender parent wanted no motives drawn from other objects or things without himself. The paternal affection within his own breast pleaded in favor of his disobedient child. By this his very bowels yearned to embrace him again, and raise him from spiritual death to life. This same tenderness and compassion in Christ was the grounds of the sisters’ confidence. Jesus, however, deferred setting out two or three days, that his glory might be more manifested by the greater evidence of the miracle, and by the trial of the virtue and confidence of the two holy sisters. When he arrived at Bethania, Martha went first out to meet and welcome him; and then called her sister Mary. The presence of Jesus brings every blessing and comfort; and, by it, the sisters had the joy to see their brother again restored to life when he had been four days in the grave.

Christ was again at Bethania, at the house of Simon the Leper, six days before his passion. Lazarus was one of the guests. Martha waited at table; and Mary poured a box of costly ointments on our Lord’s feet, which she wiped with the hair of her head.[338] Judas Iscariot complained of this waste, saying that the ointment might have been sold, and the price given to the poor. Not that he had any regard for the poor, but, bearing the common purse, he converted things sometimes to his own use, being a thief. How imperceptible a vice is covetousness, and how subtle in excuses to deceive itself! Charity interprets the actions of others in the best part; but passion hurries men into rash judgments. Judas condemned the most heroic virtue and devotion of a saint; but Jesus undertook her defence. He was pleased not with the ointment, but with the love and devotion of his fervent servant, which he suffered her to satisfy by that action, which he received as performed for the embalming of his body, his death being then at hand. He, moreover, declared that this good work which Judas condemned, should be commended to the edification of his servants over the whole world wherever his gospel should be preached.

St. Martha seems to have been one of those holy women who attended Christ during his passion, and stood under his cross. After his ascension, she came to Marseilles, and ended her life in Provence, where her body was found at Tarascon, soon after the discovery of that of St. Mary Magdalen. It lies in a magnificent subterraneous chapel of the stately collegiate church at Tarascon, which is dedicated to God in her honor. King Louis XI. gave a rich bust of gold, in which the head of the saint is kept.

* * * * *

We have all, like St. Martha, one only necessary affair; that for which alone God created and redeemed us; for which he has wrought so many wonderful mysteries in our favor, and upon which the dreadful alternative of sovereign and everlasting happiness or misery depends. This is, that we refer even all our worldly employments and all that we do, to glorify God, to fulfil his will, and to save our souls. In this, all our thoughts, desires, and enterprises, ought to centre: this is the circle in which we must shut ourselves up, and never think of moving out of. Every one ought sincerely to say with an ancient writer, “I have but one only affair; and I care for nothing else only lest any other thing should take off any part of my attention from this my only business.”[339] What account will they be able to give to themselves or to their Judge at the last day, who make vanity, pastimes, and idle employments, the sole business of their life? or they who toil and slave much in bustling through the world, seeming to neglect nothing but their only affair.

SS. SIMPLICIUS AND FAUSTINUS, BROTHERS, AND BEATRICE, THEIR SISTER, MM.

The two brothers were cruelly tormented, and at length beheaded at Rome in the persecution of Diocletian, in the year 303. Their sister Beatrice took up their bodies out of the Tiber, and gave them burial. She lay herself concealed seven months in the house of a virtuous widow called Lucina, with whom she spent her time, night and day, in fervent prayer, and in the exercise of other good works. She was discovered and impeached by a pagan kinsman, who designed to possess himself of her estate, which was contiguous to his own; she resolutely protested to the judge that she would never adore gods of wood and stone, and was strangled by his order in prison the night following. Lucina buried her body near her brothers on the side of the highway to Porto, in the cemetery called Ad Ursum Pileatum. Pope Leo translated their relics into a church which he built to their honor in the city: they now lie in that of St. Mary Major.

With them is commemorated St. Felix, pope and martyr, whose name is found in the Martyrologies on this day.

ST. WILLIAM, BISHOP OF S. BRIEUC IN BRITTANY, C.

St. William Pinchon, of an illustrious family in Brittany, was, by the innocence of his manners, his admirable meekness, humility, chastity, mortification, charity, and devotion, an accomplished model of all virtues. He received the tonsure, and some years after the holy orders of deacon and priest, at the hands of Josselin, bishop of S. Brieuc, served that church under his two successors, Peter and Sylvester, and succeeded the latter in the episcopal dignity about the year 1220. The poor were his treasurers, and not content to exhaust on them whatever he possessed, he often borrowed great stores of corn and other necessary provisions for their relief. The bare boards were usually his bed; for his domestics discovered that he never made use of the soft bed which they prepared for him. The assiduous application to all the functions of his charge was no hindrance to his nourishing within himself the spirit of recollection and holy prayer. He died about the year 1234, on the 29th of July, on which his name occurs in the Roman Martyrology. His body was deposited in his cathedral, and taken up incorrupt in 1248. He was canonized by Innocent IV. in 1253, according to Baronius. See Lobineau, Vies des SS. de Bretagne, p. 235.

ST. OLAUS OR OLAVE, KING OF NORWAY, M.

He was son of Herald Grenscius, prince of Westfold in Norway, by his wife Asta, daughter of Gulbrand Kuta, governor of Gulbrand’s Dale or Valley. He delivered his country from the tyranny under which the Swedes and Danes had for some time held it, whilst Norway was divided between Sweno, king of Denmark, Olave Scot-Konung, son of Eric, king of Sweden, and Eric, son of Hacon earl of Norway. In 1013, he sailed to England, and successfully assisted king Ethelred against the Danes after the death of Sueno or Swayn their king. He afterward waged war against Olaus Scot-Konung, king of Sweden, till, making an advantageous peace, he took to wife the daughter of that king.[340] These two princes about that time introduced the Romescot, a small annual tribute yearly to be paid to the apostolic see.[341] St. Olave brought over from England several pious and learned priests and monks, one of whom, named Grimkele, was chosen bishop of Drontheim, his capital. The holy king did nothing without the advice of this prelate, and by his counsels published many wholesome laws, and abolished such ancient laws and customs as were contrary to the Gospel; which he did not only in Norway, but also in the isles of Orkney and of Iceland; though the entire conquest of Orkney was reserved to his son Magnus, who also subdued the isle of Man, as Camden relates from the ancient Chronicle of Man.

Our religious king having settled his dominions in peace, set himself to extirpate out of them the abominable superstitions of idolatry. He travelled in person from town to town, exhorting his subjects to open the eyes of their souls to the bright light of faith. A company of zealous preachers attended him, and he demolished in many places the idolatrous temples. The heathens rebelled, and with the assistance of Canutus the Great, defeated and expelled him. St. Olave fled into Russia, whence he soon after returned, and raised an army in order to recover his kingdom, but was slain by his rebellious and infidel subjects in a battle fought at Stichstadt, north of Drontheim, on the 29th of July, 1030, having reigned sixteen years. These rebels seem to have been in the interest of Canute the Great, who arrived from England in Norway, took possession of that kingdom, and left his nephew Hackin viceroy, but he being soon after drowned at sea, Canute made his son Sweno viceroy of Norway. Saint Olave’s body was honorably buried at Drontheim, and the year following bishop Grimkele commanded him to be honored in that church among the saints with the title of martyr. His son Magnus was called home from Russia in 1035, and restored to the throne. Sweno, who saw himself entirely abandoned, fled into Sweden. Magnus exceedingly promoted the devotion of the people to the memory of his father, the martyr, who was chosen titular saint of the cathedral of Drontheim. This church was rebuilt with such splendor and magnificence, as to have been the glory and pride of all the North. Munster has given us a minute description of it, after Lutheranism was introduced; but it was soon after burnt by lightning. The body of St. Olave was found incorrupt in 1098; and again when the Lutherans, in 1541, plundered the shrine, which was adorned with gold and jewels of an immense value, a treasure nowhere equalled in the North. The ship which carried the greatest part of this sacrilegious booty perished at sea in the road to Denmark; the rest was robbed at land, so that nothing of it came into the king of Denmark’s hands. The Lutherans treated the saint’s body with respect, and left it in the same place where the shrine had stood, in the inner wooden case, till in 1568 they decently buried it in the same cathedral. A shirt or inner garment of St. Olave’s is shown at St. Victor’s in Paris. His shrine became famous by many miracles, and he was honored with extraordinary devotion throughout all the northern kingdoms, and was titular saint of several churches in England and Scotland. He was called by our ancestors St. Olave, and more frequently St. Tooley; but in the Norway Chronicles Olaf Haraldson, and Olaf Helge or the Holy. See Saxo-Grammaticus, Hist. Dan. l. 10, fol. 94, 95, 96. Adam Brem, Hist. Eccl. l. 2, c. 43. And the Iceland historians whom Mallet regards as far more accurate, especially Torfæus, in the last century, in his Series regum Daniæ; Snorro Sturleson, &c. See also Bosch the Bollandist, t. 7, Jul. p. 87. Mallet, Hist. de Dannemarc, &c.

ST. OLAUS, KING OF SWEDEN.

Was converted to the faith by St. Anscharius, and for his zeal in propagating the same, and because in the time of a great famine he could not be compelled to offer sacrifice to the idols of Upsal, was sacrificed to them by the rebellious inhabitants of Birca, at that time the usual residence of the kings of Sweden. From the ruins of Birca, Stockholm took its rise, though built at a considerable distance from it. See Puffendorf’s History of Sweden, t. 1, p. 70.

JULY XXX.

SS. ABDON AND SENNEN, MM.

They were Persians, but coming to Rome, courageously confessed the faith of Christ in the persecution of Decius in 250. They were cruelly tormented, but the more their bodies were mangled and covered with ghastly wounds, the more were their souls adorned and beautified with divine grace, and rendered glorious in the sight of heaven. The Christians at Rome did not treat them as strangers, but as brethren united to them in the hope of the same blessed country; and after their death carefully deposited their bodies in the house of a subdeacon called Quirinus. In the reign of Constantine the Great, their relics were removed into the ancient burying place of Pontian, so called from some rich man who built it: called also, from some sign, Ad Ursum Pileatum. It afterward received its name from SS. Abdon and Sennen. It was situated near the Tiber, on the road to Porto near the gates of Rome. The images of these martyrs with Persian bonnets and crowns on their heads, and their names, are to be seen there at this day in ancient sculpture.[342] SS. Abdon and Sennen are mentioned in the ancient Liberian Calendar, and in other Martyrologies; though their modern acts deserve no notice, as cardinal Noris has demonstrated.[343]

The martyrs preferred torments and death to sin, because the love of God above all things reigned in their breasts. “We say we are Christians,” says Tertullian;[344] “we proclaim it to the whole world, even under the hands of the executioner, and in the midst of all the torments you inflict upon us to compel us to unsay it. Torn and mangled, and weltering in our blood, we cry out as loud as we are able to cry, That we are worshippers of God through Christ.” Upon which Mr. Reeves observes, that no other religion ever produced any considerable number of martyrs except the true one. Do we ever read of any generation of men so greedy of martyrdom, who thought it long till they were upon the rack, and were so patient, so cheerful and steadfast under the most intolerable torments? Socrates was the only philosopher that can be said to have died for his doctrine; and what a restless posture of mind does he betray, who was esteemed the best and the wisest of the heathens! With what misgivings, and fits of hope and fear, does he deliver himself in that most famous discourse, supposed to have been made by him a little before his death, about a future state![345] And neither Phædo, Cebes, Crito, Simmias, nor any other of his greatest friends who were present at his death, durst maintain either his innocence, or that doctrine for which he died, in the Areopagus. With what reserve did Plato himself dogmatize concerning the gods whom he worshipped in public, but denied in private! How did he dodge about, disguise himself, and say and unsay the same excellent truths! Only the Christians suffered at this rate, and they held on suffering for several hundred years together, till they had subdued the world by dying for their religion. What could engage such a number of men in such a religion, and support them in it, in defiance of death in the most shocking forms, but evident truth, and a superior grace and strength from above?

ST. JULITTA, M.

The emperor Dioclesian, by the first edicts which he issued out against the Christians in 303, declared them infamous, and debarred from all protection of the laws, and from all the privileges of citizens. By thus putting arms into the hands of every one against them, the tyrant hoped to see their very name extinguished; but he was not sensible that this divine religion then triumphs when its professors seem to be overcome by death, and that by it human weakness is made victorious over the power of the world and hell. Of this St. Julitta is an instance. She was a rich lady of Cæsarea in Cappadocia, and was possessed of many farms, cattles, goods, and slaves. A powerful man of the town, by open violence, got possession of a considerable part of her estate; and when he could not otherwise maintain his suit before the pretor, charged her with being a Christian. The judge caused fire and incense to be immediately brought into the court, and commanded her to offer sacrifice to the idols; but she courageously made him this answer, “May my estates perish, or be disposed of to strangers; may I also lose my life, and may this my body be cut in pieces rather than that by the least impious word I should offend God that made me. If you take from me a little portion of this earth, I shall gain heaven for it.” The judge was extremely exasperated at the undaunted resolution with which she spoke, and without more ado confirmed to the usurper the estates to which he unjustly laid claim, and condemned the servant of Christ to the flames. Upon hearing this sentence, a kind of heavenly joy and most amiable cheerfulness flushed her countenance, which she could not refrain from expressing by continual thanksgiving to God to her last breath. She exhorted the Christians in the most moving manner to constancy and fervor. The Pagans were amazed to see a lady of her rank, age, and fortune, possessed of all the advantages necessary to please the world, and yet in a condition to enjoy all that is in it most flattering, to contemn all this, and life itself with such an heroic constancy.

When all things were ready for the execution, Julitta laid herself cheerfully upon the pile, and there expired, being, as it seems, stifled by the smoke; for the flame, rising in an arched vault round her body, did not touch it, and the Christians took it up entire. It was afterward interred in the porch of the principal church in the city; and St. Basil, speaking of this treasure about the year 375, wrote as follows: “It enriches with blessings both the place and those who come to it.” He assures us that “the earth which received the body of this blessed woman sent forth a spring of most pleasant water, whereas all the neighboring waters are brackish and salt. This water preserves health, and relieves the sick.” Both the Greeks and Latins honor St. Julitta on this day. See St. Basil’s homily on St. Julitta, t. 2, p. 33, hom. 5: also in Ruinart’s collection, p. 515.

JULY XXXI.

ST. IGNATIUS OF LOYOLA, C.

FOUNDER OF THE SOCIETY OF JESUS.

His life was written by F. Lewis Gonzales or Gonzalvo, who was a long time the saint’s confessor, and died at Lisbon in 1575; and again by Ribadeneira, who had intimately conversed with the saint, and died at Madrid in 1611. It is elegantly compiled in Latin by Maffei, who died at Tivoli in 1603; in Italian by Bartoli, at Rome about 1650; and in French by Bouhours, one of the ablest and most judicious of the modern French critics in polite literature, who died at Paris in 1704. Pinius the Bollandist gives the original lives, Julij, t. 7, p. 409, and adds the history of many miracles wrought by the intercession of this saint; also, Baillet.

A. D. 1556.

The conversion of many barbarous nations, several heretofore unknown to us, both in the most remote eastern and western hemisphere; the education of youth in learning and piety, the instruction of the ignorant, the improvement of all the sciences, and the reformation of the manners of a great part of Christendom, is the wonderful fruit of the zeal with which this glorious saint devoted himself to labor in exalting the glory of God, and in spreading over the whole world that fire which Christ himself came to kindle on earth. St. Ignatius was born in 1491, in the castle of Loyola, in Guipuscoa, a part of Biscay that reaches to the Pyrenean mountains. His father, Don Bertram, was lord of Ognez and Loyola, head of one of the most ancient and noble families of that country. His mother, Mary Saez de Balde, was not less illustrious by her extraction. They had three daughters and eight sons. The youngest of all these was Inigo or Ignatius; he was well shaped, and in his childhood gave proofs of a pregnant wit and discretion above his years; was affable and obliging, but of a warm or choleric disposition, and had an ardent passion for glory. He was bred in the court of Ferdinand V. in quality of page to the king, under the care and protection of Antony Manriquez, duke of Najara, grandee of Spain, who was his kinsman and patron; and who, perceiving his inclinations, led him to the army, took care to have him taught all the exercises proper to make him an accomplished officer. The love of glory and the example of his elder brothers who had signalized themselves in the wars of Naples, made him impatient till he entered the service. He behaved with great valor and conduct in the army, especially at the taking of Najara, a small town on the frontiers of Biscay; yet he generously declined taking any part of the booty in which he might have challenged the greatest share. He hated gaming as an offspring of avarice, and a source of quarrels and other evils; was dexterous in the management of affairs, and had an excellent talent in making up differences among the soldiers. He was generous, even towards enemies, but addicted to gallantry, and full of the maxims of worldly honor, vanity, and pleasures. Though he had no tincture of learning, he made tolerably good verses in Spanish, having a natural genius for poetry. A poem which he composed in praise of St. Peter was much commended.

Charles V., who had succeeded king Ferdinand, was chosen emperor, and obliged to go into Germany. Francis I., king of France, a martial prince, having been his competitor for the empire, resented his disappointment, and became an implacable enemy to the emperor and the house of Austria. He declared war against Charles, with a view to recover Navarre, of which Ferdinand had lately dispossessed John of Albert, and which Charles still held, contrary to the treaty of Noyon, by which he was obliged to restore it in six months. Francis, therefore, in 1521, sent a great army into Spain, under the command of Andrew de Foix, younger brother of the famous Lautrec, who, passing the Pyrenees, laid siege to Pampeluna, the capital of Navarre. Ignatius had been left there by the viceroy, not to command, but to encourage the garrison. He did all that lay in his power to persuade them to defend the city, but in vain. However, when he saw them open the gates to the enemy, to save his own honor, he retired into the citadel with one only soldier who had the heart to follow him. The garrison of this fortress deliberated likewise whether they should surrender, but Ignatius encouraged them to stand their ground. The French attacked the place with great fury, and with their artillery made a wide breach in the wall, and attempted to take it by assault. Ignatius appeared upon the breach, at the head of the bravest part of the garrison, and, with his sword in his hand, endeavored to drive back the enemy; but, in the heat of the combat, a shot from a cannon broke from the wall a bit of stone, which struck and bruised his left leg; and the ball itself in the rebound broke and shivered his right leg. The garrison seeing him fall, surrendered at discretion.

The French used their victory with moderation, and treated the prisoners well, especially Ignatius, in consideration of his quality and valor. They carried him to the general’s quarters, and soon after sent him, in a litter carried by two men, to the castle of Loyola, which was not far from Pampeluna. Being arrived there he felt great pain; for the bones had been ill set, as is often the case in the hurry after a battle. The surgeons therefore judged it necessary to break his leg again, which he suffered without any concern. But a violent fever followed the second setting, which was attended with dangerous symptoms, and reduced him to an extreme degree of weakness, so that the physicians declared that he could not live many days. He received the sacraments on the eve of the feast of SS. Peter and Paul, and it was believed he could not hold out till the next morning. Nevertheless God, who had great designs of mercy upon him, was pleased to restore him to his health in the following manner: Ignatius always had a singular devotion to St. Peter, and implored his intercession in his present distress with great confidence. In the night, he thought he saw in a dream that apostle touch him, and cure him. When he awaked he found himself out of danger; his pains left him, and his strength began to return, so that he ever after looked upon this recovery as miraculous; yet he still retained the spirit of the world. After the second setting of his leg, the end of a bone stuck out under his knee, which was a visible deformity. Though the surgeons told him the operation would be very painful, this protuberance he caused to be cut off, merely that his boot and stockings might sit handsomely; and he would neither be bound nor held, and scarce ever changed countenance whilst the bone was partly sawed and partly cut off, though the pain must have been excessive. Because his right leg remained shorter than the left, he would be for many days together put upon a kind of rack, and with an iron engine he violently stretched and drew out that leg; but all to little purpose, for he remained lame his whole life after.

During the cure of his knee he was confined to his bed, though otherwise in perfect health, and finding the time tedious, he called for some book of romances, for he had been always much delighted with fabulous histories of knight-errantry. None such being then found in the castle of Loyola, a book of the lives of our Saviour, and of the saints, was brought him. He read them first, only to pass away the time, but afterward began to relish them and to spend whole days in reading them. He chiefly admired in the saints their love of solitude and of the cross. He considered among the anchorets many persons of quality who buried themselves alive in caves and dens, pale with fasting, and covered with haircloth; and he said to himself, “These men were of the same frame I am of; why then should not I do what they have done?” In the fervor of his good resolutions he thought of visiting the Holy Land, and becoming a hermit. But these pious notions soon vanished; and his passion for glory, and a secret inclination for a rich lady in Castile, with a view to marriage, again filled his mind with thoughts of the world; till returning to the lives of the saints, he perceived in his own heart the emptiness of all worldly glory, and that only God could content the soul. This vicissitude and fluctuation of mind continued some time; but he observed this difference, that the thoughts which were from God filled his soul with consolation, peace, and tranquillity; whereas the others brought indeed some sensible delight, but left a certain bitterness and heaviness in the heart. This mark he lays down in his book of Spiritual Exercises, as the ground of the rules for the discernment of the Spirit of God and the world in all the motions of the soul; as does cardinal Bona, and all other writers who treat of the discernment of spirits in the interior life. Taking at last a firm resolution to imitate the saints in their heroic practice of virtue, he began to treat his body with all the rigor it was able to bear; he rose at midnight, and spent his retired hours in weeping for his sins.

One night being prostrate before an image of the Blessed Virgin, in extraordinary sentiments of fervor, he consecrated himself to the service of his Redeemer under her patronage, and vowed an inviolable fidelity. When he had ended his prayer he heard a great noise; the house shook, the windows of his chamber were broken, and a rent was made in the wall which remains to this day, says the latest writer of his life. God might by this sign testify his acceptance of his sacrifice; as a like sign happened in the place where the faithful were assembled after Christ’s ascension,[346] and in the prison of Paul and Silas;[347] or this might be an effect of the rage of the devil. Another night, Ignatius saw the Mother of God environed with light, holding the infant Jesus in her arms; this vision replenished his soul with spiritual delight, and made all sensual pleasure and worldly objects insipid to him ever after. The saint’s eldest brother, who was then, by the death of their father, lord of Loyola, endeavored to detain him in the world, and to persuade him not to throw away the great advantages of the honor and reputation which his valor had gained him. But Ignatius being cured of his wounds, under pretence of paying a visit to the duke of Najara, who had often come to see him during his illness, and who lived at Navarret, turned another way, and sending his two servants back from Navarret to Loyola, went to Montserrat. This was a great abbey of near three hundred Benedictin monks, of a reformed austere institute, situate on a mountain of difficult access, about four leagues in circumference and two leagues high, in the diocess of Barcelona. The monastery was first founded for nuns by the sovereign counts of Barcelona about the year 880, but was given to monks in 990. It has been much augmented by several kings of Spain, and is very famous for a miraculous image of the Blessed Virgin, and a great resort of pilgrims.

There lived at that time in this monastery a monk of great sanctity, named John Chanones, a Frenchman, who being formerly vicar-general to the bishop of Mirepoix, in the thirty-first year of his age, resigned his ecclesiastical preferments, and took the monastic habit in this place. He lived to the age of eighty-eight years, never eating any flesh, watching great part of the night in prayer, dividing his whole time between heavenly contemplation and the service of his neighbor; and giving to all Spain an example of the most perfect obedience, humility, charity, devotion, and all other virtues. To this experienced director, Ignatius addressed himself, and after his preparation, was three days in making to him a general confession, which he often interrupted by the abundance of his tears. He made a vow of perpetual chastity, and dedicated himself with great fervor to the divine service. At his first coming to this place he had bought, at the village of Montserrat, a long coat of coarse cloth, a girdle, a pair of sandals, a wallet, and a pilgrim’s staff, intending, after he had finished his devotions there, to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Disguised in this habit, he remained at the abbey. He communicated to his director a plan of the austerities he proposed to practise, and was confirmed by him in his good resolutions. He received the blessed eucharist early in the morning on the feast of the Annunciation of our Lady in 1522; and on the same day left Montserrat for fear of being discovered, having given his horse to the monastery, and hung up his sword on a pillar near the altar in testimony of his renouncing the secular warfare, and entering himself in that of Christ. He travelled with his staff in his hand, a scrip by his side, bare-headed, and with one foot bare, the other being covered because it was yet tender and swelled. He went away infinitely pleased that he had cast off the livery of the world, and put on that of Jesus Christ. He had bestowed his rich clothes on a beggar at his coming out of Montserrat; but the poor man was thrown into prison on suspicion of theft. Ignatius being sent after by the magistrates, and brought back, told the truth to release him, but would not discover his own name.

Three leagues from Montserrat is a large village called Manresa, with a convent of Dominicans, and a hospital without the walls for pilgrims and sick persons. Ignatius went to this hospital, and rejoicing to see himself received in it unknown and among the poor, began to fast on water and the bread (which he begged) the whole week, except Sundays, when he ate a few boiled herbs, but sprinkled over with ashes. He wore an iron girdle and a hair shirt; disciplined himself thrice a day, slept little, and lay on the ground. He was every day present at the whole divine office, spent seven hours on his knees at prayer, and received the sacraments every Sunday. To add humiliation to his bodily austerities, he affected a clownishness in his behavior, and went begging about the streets with his face covered with dirt, his hair rough, and his beard and nails grown out to a frightful length. The children threw stones at him, and followed him with scornful shouts in the streets. Ignatius suffered these insults without saying one word, rejoicing secretly in his heart to share in the reproaches of the cross. The more mortifying the noisomeness of the hospital and the company of beggars were, the more violence he offered to himself that he might bear them cheerfully. The story of the fine suit of clothes given to the beggar at Montserrat, and the patience and devotion of the holy man, made him soon to be reverenced as some fervent penitent in disguise. To shun this danger, he privately hid himself in a dark deep cave in a solitary valley, called The Vale of Paradise, covered with briars, half a mile from the town. Here he much increased his mortifications till he was accidentally found half dead, and carried back to Manresa and lodged in the hospital.

After enjoying peace of mind and heavenly consolations from the time of his conversion, he was here visited with the most terrible trial of fears and scruples. He found no comfort in prayer, no relief in fasting, no remedy in disciplines, no consolation from the sacraments, and his soul was overwhelmed with bitter sadness. The Dominicans, out of compassion, took him out of the hospital into their convent; but his melancholy only increased upon him. He apprehended some sin in every step he took, and seemed often on the very brink of despair; but he was in the hands of him whose trials are favors. He most earnestly implored the divine assistance, and took no sustenance for seven days, till his confessor obliged him to eat. Soon after this, his tranquillity of mind was perfectly restored, and his soul overflowed with spiritual joy. From this experience he acquired a particular talent for curing scrupulous consciences, and a singular light to discern them. His prayer was accompanied with many heavenly raptures, and he received from God a supernatural knowledge and sense of sublime divine mysteries: yet he concealed all from the eyes of men, only disclosing himself to his two confessors, the pious monk of Montserrat, and the Dominican of Manresa; however, the people began to reverence him as a living saint, which they particularly testified during a violent fever into which his austerities cast him three times.

Too nice a worldly prudence may condemn the voluntary humiliations which this saint sometimes made choice of; but the wisdom of God is above that of the world; and the Holy Ghost sometimes inspires certain heroic souls to seek perfectly to die to themselves by certain practices which are extraordinary, and which would not be advisable to others; and if affected or undertaken with obstinacy and against advice, would be pernicious and criminal. Ignatius, by perfect compunction, humility, self-denial, contempt of the world, severe interior trials, and assiduous meditation, was prepared, by the divine grace, to be raised to an extraordinary gift of supernatural prayer. He afterward assured F. Lainez that he had learned more of divine mysteries by prayer in one hour at Manresa, than all the doctors of the schools could ever have taught him. He was there favored with many raptures, and divine illustrations concerning the Trinity, of which he afterward spoke with so much light and unction, that the most learned admired him, and the ignorant were instructed. In like manner, in various wonderful ecstasies, he was enlightened concerning the beauty and order of the creation, the excess of divine love which shines forth to man in the sacrament of the altar, and many other mysteries. So imperfect was his knowledge of his duties when he first renounced the world, that hearing a certain Moresco or Mahometan speak injuriously of the holy mother of God, when he set out from Loyola to Montserrat, he deliberated whether, being an officer, he ought not to kill him, though the divine protection preserved him from so criminal an

## action. But at Manresa he made so good a progress in the school of

virtue, as to become qualified already to be a guide to others. He stayed there almost a year, during which time he governed himself by the advice of the holy monk of Montserrat, whom he visited every week, and that of his Dominican director.

Spain, in that and the foregoing age, abounded with many learned and experienced persons in that way, endowed with an eminent spirit, and a perfect experimental knowledge of Christian piety; witness the works of St. Peter of Alcantara, John of Avila, St. Teresa, Bartholomew de Martyribus, Louis of Granada, and others. Our saint had the happiness to fall into the hands of prudent and able guides, and giving his heart to God without reserve, became himself in a short time an accomplished master; and whereas he at first only proposed to himself his own perfection, he afterward burned with an ardent desire of contributing to the salvation of others; and commiserating the blindness of sinners, and considering how much the glory of God shines in the sanctification of souls purchased with the blood of his Son, he said to himself, “It is not enough that I serve the Lord; all hearts ought to love him, and all tongues ought to praise him.” With this view, in order to be admitted more freely to converse with persons in the world, he chose a dress which, being more decent than the penitential garments which he at first wore, might not be disagreeable to others; and he moderated his excessive austerities.

He began then to exhort many to the love of virtue, and he there wrote his Spiritual Exercises, which he afterward revised, and published at Rome in 1548.[348] Though the saint was at that time unacquainted with learning any further than barely to read and write, yet this book is so full of excellent maxims and instructions in the highest points of a spiritual life, that it is most clear that the Holy Ghost supplied abundantly what was yet wanting in him of human learning and study. The spirit which reigns in this book was that of all the saints. Frequent religious retirement had been practised by pious persons, in imitation of Christ and all the saints from the beginning; likewise the use and method of holy meditation were always known; but the excellent order of these meditations, prescribed by Ignatius, was new: and, though the principal rules and maxims are found in the lessons and lives of the ancient fathers of the desert, they are here judiciously chosen, methodically digested, and clearly explained. One of these is, that a person must not abridge the time, or desist from meditating, on account of spiritual dryness; another, that no one make any vow in sudden sentiments of fervor, but wait some time, and first ask advice. St. Ignatius establishes in this book the practice of a daily particular examination against a person’s predominant passion, or on the best means and endeavors to acquire some particular virtue, besides the daily general examination of conscience. He lays down this excellent maxim;[349] “When God hath appointed out a way, we must faithfully follow it, and never think of another, under pretence that it is more easy and safe. It is one of the devil’s artifices to set before a soul some state, holy indeed, but impossible to her, or at least different from hers; that by this love of novelty, she may dislike or be slack in her present state, in which God hath placed her, and which is best for her. In like manner he represents to her other actions as more holy and profitable to make her conceive a disgust of her present employment.” When some pretended to find fault with this book of St. Ignatius’s Spiritual Exercises, pope Paul III. at the request of St. Francis Borgia, by a brief in 1548, approved it, as full of the Spirit of God, and very useful for the edification and spiritual profit of the faithful.

The pestilence which raged in Italy having ceased, Ignatius, after a stay of ten months at Manresa, left that place for Barcelona, neither regarding the tears of those who sought to detain him, nor admitting any to bear him company, nor consenting to accept any money for the expenses of his journey. He took shipping at Barcelona, and in five days landed at Gaeta, whence he travelled on foot to Rome, Padua, and Venice, through villages, the towns being shut for fear of the plague. He spent the Easter at Rome, and sailed from Venice on board the admiral’s vessel, which was carrying the governor to Cyprus. The sailors were a profligate crew, and seemed entirely to neglect prayer and all duties of religion, and their discourse was often lewd and profane. Ignatius having reproved them for their licentiousness, his zeal made them conspire to leave him ashore in a desert island; but a gust of wind from the land hindered the ship from touching upon it. He arrived at Cyprus, and found in the port a vessel full of pilgrims, just ready to hoist sail. Going immediately on board, he made a good voyage, and landed at Jaffa, the ancient Joppa, on the last day of August, 1523, forty days after he had left Venice. He went on foot from thence to Jerusalem in four days. The sight of the holy places filled his soul with joy and the most ardent sentiments of devotion and compunction, and he desired to stay there to labor in the conversion of the Mahometans. The provincial of the Franciscans, by virtue of his authority from the holy see over the pilgrims, commanded him to leave Palestine. Ignatius obeyed, but slipt privately back to satisfy his devotion again in visiting twice more the print of our Saviour’s feet on mount Olivet.

He returned to Europe in winter, in extreme cold weather, poorly clad, and came to Venice at the end of January, in 1524; from whence he continued his journey by Genoa to Barcelona. Desiring to qualify himself for the functions of the altar, and for assisting spiritually his neighbor, he began at Barcelona to study grammar, and addressed himself to a famous master named Jerom Ardebal, being assisted in the meantime in his maintenance by the charities of a pious lady of that city, called Isabel Rosella. He was then thirty-three years old; and it is not hard to conceive what difficulties he must go through in learning the rudiments of grammar at that age. Moreover, he seemed, by his military employments, and after his retreat by his contemplative life, very unfit for such an undertaking. At first, his mind was so fixed only on God, that he forgot everything he read, and conjugating _amo_, for example, could only repeat to himself, “I love God; I am loved by God,” and the like; but resisting this as a temptation, he began to make some progress, still joining contemplation and extraordinary austerities with his studies. He bore the jeers and taunts of the little boys, his schoolfellows, with joy. Hearing that a poor man called Lasano had hanged himself on a beam in his chamber, he ran to him, cut the rope, and prayed by him till the man returned to himself, though he had before seemed perfectly dead to all the bystanders. Lasano made his confession, received the sacraments, and soon after expired. This fact was regarded in the city as miraculous.

Some persons persuaded Ignatius to read Erasmus’s Christian Soldier, an elegant book written by that master of style, at the request of an officer’s pious lady, for the use of her husband, a man of loose morals. The saint always found his heart dry after reading this or any other of that author’s works; which made him afterward caution those of his society against reading them, at least very much. Though in that writer’s paraphrase on the Lord’s prayer and other such treatises of piety, we find very pious sentiments collected from great authors, and elegantly and concisely expressed, yet a devout reader finds the language of the heart wanting. On the other side, it is well known how much St. Ignatius read daily, and recommended to all others the incomparable book, Of the Imitation of Christ, which he made frequent use of to nourish and increase the fervor of his soul. He lodged at the house of one Agnes Pascal, a devout woman. Her son, John Pascal, a pious youth, would sometimes rise in the night to observe what Ignatius did in his chamber, and saw him sometimes on his knees, sometimes prostrate on the ground, his countenance on fire, and often in tears, repeating such words as these: “O God, my love, and the delight of my soul, if men knew thee they could never offend thee! My God, how good art thou to bear with such a sinner as I am!”

The saint, after studying two years at Barcelona, went to the university of Alcala, which had been lately founded by cardinal Ximenes, where he attended at the same time to lectures in logic, physics, and divinity; by which multiplicity he only confounded his ideas, and learned nothing at all, though he studied night and day. He lodged in a chamber of an hospital, lived by begging a small subsistence, and wore a coarse grey habit, in which he was imitated by four companions. He catechised children, held assemblies of devotion in the hospital, and by his mild reprehensions converted many loose livers, and, among others, one of the richest prelates in Spain. Some accused him of sorcery, and of the heresy of certain visionaries lately condemned in Spain under the name of the Illuminati, or Men of New Light: but, upon examination, he was justified by the inquisitors. After this, for teaching the catechism, being a man without learning or authority, he was accused to the bishop’s grand vicar, who confined him to close prison two-and-forty days, but declared him innocent of any fault by a public sentence on the 1st day of June, 1527; yet forbidding him and his companions to wear any singular habit, or to give any instructions in religious matters, being illiterate persons. Ignatius rejoiced in his jail that he suffered, though innocent, but spoke with such piety that many called him another St. Paul in prison. Being enlarged, he went about the streets with a public officer to beg money to buy a scholar’s dress, in which action he rejoiced at the insults and affronts which he met with. However, he went himself to the archbishop of Toledo, Alphonsus de Fonseca, who was much pleased with him, but advised him to leave Alcala, and go to Salamanca, promising him his protection. Ignatius, in this latter place, began to draw many to virtue, and was followed by great numbers, which exposed him again to suspicions of introducing dangerous practices, and the grand-vicar of Salamanca imprisoned him; but, after two-and-twenty days, declared him innocent, and a person of sincere virtue. Ignatius looked upon prisons, sufferings, and ignominy, as the height of his ambition; and God was pleased to purge and sanctify his soul by these trials. Recovering his liberty again, he resolved to leave Spain.

He from that time began to wear shoes, and received money sent him by his friends, but in the middle of winter travelled on foot to Paris, where he arrived in the beginning of February, 1528. He spent two years in perfecting himself in the Latin tongue; then went through a course of philosophy. He lived first in Montaigue college; but, being robbed of his money, was obliged to lodge in the hospital of St. James, to beg his bread from day to day, and in the vacation time to go into Flanders, and once into England, to procure charities from the Spanish merchants settled there, from whom and from some friends at Barcelona he received abundant supplies. He studied his philosophy three years and a half in the college of St. Barbara. He had induced many of his schoolfellows to spend the Sundays and holydays in prayer, and to apply themselves more fervently to the practice of good works. Pegna, his master, thought he hindered their studies, and finding him not corrected by his admonitions, prepossessed Govea, principal of the college of St. Barbara, against him, so that he was ordered by him to undergo the greatest punishment then in use in that university, called _The Hall_, which was a public whipping; that this infamy might deter others from following him. The regents came all into the hall with rods in their hands, ready to lash the seditious student. Ignatius offered himself joyfully to suffer all things; yet, apprehending lest the scandal of this disgrace should make those whom he had reclaimed fall back, when they saw him condemned as a corrupter of youth, went to the principal in his chamber, and modestly laid open to him the sentiments of his soul, and the reasons of his conduct; and offered himself as much as concerned his own person, that any sacrifice should be made of his body and fame, but begged of him to consider the scandal some might receive, who were yet young and tender in virtue. Govea made him no answer, but taking him by the hand led him into the hall, where, at the ringing of the bell, the whole college stood ready assembled. When all saw the principal enter, and expected the sign for the punishment, he threw himself at the feet of Ignatius, begging his pardon for having too lightly believed such false reports; then rising, he publicly declared that Ignatius was a living saint, and had no other aim or desire than the salvation of souls, and was ready to suffer joyfully any infamous punishment. Such a reparation of honor gave the saint the highest reputation, and even the ancient and experienced doctors asked his advice in spiritual matters. Pegna himself was ever after his great admirer and friend, and appointed another scholar, who was more advanced in his studies, and a young man of great virtue and quick parts, to assist him in his exercises. This was Peter Faber, a Savoyard, a native of the diocess of Geneva, by whose help he finished his philosophy, and took the degree of master of arts with great applause, after a course of three years and a half, according to the custom of the times. After this, Ignatius began his divinity at the Dominicans.

Peter Faber had from his childhood made a vow of chastity, which he had always most faithfully kept, yet was troubled with violent temptations, from which the most rigorous fasts did not deliver him. He was also tempted to vain-glory, and labored under great anxiety and scruples about these temptations, which he at length disclosed to Ignatius his holy pupil, whose skilful and heavenly advice was a healing balsam to his soul. The saint at last prescribed him a course of his spiritual exercises, and taught him the practices of meditation, of the particular examination, and other means of perfection, conducting him through all the paths of an interior life. St. Francis Xavier, a young master of philosophy, full of the vanity of the schools, was his next conquest. St. Ignatius made him sensible that all mortal glory is emptiness; only that which is eternal deserving our regard. He converted many abandoned sinners. When a young man, engaged in a criminal commerce with a woman of the city, was proof against his exhortations, Ignatius stood in a frozen pond by the way side up to the neck, and as he passed by in the night, cried out to him, “Whither are you going? Do not you hear the thunder of divine justice over your head, ready to break upon you? Go then; satisfy your brutish passion; here I will suffer for you, to appease heaven.” The lewd young man, at first affrighted, then confounded, returned back, and changed his life. By the like pious stratagems the saint recovered many other souls from the abysses into which they were fallen. He often served the sick in the hospitals; and one day finding a repugnance to touch the ulcers of one sick of a contagious distemper, to overcome himself he not only dressed his sores, but put his hand from them to his mouth, saying, “Since thou art afraid for one part, thy whole body shall take its share.” From that time he felt no natural repugnance in such actions.

James Laynez, of Almazan, twenty-one years of age; Alphonsus Salmeron, only eighteen; and Nicholas Alphonso, surnamed Bobadilla, from the place of his birth, near Valencia, all Spaniards of great parts, at that time students in divinity at Paris, associated themselves to the saint in his pious exercises. Simon Rodriguez, a Portuguese, joined them. These fervent students, moved by the pressing instances and exhortations of Ignatius, made all together a vow to renounce the world, to go to preach the gospel in Palestine, or if they could not go thither within a year after they had finished their studies, to offer themselves to his holiness to be employed in the service of God in what manner he should judge best. They fixed for the end of all their studies the 25th day of January in 1537, and pronounced this vow aloud, in the holy subterraneous chapel at Montmartre, after they had all received the holy communion from Peter Faber, who had been lately ordained priest. This was done on the feast of the Assumption of our Lady, in 1534. Ignatius continued frequent conferences, and joint exercises, to animate his companions in their good purposes; but soon after was ordered by the physicians to try his native air, for the cure of a lingering indisposition. He left Paris in the beginning of the year 1535, and was most honorably and joyfully received in Guipuscoa by his eldest brother Garcias, and his nephews, and by all the clergy in processions. He refused to go to the castle of Loyola, taking up his quarters in the hospital of Azpetia. The sight of the places where he had led a worldly life excited in him the deepest sentiments of compunction, and he chastised his body with a rough hair shirt, iron chains, disciplines, watching and prayer. He recovered his health in a short time, and catechised and instructed the poor with incredible fruit. Ignatius, in his childhood, had with some companions robbed an orchard, for which another man had been condemned to pay the damages. In the first discourse he made he accused himself publicly of this fact, and calling the poor man, who was present, declared that he had been falsely accused, and for reparation gave him two farms which belonged to him, begging his pardon before all the people, adding that this was one of the reasons of his journey thither.

In the meantime, three others, all doctors in divinity, by the exhortations of Faber, joined the saint’s companions in Paris. Claudius le Jay, a Savoyard, John Codure, a native of Dauphiné, and Pasquier Brouet, of Picardy; so that with Ignatius they were now ten in number. The holy founder, after a tedious and dangerous journey both by sea and land, arrived at Venice about the end of the year 1536, and his nine companions from Paris met him there on the 8th of January, 1537; they employed themselves in the hospitals, but all except Ignatius went to Rome, where pope Paul III. received them graciously, and granted them an indult, that those who were not priests might receive holy orders from what bishop they pleased. They were accordingly ordained at Venice by the bishop of Arbe. Ignatius was one of this number. After their ordination they retired into a cottage near Vicenza, to prepare themselves in solitude by fasting and prayer for the holy ministry of the altar. The rest said their first masses in September and October, but Ignatius deferred his from month to month till Christmas day, overflowing in his retirement with heavenly consolations, and in danger of losing his sight through the abundance of his tears. Thus he employed a whole year in preparing himself to offer that adorable sacrifice. After this they dispersed themselves into several places about Verona and Vicenza, preaching penance to the people, and living on a little bread which they begged. The emperor and the Venetians having declared war against the Turks, their pilgrimage into Palestine was rendered impracticable. The year therefore being elapsed, Ignatius, Faber, and Laynez went to Rome, threw themselves at his Holiness’s feet and offered themselves to whatever work he should judge best to employ them in. St. Ignatius told his companions at Vicenza, that if any one asked what their institute was, they might answer, “the Society of Jesus;” because they were united to fight against heresies and vice under the standard of Christ. In his road from Vicenza to Rome, praying in a little chapel between Sienna and Rome, he, in an ecstasy, seemed to see the eternal Father, who affectionately commended him to his Son. Jesus Christ appeared at the same time also shining with an unspeakable light, but loaded with a heavy cross, and sweetly said to Ignatius,--“I will be favorable to you at Rome.”[350] This St. Ignatius disclosed to F. Laynez, in a transport when he came out of the chapel; and F. Laynez, when he was general, related it to all the fathers in Rome in a domestic conference, at which F. Ribadeneira, who records it, was present. The same was attested by others to whom the saint had discovered this signal favor. Pope Paul III. accordingly received them graciously; and appointed Faber, called in French Le Fevre, to teach in the Sapienza at Rome scholastic divinity, and Laynez to explain the holy scripture; whilst Ignatius labored, by means of his spiritual exercises and instructions, to reform the manners of the people.

The holy founder, with a view to perpetuate the work of God, called to Rome all his companions, and proposed to them his design and motives of forming themselves into a religious Order. After recommending the matter to God by fasting and prayer, all agreed in the proposal, and resolved, first, besides the vows of poverty and chastity already made by them, to add a third of perpetual obedience, the more perfectly to conform themselves to the Son of God who was obedient even to death; and to establish a general whom all, by their vow, should be bound to obey, who should be perpetual, and his authority absolute, subject entirely to the pope, but not liable to be restrained by chapters. He likewise determined to prescribe a fourth vow of going wherever the pope should send them for the salvation of souls, and even without money, if it should so please him; also that the professed Jesuits should possess no real estates or revenues, either in particular, or in common; but that colleges might enjoy revenues and rents for the maintenance of students of the Order. In the meanwhile Govea, principal of the college of St. Barbara at Paris, had recommended the Jesuits to the king of Portugal as proper missionaries for the conversion of the Indies, and that prince asked of Ignatius six laborers for that purpose. The founder having only ten, could send him no more than two, Simon Rodriguez, who remained in Portugal, and Xavier, afterward the apostle of the Indies. The three cardinals appointed by the pope to examine the affair of this new Order, at first opposed it, thinking religious Orders already too much multiplied, but changed their opinions on a sudden, and pope Paul III. approved it under the title of “The Society of Jesus,” by a bull, dated the 27th of September, 1540. Ignatius was chosen the first general, but only acquiesced in obedience to his confessor. He entered upon his office on Easter-day, 1541, and the members all made their religious vows, according to the bull of their institution.

Ignatius then set himself to write constitutions or rules for his Society, in which he lays down its end to be, in the first place, the sanctification of their own souls by joining together the active and the contemplative life; for nothing so much qualifies a minister of God to save others as the sanctification of his own soul in the first place; secondly, to labor for the salvation and perfection of their neighbor, and this, first, by catechising the ignorant (which work is the basis and ground of religion and virtue, and though mean and humble, is the most necessary and indispensable duty of every pastor), secondly, by the instruction of youth[351] in piety and learning (upon which the reformation of the world principally depends); and thirdly, by the direction of consciences, missions, and the like.[352]

St. Ignatius would have the office of general to be perpetual or for life, being persuaded this would better command the respect of inferiors, and more easily enable him to undertake and carry on great enterprises for the glory of God, which require a considerable time to have them well executed. Nevertheless, he often strenuously endeavored to resign that dignity, but was never able to compass it; and at length the pope forbade him any more to attempt it. He had no sooner taken that charge upon him than he went into the kitchen, and served as a scullion under the cook, and he continued for forty-six days to catechise poor children in the church of the Society. By preaching he gained such an ascendant over the hearts of the people as produced many wonderful conversions. Among the pious establishments which he made at Rome, he founded a house for the reception of Jews who should be converted, during the time of their instruction, and another for the reception and maintenance of lewd women who should be desirous to enter upon virtuous courses, yet were not called to a religious state among the Magdalens or penitents. When one told him that the conversion of such sinners is seldom sincere, he answered: “To prevent only one sin would be a great happiness, though it cost me ever so great pains.” He procured two houses to be erected at Rome for the relief of poor orphans of both sexes, and another for the maintenance of young women whose poverty might expose their virtue to danger. The heart of this blessed man so burned with charity, that he was continually thinking and speaking of what might most contribute to promote the divine honor and the sanctification of souls; and he did wonders by the zealous fathers of his Society in all parts of the globe. He was entreated by many princes and cities of Italy, Spain, Germany, and the Low-Countries to afford them some of his laborers. Under the auspicious protection of John III. king of Portugal, he sent St. Francis Xavier into the East-Indies, where he gained a new world to the faith of Christ. He sent John Nugnez and Lewis Gonzales into the kingdoms of Fez and Morocco to instruct and assist the Christian slaves; in 1547, four others to Congo in Africa; in 1555, thirteen into Abyssinia, among whom John Nugnez was nominated by pope Julius III. patriarch of Ethiopia, and two others, bishops; lastly, others into the Portuguese settlements in South America.

Pope Paul III. commissioned the fathers James Laynez and Alphonsus Salmeron to assist, in quality of his theologians, at the council of Trent. Before their departure, St. Ignatius, among other instructions, gave them a charge in all disputations to be careful above all things, to preserve modesty and humility, and to shun all confidence, contentiousness, or empty display of learning. F. Claudius Le Jay appeared in the same council as theologian of cardinal Otho, bishop of Ausberg. Many of the first disciples of St. Ignatius distinguished themselves in divers kingdoms of Europe, but none with greater reputation, both for learning and piety, than Peter Canisius, who was a native of Nimeguen, in the Low Countries, and having with wonderful success employed his zealous labors at Ingolstadt and in several other parts of Germany, and in Bohemia, died in the odor of sanctity, at Fribourg, in 1597, seventy-seven years old.[353] Whilst F. Claudius Le Jay was at Trent, Ferdinand, king of the Romans, nominated him bishop of Trieste. The good father seemed ready to die of grief at this news, and wrote to St. Ignatius, humbly requesting him to put some bar to this promotion. The holy founder was himself alarmed, and by a pressing letter to the king, prevailed upon him not to do what would be an irreparable prejudice to his young Society. He urged to the pope and sacred college many reasons why he desired that all the fathers of his Society should be excluded from all ecclesiastical dignities, alleging that this would be a means more easily to preserve among them a spirit of humility and poverty, which is the very soul and perfection of their state; and that, being missionaries, it was more advantageous to the Church that they should remain such, always ready to fly from pole to pole, as the public necessities should require. The pope being satisfied with his reasons, the saint obliged all professed Jesuits to bind themselves by a simple vow never to seek prelatures, and to refuse them when offered, unless compelled by a precept of the pope to accept them.

In 1546 the Jesuits first opened their schools in Europe, in the college which St. Francis Borgia had erected for them at Gandia, with the privileges of an university.[354] The seminary of Goa in Asia, which had been erected some years before for the Indian missions, was committed to the Jesuits, under the direction of St. Francis Xavier, the preceding year. King John also founded for them, in 1546, a noble college at Coïmbra, the second which they had in Europe. F. Simon Rodriguez directed this establishment, and many others in Portugal, Spain, and Brazil, and died at Lisbon in the highest reputation for sanctity and learning in 1579. Among the rules which St. Ignatius gave to the masters, he principally inculcated the lessons of humility, modesty, and devotion; he prescribed that all their scholars should hear mass every day, go to confession every month, and always begin their studies by prayer; that their masters should take every fit occasion to inspire them with the love of heavenly things; and that by daily meditation, self-examinations, pious reading, retreat, and the constant exercise of the divine presence, they should nourish in their own souls a fervent spirit of prayer, which without the utmost care is extinguished by a dry course of studies and school disputations; and with it is destroyed the very soul of a religious or spiritual life. He recommended nothing more earnestly, both to professors and scholars, than that they should dedicate all their labors, with the greatest fervor, to the greater glory of God, which intention will make studies equal to prayer. He treated very harshly all those whom learning rendered self-conceited or less devout; and removed all those masters who discovered any fondness for singular opinions. It is incredible with what attention and industry he promoted emulation and every means that could be a spur to scholars. He required that copies of some of the principal literary performances should be sent from all the colleges to Rome, where he had them examined before him, that he might better judge of the progress both of masters and scholars.

He encouraged every branch of the sciences, and would have the fathers in his Society applied to those functions, whether in teaching, preaching, or the missions, for which God seemed chiefly to qualify and destine them by their genius, talents, and particular graces; yet so that no one should neglect the duties either of assiduous prayer and an interior life, or of instructing and catechising others. He recommended to them all, especially to the masters of novices, &c., to read diligently the conferences, lives, and writings of the fathers of the desert, and other pious ascetics, in order to learn their spirit. With what success many among them did this, appears from the Practice of Christian Perfection, compiled by F. Alphonsus Rodrigues, one of the most eminent persons whom our saint had admitted into his Society. In this excellent work he gathered and digested, in a clear and easy method, the most admirable maxims and lessons of the ancient monks; and having many years trained up, according to them, the novices of his Order in Spain, died holily in the year 1616, the ninetieth of his age.[355] We have other eminent instances of this holy spirit and science among the primitive disciples of St. Ignatius, in the works of F. Lewis de Ponte or Puente, who died in 1624, and whose canonization has been often desired by the kings of Spain; in those of F. Alvarez de Paz, who died in Peru in 1620; and in the writings and life of F. Baltassar Alvarez, who died in Spain in 1580, in the odor of sanctity.

St. Francis Borgia, in 1551, gave a considerable sum towards building the Roman college for the Jesuits. Pope Julius III. contributed largely to it; Paul IV., in 1555, founded it for perpetuity with great munificence; afterward Gregory XIII. much augmented its buildings and revenues. St. Ignatius, intending to make this the model of all his other colleges, neglected nothing to render it complete, and took care that it should be supplied with the ablest masters in all the sciences, and with all possible helps for the advancement of literature. He made it a strict rule in the Society, that every one should study to speak correctly the language of the country where he lives;[356] for, without being perfect in the vulgar tongue, no one can be qualified to preach or perform many other functions with profit. On this account he established in the Roman college daily lessons in the Italian tongue, and he carefully studied that language, and appointed others to put him in mind of all the faults which he should commit in speaking. St. Ignatius also directed the foundation of the German college in Rome made by Julius III. but afterwards finished by Gregory XIII. He often met with violent persecutions, but overcame them by meekness and patience. When the French king Henry II. gave the Society letters patent to settle in France, the parliament of Paris made the most outrageous remonstrances, and the faculty of Sorbon, though not without opposition, passed a virulent decree against it. The other fathers at Rome thought it necessary to answer these censures; but St. Ignatius would have nothing printed or written in their defence, saying, that it was better to commit their cause to God, and that the slanders raised against them would fall of themselves; and so it happened. Indeed the storm was too violent to last. Upon other occasions the saint modestly defended his institute against slanderers.

The prudence and charity of the saint in his conduct towards his religious, won him all their hearts. His commands seemed rather entreaties. The address with which he accommodated himself to every one’s particular genius, and the mildness with which he tempered his reproofs, gave to his reprehensions a sweetness which gained the affections whilst it corrected a fault. Thus chiding one for his too little guard over his eyes, he said to him, with tenderness: “I have often admired the modesty of your deportment, yet observe that unguarded glances often escape you.” When another had fixed his eye steadfastly upon him a long time, the saint enjoined him to make the government of his eye the subject of his particular examination, and to say every day a short prayer for fifteen months. He extremely recommended a strict modesty in the whole exterior as the index of the interior, and a means absolutely necessary for the regulating of it, and the government of the senses and passions. He always showed the affection of the most tender parent towards all his brethren, especially towards the sick, for whom he was solicitous to procure every spiritual and even temporal succor and comfort, which it was his great delight to give them himself. The most perfect obedience and self-denial were the two first lessons which he inculcated to his novices, whom he told at the door as they entered, that they must leave behind them all self-will and private judgment. In his famous letter to the Portuguese Jesuits, On the Virtue of Obedience, he says, this alone bringeth forth and nourisheth all other virtues; and calls it the peculiar virtue, and distinguishing mark and characteristic of his Society, in which, if any member suffer himself to be outdone by those of other Orders in fasting or watching, that he must yield to none in obedience. He adds, true obedience must reach the understanding as well as the will, and never suffer a person even secretly to complain of, or censure the precept of a superior, whom he must always consider as vested with the authority of Jesus Christ over him. He says, it is not a less fault to break the laws of obedience in watching than in sleeping, in laboring than in doing nothing.

When F. Araos, whose spiritual labors were very successful in the court of Spain, seemed to seek the conversation of the great ones of the world, upon pretence of conciliating their favor to his ministry, St. Ignatius sent him a sharp reprimand, telling him that the necessary authority for the ministers of the word of God, is to be gained only by a spirit of recollection, and the exercises of Christian humility; for the loss of everything is to be feared in an intercourse with the great ones of the world. He used to say, that prosperity caused in him more fear than joy, that when persecution ceased he should be in apprehension lest the Society should somewhat relax in the observance of its regular discipline; that good fortune is never to be trusted, and that we have most to fear when things go according to our desires. He made a most severe regulation, that in the Society no one should ever visit women, even of the highest quality, alone; and that when they discoursed with them, or heard their confessions, this should be so ordered, that the companion might see all that passed, without hearing what ought to be secret, this being a means to prevent the possibility of evil suspicions or slanders. In the assigning the employments of those under his charge, he had usually a regard to their inclinations, though he always required that, on their parts, they should be wholly indifferent and disposed cheerfully to accept and discharge any.

Notwithstanding the fatigue and constant application which the establishment of his Order in all parts of the world, and so many other great enterprises undertaken to promote the glory of God, required, he was all on fire with an excess of charity, and a restless desire of gaining souls to God, and wearied himself out in the service of his neighbor, always laboring to extirpate vice, and to promote virtue in all, and set on foot several practices which might conduce to the divine service and the salvation of men. It is not to be believed how many and how great affairs this blessed man was able to go through, and with what courage and spirit he bore so continual a burden, and this with so weak health and infirm body. But he was assisted by the powerful hand of our Lord, that furnished him with strength for all his labors; so that he then appeared strongest and most courageous, when he was weary, sickly, and unprovided of human and natural helps; for, in his infirmity, the power of God manifested itself, and the saint seemed to support the weakness of his body with the vigor of his soul. This interior strength he chiefly maintained by an eminent spirit of prayer, and the constant and closest union of his soul with God. For he was favored with an extraordinary grace of devotion, which he, out of humility, thought God had given him out of compassion for his weakness and misery, which he said was greater than that of any other. In saying the holy mass, and reciting the divine office, the abundance of heavenly delights which God poured into his soul, was often so great, and made such showers of tears stream from his eyes, that he was obliged to stop in a manner at every word, sometimes to make a considerable interruption whilst he gave vent to his tears. It was once feared, lest his continual effusion of tears should hurt his eye-sight. At other times, though his eyes were dry at his devotion, and the sluices of his tears were shut up, yet their influence and effect was not wanting; for his spirit was still watered with heavenly dew, and the divine illustrations ceased not to flow copiously into his soul.

In matters of concern, though reasons were ever so convincing and evident, he never took any resolution before he had consulted God by prayer. He let not an hour pass in the day without recollecting himself interiorly, and examining his conscience, for this purpose banishing for a while all other thoughts. He never applied his mind so much to exterior affairs as to lose the sweet relish of interior devotion. He had God always and in all things present to his mind. Every object served him for a book, wherein he read the divine perfections, and by that means raised his heart to his Creator. He recommended this manner of prayer to every one, especially to those who are employed in spiritual functions for the help of their neighbor. Before he betook himself to public or private prayer, he prepared his soul with great fervor, and entering into the oratory of his heart, enkindled his affections, so that this appeared in his countenance, and he seemed to be all on fire, as we ourselves frequently observed, says Ribadeneira. The saint being once asked by F. Lainez what manner of prayer he used, gave this answer, that in matters concerning Almighty God he behaved himself rather passively than actively. He prayed sometimes standing, and profoundly adored the majesty of God present to his soul; he often bowed his body low, and most frequently prayed on his knees. No sooner had he recollected his mind in God, but his countenance put on an air which appeared altogether heavenly, and often streams of tears fell sweetly from his eyes.

He prescribed to the priests of his Order to be about half an hour at the altar in saying mass, to avoid on one side the least appearance of indecent hurry and precipitation in that tremendous sacrifice; and, on the other, not to be tedious to the people by unseasonably indulging their private devotion. Nevertheless, he was himself about an hour in saying mass, to excuse which he alleged the plea of necessity, being often obliged to make pauses through an irresistible tenderness of devotion. After mass he spent two hours in private prayer, during which time no one was admitted to speak to him except on some pressing necessity. F. Louis Gonzales, who for some time governed the college under him, says, “As often as I went to him at that time, which necessity frequently obliged me to do, I always saw his face shining with an air so bright and heavenly, that, quite forgetting myself, I stood astonished in contemplating him. Nor was his countenance like that of many devout men in whom I have admired a wonderful serenity at their prayers, but it breathed something quite unusual, and, as it were, divine.” On other occasions the like was remarked in him; on which account F. Lainez compared him to Moses when he came from conversing with God. Nicholas Lanoy testified, that he one day saw a fire flame on his head whilst he was saying mass. Saint Philip Neri, who often visited St. Ignatius, used to assure his friends that he had seen his face shining with bright rays of light. As F. Antony Galloni, his disciple and confidant in all his concerns, and Marcellus Vitelleschi declared they had often heard from his own mouth; of which cardinal Taurusius, archbishop of Sienna, published an authentic certificate.[357] John Petronius, a famous physician in Rome, declared publicly that, when sick, he once saw his own chamber, which was then very dark, by reason of the windows being shut, filled with a dazzling light from such rays upon the blessed man’s coming into it. Isabel Rosella, John Pascal, and several other persons testified, that they had sometimes beheld his countenance at prayer sparkling with radiant beams of light, the abundant consolations which replenished his soul redounding on his body. John Pascal added, that he had seen him in prayer raised more than a foot above the ground, and heard him say at the same time, “O my God! O my Lord! O that men knew thee!” The saint was often favored, amid the tears and fervor of his devotion, with wonderful raptures, visions, and revelations; and some of these visions and other supernatural favors St. Ignatius mentioned himself in short notes which he wrote, and which were found in his own hand after his death, some of which notes are published by F. Bartoli.[358] Others are mentioned by Ribadeneira, who inserted in the saint’s life, as he declares, only what himself had seen, or had heard from his mouth, or from persons of unquestionable authority, and whose life of his holy founder, by the order of Saint Francis Borgia, was carefully examined and approved by the principal persons then living who had frequently conversed with the saint, as Salmeron, Bobadilla, Polancus, who had been the saint’s secretary, Natalis, &c.

If the spirit of prayer was that virtue by which our saint was admitted to the familiar intercourse with God, was the key which unlocked to him the treasure of all other virtues and graces, and was the continual comfort, support, and light of his soul, and the constant advancement of its supernatural life in his mortal pilgrimage, this spirit was itself founded in the most perfect self-denial. The Holy Ghost never communicates himself, by the infusion of this grace, but to a heart that is entirely dead to itself and its passions, and crucified to the world. This St. Ignatius understood so well, that hearing another once say, that a certain person was endowed with a great gift of contemplation, and was eminently a man of prayer, he corrected the expression, saying, “call him rather a man of the most perfect self-denial;” because the spirit of grace and prayer requires a perfect purity and disengagement from all inordinate affections, and a heart empty of itself. This victory over himself the saint obtained by an habitual practice of the exterior mortification of his senses; and by that perfect patience, resignation, and confidence in God, and constancy with which he bore the most severe interior and exterior trials. To complete the most essential interior mortification of his will and passions, he added the practice of an unlimited obedience to his directors and superiors, and of the most profound and sincere humility. Even when broken with age and infirmities, he said, that should his Holiness command it, he would with joy go on board the first ship he could find; and if he were so ordered, though it had neither sails nor rudder, and without any warning, would immediately set out for any part of the globe. It was his perpetual lesson to his novices,--“Sacrifice your will and judgment by obedience. Whatever you do without the consent of your spiritual guide will be imputed to wilfulness, not to virtue, though you were to exhaust your bodies by labors or austerities.”

Humility is the sister virtue of obedience, the foundation of a spiritual life, and the distinguishing mark or characteristic of all the saints. This virtue St. Ignatius embraced with the utmost ardor, from his first entering upon a spiritual course of life. He went a long time in old tattered rags, and lived in hospitals, despised, affronted, and persecuted; this he desired, and in it he found his great joy and satisfaction. He ever retained this affection for humiliations, out of a sincere contempt of himself; for acknowledging himself a sinner, he was thoroughly persuaded that contempt and injuries from all creatures, as instruments of the divine justice, were his due, and that he was most unworthy of all comforts, favor, or regard. Nothing but charity and zeal to procure his neighbor’s good restrained him from doing ridiculous things on purpose to be laughed at by all; and he always practised such humiliations as were consistent with prudence and his other duties. All his actions and whatever belonged to him, breathed an air of sincere humility. His apparel was poor, though clean; his bed was very mean, and his diet coarse, and so temperate, that it was a perpetual abstinence. He employed himself often most cheerfully in the meanest offices about the house, as in making beds, and in cleansing the chambers of the sick. It was his great study to conceal his virtues, and nothing was more admirable in his life than the address with which he covered his most heroic actions under the veil of humility. Though he was superior, he frequently submitted to inferiors with wonderful meekness and humility, when he could do it without prejudice to his authority. In things of which he was not certain, he readily acquiesced in the judgment of others; and was a great enemy to all positiveness, and to the use of superlatives in discourse. He received rebukes from any one with cheerfulness and thanks. If in his presence anything was said that redounded to his praise, he showed an extreme confusion, which was usually accompanied with many tears. He was seldom heard to speak of himself, and never but on very pressing occasions. Though visions, revelations, and the like favors were frequently vouchsafed him, he scarce ever mentioned such things; but all his discourse was of humility, charity, patience, divine zeal, prayer, mortification, and other such virtues, of which we are to make the greatest account, and by which alone men become saints and friends of God. Ribadeneira heard him say, that every one in the house was to him an example of virtue, and that he was not scandalized at any one besides himself. It was his usual saying, that he did not think there was a man in the world, that on one side received from God so great and continual favors, and yet on the other side was so ungrateful, and so slothful in his service as himself. It was his desire that, after his death, his body might be thrown upon some dunghill, in punishment of the sins he had committed by pampering it. The chief reasons why he would have his Order called The Society of Jesus, were lest his name should be given it, and that his followers might be known by their love and zeal for their Redeemer. As often as he spoke of his Order, he called it, This least Society; for he would have his children to look upon themselves as the last and least of all persons in the Church.

From the perfect mortification of all his passions and inordinate affections resulted an admirable peace and evenness of mind which nothing seemed able ever to disturb or ruffle. His contempt of the world appeared by the disinterestedness with which he rejected legacies and presents whenever they might give occasion to complaints. When he looked up towards the heavens, he used feelingly to repeat, “How contemptible doth earth appear when I behold the heavens!” Charity, or the most ardent and pure love of God, was the most conspicuous, and the crown of all his other virtues. He had often in his mouth these words, which he took for his motto or device, “To the greater glory of God,” referring to this end, with all his strength, himself, his Society, and all his actions, in which he always chose that which appeared to him the most perfect. He often said to God, “Lord, what do I desire, or what can I desire besides thee?” True love is never idle; and always to labor, to promote God’s honor, or to suffer for his sake, was this saint’s greatest pleasure. He said, that no created thing can bring to a soul such solid joy and comfort as to suffer for Christ. Being asked what was the most certain and the shortest way to perfection, he answered, “To endure for the love of Christ many and grievous afflictions. Ask this grace of our Lord: on whomsoever he bestoweth it, he does him many other signal favors, that always attend this grace.” Out of this burning love of God, he most ardently desired the separation of his soul from his mortal body, when it should be God’s will; and, when he thought of death, he could not refrain from tears of joy, because he should then see his loving Redeemer; and, beholding God face to face, should love and praise him eternally, without let, abatement, or intermission.

From this same love of God sprang his ardent thirst for the salvation of men, for which he undertook so many and so great things, and to which he devoted his watchings, prayers, tears, and labors. When he dismissed any missionaries to preach the word of God, he usually said to them, “Go, brethren, inflame the world, spread about that fire which Jesus Christ came to kindle on earth.” To gain others to Christ he, with admirable address, made himself all to all, going in at _their_ door, and coming out at _his own_. He received sincere penitents with the greatest sweetness and condescension, so as often to take upon himself part of their penance. When a brother, growing weary of the yoke of Christ, had determined to leave the Society, St. Ignatius by his remonstrances made such an impression upon his heart, that falling at the feet of the general, he offered to undergo whatever punishment he would impose upon him. To which the saint replied, “One part of your penance shall be, that you never repent more of having served God. For the other part, I take it upon myself, and will discharge it for you.” He endeavored to bring all his penitents to make, without reserve, the perfect sacrifice of themselves to God, telling them, that it is not to be expressed what precious treasures God reserves for, and with what effusion he communicates himself to, those who give themselves to him with their whole heart. He proposed to them for their model this prayer, which he used often to recite,--“Receive, O Lord, all my liberty, my memory, my understanding, and my whole will. You have given me all that I have, all that I possess, and I surrender all to your divine will, that you dispose of me. Give me only your love, and your grace. With this I am rich enough, and I have no more to ask.”

St. Ignatius was general of the Society fifteen years, three months, and nine days; but was in the end so worn out with infirmities, that he procured that the Society should choose him an assistant in that office. This was F. Jerom Nadal. After which, the saint reserved to himself only the care of the sick, and spent his time in continual prayer, and in preparing himself for death. By way of his last will and testament, he dictated certain holy maxims concerning the obligation and conditions of religious obedience, which he bequeathed to his brethren of the Society. The saint, on the day before he died, charged F. Polancus to beg his Holiness’s blessing for him at the article of death, though others at that time did not think it so near. The next morning having lifted up his eyes and hands to heaven, and pronouncing, both with his tongue and heart, the sweet name of Jesus with a serene countenance, he calmly gave up his happy soul into the hands of his Creator on the last day of July, in the year 1556, the sixty-fifth of his age, the thirty-fifth after his conversion, and the sixteenth after his confirmation of the Society. The people esteemed him a saint both living and after his death; and the opinion of his sanctity was confirmed by many miracles.[359] He saw his Society in very few years divided into twelve provinces, with above one hundred colleges, and spread over almost the whole world. In 1626, it contained thirty-six provinces, and in them eight hundred houses, and fifteen thousand Jesuits, since which time it is much increased. St. Ignatius’s body was buried first in the little church of the Jesuits, dedicated in honor of the blessed Virgin in Rome. When cardinal Alexander Farnesius had built the stately church of the professed house called Il Giesu, it was translated thither in 1587; and, in 1637, was laid under the altar of the chapel, which bears his name. This church is one of the most magnificent piles of building in the world next to the Vatican, and is not less admired for the elegance of the architecture than for its riches, consisting in costly beautiful ornaments of gold, silver, jewels, exquisite paintings, statues, and carving, and a great profusion of fine marble. Among the many chapels which it contains, those of the Blessed Virgin, of the Angels, of SS. Abundius and Abundantius, martyrs, of St. Francis Borgia, and of St. Ignatius, are the admiration of travellers, especially the last; in which the remains of the holy founder lie, in a rich silver shrine under the altar, exposed to view. The other glittering rich ornaments of this place seem almost to lose their lustre when the statue of the saint is uncovered. It is somewhat bigger than the life, because raised high. Its bright shining gold, silver, and sparkling diamonds, especially in the crown of glory over the head, dazzle the eye. In the professed house are shown the pictures of St. Ignatius and St. Philip Neri, taken from the life. St. Ignatius’s chamber is now a chapel, his study is another, in which prelates, and sometimes popes, come to say mass on the saint’s festival. He was beatified by Paul V. in 1609, and canonized by Gregory XV. in 1622, though the bull was only published the year following by Urban VIII.

The example of the saints evinces that to disengage our affections from earthly things, and to converse much in heaven by the constant union of our hearts to God, is the short road to Christian perfection. Those who are employed in the active life, ought to learn the art of accompanying all their actions with a lively attention to the divine presence, as our guardian angels are faithful in discharging every duty of that external ministry which God hath committed to them, yet so as never to intermit their contemplation of the Godhead, and their incessant homages of praise and love, which are the uninterrupted employment of their happy state. Without this precaution, by the hurry of dry studies, and even the discharge of the sacred ministry itself, the spirit of piety and devotion is extinguished in the heart, and the more sacred functions are easily profaned.

ST. JOHN COLUMBINI, C.

FOUNDER OF THE ORDER OF THE JESUATI.

He was descended of one of the most ancient and noble families of Sienna; and being chosen first magistrate of that commonwealth, acquitted himself of all the duties of that charge with integrity and honor, and to the great satisfaction of his countrymen; but he was passionate, and his heart was strongly wedded to the world, and buried under the weight and hurry of its business, vanity, and ambition, so that he scarce seemed able to find leisure to breathe, or to think of eternity. One day, after being taken up the whole morning in deciding causes in his court, he came home, much fatigued, and not finding dinner ready, flew into a violent passion. His wife put a book of the Saints’ Lives into his hands; but he threw it on the ground. The next moment, being ashamed of his passion, he took it up again, and sitting down to read, fell on the life of St. Mary of Egypt. He read it with so much pleasure that he thought no more of his dinner; and insensibly found his heart pierced with compunction and remorse for his past sins and unthinking conduct, and entirely weaned from the world.

From that moment he resolved to begin a new life; and, to expiate his offences, he embraced the most austere practices of penance. Resigning his public employs, he consecrated the greatest part of his estates to alms-deeds; and being sensible that the first sacrifice which God requires of a sinner is that of a contrite and humble heart, without which no other can be acceptable to him, he spent his time chiefly in prayers and tears. He sold his rich clothes and furniture, giving the money to the poor, that they might be intercessors in his behalf at the throne of mercy; he lay on two boards, watching great part of the night in prayer, and his house seemed converted into a hospital, so great was the number of the poor and sick that he caused to be brought thither, and attended. The whole country was astonished at so great a change, and so exemplary a penance. Francis Vincent joined him in this manner of life. They both ran the same course, and with equal paces. One day seeing a leper lying at the door of the great church, covered with blotches and ulcers, the saint carried him on his back through the public market-place; attending him both as his servant and physician, tenderly kissing his running sores one after another, till he had perfectly overcome the abhorrence which nature inspires in such

## actions, and continued his care of this patient till he was perfectly

cured.

St. John had one son and one daughter. The former God called to himself by death, and the latter consecrated herself to his divine service in a nunnery. St. John had before this, with his wife’s consent, made a vow of chastity; and after their children were thus disposed of, he sold his estate, and gave one-third of it to a hospital, and the other two-thirds to different churches and the poor. Having thus reduced himself to a state of poverty like that of the apostles, he gave himself up to serve the poor in the hospitals, and to the exercises of devotion and the most rigorous penance. Several others, moved by his example, became his faithful imitators and companions. They were solicitous to exhort the sick and poor to the sincere dispositions of repentance, and to fervor in the divine service; and the charity and disinterestedness with which they ministered to them corporal relief and comfort, gave great force to their zealous instructions. Out of their ardent love of our Redeemer, whom they considered and served in his afflicted members, they had his holy name so often, and with so great devotion and respect in their mouths, that the people gave them the name of Jesuats. That adorable name is repeated fifteen hundred times in the few letters which St. John wrote. The number of his disciples being increased to about seventy, he formed them into a religious Order, under the rule of St. Austin, and took St. Jerom for their patron.[360] He addressed himself to pope Urban V. at Viterbo, who approved and confirmed his institute in 1367, and granted to it most ample privileges. Such was the fervor of the first disciples of our saint, that almost all their names have been placed among the blessed. The holy founder fell sick soon after the approbation of his Order; and, having received the last sacraments, commending his soul into the hands of his Creator through the death of Christ, and in union with his recommendation of his divine soul to his Father on the cross, he happily expired on the 31st of July, in the year 1367, the twelfth after his conversion, only thirty-seven days after his Order had been confirmed by Pope Urban V. See F. Cuper, the Bollandist, Julij, t. 7, p. 333, and Helyot, Hist. des Ord. Rel. t. 3, p. 410.

SAINT HELEN OF SKOFDE IN SWEDEN, M.

She was a lady of quality in Westrogothia, whom Saint Sigfrid, apostle of that province in Sweden, who died in 1045, converted to the faith. She made a pilgrimage to Rome, and upon her return was martyred by her own relations about the year 1160, at her own estate of Skofde or Scœude, in Westrogothia in Sweden. She was honored on the 31st of July, with extraordinary devotion in that country, and in the isle of Seland in Denmark, especially in the church which bears her name, where her body was kept in a rich shrine, eight miles from Copenhagen, near the sea, in which place there is a famous miraculous well still resorted to by the Lutherans, and called to this day St. Lene Kild, or St. Helen’s well. She was canonized by Alexander III. in 1164, and her feast fixed on the 31st of July. See the Bollandists ad 31 Julii.

FOOTNOTES

[1] The place of St. Rumold’s death is contested. According to certain Belgic and other Martyrologies, he was of the blood royal of Scotland (as Ireland was then called) and bishop of Dublin. This opinion is ably supported by F. Hu. Ward, an Irish Franciscan, a man well skilled in the antiquities of his country, in a work entitled Dissertatio Historica de Vita et Patria S. Rumoldi, Archiepiscopi Dubliniensis, published at Louvain in 1662, in 4to. The learned pope Benedict XIV. seems to adjudge St. Rumold to Ireland, in his letter to the prelates of that kingdom dated the 1st of August, 1741, wherein are the following words: “Quod si recensere voluerimus sanctissimos viros Columbanum, Kilianum, Virgilium, Rumoldum, Gallum, aliosque plures qui ex Hibernia in alias provincias catholicam fidem invexerunt, aut illam per martyrium effuso sanguine collustrarunt.” (Hib. Dom. Suppl. p. 831.) On the other hand, Janning the Bollandist undertakes to prove that St. Rumold was an English Saxon. See Janning and J. B. Sellerii Acta S. Rumoldi, Antverp, 1718; also F. Ward, and Ware’s bishops, p. 305.

[2] St. John Damascen. Serm. de Transfig. Dom.

[3] Gildas, c. 8.

[4] Bede, Hist l. 1. c. 7.

[5] The second kingdom of Burgundy was begun in 890, by Ralph, nephew to Bozon, whom the emperor Charles the Bald, king of France, had made king of Arles in 876, giving him Provence and part of Dauphiné. This second kingdom of Burgundy comprised Provence, Savoy, the Viennois, and the county of Burgundy. The duchy of Burgundy had its duke at the same time.

[6] It is nine leagues from Mans. Childebert in the charter says that the land had been already given to the saint by Clovis his father. (Marten. Amp. Coll. tom. 1, p. 1.) This is also attested by Nicholas, Ep. ad Episc. Gall. and is likewise insinuated by Siviard in his life of St. Calais.

[7] Salus in the Syriac signifies foolish.

[8] St. Tho. 2, 2.

[9] Imit. of Chr. b. 1, c. 20.

[10] Phil. iii. 29.

[11] From the word joy used by the evangelist on this occasion, and from the unanimous consent of the fathers, it is manifest that the holy infant anticipated the use of reason, and that this was not a mere natural motion, as some protestants have imagined, but the result of reason, and the effect of holy joy and devotion.

[12] Phil. iv. 20.

[13] Nero reigned the first five years with so much clemency, that once when he was to sign an order for the death of a condemned person, he said: “I wish I could not write.” But his master Seneca and Burrhus the prefect of the prætorium, to whom this his moderation was owing, even then discovered in him a bent to cruelty, to correct which they strove to give his passion another turn. With this view Seneca wrote and inscribed to him a treatise On Clemency, which we still have. But both Seneca and Burrhus connived at an adulterous intrigue in which he was engaged in his youth: so very defective was the virtue of the best among the heathen philosophers. If the tutors imagined that by giving up a part, they might save the rest, and by indulging him in the softer passions they might check those which seemed more fatal to the commonwealth, the event showed how much they were deceived by this false human prudence, and how much more glorious it would have been to have preferred death to the least moral evil, could paganism have produced any true martyrs of virtue. The passions are not to be stilled by being soothed: whatever is allowed them is but an allurement to go farther, and soon makes their tyranny uncontrollable. Of this Nero is an instance. For, availing himself of this indulgence, he soon gave an entire loose to all his desires, especially when he began to feel the dangerous pleasure of being master of his own person and actions. He plunged himself publicly, and without shame or constraint, into the most infamous debaucheries, in which such was the perversity of his heart, that, as Suetonius tells us, he believed nobody to be less voluptuous and abandoned than himself, though he said they were more private in their crimes, and greater hypocrites: notwithstanding, at that very time, Rome abounded with most perfect examples of virtue and chastity among the Christians.

There is a degree of folly inseparable from vice. But this in Nero seemed by superlative malice to degenerate into downright phrenzy. All his projects consisted in the extravagances of a madman; and nothing so much flattered his pride as to undertake things that seemed impossible. He forgot all common rules of decency, order, or justice. It was his greatest ambition to sing or perform the part of an actor on the stage, to play on musical instruments in the theatre, or to drive a chariot in the circus. And whoever did not applaud all his performances, or had not the complaisance to let him carry the prize at every race or public diversion, his throat was sure to be cut, or he was reserved for some more barbarous death. For cruelty was the vice which above all others has rendered his name detestable. At the instigation of Poppæa, a most infamous adulteress, he caused his mother Agrippina to be slain in the year 58, and from that time it seemed to be his chief delight to glut his savage mind with the slaughter of the bravest, the most virtuous, and the most noble persons of the universe, especially of those that were nearest to him. He put to death his wife Octavia after many years ill usage, and he cut off almost all the most illustrious heads of the empire.

[14] On account of the murder of St. Stanislas, slain by Boleslas II.

[15] Serm. v. de Laz. t. 1, p. 765.

[16] St. Chrys. l. 1, ad Vid. Junior. t. 1, p. 341.

[17] According to the Registers of Landaff, quoted by Usher, St. Oudoceus was son of Budic II. prince of Cornwall, in Armorica; and was committed to the care of St. Theliau, when he removed to Armorica. But Usher is mistaken, as he dates this fact at 596. For we learn from St. Gregory of Tours that Thierri, son of Budic, was made prince of Cornwall in 577, and that his father was dead a long time before.

[18] P. 178, ed. Combefis.

[19] Not. ib. t. 2, p. 704, Op. St. Chrys.

[20] T. 2, ed. Ben. p. 704.

[21] The abbey of Kemperle is three leagues from Port-Louis and eight from Quimper.

[22] In Latin Berti Cramnus, Bertrannus: not Bertrandus.

[23] Lugo in Decal. See Less. l. de Valetud.

[24] Jos. ix. 14.

[25] See these laws in Spelman, Conc. t. 1, and Wilkins, Conc. Brit. t. 1.

[26] Cent. 10.

[27] Extant in Monast. Anglic. App., vol. 1.

[28] The Welch laws of Howel Dha, that is, Howel the Good, are published by Dr. Wotton, in folio, 1735.

[29] See Inett, History of the Church of England, t. 1.

[30] Rosweide, Vit. Patr. l. 5, lib. 4, n. 38.

[31] Ibid. l. 6, lib. 2, n. 14.

[32] Cotelier, Monum. Gr. p. 675.

[33] Cotelier, ib. p. 670, Rosweide, l. 3, p. 103.

[34] Cotelier, ib. p. 672.

[35] Rosweide, Vid. Patr. l. 5, lib. 15, n. 47.

[36] Rosweide, Vit. Patr. l. 5, lib. 1, n. 17.

[37] Rosweide, Vit. Patr. l. 5, lib. 15, n. 44.

[38] Ibid. n. 46.

[39] Ibid. l. 5, lib. 8, n. 15.

[40] Ibid. l. 6, lib. 9, n. 5.

[41] Cotelier, ibid. p. 669.

[42] Rosweide, Vit. Patr. l. 5, lib. 4, n. 39, et l. 6, lib. 3, n. 6.

[43] Cotelier, p. 671.

[44] Rufin. ap. Rosw. l. 3, n. 162.

[45] Rosweide, Vit. Patr. l. 5, lib. 16, n. 10.

[46] Cotelier, t. 1, p. 678.

[47] The monastery of Blangy was founded in 686. Having been destroyed during the incursions of the Normans, it was rebuilt in the eleventh century, and given to the religious of the Order of St. Benedict. It is still in being.

[48] She was widow of Guy of Chatillon, count of St. Pol, brother to Maud.

[49] St. Cypr. l. de Oper. et Eleem.

[50] L. 1, de Offic. c. 30.

[51] The abbé Ma-Geoghegan, in his history of Ireland, published in Paris in 1758, asserts that the Scots were originally Scythians, or properly Celto-Scythians, of Spanish original. Foreign writers of repute bear witness to this extraction: the native historians of Ireland have at all times been unanimous in recording it, and have adduced testimonies in support of it, which cannot be easily overthrown, as some moderns, who made the attempt, have experienced. The ancient Fileas of Ireland have indeed (like the old poets of all other European nations) shrouded real facts in a veil of pompous fables. Thus they pretended the leaders of this Spanish colony were the descendants of a celebrated Breogan, and that a grandson of this Breogan was married to an Egyptian heroine named Scota, from whom the Irish took the name of Kinea-Scuit or Scots, as they took the appellation of Clan-Breogan or Brigantes, from the former. But such inventions, acceptable to the credulity and flattering to the pride of nations, cannot discredit any fact otherwise well attested. The British Brigantes were probably descendants of the Irish Brigantes, as the Scots of Britain were certainly descendants from those of Ireland. Tacitus, in the first age of the Christian era, has thought from the difference of complexion and frame of body observable among the British tribes of his time, that some were of Spanish original; and an earlier writer, Seneca, in his satire on the emperor Claudius, makes mention of the Scuta-Brigantes, which Scaliger, by needless correction, makes Scoto-Brigantes, as the Irish wrote Scuit and Scoit indifferently. This testimony of Seneca is a proof that the name Scots or Scuits, was known to some Roman writers so early as the first century; and the Irish appellations of Kinea-Scuit and Clan-Breogan plainly point out the proper country of those Scuta-Brigantes in the time of the emperor Nero.

Mr. Geoghegan looks upon the Irish to be a mother tongue; and it may justly be so denominated, notwithstanding the adoption of some foreign terms, and some variations of construction introduced by time in all languages, before they arrive at their classical standard. Some writings of the fifth century show that this language was at its full perfection before the introduction of the gospel by Roman missionaries in the fourth and fifth centuries. The notion that this language is a dialect of the modern Biscayan is undoubtedly groundless. The latter tongue owes its original to some nation of those barbarians who settled in Guipuscoa and other parts of the Pyrenean regions, on the decline of the Roman empire, nor are the few words common in the Basque and Irish tongues any proof that the one is descended from the other. This observation will hold good relatively to the Welsh and Irish languages. They differ entirely in syntax, and show that the two nations speaking those tongues have different Celtic originals.

Bollandus says that St. Patrick taught the first alphabet to the Irish: he means the Roman alphabet, and should not forget that it was taught very near an age before, by earlier missionaries in the parts of Ireland which they converted to the faith. In the antecedent times the Fileas or ancient Irish writers, inscribed their ideas on tablets of wood, by the means of seventeen cyphers, of which their ancestors learned the use before their arrival in Ireland; nor is this fact obscured, but is rather enlightened by a fable of the Fileas, setting forth that some of those ancestors were instructed in letters by a celebrated Phenius, famous for literary knowledge in the East. Through this poetical veil we plainly discern the Phenicians, who first instructed the Europeans (the Greeks, Lybians, Italians, and Spaniards particularly) in the use of letters and other arts. Spain, according to Strabo, had the use of letters in a very early period; and that a colony from that country should import into, and cultivate also, those elements of knowledge in Ireland, is not improbable: the perfection of the Irish language before the introduction of Christianity is an incontrovertible proof of the fact.

* * * * *

The Scots are represented as a rude and barbarous people in the fourth and fifth ages, even by some eminent ecclesiastical writers. But these as well as other foreign historians have not, if at all, been resident long enough in Ireland to pronounce the natives barbarous, if those writers took that epithet in the worst sense it can bear. St. Jerom avers that when an adolescentulus, he saw a Scot in Gaul feeding upon human flesh, but the child, in this case, might impose upon the man, or if otherwise, a nation is not to be characterised from the barbarity of an individual, or even of a single tribe in an extensive country. That some barbarous customs prevailed in Ireland during the ages mentioned, cannot be denied; and that some prevail at this day in most of the modern states of Europe, called enlightened, is a matter of fatal experience. In the documents still preserved in the native language of the ancient Irish, we learn that after the reform made of the order of Fileas in the first century, houses and ample landed endowments were set apart for those philosophers, who, in the midst of the most furious civil wars, were by common consent to be left undisturbed; that they were to be exempt from every employment but that of improving themselves in abstract knowledge, and cultivating the principal youths of the nation in their several colleges; that in the course of their researches they discovered and exposed the corrupt doctrines of the Druids; and that an enlightened monarch called Cormac O’Quin took the lead among the Fileas in the attack upon that order of priests, and declared publicly for the unity of the Godhead against Polytheism, and for the adoration of one supreme, omnipotent, and merciful Creator of heaven and earth. The example of that monarch, and the disquisitions of the Fileas relating to religion and morality, paved the way for the reception of the gospel; and as the doctrines of our Saviour made the quickest progress among civilized nations, the conversion of Ireland in a shorter compass of time than we read of in the conversion of any other European country, brings a proof that the natives were not the rude barbarians some ancient authors have represented them to be.

[52] Antiq. Brit. Eccl. c. 16, p. 408, 412.

[53] Prosp. Contra Collat. c. 44.

[54] See the note on the life of St. Patrick in this work; also Ware’s Antiq. by Harris, with his remarks on Dempster, c. 1, p. 4.

[55] Usher, p. 418.

[56] Certain ancient principal Scottish saints are commemorated in an ancient Scottish calendar published by Mr. Robert Keith, as follows:

January 8. St. Nethalan, B. C. An. 452. 21. St. Vimin, B. An. 715. 29. St. Macwoloc, B. An. 720. 30. Saint Macglastian, B. An. 814.

February 7. St. Ronan, B. C. An. 603.

March 1. St. Minan, archdeacon, C. An. 879. Also St. Marnan, B. An. 655. 4. St. Adrian, B. of St. Andrew’s, M. He was slain by the Danes in 874, and buried in the isle of Man. 6. St. Fredoline, C. An. 500. 11. St. Constantine, king of Scotland, a monk and M. An. 556. 17. St. Kyrinus or Kyrstinus, surnamed Boniface, B. of Ross, An. 660.

April 1. St. Gilbert, B. of Caithness, An. 1140. 12. St. Ternan, archbishop of the Picts, ordained by Saint Palladius, about the year 450. 16. St. Manus or Mans, M. in Orkney, An. 1104. 19. Translation of St. Margaret’s body to Dunfermline.

July 6. St. Palladius, apostle of Scotland.

August 10. St. Blanc, B. C. 27. St. Malrube, hermit, martyred by the Danes, in Scotland, in 1040.

September 16. St. Minian, B. C. in 450, or according to some, a whole century later. 22. St. Lolan, B. of Whithern or Galloway.

October 25. St. Marnoc, B. C. died at Kilmarnock in the fourth or fifth century.

November 2. Saint Maure, from whom Kilmaures is named, An. 899. 12. St. Macar, B. of Murray, M. 887.

St. Germanus, B. C. said to have been appointed bishop of the isles by St. Patrick. Under his invocation the cathedral of the isle of Man is dedicated. St. Macull or Mauchold, in Latin Macallius, bishop in the same place from 494 to 518. In his honor many churches are dedicated in Scotland, and one in the isle of Man. He is honored on the 25th of April. St. Brendan, from whom a church in the isle of Man is called Kirk-Bradan, was bishop of the isles in the ninth century.

N. B. The isle of Man has had its own bishop from the time it came into the hands of the English in the days of Edward I. of England, and David II. of Scotland. It was anciently subject to the bishop of the Isles, who always resided at Hy-columbkill till the extinction of episcopacy in Scotland, in 1688. The bishops both of the isles and of Man took the title of Episcopus Sodorensis; which Mr. Keith (p. 175) derives (not from any towns), but from the Greek word Soter or Saviour, because the cathedral of Hy-columbkill is dedicated to our Saviour. See Mr. Robert Keith, in his new Catalogue of bishops in Scotland, printed at Edinburgh, in 4to. An. 1755.

Le Neve supposes with Spotiswood that the isle of Man had its bishops after Amphibalus, who lived in the fourth age, that they were called bishops of Soder from a village of that name in the island, and that the title was transferred to the island of Hy-columbkill in the eighth age, when the two sees were united into one. But the succession of bishops in the isle of Man is not sufficiently clear.

Matthew Paris says that Wycomb was first bishop of Man, in the twelfth age, and that he was consecrated by the archbishop of York. See Le Neve. Fasti Anglic.

[57] Hect. Boet. l. 7, fol. 128.

[58] Sozom. l. 3, c. 14.

[59] Rufin. b. 5, c. 10.

[60] Socrates, in all things he said, used to add this form of speech, “By my Dæmon’s leave.” And just upon the point of expiring, he ordered a cock to be sacrificed to Esculapius (Plato’s Phædo sub finem). And in his trial we read one article of his impeachment to have been a charge of unnatural lust. Thales, the prince of naturalists, being asked by Crœsus what God was, put off that prince from time to time, saying, “I will consider on it.” But the meanest mechanic among the Christians can explain himself intelligibly on the Creator of the universe. Diogenes could not be contented in his tub without gratifying his passions. And when with his dirty feet he trod upon Plato’s costly carpets, crying that he trampled upon the pride of Plato, he did this, as Plato answered him, with greater pride. Pythagoras affected tyranny at Thurium, and Zeno at Pyrene. Lycurgus made away with himself because he was unable to bear the thought of the Lacedæmonians correcting the severity of his laws. Anaxagoras had not fidelity enough to restore to strangers the goods which they had committed to his trust. Aristotle could not sit easy till he proudly made his friend Hermias sit below him; and he was as gross a flatterer of Alexander for the sake of vanity, as Plato was of Dionysius for his belly. From Plato and Socrates the stoics derived their proud maxim, “The wise man is self-sufficient.” Epictetus himself allows “to be proud of the conquest of any vice.” Aristotle (Ethic. ad Nicom. l. 10, c. 7) and Cicero patronize revenge. See B. Cumberland of the Laws of Nature, c. 9, p. 346. Abbé Batteux demonstrates the impiety and vices of Epicurus mingled with some virtues and great moral truths. (La Morale d’Epicure, à Paris, 1758.) The like blemishes may be found in the doctrine and lives of all the other boasted philosophers of paganism. See Theodoret. De curandis Græcor. affectibus, &c.

[61] King Ina ruled the West-Saxons thirty-seven years with great glory, from the abdication of Ceadwalla who died at Rome. Ina vanquished the Welsh, several domestic rebels, and foreign enemies; made many pious foundations, and rebuilt in a sumptuous manner the abbey of Glastenbury. Ralph or Ranulph Higden in his Polychronicon, and others say this king first established the Rome-scot or Peter-pence, which was a collection of a penny from every house in his kingdom paid yearly to the see of Rome. By considering the vanities of the world and moved by the frequent exhortations of the queen his wife, he renounced the world in 728 in the highest pitch of human felicity, and leaving his kingdom to Ethelheard his kinsman, travelled to Rome, was there shorn a monk, and grew old in that mean habit. His wife accompanied him thither, confirmed him in that course, and imitated his example: so that living not far from each other in mutual love, and in the constant exercises of penance and devotion, they departed this life at Rome not without doing divers miracles, as William of Malmesbury and H. Huntingdon write. In 696 Sebbi, the pious king of the East-Saxons, preferred also a private life to a crown, took the monastic habit with the blessing of bishop Whaldere, successor to St. Erkenwald in the see of London, after bestowing a great sum of money in charity, and soon after departed this life in the odor of sanctity. See Bede b. 4, c. 11.

[62] Spelman Conc. Brit. t. 1.

[63] B. 5, ch. 19.

[64] Bede, p. 3, c. 6.

[65] On St. Edelburga see Solier the Bollandist, ad diem 7 Julij, t. 2, p. 481. She is called in French St. Aubierge. See on her also Du Plessis, Hist. de Meaux.

[66] Published by Dom. Martenne, Anecdot. t. 4.

[67] Urban VIII. Constit. 58. _Cum sicut._ An. 1626, Bullar. Roman. t. 5, p. 120.

[68] Grotius and others demonstrate the Greek language to have been, in the first ages of Christianity, common in Palestine; but this cannot be extended to all the country people, as this passage and other proofs clearly show. Hence Eusebius wrote his Acts of the Martyrs of Palestine in Syro-Chaldaic, but abridged the same in Greek, in the eighth book of his Church History.

[69] The old Latin Acts write his name Flavian, and some Fabian, by mistaking the Syriac name, which is written without vowels.

[70] Anglia Sacra, t. 1, p. 613, published by Wharton.

[71] Ibid. p. 606.

[72] Sozom. l. 3, c. 16.

[73] T. 3, p. 23.

[74] On this genuine work see Assemani, Op. t. 1, p. 119, ib. Proleg, c. 1, et t. 2, p. 37. Item Biblioth. Orient. t. 1, p. 141. The disciples of St. Ephrem committed to writing this same history, as they had often heard it from his mouth. Hence we have so many relations of it. One formerly published by Gerard Vossius, is republished by Assemani (t. 3, p. 23). But the most complete account is that given us in the saint’s confession, extant in the new Vatican edition.

[75] See Appendix on St. Ephrem’s Works, at the end of the life.

[76] Serm. Ascetic. 1, p. 4.

[77] In encomio Basilij, t. 2.

[78] From his conversing with St. Basil by an interpreter it is clear that St. Ephrem never understood the Greek language. The old vicious translation of the life of St. Basil, under the name of St. Amphilochius, pretends that St. Basil obtained for him miraculously the knowledge of the Greek tongue, and ordained him priest. But this is a double mistake, though the latter was admitted by Baillet. Saint Jerom, Palladius, and other ancients always style him deacon, never priest. Nor does Pseudo Amphilochius say, that St. Basil raised St. Ephrem, but only his disciple and companion to the priesthood, as the new translation of this piece, and an attentive inspection of the original text, demonstrate.

[79] T. 4, b. 1, ed. Vaticanæ.

[80] Necrosima, can. 81, p. 335, t. 6.

[81] St. Ephrem in Testam. p. 286, 395, and St. Greg. Nyss. p. 12.

[82] Testam. t. 2, p. 230, &c.

[83] Greg. M. Moral. l. 23, c. 21.

[84] Cant. ii. 12.

[85] John Oosterwican was director to a convent of nuns of the same order in Gorcum; he was then very old, and often prayed that God would honor him with the crown of martyrdom.

The names of the eleven Franciscans were Nicholas Pick, Jerom, a native of Werden, in the county of Horn, Theodoric of Embden, native of Amorfort, Nicaise Johnson, native of Heze, Wilhade, native of Denmark, Godfrey of Merveille, Antony of the town of Werden, Antony of Hornaire, a village near Gorcum, Francis Rodes, native of Brussels. These were priests and preachers. The other two were lay-brothers, namely, Peter of Asca, a village in Brabant, and Cornelius of Dorestate, a village now called Wick, in the territory of Utrecht.--The three curates were Leonand Vechel, Nicholas Poppel, and Godfrey Dunen. This last was a native of Gorcum, who having been rector of the university of Paris, where he had studied and taught, was some time curate in Holland near the French territories, but resigned his curacy and lived at Gorcum.

The other martyrs were John Oosterwican mentioned above; John, a Dominican of the province of Cologne, curate of Hornaire; Adrian Hilvarenbeck, a Norbertin of Middleburge, who served a parish at Munster, a village near the mouth of the Meuse; James Lacop of the same order and monastery, an assistant in a neighboring parish to Munster; and Andrew Walter, a secular priest, curate of Heinort, near Dort.

[86] Julij, t. 2, p. 823.

[87] De Canoniz. lib. iii. cap. 12.

[88] The reader will observe that this word is used in the Saints’ writings in the sense of elevated, and almost ecstatic, union with God, in prayer and contemplation.

[89] Pius VI. Decree approving the virtues of the Ven. Veronica Giuliani. April, 1796.

[90] Ceillier and some others think this emperor to have been M. Aurelius Antoninus Philosophus, who was a persecutor, and reigned with Lucius Verus; the latter was absent from Rome in the Parthian war from 162 to 166; on which account, say these authors, he did not appear in this trial. See Tillemont, t. 2, p. 326. But that these martyrs suffered under Antoninus Pius, in the thirteenth year of his reign, of Christ 150, we are assured by an old inscription in several ancient MS. copies of their acts mentioned by Ruinart. That this emperor put several Christians to death whilst he was governor of Asia before his accession to the empire, Tertullian testifies (ad Scapul.). And that towards the end of his reign, notwithstanding his former mildness towards them, he again exercised the sword and torments on them, we have an undoubted proof in the genuine epitaph of St. Alexander, martyr, produced by Aringhi, Diss. 2, l. 3, c. See Berti in Sæc. 2.

[91] Quæ in viduitate permanens Deo suam voverat castitatem. Ruin. Act. Sincer. p. 21.

[92] Omnes qui non confitentur Christum verum esse Deum, in ignem æternum mittentur. Ruin. p. 23.

[93] In Cyclum Pasch. p. 268.

[94] Nisibis was the Assyrian name of this city, which was called by the Greeks Antiochia Mygdoniæ, from the river Mygdon, on which it was situated, which gave name to the territory. The ancient name of this city was Achar or Achad, one of the seats of the empire of Nimrod. “He reigned in Arach, that is, Edessa, and in Achad, now called Nisibis,” says St. Jerom. (qu. in Gen. c. 10, n. 10). St. Ephrem had made the same observation before him. “He reigned in Arach, which is Edessa, and in Achar, which is Nisibis, and in Calanne, which is Ctesiphon, and in Rehebot, which is Adiab.” St. Ephrem, Comm. in Gen. See Sim. Assemani, Bibl. Orient. t. 2, Diss. de Monophysitis.

[95] Philoth. seu Hist. Relig. c. 1, p. 767.

[96] F. Cuper thinks the account of this event in Theodoret’s Religious History to be an addition inserted from other places, t. 4. Jul. in Comment. prævio ad Vitam, S. Jacobi, n. 12 et 17.

[97] Philost. Hist. l. 3, c. 23.

[98] Chron. Alex. p. 287, S. Hieron. In Chron. and Theophan. p. 28. See Le Beau, Hist. du Bas Empire, l. 6, n. 11, t. 2, p. 22.

[99] Wisdom xvi. 9.

[100] Theodoret, Hist. Relig. in vit. S. Jacobi, et in Hist. Eccl. l. 2. c. 30. Philost. l. 3, c. 32. Theophan. p. 33. Chron. Alex. Zozim. l. 3. Zonar. t. 2, p. 44. Le Reau, l. 7, p. 127, t. 2.

[101] Tillemont, Hist. des. Emp. t. 4, p. 674, places the second siege of Nisibis to 346, and the third in 350. But the dates above mentioned are more agreeable to history, and adopted by the suffrage of most modern critics.

[102] The two elder Assemani place the death of St. James in 338, soon after the first siege of Nisibis, of which they understand the circumstances which are usually ascribed to the second siege; for Theodoret confounds them together, as Garnier, (in hunc Theodoreti locum), Petau, (in Or. l. Juliani) Henricus Valesius, (in Hist. Eccl.). Theodoret, Ammian. Marcell. l. 18. Pagi, Tillemont, and others observe. Simon Assemani confirms this chronology by the express testimony of the authors of two Syriac Chronicles, that of Dionysius, patriarch of the Jacobits, and that of Edessa. See Simon Assemani, Biblio. Orient. t. 1, c. 5, p. 17, and Stephen Evodius Assemani in Op. S. Ephrem, t. 1. But neither of these Chronicles seems of sufficient authority to counterbalance the testimony of the Greek historians, and the circumstances that persuade us that St. James survived the second siege of Nisibis, upon which Tillemont, Ceillier, &c., place the death of St. James in 350; and Cuper the Bollandist between the years 350 and 361, in which Constantius died.

[103] Ammian. Marcelli. l. 18, c. 7. Zonaras, t. 2, p. 20. Monsignor Antonelli in vit. St. Jacobi, p. 26.

[104] See on him Galanus in